What I Eat in a Week as a Plant-Based Runner (Simple Dinners for Busy Athletes)

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what I eat in a typical week as a sports dietitian, marathoner, and busy mom. Spoiler: it’s not complicated.

I’m sharing the real dinners I make on weeknights, all ready in about 30 minutes or less. Plus, the simple system I use to make sure my meals are balanced, nourishing, and realistic (even on the busiest days).

You’ll learn:

•  How I plan a week of plant-based dinners in 10–15 minutes
•  The simple formula I use to build balanced meals for energy + recovery 
•  Why I rely on theme nights (like Taco Tuesday + Pizza Friday)
•  How to get enough plant-based protein as an active person
•  Easy dinner ideas you can repeat every week without getting bored 

These are the exact strategies I use to stay consistent with my nutrition and feel strong in my training without spending hours in the kitchen.

Watch the YouTube video to see examples of the dinners: 

If this episode was helpful: subscribe, leave a rating, and share it with a friend who’s always wondering what to make for dinner.

Have questions or want to request a show topic? DM us @greenletes

Check out Natalie's book 📕: Planted Performance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

These are the simple dinners I actually make in a week as a plant-based runner and sports dietitian. There's no complicated recipes involved here, just simple things that are nourishing and keep me strong as a runner. As a sports dietitian, you may think my meals are super complicated, but in reality, they're actually pretty simple. But the secret to keeping these recipes simple is that I have a system that I follow every single week, and I'm going to share it with you. Because between work, working out, being a busy mom, I don't have a ton of time to plan elaborate recipes and make sure that they get cooked every single night. I need dinners that are quick, nourishing, and realistic. And I'm gonna show you exactly what I ate in a week and how I went about planning out these recipes. Most nights I am finishing work at five o'clock, juggling my kids, and trying to figure out how to get a nourishing dinner on the table for everyone in my family. So I don't have a lot of time to start looking for recipes, start thinking about what to make. And I know a lot of the athletes that I work with fall into this trap. Instead of actually cooking something, they'll end up ordering takeout, throwing something random together that they don't actually want to eat, feeling like they need to eat something healthy that doesn't necessarily taste good, and then maybe doesn't have as much food as they actually need for their activity level. It's really a trap of just kind of this dinner time trap that I think a lot of people fall into. And then that also doesn't take into account the people who are new to plant-based eating, the people who don't even know what to put together, how to put together meals. So I'm gonna walk you through exactly how I do it, what I eat in a week, and how you can replicate it at home. And these meals are good for really active people who need extra protein, who need extra carbs, who want antioxidants to help them fight inflammation, and who want vitamins and minerals to keep them healthy. But even if you're not an active runner, you can still use this as guidance for yourself as a plant-based person. So let me show you my dinners from last week. Here's what this looks like. We have things like a tofu burrito. I have tofu, some refried beans in there, some cabbage, a little bit of salsa. I make a big batch of these, and these actually double as breakfast burritos that sometimes I will take out of the freezer and have after a run in the morning. Then I have other things like every single week we do Taco Tuesday, and I will walk you through why theme days are a huge part of meal planning that actually make your life so much simpler. But we do Taco Tuesdays, and it's as simple as a can of black beans and roasted veggies, and then some toppings for crunch, like salsa or crunchy radishes, or crunchy cabbage. Then I always utilize tofu, probably more than once a week. So we have a tofu with cashew nuts, and I made this all on one sheet pan, and I put it on rice that comes from a rice cooker. I'm not even cooking the rice on the stove. I use simple tools to make life easier. I also will make a veggie burger every single week, and it'll either be black bean-based. This was actually a red lentil veggie burger, which is absolutely delicious. And I cut up some sweet potato and shoved it in the air fryer to make these homemade sweet potato fries. Every single week we do Pizza Friday in my house. I grew up eating pizza every single Friday. My mom made it for me. So for 40 plus years, I have been eating pizza every Friday. And as you can see, you can make pizza a healthy meal. You can add tons of veggies, you can change it from sauce to pesto to whatever you want on top of pizza. But we do this every single Friday at my house, and I serve it to my kids, and I we all absolutely love Pizza Friday. And then on the weekends, generally, we will allow one night for takeout, but then we also cook another night. So I'll do simple things like this is just black bean quesadillas. Other things that we make that I didn't make last week are maybe tempeh, tempeh bowls, or soups. So those are kind of the things that we eat throughout the week. Every single thing on this list comes together in about 30 minutes or less. I don't take a lot of time to cook, but I make sure that the meals actually taste really good and are nourishing and filling and make me feel strong as a runner and are completely plant-based. So there's nothing fancy here, but every single meal has carbs, protein, and obviously it's all made from plants, which is what actually supports my training and my recovery. So here are four tips that I use to make sure that my family and I are eating healthy every single week and how I plan out my meals as a busy mom, a runner, and