How do you normally manage your meals? Do you just wing it all the time, or do you actually sit down and plan your meals?
It’s no secret that planning your slow-carb meals is going to go much further in helping you actually stick to them than just flying by the seat of your pants.
So in an effort to help you come up with some appropriate meal ideas, I’ve gone through different recipes I’ve used and plans I’ve created for myself to give you a guide.
If you want something a little more hands-off and prefer having someone else create your meal plans for you, you should check out my slow-carb meal planner. You’ll never have to plan a slow-carb meal again. You just take our shopping list to the store and cook, aka “the easy stuff”.
But if you want to try a bit yourself (and get a whole month of them for free), keep reading.
Keeping it simple goes a long way
I’ve often said that one of the best ways to keep yourself on the plan you create is to make it as easy as possible to do so. The less you have to think about things like exercise and food, the more likely it is that you’ll actually do what you say you will.
In following that precept, these plans don’t have 28 different meals. It’ll be far easier for you to do some extra preparing when you do cook (especially if you have a busy lifestyle) than it would to prepare a different meal every single time you eat. I’ve checked out several meal plans, and the fact is I found it hard to follow them because I was always having to make something new.
The idea here was to create a plan you’d actually follow.
That said, these meal plans aren’t boring. I love to eat delicious food, so I always try to tantalize my taste buds. The plan also is right in line with Rule #2.
You can modify for your own lifeway
If you follow paleo, you’ll still be able to use most of these ideas. The basis for the majority of the meals are proteins and vegetables. You can omit the legumes if there are some in the meal.
Conversely, some of the meals don’t have legumes in them. I’ve found that lowering legume intake helped more with fat loss, but from what I hear, your mileage may vary. Feel free to incorporate more legumes if you want to.
And now, the meal plans:
These plans will get you through four weeks, so feel free to adjust accordingly!
Oh, one more note: I’m assuming Sunday is cheat day, since that’s mine. I don’t expect yours to be Sunday, but you can just adjust the days to fit your schedule.
Week 1
Breakfast: Slow-carb breakfast casserole
Lunch: Hamburgers wrapped in lettuce, raw veggie plate, 5 bean salad
Breakfast: Breakfast casserole
Lunch: Pork loin leftovers
Dinner: Grilled fish, steamed veggies, and lima beans
Breakfast: Breakfast casserole
Lunch: Fish and veggie leftovers
Dinner: Poached egg over chorizo, all over sauteed red peppers and onions.
Breakfast: Omelet of eggs, lentils, spinach, and bacon
Lunch: Tuna salad lettuce wraps with chimichurri
Dinner: Halibut macadamia with roasted asparagus*
Breakfast: Omelet of eggs, lentils, spinach, and bacon
Lunch: “Burrito” bowl – grilled protein of choice, grilled onions & peppers, black beans, diced tomatoes, salsa, guacamole
Dinner: Slow-carb pizza**
Breakfast: Breakfast burrito***
Lunch: London broil (on the grill!), spinach-leaf salad
Dinner: Orange chicken stir fry with peppers, onions, carrots, and broccoli
Week 2
Breakfast: Egg cupcakes
Lunch: Chipotle meatballs with guacamole, salad
Dinner: Slow carb shepherd’s pie
Breakfast: Egg cupcakes
Lunch: Shepherd’s pie leftover
Dinner: Baked salmon, lentils, and steamed broccoli
Breakfast: Ham and kale fritata
Lunch: Big salad: fajita steak salad (steak, peppers, onions, spinach leaves, and whatever else you want)
Dinner: Beef roast with onions, carrots, and parsnips. Side of lentils**
Breakfast: Ham and kale fritata
Lunch: Roast leftovers
Dinner: Butter chicken with chickpeas and spinach
Breakfast: Quick omelette (eggs, bacon, lentils, spinach or kale)
Lunch: Tuna and spinach salad (load it up with veggies!)
Dinner: Pork chops, red beans and garlic, green beans
Breakfast: Coconut milk and curry fritata*
Lunch: my smokey, zesty, irresistible chili**
Dinner: London broil, steamed broccoli, lentil stew**
Week 3
Breakfast: breakfast casserole
Lunch: London broil leftovers, spinach leaf salad (any veggies you want) with a oil/vinegar dressing
Dinner: Beef burgundy, asparagus, cauliflower mash
Breakfast: breakfast casserole
Lunch: Fajita salad w/ guac and black beans (cook up the peppers and onions)
Dinner: Fish, steamed veggies
Breakfast: breakfast casserole
Lunch: Fish and veggie leftovers (wrap them in lettuce, like a taco!)
Dinner: Rotisserie Chicken, side of spiced cauliflower and carrots.
