7 Day Clean Eating Meal Plan (That You’ll Want to Repeat)
I know some people call “clean eating” all sorts of things – from “never again seed oil,” to “I found organic ketchup.” So, let me define what I mean by it, before we move forward.
Clean eating means that when I do my meal plan, most of the time most of the foods are real food, have only one ingredient or as close to that as possible and made at home about 90% of the time; with package foods making up only a small portion of meals, not the majority.
This isn’t going to be a point system where you’ll count calories or points for each item. Nothing will be off-limits and there will be no recipes that require finding monk fruit sweetener. This is how I eat during a good week – and since I’m now 50 years old, it adds another rule: protein at every single meal (not just dinner) due to loss of muscle mass in our age group, along with study after study on optimal timing for proteins showing us that spread them throughout your daily meals and your body will use more of the protein provided.
A few items before starting your new diet. All dinners listed make enough for leftovers; this plan uses leftovers on purpose – nobody wants to cook 21 meals per week and abandoning a meal plan is usually done when someone builds a meal plan based on an assumption they’ll cook 7-8 times per week.
Replace any foods that you dislike with a similar food type (replace any fish with any other fish or replace any bean with any other bean), and if any day gets away from you due to life events pick-up where you left-off at the next meal time. As stated above – this isn’t a contract but rather a template for how you can eat healthy without spending too much money cooking multiple meals each week.
Sunday prep, about an hour
You can skip this part of the plan if you want to; it’ll certainly help your weekly meal planning go smoothly. In addition, by cooking a large pot of quinoa and another pot of brown rice, boiling six eggs, making a batch of White Bean Soup (Day 7) that will only get better as it sits in the refrigerator, and washing and chopping the vegetables you’ve purchased for easy access during meals, you’ll save yourself one full hour worth of time over the next week with not having to think about food.
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Greek yogurt bowl with berries and walnuts | Tuna and white bean salad | Sheet-pan salmon, little potatoes, broccoli |
| Day 2 | Scrambled eggs with spinach, buttered toast | Leftover salmon over greens with avocado | Turkey chili (tomorrow’s lunch too) |
| Day 3 | Overnight oats with Greek yogurt and chia | Leftover chili | Roasted chicken thighs with carrots and onions |
| Day 4 | Greek yogurt and berry smoothie | Leftover chicken and quinoa bowl | Shrimp stir fry over brown rice |
| Day 5 | Yogurt bowl, on repeat | Big Greek salad with chickpeas and feta | Slow-cooker pot roast with potatoes |
| Day 6 | Oatmeal with peanut butter and banana | Leftover pot roast | Baked cod with white beans and tomatoes |
| Day 7 | Vegetable omelet with cheese | Sunday’s white bean soup, at its peak | Whole roasted chicken, sweet potatoes, salad |
Day 1
I have breakfast as a bowl of plain full-fat Greek yogurt (1 cup) and add a handful of berries, chopped walnuts and a drizzle of honey to make it taste better than just plain yogurt. The 20 grams of protein gets me through the morning until lunch time.
For my lunch, I use canned beans and tuna mixed together with olive oil, lemon juice, diced red onion and what ever type of greenery has wilted away from the fridge that will take around 5 minutes to prepare. My afternoon snack is an apple with peanut butter. My dinner is salmon cooked in a sheet pan with little potatoes and steamed broccoli all at once at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
I cook my salmon for the last 12 minutes but since cooking time varies depending on thickness I also like to cook two extra portions so I can use one portion for lunch the next day.
Day 2
Breakfast is made from 2 eggs which are scrambled and have a bunch of spinach added to them along with some toasted bread with good butter on it; the type of breakfast that has been out of style then back in vogue so many times I don’t keep track anymore. Lunch is yesterday’s leftover salmon flaked over greens with avocado and squeezed lemon.
Snack time is cottage cheese and either pineapple or peaches (as long as they’re canned in juice there will be no judgment). Dinner is a large pot of turkey chili with kidney beans, tomatoes, and plenty of chili powder; this one also serves as tomorrow’s lunch and a freezer stash for those who think ahead.
Day 3
You made breakfast as overnight oats using one-half cup of rolled oats, a scoop or two of Greek yogurt to add protein, a tablespoon or so of chia seeds for fiber and other nutrients, then some milk, and finally frozen berries on top. For lunch I had the leftover chili from last night; it was much tastier today than yesterday, chili always is.
