Healthy Vegetarian Diet Meal Plan – Everything you need to know about creating the perfect vegetarian meal plan! Meal planning in six easy steps with tons of recipe ideas.
If you choose not to eat meat as part of a vegetarian lifestyle, you know it can take some extra work to find delicious plant-based, meat-free options. While your friends at the restaurant are ordering whatever they like from the menu, you have to look for products that do not contain meat or something labeled “vegetarian”. Your cookbooks and Pinterest pages are full of words like “veggie,” “protein-packed,” “meatless,” “plant-based,” “tofu,” “seitan” and other alternative jargon.
Healthy Vegetarian Diet Meal Plan
Cooking for others can even be difficult. Are you cooking meat for your guests because they eat it, or are you cooking a vegetarian dish that you hope everyone will enjoy? Despite the growing number of vegetarians (7.3 million Americans, according to
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The same can be said for planning meals ahead of time. Whether you’re single, in a relationship, or with a family to feed, navigating meal planning can be difficult, if not downright frustrating. However, meal planning is a healthy and budget-friendly option that everyone can benefit from.
Not only can this help ensure you’re eating towards your nutritional goals, but it’s also a great time saver on those busy days when you just can’t think of something to eat right away. Instead of calling pizza delivery for the second time this week or eating sugary cereal for dinner, consider trying vegetarian meal planning.
Here are some simple steps you can take to help plan ahead for meals that don’t contain meat (or that can easily be supplemented with meat if you’re cooking for others). Try it—discover the benefits of meal planning that carnivores everywhere are already enjoying. Why should they have fun?
Meal planning is actually the same concept for everyone, no matter what you choose to eat. The idea is simply to choose recipes and dishes ahead of time (usually a week) that you want to make or that sound worth trying. Place these meals in the days and meals of the following week. (For example, if dinner is your stop, why not try to plan ahead for the week’s dinners? The same goes for the rest of your meals and snacks, if you like.)
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You then make a list of ingredients, shop on that list, bring home the items, and then plan to create pre-planned meals for that day and time.
While I listed several good reasons why meal planning is good for vegetarians, you should make your own list of reasons. Whether it’s for health reasons, a diet you’re on, to save time, or even to help you learn how to include more of a certain type of nutrient (say, protein) in your meals, writing down your meal planning goals can prove to be very helpful.
Even if you don’t have to refer to an actual list when looking for recipes, this will help you focus and help you mentally check if a particular recipe is helping you achieve those goals.
Once you’ve met your goals and experienced your first week of meal planning, you can skip this step for planning the next week. That is, unless of course you change your goals!
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So you know why you want a meal plan, and that’s great. But how often? Want to plan every dinner? Every lunch? Breakfast, lunch and dinner every week? (I admit it’s a bit much, especially as a beginner, but do what you gotta do!)
If your goal is to eat more protein, for example, choosing one meal to focus on will work just fine. Especially if you are not used to cooking with protein alternatives to meat. However, if your goal involves saving time, you might want to consider planning more than one meal ahead of time.
This doesn’t mean you have to cook every meal. Take this overnight oats recipe for example. You can easily make this in a larger batch and add different fruit options each morning. Or you can grill up a bunch of veggies on the weekend or make a big batch of beans to eat through the rest of the week. Once you start thinking about it, the possibilities are almost limitless!
I’ve found that a Google Doc can be a great resource for writing down your frequency so you can easily go in and make any changes or copy the meal plan from week to week if you find a particular recipe that works well for you or that you want to have again.
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Keep in mind that meal planning is about taking the stress out of what to eat and when. If it doesn’t go quite as you expect the first time, don’t worry and try again the following week.
This is the fun part. How creative do you want to be when looking for recipes? Looking for new recipes or tried and true recipes? Remember the goals you wrote down and the frequency with which you search for recipes.
If you’re only planning dinner next week, you’ll only need a few recipes. But if you see meals that would be good for the future, highlight, bookmark, cut, pull out, or otherwise save them. That way, your work can be partially or completely done for a few weeks in the first week. What can I say? I want to save time, but when and why.
I like to look at online food blogs, Pinterest, and sometimes even actual paper magazines to get inspiration for my recipes. (Even if you’re only reading a magazine in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, you can always take a photo of a prescription that piques your interest.)
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Although it may seem almost impossible at times, try to keep all of your recipes in a place where you can easily access them—again, perhaps links in a Google Doc or as pages that are pulled out or printed out and placed in a folder. Whatever works best for you, just think about organizing them now to save time later.
Oh, one more note about recipes: If you plan to use one recipe to make multiple meals, keep that in mind when looking for vegetarian options. Can the recipe be easily doubled/tripled?
This step will make your grocery shopping a lot easier. Can you tell I love a good list? Sometimes items needed in vegetarian recipes can be more expensive or harder to find, so keep that in mind when making your list.
If you have to go to more than one store to find what you need, consider buying bulk items that will be easy to store. You’ll thank your future self for buying more than you need when you don’t have to run to the store to make the same recipe.
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If you’re looking online for vegetarian meal plans and recipes, some sites like Slender Kitchen will offer customizable meal plans. Some of these sites will also have an ingredient list that you can print at home. There are also apps that will offer ingredient lists and can help you organize your list by grocery aisle. Check out these options if you find them valuable.
I also check my pantry and fridge before I go to the store. I may already have an ingredient that I have forgotten about. If you already have them, check them off your list – there’s no point in having multiple items (unless you’re sure you’ll use them).
Finally, be sure to keep in mind the frequency of vegetarian meal planning when making your list. Are you going to make a big batch of something to eat every day? If this is your first time meal planning, this is not a bad option. This can make the task less daunting if you only cook a couple of times a week instead of every day.
Some ways you can fit one big batch into multiple meals include options like the beans mentioned above. If you’re making a big batch of Simple Crockpot Pinto Beans, a simple bowl of beans straight from the crock can help one day. The next night, though, you might want to take those beans and put them in a taco with lettuce, salsa, and cheese. Or you might want to roll up a couple of scoops of bean burritos with your favorite condiments. Save some beans for dinner with these Fajita-Stuffed Zucchini with Pinto Beans, or whip up a healthy batch of homemade frozen burritos.
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One of my favorite ways to incorporate vegetables into more meals is to grill a whole bunch of different varieties, then add them to dinners, lunches, and breakfasts throughout the week. Because you
