Let’s face it. If you’re like most people, you are probably extremely busy and don’t want to spend all your time in the kitchen making healthy, delicious, plant-based meals. Most people are in the same boat, which is why I consistently hear one question all the time: how can I meal prep on a plant-based diet?
Before I go any future, I’d like to say I don’t like to provide rigid meal plans for people for multiple reasons:
- It doesn’t teach you the foundation of healthy eating because once you “stop” the meal plan, you might resort back to your old ways of eating
- Life happens and if you don’t stick to your meal plan, you might think you’ve fallen off track
- It doesn’t allow for individualization. I want you to eat what you like to eat (as long as you’re making healthy decisions!)
That said, what I do share are different ways that you can meal prep so you can choose to implement one that will work for you, your life, and your schedule.
The information below is outlining three of the best ways to meal prep (depending on your needs/wants).
Option 1: The Simplest, Fastest, Healthy Option
This plan is for anyone who wants to limit the amount of time they spend cooking each week and is okay eating similar foods (to a certain extent) throughout the week.
The Plan of Action
Action Step 1: Breakfast
Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, scrambled tofu, avocado toast, whatever you’d like. If you want the fastest option, either make a smoothie or spend 5 minutes each night preparing overnight oats, which will be ready for you in the morning the following day.
Action Step 2: Lunch (Buddha bowl)
Essentially, you are going to spend 60 minutes on Sunday preparing 7 Buddha bowls (you could also replace this with a salad, stir fry, or any other food you can prepare in bulk) worth of ingredients for your lunches the upcoming week. When lunch time comes, all you have to do is pull the containers out of the fridge, throw some food on your plate, add the sauce and you’re ready to go!
If this sounds intriguing to you, I wrote an article outlining exactly what you need to buy, prep, and how to store the food. Check out that article here.
As a side note, you can structure this in any way that works for your schedule. If you’d rather do 2 meal preps (Sunday and Wednesday/Thursday) to keep food more fresh and/or switch up the food, that’s totally fine too. It’s whatever works best for you and your schedule. But again, have a plan before the week starts with which option works best for you.
Action Step 3: Dinners (your choice!)
Find 3-4 (or as little as 2-3 if you’re fine with more leftovers) plant-based dinners online that you’d like to make the following week, buy any ingredients you need that you don’t have, and then you’ll make 2-4 dinners throughout the week and eat the leftovers for dinner the following day.
Here is what this plan would look like:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. |
| Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Buddha Bowl |
| Dinner Dinner 1 | Dinner Dinner 1 Leftovers | Dinner Dinner 2 | Dinner Dinner 2 Leftovers | Dinner Dinner 3 | Dinner Dinner 3 Leftovers | Dinner Dinner 4 |
How to plan for this:
To ensure you’re not scrambling around for food and needing to make grocery runs in the middle of the week, find out exactly what you need for food the following week, and do your grocery shopping the weekend before. Feel free to add a second quick grocery run in the middle of the week if you need to restock fresh fruit/vegetables, or whatever you may need.
For example, if you are doing Buddha bowls for lunch, read the article I link to (here) and buy whatever ingredients you need. Then on Sunday, spend 1 hour preparing the food. For dinner, choose the recipes over the weekend that you will want to make for the following week, that way you can buy the ingredients ahead of time.
2 Considerations with this approach:
- This is just an example of how you could structure your meals. This is meant to be a guide, not a specific meal plan. With something like the Buddha bowl, for example, there are tons of ways to make them, so if you are brand new to this, feel free to copy the example I have in the article I linked to. But then as you become more comfortable with it, you can always branch out and put your own twist on it. Additionally, if you have time and want to make dinner each night, then simply don’t make more for leftovers the following night – just make a new dinner each night.
- With a limited amount of time to prepare your week’s meals, each meal isn’t meant to be 5 courses. Now don’t get me wrong, while the food will still tastes great and is SUPER healthy, the structure of this “meal plan” is designed with the intention that you will be eating similar foods for throughout the week. That said, there is so much variety with the options above. For example, with breakfast, you could do overnight oats on some days and a smoothie other days. Or because Buddha bowls offer so much flexibility, you can add twists that make them different. For example, you could use a different sauce, switch the protein source from tempeh to tofu, choose lentils instead of beans, or choose different vegetables and toppings.
Option 2: Leftovers for Lunch
The Plan of Action
Action Step 1: Breakfast
Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, scrambled tofu, avocado toast, whatever you’d like. If you want the fastest option, spend 5 minutes each night preparing overnight oats, which will be ready for you in the morning the following day.
Action Step 2: Lunch (Leftovers)
Essentially, you are going to eat the leftovers from dinner the previous night for lunch the next day.
