I love meal planning, and consider it essential to keep my family eating healthy, with plenty of vegetables, and to avoid daily trips to the grocery store, as well as avoiding high costs of convenience meals. I find time between other chores to look at the calendar with my husband and write on our family dry erase board the basics of what's going on that week, and what meals would likely fit where. It helps a lot to be able to look what's for dinner when it's still the morning, and plan when to start defrosting meat or start rice (or other things that require long cooking times) during the day! This meal plan is mostly from scratch, which can admittedly be exhausting - convenience foods are indeed hard to find for LPLD! But real life is full of leftovers, anyway. One loaf of banana bread or batch of pizza yields many meals, which is where most of our 'convenience foods' come from ;). Yay leftovers! Plus, we usually have hamburgers every week on our busiest day. Pick a meal that you don't mind eating weekly, and run with it!
Hypothetical meal plan, with fat in parentheses:
*Note on MCT oil: most folks with LPLD are able to eat MCT oil with impunity, as MCT oil passes through cell membranes without the need of the lipoprotein lipase enzyme that they lack. So that's why I don't count MCT oil in total fat, but make note of it just in case you do.
Also, in our family, we try to average 10 g of fat per day. Sometimes there's more fat, sometimes there's less, but it seems to average out OK.
Monday:
- breakfast: Banana bread (assuming 15 slices,1 g per slice from eggs, plus 3.6 g from MCT oil*)
- lunch: Frozen pieroggies, sauerkraut, mustard, and oven roasted butternut squash (3 g for olive oil for the squash)
- dinner: Bibimbap (10 g, assuming an 8 oz serving of meat, plus a little oil from sauteeing)
- snacks: Potato chips (1 g)
- Total fat: 15 g/ 18.6 g counting MCT as fat
Tuesday:
- breakfast: Crepes (1.5 g per crepe from eggs, plus another 2.5 g per crepe from MCT oil*)
- lunch: Hamburgers (quarter pound patty has 5.75 g of fat if 95% lean, 2 g from whole wheat bun) with steamed green beans
- dinner: Pizza! (4 tablespoons of MCT oil in the crust with nonfat cheese and vegetable toppings, each crust making 15 pieces, and you eat 4 slices; 15 g of from MCT oil*)
- snacks: Pretzels (1 g from MCT oil each) (roll in cinnamon sugar for a sweet treat!)
- Total fat: 7.25 g/ 25.75 g counting MCT as fat
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| Don't let olives fool you, they have 10 g of fat in 3 ounces! |
- breakfast: Pumpkin muffin (1 g from egg and pumpkin seeds; plus 4.5 g from MCT oil)
- lunch: curried chicken salad without nuts and fat free mayo, on 1 slice whole wheat bread (6 g)
- dinner: whole wheat pasta with jarred sauce, maybe some sauteed zuchini (3 g, depending on sauce)
- snacks: fruit pizza (0 g with fat free cream cheese and yogurt)
- Total fat: 10 g/ 14.5 g counting MCT as fat
- breakfast: Huevos Rancheros (7 g fat, or 2 g if you use nonfat egg alternative like EggBeaters)
- lunch: Frozen tuna steak with stir fry sauce and carrot sticks (1 g)
- dinner: Beef and cabbage stir fry (7 g fat if 95% lean beef and no cooking oil; sesame oil is so flavorful!)
- snacks: air popped popcorn (0 g! unless you top it with MCT oil, yum)
- Total fat: 15 g
- breakfast: German pancakes (1 g from coconut oil or MCT oil)
- lunch: Veggie bean burritos (1 g per corn tortilla you eat, or nonfat served over rice!)
- dinner: Banh Mi sandwiches (13 g, use nonfat mayo mixed with sriracha, whoo!)
