Someone contacted me through the Real Muscle Online Facebook Group this week and asked for some ideas about eating healthy at high school. Here is a copy of what they said:

“I was wondering if you guys at RMO could do some stuff about eating healthy in high school? As is, just about every fast food and prepared food company tries to aggressively market to kids and adolescents especially, and at times, even for health conscious people, it can be pretty tough, you know?”

I agree with what the email says 100% and thought it was a great idea for a post. I will try to give some ideas based on my own experience of trying to eat like an athlete while still in high school and all the limitations that it presents.

How to eat healthy at high school

High school can be pretty annoying. You are bound by class times and you only have two breaks to fit in your meals. However, with a bit of planning this structure can actually work in your favor.

1. Trying to eat six healthy meals a day

If you are trying to lose weight or gain muscle it is important to eat about six evenly spaced out meals per day. The reason for this is that you want to keep your metabolism cranking as well as providing your muscles with a constant stream of nutrients.

High school is actually good for this as the two breaks are usually at around 11am and 1pm. This means that you can have breakfast at about 8am, snack at 11am, lunch at 1pm, snack at 4pm and then dinner at 7pm. That is all six meals spaced out perfectly!

Leftovers
The problem with high school is that you need to do a lot of pre-cooking if your school has a bad canteen. I was very luck where I went - the canteen ladies did an amazing job and we always had gourmet foods like sandwiches, healthy pizzas, pasta dishes, salads and so on. It was not difficult to eat healthy or get my protein.

However, not all schools are like this and that means that you have to plan. One of the best things you can do it eat leftovers. If your mom cooks for you then kindly ask her to make extra. If you have an extra chicken breast leftover you can cut it up and throw it into a lunch box with some salad leaves and a bit of mustard for a dressing. Be creative with your leftovers as you can quite often turn some old meal into an awesome new one by simply adding some salad, vegetables or dressing.

Buy food elsewhere
Another thing you can do is spend your lunch money on the way to school. If you have a crappy canteen you can stop off at the local supermarket or a local cafe and buy some take away food which you then eat for lunch. A chicken salad or some healthy equivalent should only cost you about $10. If you can’t afford this everyday once or twice a week is better than none.

Protein shakes
One of the best things you can do is make a protein shake before you go to school and take with with you in a thermos or some other bottle. No one will know what you are drinking and you can get a good healthy meal in a bottle!

All you need to do is add a few eggs, bananas, milk, whey powder and then pack it with ice to keep it cool. This is a perfect 11am recess meal. The great thing about a protein shake is it will not make you feel heavy and tired and as such your studies will benefit too.

Another great thing about protein shakes is that it is cheap. Milk, eggs and bananas cost you next to nothing but give you such a wide spectrum of protein and nutrients. It saves you time and a lot of money.

Turn your backpack into a pantry
Something I used to do in high school to combat the fact that I didn’t have a lot of time was fill my backpack up with plastic bags filled with dried fruits, mixed nuts and other natural foods that would last a long time.

Almost every day after school I would go into China Town in the city for a meal before going home. In China Town you can get a lot of quality produce for a really good price and so I would spend my leftover money at the health food shop buying nuts and so on.

Nuts and dried fruit are a great idea because you can keep them for ages, eat them whenever you want and they are full of protein, good fats, as well as vitamins and minerals.

Some other things you can add to your “back pack pantry” include:

• boiled eggs
• cans of tuna
• cans of fruit
• long life milk
• water

2. Avoiding the temptation to eat junk food

One of the biggest problems with high school is that everyone is eating junk food. Usually a high school lunch consists of chips, hot dogs and a Coke. Not great for a normal person and unacceptable for a bodybuilder.

Avoiding temptation is even harder than normal when you are in high school because for some unknown reason everyone is trying to be cool and impress each other. If all your friends are drinking Coke it sometimes hard to crank out your home made freshly squeezed juice!

However, if you want to eat healthy you need to overcome those obstacles of temptation.

Eat away from others
One of the best ways to avoid temptation is to eat alone. If you brought your meals from home then head out to a bench somewhere in the school and quickly eat your meal before joining your mates for a game of lunch time football or whatever it is you do on your break. This helps you focus on your own goals without being swayed by the opinions of others.

Be your own person
I never really bought into the peer pressure thing in high school. If I wanted to eat bean shoots at lunch time I would (and I did, I’m sure one of my high school mates reading will attest to it). At first your mates might give you a bit of a hard time but it is only because they are jealous of you being strong enough to be different. They are afraid of your independence because it threatens their “group” mentality.

Take what you want to school and eat it with pride. You are looking after your body and your example will encourage others to do the same. I remember in my final year of high school a few of my other friends started bringing in mixed nuts and dried fruit from the local health food store and we all sat and shared with each other in physics class.

Don’t beat yourself up
One thing I had to learn in high school is that you can’t eat perfectly all the time. If you ask my friends they will tell you that I never ate any junk food, sugar, saturated fats, etc. because I was so health conscious and wanted to be fit for my sports. However, this meant that I missed out on a lot of good social events because I wouldn’t eat at KFC or go out for a Coke after training. Do the best that you can but don’t be upset if you eat junk food once in a while.

Look at the marketing for what it is
The question above mentioned that fast food companies market to kids very heavily and it can be tough to avoid their products. This is very true and as such you need to learn to look at their marketing for what it is - a trap.

I know a very wise buddhist master in India who once said:

“Marketing is designed to test how gullible you are.”

If you realize this you will see all the foods and their commercials as nothing more than a scheme to make money. When you see that junk food is marketed in the same way as every other product you will realize that you don’t need it to be happy or satiated.

Conclusion on eating healthy in high school

Eating healthy is a choice. It will not happen by accident so you need to plan ahead and make it happen. High school might be limiting in some ways but it also gives you a rigid structure where you can create some pretty useful habits that will last a lifetime.

If anyone has any other tips I would love to hear them.

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