Protein First, Small Plates

A cookbook for people eating on a GLP-1 medicine: semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) and others like them.

When a few forkfuls fill you up, an ordinary recipe is the wrong size, and whatever you eat first is often all you eat. This book is built around that. Every recipe makes small plates. On every plate the protein is the main part and the part you eat first, marked with a coral 1 on its photograph. And the food is cooked gently, with little fat and nothing fried, because big, greasy meals are the ones most likely to sit badly.

What is inside

• 25 recipes in five chapters, sorted by how hungry you are, not by breakfast, lunch and dinner. Barely hungry: lemon chicken and orzo soup, ginger chicken rice porridge, red lentil soup, a peanut butter banana shake, peach cottage cheese cups. A little hungry: soft scrambled eggs, overnight oats, tuna and white bean salad, chicken salad with grapes, sesame tofu and edamame salad, smoked salmon crispbreads. Ready for dinner: ginger-soy chicken, cod with tomatoes and white beans, garlic shrimp, pork tenderloin with apples, a lemon chicken tray bake, soft chicken tacos, salmon parcels. Cook once: turkey meatballs, a mild turkey chili, little shepherd's pies, egg bites, a one-pot chicken and rice. A few bites: chocolate yogurt mousse pots and strawberry yogurt bark.
• Two pages for every recipe. The first shows one finished plate, says exactly what is on it in cups and ounces, gives its protein, calories, fat, carbohydrate and fiber, and says what to change on a queasy day. The second is the recipe: ingredients in US measures with metric beside them, numbered steps, the safe cooking temperature, how long it keeps, and what to do if it goes wrong.
• Protein from 12 to 35 grams a plate, each number worked out from USDA FoodData Central for every ingredient.
• Before you cook: what changes when you eat on these medicines and what published guidance says about it; why to eat protein first, with four worked plates; 20 grams of protein in nine foods, compared by how much room each takes and how many calories it brings; two example days added up; what usually helps and what usually makes nausea worse, with a queasy-day ladder; how big a small plate is; kit and food safety.
• A worked week: cook on Sunday and Wednesday, eat small meals all seven days, with every plate eaten within four days or taken from the freezer, and the shopping list for it.
• Six fridge plates for days when cooking will not happen, and an index of every recipe by protein.

What you download

• Protein First, Small Plates (72 pages, PDF, US Letter, color), with bookmarks and a contents page.
• Kitchen Pages (7 pages, PDF): the protein comparison, what sits well, the week plan, the shopping list, kit and food safety, the fridge plates and the recipe finder, pulled out to print for the fridge door. Page numbers on them refer to the book.

Good to know

• No protein powder, bars or special products: everything is supermarket food.
• Most recipes make four small plates, about the size of two ordinary servings. The shake makes 2, the scrambled eggs 2 and the chili 6.
• Between them the recipes use milk, eggs, wheat, fish, shellfish, soy, peanuts and sesame. Nine recipes have no meat or fish (ten if you make the lentil soup with vegetable broth); the tofu and edamame salad is vegan apart from its teaspoon of honey.
• This book is about cooking, not medicine. Your prescriber or dietitian sets your protein target and anything else about your treatment; follow them where they differ from this book.
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.