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Glow Steady

Vegan Recipes, Beauty & Lifestyle

Food, Health -

What To Eat To Stay Healthy | 100% RDA

As some of you will know, I recently did a post on ‘the perfect diet’, what to eat in a day to get 100% of the amount of recommended vitamins and minerals. This post is the same thing, kind of. Only instead of perfect, I’m calling this one what to eat to stay healthy. Because at the end of the day, vitamin and mineral recommendations are there as health guides. 

The same two things kept cropping up in the comments last time. 1) can you do a full week of this, like a proper meal plan? 2) I don’t think there’s such thing as a perfect diet. My first response to number 1 was ‘urgh, no, that’s hard’, but I get it. No one wants to eat the same thing every day and I decided to spend another full day playing with Cronometer to give you want you asked for. 2) I literally said in the post that there’s no such thing as a perfect diet for everyone, but it was a perfect day of eating in terms of nutrition as it provides 100% of everything. Please read before critiquing.  

How It Works

Anyway, I decided to do another 5 days of 100% RDAs, thinking eat well Monday- Friday and weekends are for chocolate? Last time was long with all of the Cronometer screenshots and full explanations of everything. I’m not going to do that this time because the post would be about 4000 words long. For more information about how I calculated the RDA for everything, please read the first post for more details. You’re going to have to trust me that I worked out these days the same way.  

As with last time, I didn’t set targets for things like calories and protein as that amount varies massively for everyone so some of these days vary a lot. I stopped as soon as all of the vitamins, minerals and omegas hit green in the Cronometer boxes. As a result, one day only has1250 calories and another has just under 2000.  

This isn’t a full meal plan to be followed. Use this as a guide for getting vitamins and minerals and adjust according to your needs.  

What To Eat To Stay Healthy Meal Plan

Day 1 

Calories 1654, total protein 83g 

Breakfast – Nutella smoothie bowl with an added brazil nut 

Lunch – Veggie Quinoa Salad with lime & mint dressing 

Dinner – High Protein Vegan Chili, with some added chestnut mushrooms for vitamin D. 

Snacks – 2 rice cakes, each with a tsp of peanut butter, 20g of dark chocolate and 1 pistachio energy ball.  

lime & mint veggie quinoa salad on a wooden board with dressing pot

Day 2 

Total calories 1245, total protein 54g 

Breakfast: Blueberry smoothie bowl with added brazil nut. 

Lunch: Smokey harissa beans on toast with chestnut mushrooms, again for vitamin D. 

Dinner: Quinoa stuffed squash 

Snacks: 1 medium orange, 100g strawberries, 25g walnuts, 25g cashews 

beans on toast on a wooden tray

Day 3 

Total calories 1572, total protein 58g 

Breakfast- Berry quinoa with a tbsp chia seeds and a brazil nut 

Lunch- Chilli bean soup 

Dinner- My go to chickpea salad only with a green salad base instead, and a cup of cubed butternut squash (green salad recipe coming early next week, sorry!) 

Snacks- ½ mango, a pistachio energy ball  

Day 4 

Total calories 1975, total protein 67g 

Breakfast – Sugar free nutty granola, strawberry cashew cream and a brazil nut 

Lunch – Minty bean salad  

Dinner – Green salad base with stuffed sweet potato on top 

Snacks – 40g dark chocolate, apple with tbsp almond butter 

Day 5 

Total calories 1723, total protein 65g 

Breakfast – Sugar free nutty granola with Alpro Greek Style yoghurt, 50g strawberries and 50g blueberries and a brazil nut.  

Lunch – Sundried tomato falafel salad 

Dinner – High Protein Squash + Bean Pasta 

Snacks – 30g almonds, 20g dark chocolate, an apple and 1 tbsp almond butter.  

Again, there’s no such thing as a perfect diet. But this is 5 more days worth of meal plans to provide you with all of the vitamins and minerals you need. While everyone is currently stockpiling toilet roll and plain wheat pasta, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also need good nutrition and a balanced diet. Please keep in mind that what you’re eating plays a huge part in staying healthy too. 

Until next time,

Sophie

27

Comments

  1. All looks delicious, Sophie, and a very valid point about needing healthy and nutritious food now more than ever. Fingers crossed no-one starts panic buying chickpeas or quinoa! Seriously though, I love the look of all of these – I only wish I could persuade the carnivores in my family to try some of them – or that you could come and cook them for me 🙂 xx

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  2. This is so useful! I’ll definitely be trying to do some of these recipes, as I’m starting to eat more vegan and my mum is getting worried about my nutrition so I can show her this haha!

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  3. Thanks for sharing – I found this really interesting and I would actually like to try it. It does look like a little challenge but you’ve done some of the hard work and so I’ll be using some of your recipes – haha.

    As I’m breastfeeding, I’ll have to look into how I can alter these recipes to suit my needs but I’ve got a great starting point now.

    Ashlee | ashleemoyo.com

    Reply

    • No need to feel bad! I actually found it a little bit easier putting these days together than I did the first one. It’s no trouble, just quite time consuming (and a little frustrating when the days are taking a while to add up) x

      Reply

  9. Great suggestions and it all looks SOOO good! The biggest complaint I hear from people that are considering revamping their diet and eating healthier is that they are going to have to give up the food that they enjoy. However, this goes to show that there are options that are both delicious AND healthy, the perfect win/win!

    Reply

  11. I love that you put yourself through the entire process to learn whether keeping a 100% RDA works. I love the different meals you had each day – big plus that you try to be diverse. I am a big fan of the smokey harissa beans on toast! I didn’t realize that these meals pack in a good amount of calories. Love it! Diets work different for everyone, especially when they have different activity levels going on. Thanks for sharing the insight!

    Nancy ♥ exquisitely.me

    Reply

  12. I always thought healthy food needs a lot of free time to cook, prepare… but what you show here is really worth a shot specially if it helps to stay healthy

    Reply

  15. Damn always making me hungry! i’ve been trying to plan more meals that are more healthy and actually take a proper meal to work with me instead of just eating mcdonalds!

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  17. These all sound like really great meals to try out! I will definitely be giving these a try soon! I mean what’s not to love? They all sound great AND they are all healthy – thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  18. We eat around the same amount of calories a week, but you eat way healthier than I do! I had an obsession with smoothie bowls in Summer last year, can’t wait for it to be warmer again so I can have them again 🙂 x

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  21. This menu sounds delicious. I started using a subscription type meal service that I plan meals and snacks around a certain amount of calories (1200 max but trying to go lower for weight loss) and been loving it. The food has been great though your post is making me contemplate on whether I should attempt to create my own meals because it looks easy. I’m just not 100% confident in my cooking abilities hahaha!

    Sxx
    daringcoco.com

    Reply

  23. Sounds like some lovely meals you’ve had! It’s so important to try and get all the right nutrients – especially now! So I’m sure a lot of people will love this post and be keen to try some of your recipes!

    Reply

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