I also had a small handful of almonds along with an orange as my snack this afternoon. For dinner tonight were chicken thighs that were roasted with carrots and onions that have been cooking since yesterday evening when you cooked your quinoa (Sunday). You used thighs because they’re less expensive than breasts and can’t be dried out like breasts; plus the extra fat helps keep you satisfied longer.
Day 4
I have breakfast as a smoothie, using my favorite ingredients such as Greek yogurt, a large handful of frozen fruit (berries), one ripe banana, milk, and a small handful of fresh spinach-you won’t be able to taste it. If you want the “numbers” for this smoothie; that’s about 20 grams of protein based on the type/brand of Greek yogurt used.
Lunch consists of last nights leftover chicken/quinoa mixture topped off with roasted vegetables that remained after roasting last night. Snacks consist of two hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with salt & pepper. Dinner consists of a shrimp stir fry over brown rice from last Sunday. The shrimp can be defrosted in 10 minutes under cold running water and cooked within 3 minutes when thawed, making this the quickest meal of the week.
Day 5
I’m having yogurt again, which is a easy way to have your meal planning go in circles with breakfasts – and it may be one of the simplest ways to keep things going. The women I’ve known who are able to eat well over time almost always have a couple of meals they repeat for years.
My lunch is an extremely large Greek salad made from chickpeas, feta cheese, cucumber, tomato, olives & olive oil; plus some crusty bread if just eating the salad isn’t enough to fill you (for me, it never is). Veggies and hummus make up my snack.
Finally, dinner will include a slow-cooker pot roast w/ potatoes & carrots & onions that we’ll have started cooking this morning; while summer would usually call for something much lighter than this recipe – the leftover potential is amazing and I refuse to wait until October to enjoy my last pot roast of the season!
Day 6
Breakfast is oatmeal cooked in milk with peanut butter melted into it and a slice of banana (half) on top of it. Lunch is leftover pot roast, which you have already been informed about. Your snack can be cottage cheese again or cheese/pear if you’re at your cottage cheese limit for the week.
Dinner will be baked cod with white beans from a can cooked in canned tomatoes and garlic along with green beans, as long as cod doesn’t feel boring to you – this would be the result of every restaurant that has ever surrendered its cod to steam; when baked with lemon and butter however, it becomes an entirely different fish.
Day 7
Breakfast is an omelet of whatever vegetables are in the crisper, (2-3) eggs with optional, yet highly recommended, cheese. Lunch will be your white bean soup from Sunday which now has seven days to reach its peak flavor. Snacks consist of whatever fruit is available along with a handful of walnuts.
Dinner will be a complete roasted chicken along with sweet potatoes and a green salad; it’s this dinner that will set you up for success next week as tomorrow’s carcass will become the base for soup, while the remaining chicken becomes two additional meals so making you a meal planner.
The protein math, roughly
I believe using this meal plan exactly will give you about 85-100 grams of protein per day with each of the four meals (instead of stuffing it into your last meal). This is where many studies recommend for women over 50 years old, which is well above what has been designated by federal guidelines as the minimum amount of protein required, which were established based on research done primarily on young males decades ago.
The estimated amounts shown here are an estimate created from these recipes; use them as a rough guide, not a clinical result. Use your physician’s recommendations for how much protein you need to consume if you have kidney disease or they’ve prescribed a particular daily intake of protein.
Your grocery list
I’ll be buying: Produce: berries (fresh and/or frozen), apples, oranges, bananas, pears, lemons, spinach, mixed greens, broccoli, green beans, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes & potatoes; sweet potatoes; little potatoes; onions; red onion; garlic; avocados. Protein: salmon (four times); frozen shrimp; chicken thighs; a whole chicken; chuck roast (one); ground turkey; cod fish; eggs (a dozen and a half).
Dairy: full fat plain Greek yogurt (large container); cottage cheese (small container); milk; feta cheese (for omelet); butter for cooking omelets; cheese for making omelets. Pantry: oats; chia seeds; quinoa; brown rice; canned white beans in water; canned kidney beans in water; canned chickpeas in water; canned diced tomatoes (2 cans ); olives (in a jar of brine ), hummus (1 large container); peanut butter (a small jar ); almonds; walnuts. Olive oil and honey and bread and chili powder.
What to do next week
Run it again. Replace salmon with trout, lentils for chili, and replace pot roast with something else you like to do in your slow cooker. Keep the rest of the skeleton as is – protein at each meal, dinner recipes that are cooked once and will provide two meals, a single large batch of soup to be made on Sundays.
The “plan” isn’t the seven day schedule; it’s how those days have been shaped into habits. Once they’ve become habits there’s no need to continue printing out meal plans from anywhere on the Internet including my own.
