Best meal replacement shake to feel full? https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

I am looking for a healthy meal replacement shake (either premade or homemade) to eat for lunch, which is the meal of the day I most often neglect for a couple reasons. I am looking for something that would be filling enough, have sufficient calories and give me energy for the next few hours of the day without taking much digestion energy. I am not looking to lose weight, I am more hoping to save time during my busy schedule but still properly give my body the calories and energy it needs to sustain itself.

I am a 5'5" 100lb female; I struggled with chronic illness for a number of years and at the end of it, my body was very weak and instinctively prioritized energy conservation. Anytime I would eat food, even the smallest amount, I could feel the last bits of my energy draining into my digestive system and it felt like all other parts of my body would just shut down and I would get extremely drowsy and near pass out. This caused an unfortunate cycle where I would starve myself during the day when I had to be out in public because eating anything would be out of the question, and would wait until I was home for the night to eat my meal and then proceed to knock out right after. I was never able to eat a single meal without falling asleep half way through.

Currently, I am on my road to recovery and have come a long way since then. My body is much stronger now and feeling drowsy after eating is much less of a problem, but it still is present in my life. My stomach capacity is quite small, and I can only eat a little bit at a time before I get full so getting enough calories in is something I am trying to be conscious of. I don't count calories but if I did, I'm pretty sure I would be in deficit, which is opposite of what I want. Ideally, I know that I should be eating 5 or 6 small meals evenly spaced throughout the day, but with my schedule it feels unrealistic, and I dislike being disrupted from a productive flow by having to go and prepare a meal. I currently eat 3 meals a day, but lunch is often pushed back because of my fear of eating, feeling drowsy and losing my productivity for the rest of the day because I have to take a 3 hr nap before my body can function again, which messes up my sleeping schedule that I barely was able to fix. I feel less of that fear during dinner because there are less stakes in that I can always head to bed early if I get drowsy after eating and then wake up earlier and start the next day better.

It's difficult to eat lunch because objectively, I feel good when I don't have food in my stomach. I feel productive, clear-minded and am motivated for the rest of the day while my body is not bogged down by digestion. I want that feeling to last, but it gets cut short when I eat. But I know that prolonging my starvation is doing more harm to my body than good and I'm essentially running on empty. And when I finally eat, I tend to eat more than I should because I'm hungry and get the food coma that any normal person would get if they ate twice as much as they normally would. That's why Im looking to meal replacement drinks so that I can have a happy medium of giving my body the energy and calories it needs, but also giving my digestive system a bit of a rest.

I already have been drinking protein drinks for lunch for a while now, but the brand I have is low in calories and doesn't keep me full for more than an hour so it's not particularly helpful. I'm looking for a brand or a recipe of some sort that is more substantial and hopefully healthy to be used long term. I keep a low-sugar diet, including fruits, but at the same time I can't say I would be able to drink a gross flavored shake just for the sake of my health. I'd be willing to add some fruits for flavor if necessary.

If anyone has ideas/recipes/brands they can share that works for them, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!

goo.gl/FXiP5V