The Quick, Healthy Dinner a Nutritionist Recommended That I Always Make When I’m Too Tired to Cook

Picture it: You come home tired after a long, stressful day, with zero desire to cook, to a fridge with few ingredients. Is a healthy dinner on the table? Yeah, right.

On those days I’m more likely to eat foods high in carbohydrates and sugars that generate dopamine quickly but also cause a fast glucose spike. That’s why I wanted to always have a few healthy, easy-to-make dinners in the back of my mind—ones that will satiate without requiring too much effort.

So I asked expert nutrition coach Cristina Barrous to help with this dilemma. I’ve been following her on social media for a long time, and I knew she’d understand how to find simple, practical foods that fit in with the very chaotic, very real life we all lead.

Here’s what she suggested for a quick and healthy dinner option:

Main dish: a spinach and shrimp omelet

All you need are three ingredients to make this dish, and all provide the kind of vitamins and calming benefits that are needed at the end of the day.

• “The egg is [a great source of] protein,” says Barrous. “And since it also has the yolk, it provides us with the healthy fats we need.” Other benefits: Eggs add vitamins A, D, E, and K to your diet and are filling.
• Spinach has many benefits, too, including vitamin K, which is good for blood circulation. In the evening, Barrous says, the magnesium in spinach can also help promote better sleep.
• Shrimp is an important source of protein, vitamins, and minerals. Protein-rich dinners not only keep you fuller longer, but can help boost your metabolism. “Proteins are necessary to form new tissues,” says nutritionist and biochemist Leticia Carrera. This is important because “at night, our body goes into repair mode,” she says.

Dessert: a handful of fresh or frozen blueberries

Although there are other healthy dessert options you can have after dinner—yogurt is one of them—Barrous recommends blueberries because the fruit has a low glycemic index, so you’ll avoid a nighttime blood-sugar spike. Blueberries are also rich in fiber, vitamin C, and potassium and are good for the skin because of the antioxidants they contain.

To make it easier on you, the blueberries don’t even have to be fresh. “They can be eaten frozen as if they were a sweet candy,” Barrous says. What’s more, one study suggests that frozen fruit may contain even more antioxidants. So just in case, I now always make sure to keep an extra-large bag in my freezer.

This post was originally published in Vogue Spain.