a plant-based person. One, every single weekend I sit down and make out a meal plan. Now, do I want to do this every weekend? Not always. Do I have the time to do this every weekend? Not always. But you know what I do end up doing? Watching TV or scrolling on my phone. And during those times I think to myself, I should be making a meal plan. And it's sometimes overwhelming to do it, but it really takes about 10-15 minutes once you get into the groove of it. And what I do, I'm gonna here's a sample of what my meal plan looks like. If you're listening to this on the podcast, definitely tune into the YouTube because I'm showing pictures of these meals and I'm showing screenshots here. But this is what I do. I keep a running note in my phone of what I'm gonna serve for the week, and I just add to that note every single week so that I can look back at past weeks and think like, oh, that was a good dinner, I could do that again. So I plan out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then usually one weekend day. The way that I make this meal plan comes to tip number two. I look at the different plant-based protein sources and I make sure that I have a variety of them throughout the week. So we're starting with obviously tofu one night. Sometimes we're doing tempeh one night, lentils, beans multiple nights, sometimes we're doing things like peas from a split piece soup. How do I make sure that I'm getting a variety of protein in my week? And I do this because different proteins have different nutrients, which help keep me strong. They also taste different so that I'm not getting taste fatigue from eating the same thing every night. And also I just like to have the different textures in my meals. It's more interesting to have different proteins every night. Now we end up using tofu maybe two or three nights a week. When we have Pizza Friday, sometimes the protein will be maybe chickpeas on a salad next to the pizza. So we make sure that we do have protein with every single meal and we vary it throughout the week. Number three, talking about pizza Friday, I do theme nights every week. I kind of stick to the same themes, but this just makes the meal planning going back to tip one so much easier. And what I mean by theme nights is Taco Tuesday, Pizza Friday, generally we'll have a veggie burger some night in the week. We usually have a toast some night in the week. On Thursdays, I actually end up going to my parents' house for them to watch my son. And so I make my husband make dinner that night. So that's kind of his theme night, and he's not really much of a cook, but he will do just a microavable brown rice and then chickpeas and a veggie in the air fryer. And we put that in a bowl and we put some sauce on top. So anyone, even if you can't cook, could do this kind of thing where you you have these theme nights that you kind of stick to, whether it's veggie burger Wednesday, taco Tuesday, pizza Friday. What works for you and is what something that's repeatable every single week. And even if you're doing Pizza Friday every week, it doesn't have to be the same pizza every week. Taco Tuesday don't have to be the same tacos. Some week weeks I do cauliflower as a star with with black beans. Sometimes I do lentils as the star. Sometimes we do tempeh tacos. But in my mind, when I'm meal planning, it is so much easier for me to know there's a theme that I can follow and I can look back and I can use those themes over and over again. And if I ever get bored of something, then I move on and I change the theme. But that's how I stick with it. And then tip number four. I keep these meals simple enough that I'm actually going to make them. So I have a cookbook that I love by actually Rainbow Plant Life, the there's a vegan blogger, and her recipes are really good. Sometimes they're a little more complicated than what I can make on a weeknight. So I don't always go with that. If I have the time and the energy and the ingredients to make that, great. But if not, you know, I kind of stick to what I know and I cook that. And if you don't know how to make anything, you can look for the simplest recipes online. I have plenty on my website, greenleats.com. But you can also just Google like simple veggie tacos and get the simplest things that, you know, Google things like plant-based recipes, five ingredients or less. You will find recipes. Trust me, there's tons of them out there. Six simple things. You don't have to do the complicated stuff that you see on social media. Do you know how much stuff I have saved on social media that I have never made? And I wish that I would, but I don't always have the time or the energy to do it. It's always my goal to be doing creating more of these recipes for you guys and showing them to you because I do think we sh we need to make nutrition accessible and we need to make it easy for everyone. So that's my tip number four. At the end of the day, fueling your body, especially as an athlete, is not about perfection, it's about consistency. And if you're plant-based, it takes a little bit of planning out what you're gonna eat and the education to make it all work. These simple dinners help me recover from my tough workouts in the morning and help me feel good and strong as I take on higher mileage, as I transfer marathons. And as I was pregnant, I use these kinds of dinners as well to keep me healthy through pregnancy. If you need some dinner inspiration for the week, save this. If you like what we're doing here, obviously like, leave us a rating, subscribe, you'll never miss an episode. And tell me in the comments below, what's one simple thing that you make every week that you feel like is helping you feel strong as an athlete? If you're listening to this on the podcast, come check us out in video version on YouTube because you can see all the meals I'm talking about, and you can see me in my living room talking to you. And if you found this episode helpful, send it to a friend who's always asking you, what are you making for dinner tonight? Because hopefully it'll help them too.