Two Full Days of Plant-Based Meals (with Recipes!)

I love getting to work with women. Every kind of woman. I teach them, but they also teach me. It is humbling and eye opening.

If you have been virtually hanging out with me for any length of time, you know what a huge proponent of animal products I am. I come by this rationale after years of training, studying the literature on macronutrients, and clinical results. Humans were designed to eat meat, and I stand by my recommendation for most women. The B vitamins and essential fatty acids that come from chicken, beef, fish, game, and eggs include the raw materials to make hormones properly, and it is very difficult for the body to create progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, serotonin, and the like without sufficient levels of dietary cholesterol. If you are a woman dealing with chronic degenerative disease, you will need to find a way to work some of these products into your diet.

Yet humans are different. Every woman is biologically unique, and some women choose a plant-based lifestyle for a myriad of different reasons.

Some cannot digest protein well. Some have ethical or religious reservations. Some never emotionally recovered after getting food poisoning from a hamburger.

I can help those women who cannot digest protein. We work on optimizing stomach acid and reducing stress so the body can produce more hydrochloric acid.

photo via unsplash by Ella Olsson

I have no control over the other situations, so I must adapt. Since meat is not the only way to introduce protein into the body, it is my job to get as much protein into my plant-based clients as humanly possible. I am no proponent of a processed-foods-based vegan diet. Soy will f with your hormones. Excessive sugar is going to mess with your cortisol levels. Insufficient protein will cause hair loss, libido to tank, and emotions to run rampant. It is imperative for a plant-based woman (and her family) to get plenty of calories, and plenty plenty of protein.

How do we figure out protein needs?

Simple.

Figure out your lean body weight. What weight does your body naturally like to be at? When are you comfortable in your clothes? When do you have energy and hair and libido and joy?

Take that lean body weight in pounds and convert it to grams of protein using a 1:1 ratio.

I am 5’11” and my lean body weight is 165 pounds.

Ergo, I need to eat 165 grams of protein every day.

Make sense? If your body likes to be 150 pounds, that is how many grams of protein you should be eating each day.

I am not usually a fan of counting things like calories, but I do have my clients count their protein grams for a few weeks to make sure they are hitting their maximum protein goal. I don’t care how many calories or carbs or fat grams they are getting, but I do want them to hit their protein.

This is the number one beneficial change that clients see right away. They almost immediately report a better mood, better sleep, and more energy.

It makes sense. When you starve yourself, you feel like crap. You are essentially dying a terribly slow death. When you feed yourself properly, you perk back up again, like a houseplant given more water after a week of languishing on your dining room table.

So, when I was challenged by a dear client to put together a plant-based plan, you can be sure that my number one objective was to get her enough protein. My second objective was to get her enough calories. And my third objective was to get in plenty of actual plants. Too many plant-based women rely on crappy “food-ish” vegan items to get them through the day.

Cause they are hungry.

Because plants just are not that calorie dense.

Okay, that is my preamble pre-ramble. On to the recipes.

Day 1

Breakfast

Snack

Lunch:

Snack

1 scoop vegan protein powder (make sure it has 20 grams or more per scoop).

Dinner

Day 2

Breakfast

*add bananas, frozen grapes, cacao nibs, or other toppings of your choice to the oats in the morning!

snack

1 scoop protein powder in water or nut milk

1 pear

lunch*

*top each serving of veggies with 1 tbsp pumpkin seeds

serve veggies with a side of 1 cup chickpeas.

snack

1/2 cup hummus

carrot sticks

blue corn chips (provide selenium for optimal thyroid function)

dinner

I recommend some of the following protein powders:

If you are plant-based, you should really consider adding extra protein twice a day in the form of powder. This is helpful for plant-based children too! One scoop a day will help mood, sleep, and attitude in little ones.

I hope this is helpful to some of you! Bon appetit!

To your health,

Jennifer