- snacks: lemon (or another flavor) sorbet! (0 g)
- Total fat: 15 g
- breakfast: Pancakes (1.25g, 3.5 from MCT oil or coconut oil)
- lunch: Peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread (4 g, depending how much powdered peanut butter you use)
- dinner: Fish tacos (3.25 g with tilapia and a corn tortilla)
- snacks: One chocolate cupcake (3 g MCT oil)
- Total fat: 8.5 g / 13.75 g counting MCT oil
- breakfast: Bowl of cheerios with skim milk and sliced banana or blueberries or strawberries... yum (0 g)
- lunch: Chicken tacos (6 g without avocado, on a corn tortilla)
- dinner: Pasta fagioli (scroll down, past other good recipes :) ) (3.2 g)
- snacks: Kettle corn (7 g if you eat half the batch, muah ha ha)
- Total fat: 16.2 g
WEEK TWO!
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
And just to reassure the parents out there, a lot of these are adult servings. Kids tend to get more restrictive daily fat goals (10 g or less is what we first heard), but kids also just don't eat as much as adults. It's not impossible! We went through months of weighing the food on our daughter's plate before and after every meal to gauge her fat intake, but it only took a few weeks for us to get a good feel for it, and it hasn't been that bad ever since!
- breakfast: Instant oatmeal (3 g)
- lunch: Lettuce wraps (9.5 g from 95% lean ground beef and a little oil)
- dinner: Pasta primavera (2 g from the olive oil, top with fat free feta)
- snacks: Rice pudding (0 g)
- Total fat: 14.5 g
Tuesday:
- breakfast: Bagel with fat free cream cheese (1.5 g)
- lunch: Vegetable Lo Mein (0 g)
- dinner: Shepherd's Pie (if you eat one sixth of the recipe, 9 g)
- snacks: slice of apple pie! (6.75 g for an eighth of the pie, serve with fat free whipped topping?)
- Total fat: 17.25 g
Wednesday:
- breakfast: Nonfat yogurt with fruit (0 g)
- lunch: wrap with sliced turkey, nonfat cream cheese, slices of apples, banana peppers, and fat free ranch dressing (~3 g, but depends on the tortilla you use)
- dinner: 2 California sushi rolls with edamame beans (7 g of fat per roll)
- snacks: strawberry ice cream (2.5 grams if you eat one fourth of the whole batch, don't forget chocolate syrup!)
- Total fat: 19.5 g
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| Wraps are a favorite picnic meal |
Thursday:
- breakfast: Sauteed vegetables (onion, zuchini, mushrooms, peppers with a tiny amount of olive oil) and an egg (8 g)
- lunch: homemade pizza rolls (0 g)
- dinner: Can of nonfat soup
- snacks: Angel food cupcake from a box (0 g! eat a few... top with fruit or jelly!)
- Total fat: 8 g
- breakfast: Smoothie with fat free yogurt, bananas, strawberries, other fruits and veg of your choice (0 g)
- lunch: boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce and steamed cauliflower (4 g)
- dinner: 3 oz sirloin steak with sweet potato with marshmallow and cinnamon (12 g)
- snacks: Pumpkin cookie (1 g per cookie)
- Total fat: 18 g (you're going to have more than one cookie...)
- breakfast: French toast cooked in 1 teaspoon coconut oil, topped with maple syrup (4.5 g)
- lunch: salad with a hard boiled egg, shredded carrots, shredded cabbage, green apple slices, sliced red bell pepper, nonfat Italian dressing (5 g)
- dinner: grilled cheese sandwich with fat free mayo or cream cheese, fat free cheese, and roast bell pepper, with a side of canned tomato soup (2 g)
- snacks: fresh whole wheat bread dipped in balsamic vinegar (1 g per slice of bread, usually)
- Total fat: 12.5 g
- breakfast: homemade cinnamon rolls (1.8 g each)
- lunch: Cheesy chicken quesadillas (5 g in each, you'll want 2 though!)
- dinner: Baked chicken nuggets (1.5 g in 8 nuggets)
- snacks: pretzels in a fat free dip (0 g)
- Total fat: 13.3 g
And just to reassure the parents out there, a lot of these are adult servings. Kids tend to get more restrictive daily fat goals (10 g or less is what we first heard), but kids also just don't eat as much as adults. It's not impossible! We went through months of weighing the food on our daughter's plate before and after every meal to gauge her fat intake, but it only took a few weeks for us to get a good feel for it, and it hasn't been that bad ever since!