Breakfast: breakfast casserole
Lunch: Leftover chicken, pulled, in a salad with red beans
Dinner: Slow-carb crab cake patties over wilted spinach leaves
Breakfast: eggs, lentils, spinach, bacon omelet
Lunch: “Burrito” bowl
Dinner: Pork loin, broccoli, and lentils
Breakfast: Sausage, kale, mushrooms, onions, peppers, in the form of a fritata
Lunch: Pork dinner leftovers
Dinner: Slow-carb Beef and Lentil Soup
Week 4
Breakfast: Eggs, lentils, bacon, spinach omelet
Lunch: Soup leftovers
Breakfast: Egg cupcakes
Lunch: Thai chicken leftovers
Dinner: Tilapia fillet with summer squash
Breakfast: Eggs, lentils, bacon, spinach omelet
Lunch: Turkey, ham, olives, sauteed onions and peppers, in a lettuce wrap
Dinner: Ña Ever’s awesome Pan de carne (that means a really great meat loaf)
Breakfast: Egg cupcakes
Lunch: meat loaf leftovers
Dinner: Ginger pork stir fry (the recipe says beef, but you can use pork)
Breakfast: Eggs, lentils, bacon, spinach omelet
Lunch: stir fry leftover
Dinner: Crabcakes; roasted carrots, onions, and asparagus
Breakfast: Breakfast burrito
Lunch: Hamburgers – burger, ham, 1 egg, onion, tomato, homemade mayo, in a lettuce “bun”
Dinner: Chili
There you have it! Check your pantry and fridge and make your shopping list!
Need more meal plan love?
Maybe you’re too busy to come up with your own meal plans. Maybe you don’t feel like you’re creative enough. Maybe you just value your time more than that (these meal plans take me several hours to put together).
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve come up with a slow-carb meal planning service that’s designed to take all of the hard work out of planning your meals and giving you what you need to actually DO it. You’ll get a shopping list every week along with the recipes.
If that sounds interesting, check out the post I wrote announcing the service to get all the details. Let me know how I can help!
Check out the slow-carb meal planning service here.
I have one real question for you before you go: How can I make meal plans like these better for you? What can I change to make this immensely shareable with everyone you know? Please let me know in the comments!
*recipe from Robb Wolf’s 30 Day Transformation
**recipe found in my slow-carb recipe email series
***recipe from Mark Sisson’s Quick Easy Paleo Recipes
Thanks for stopping by!
I follow Paleo Cookbook and I use some recipes from it, for example I one of them on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9r2qQBuzlM
Very good article, Thanks,
Hi Just new to this but I’m a pretty decent cook, one thing I’ve found is a site where you can plug in all the foods you have available, say in the tha pantry and fridge and it will then spit out a list of receipes that you can make with the different combinations of food, while it’s not strictly a Paleo receipe system a lot of the foods you can make, if you imput fairly strict ingredients, are within tolerences.
The site is http://www.supercook.com/ Try it it works really well.
Thanks for sharing that link, Terry! Even though it’s not strictly paleo or slow carb, all it takes is a bit of thought to convert almost any recipe into a properly healthy one.
-j
Thank you for putting all this together! I tried a slow-carb diet last fall and could only keep up with it for a few weeks, and that was really due to the fact that I couldn’t plan ahead well enough. My question for you would be if you have any ideas for slow-carb recipes or substitutions for someone that can’t eat onions, broccoli, or cauliflower. My husband has some major food sensitivities and it seems like those three ingredients play a big role in most slow-carb diet plans I’ve seen. Any ideas?
Hey Kristine, thanks for checking this out!
In case you haven’t seen them, check out my slow-carb recipes page as well as my page with the slow-carb food list. I’ve got a bunch of different recipes there that might have some interesting things. I do love onions, though, so there’s a good chance they’re in a bunch of my recipes. 🙂
A short list of vegetables that I’d think about trying are leafy greens (cabbage, bok choy, chard, kale, spinach); cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash; asparagus; and green beans.
With any luck, your husband’s food sensitivities will be related to a sensitivity to wheat and with prolonged abstention from white carbohydrates his vegetable problems will go away and he’ll be able to eat any kind of veggies. 🙂
Let me know how it goes!
-jason
Hi, I am going to do the 28 days low carb diet. Can youcplease tell me how much do I have to eat in each meal?
Thank youu so much
Cynthia
Hi Cynthia,
You can eat as much as you want of the approved foods at each meal. Eat until you’re full. I like my plate to be half veggies, 1/4 protein, and 1/4 legumes. If I want more, I’ll start with more veggies and maybe a bit more protein.
Let me know how it goes!
-jason