Action Step 3: Dinners (your choice!)
Find 7 (or fewer if you want more leftovers) plant-based dinners you’d like to make the following week, buy any ingredients you need, and then you’ll make 7 dinners throughout the week (one each night) and eat the leftovers for lunch the following day.
Here is what this plan would look like:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. |
| Lunch Sunday Dinner Leftovers | Lunch Monday Dinner Leftovers | Lunch Tuesday Dinner Leftovers | Lunch Wednesday Dinner Leftovers | Lunch Thursday Dinner Leftovers | Lunch Friday Dinner Leftovers | Lunch Saturday Dinner Leftovers |
| Dinner Dinner 1 | Dinner Dinner 2 | Dinner Dinner 3 | Dinner Dinner 4 | Dinner Dinner 5 | Dinner Dinner 6 | Dinner Dinner 7 |
How to plan for this:
To ensure you’re not scrambling around for food and needing to make grocery runs in the middle of the week, find out exactly what you need for food the following week, and do your grocery shopping the weekend before. Feel free to add a second quick grocery run in the middle of the week if you need to restock fresh fruit/vegetables, or whatever you may need.
2 Considerations:
- As I mentioned in the meal plan structure above, this is just an example of how you could structure your meals. This is meant to be a guide, not a specific meal plan. If you have no leftovers from dinner, or simply don’t want to eat the leftovers for lunch the following day, then you can always make a quick lunch. Or if you don’t want to cook dinner each night, simply make more leftovers to account for the days you don’t want to cook.
- With a limited amount of time to prepare your week’s meals, this meal plan structure is designed with the intention that you are okay eating leftovers each day.
Option 3: Any Combination of the 2 Options Above
This document is meant to be a guide for how you can structure your meals throughout the week to reduce the amount of time you need to spend in the kitchen, while also having structure so you can stick to a healthy diet.
If you want a less “strict” meal plan structure, then feel free to do any combination of the two options above.
For example, you could prepare Buddha bowl ingredients on Sunday to use whenever you don’t have time to cook and you need something fast and healthy. This could be used for both lunch or dinner.
Then you could plan on cooking 3-4 dinners that week, sometimes having leftovers for lunch or dinner the following day.
This option is great for someone who has a busy schedule and wants to be ready for whatever life throws at them!
Here is an example of what this plan could look like:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. | Breakfast Oatmeal, overnight oats, cold cereal, smoothie, etc. |
| Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Monday Dinner Leftovers | Lunch Tempeh BLT | Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Chickpea “tuna” sandwich | Lunch Buddha Bowl | Lunch Buddha Bowl |
| Dinner Dinner 1 | Dinner Buddha Bowl | Dinner Dinner 2 | Dinner Dinner 2 Leftovers | Dinner Buddha Bowl | Dinner Dinner 3 | Dinner Dinner 4 |
As you can see, this approach is essentially allowing for more flexibility, where you eat some Buddha bowls for lunch and others for dinner. And you make some dinners throughout the week, and have leftovers for either lunch or dinner the following day.
Conclusion
When it comes to meal prepping, as you can see from this article, planning is hugely important. If you start each week with no idea what your meals are going to look like, you’re not setting yourself up for success.
Instead, take a bit of time over the weekend, plan out how you want to structure your meals throughout the week, and meal prep whatever is necessary. Trust me, this will save so much time and stress during the week, and you will always have access to healthy food.
What’s most important is that you can take the information from this article and make it your own.
I outline 3 options in this article as a way to get you thinking about different possibilities. But when it’s all said and done, what makes sense for you might not be optimal for someone else.
So finding an option that works for you is most important as that will allow you to stay consistent, week after week, month after month.
I personally like option two the most, where I make a big stir fry (in replace of Buddha bowls) at the beginning of the week that will last for several different meals. Then I will make 2-4 dinners throughout the week and eat leftovers for a day or two.
This plan works well for me because I personally prefer to keep it more simple and I don’t mind eating similar foods throughout the week.
But for you, just play around with some different options and find what works best.
As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on my website or facebook at https://www.facebook.com/devin.mcnamara.77.
Online Fitness and Nutrition Coaching
So if you are looking for a coach to help keep you accountable and create a plan specifically for you, I recently opened up a few spots for my online fitness and nutrition coaching. Here’s what it includes:
- Customized workout routine that fits within your schedule/available equipment.
- Tailored plant-based nutrition coaching so you can reach your goals while optimizing your health.
- Integrated support system that allows you to be held accountable throughout your journey.
While I specialize in helping people get fit on a plant-based diet, if you aren’t ready to make that change, we can still chat to see how I can help you reach your fitness and nutrition goals. So if you’re interested in working with me, I’d love to talk about how I can help you! Find out more here!