Last month, we launched our Reclaim
Your Lunch Break campaign, urging you to buck the unhealthy trend for working
through. If the increased risk of heart disease, depression and weight gain
still hasn’t made you down tools at 1pm, maybe these four inspiring ideas
will….
What
are you doing at lunch?
1. Get your groove on
In June 2010, a group of young Swedish
professionals created Lunch Beat, a club-style lunchtime dance session offering
tired-out office workers the opportunity to ditch their desks and get down on
the dance floor. What started out as 14 mates Freestlying in a garage has gone
global and the daytime rave-ups now happen in 25 cities worldwide, with new
sites popping up every week. They’re everything you’d expect from a good club
night: disco ball, strobe lights, achingly-cool crowd and bass-heavy DJ – just
minus the booze. Instead, you’ll be served plenty of water along with your
organic, veggie lunch. The only rules? You have to dance, and you can’t talk
about work. We approve. (price: From $7.5; events are currently held in London
and Manchester, with plans to expand across the UK; visit lunchbeat.org,
facebook.com/lunchbeat, or tweet @lunchbeat to find out more).
2. Cook up a storm
Don’t just grab a sandwich, how about using
your break to learn how to whip up a delicious meal in a flash, with enough
time to sit down and enjoy it afterwards.
L’atelier des Chefs in London (St Pauls and Oxford Circus) hosts 30-minute ‘Cook, Eat
and Run’ session, where you’ll rustle up dishes like Indonesian fish curry or
lamb steak with feta, salsa verde and crushed new potatoes. They’ll give you a
doggie bag to take your culinary creations away (price: $22.5,
atelierdeschefs.co.uk). School of Wok in Covent Garden also hosts an
hour-long ‘quick fire’ lunchtime course to show you how to master quick, easy
and healthy Asian meal (price: $67.5, schoolofwork.co.uk). And Friday
Kitchen at Edinburgh New Town Cookery School is an hour-long
class that kicks off at 1pm sharp and teaches you to prepare a two-course
gourmet menu for two (price: $37.5, entcs.co.uk).
L'Atelier
des Chefs is right in the centre of London, in Wigmore
Street.
3. Feel the burn
A quick workout is the ultimate way to use
your lunch break, but if you’d rather stay chained to your desk than pound the
treadmill, it’s time to find a new fitness habit. Power Plate has just
launched a 25-minute session called PowerHIT nationwide (price: $30,
powerplate.com/uk), while climbing centres often offer open sessions on
indoor walls over lunch. Pound the pavements with Run Club London, which
runs 45-minute city circuits in Canary Wharf (runclub.co.uk), or if you
can’t waste time to-ing and fro-ing, download a yoga workout from Love Yoga
Online (price: from $6 loveyogaonline.co.uk), roll up your mat and head to the
park. And of course you’ll find hundreds of quick workouts at zest.co.uk
or in the magazine; this month try high-intensity interval training (HIIT),
featured on page 103 – if you think you can handle it!
4. Get a wellbeing makeover
Treat your grey matter to lunch at one of Nuffield
Health’s ‘Meet our Expert’ events, where industry experts give lectures
packed with insider know-how on working out, eating well or staying emotionally
healthy (nuffield health.com). And don’t forget to visit zest.co.uk every
Wednesday at 1pm, for our weekly clinic, and put your questions to fitness
experts, dermatologists, nutritionists and more. The Wellcome Collection
in central London offers ‘Packed Lunch’ talks, where you can munch a sarnie
while listening to discussions on everything from how to make a decision to
understanding cravings (wellcomecollection.org). And at University
College London lunchtime lectures will get you thinking about subjects such
as how self-esteem affects our eating habits and why laughter is so contagious (ucl.ac.uk).
Feast your mind on that.
