Girl, I’ve got you.
Listen, you’re not going to be trapped in the kitchen on your vacation. None of this meal prepping, pot-stirring, slicing and dicing nonsense.
This is your time to get a break, from office work and housework.
Here’s how it’s gonna go.
I have a menu for you. It’s delicious. It’s nutritious. And it’s unambitious. These meals are simple and require minimal effort so you can get back to your vacation.
4 High-Protein, No-Cook Breakfasts for Vacay
🍮 Piña Colada Pudding
Start with my favorite, protein-packed breakfast basil-seed parfait. Now, let’s make it vaca-worthy.
- Stir in 3 drops of coconut extract
- Top with pineapple chunks and unsweetened coconut flakes
This is the perfect vacation alternative to chia pudding because we’re subbing out chia seeds for basil seeds. These fiber-packed seeds don’t require time to sit and turn into a gel, like chia seeds, so you can mix it up and eat this breakfast immediately. Let your meal-prep mind rest on vacation.
🥣 Savory Cottage Cheese Bowl
I love a savory breakfast, but I also love slow mornings relaxing on a patio chair.
That’s where this cottage cheese bowl solves my problems. It’s a delicious combo of creamy, tangy, salty, and herbal. Plus, it takes two minutes to put together.
Start by adding cottage cheese to your bowl. I use a full cup of Good Culture’s low fat cottage cheese for the perfect balance of protein and calories. Top with sliced cucumbers, grape tomatoes, avocado chunks, and chives. Sprinkle salt and black pepper on top, and dig in.
🥪 Smoked Salmon Cottage Cheese Toast
Don’t you love it when you find a recipe that’s as simple as it is decadent? It feels impossible, but when you find that perfect recipe, you return to it over and over.
This is one of those recipes. You don’t have to cook a thing. It’s drop-dead delicious. And you’ll feel like you’re out for a fancy brunch with every bit.
Here is the recipe I start with, but I make a few adjustments:
- Use Hero bread. Each slice contains 45 calories, 0g net carbs, 11g fiber, and 5g protein. That’s a killer bread base for breakfast.
- Double the smoked salmon. Because it’s delicious and you’ll add 15 more grams of protein to your meal.
- And, if you don’t feel like whipping up a batch of homemade pickled red onions, opt for this gut-friendly store bought version.
🍹 The All-In-One Breakfast Brew
Some days on vacation, you just can’t be bothered. You want a book. You want your coffee. You want quiet.
And while a whole food breakfast full of every color in the rainbow would be ideal, perfect on paper isn’t always perfect in real life. The best plan is the one you’ll actually do.
So, on that vacation morning when you know you won’t make anything more than a cup of coffee, opt for this “breakfast brew.” This breakfast fits into your coffee mug so you can skip morning kitchen duty altogether.
Grab the biggest mug you can find. Start with my bulletproof coffee formula. Add:
- One serving of organic acacia fiber powder. Fiber is crucial for weight loss and hormone health, and most of us aren’t getting enough. Whole foods are always better, especially when it comes to fiber. But when you’re on vacation, supplements can do the trick. Acacia fiber powder is a natural prebiotic fiber derived from the sap of the Acacia tree. It dissolves into hot drinks, like coffee, and contains 6 grams of fiber per tablespoon. To incorporate this into your coffee, dissolve a serving into a small amount of hot water, then pour it into your mug of coffee.
- One serving of collagen peptides. Add 15 grams of protein and a creamy consistency to your morning brew with a scoop of collagen peptides. This can be added straight into your hot coffee.
- One serving of Naked Whey. This is a clean brand of whey protein that provides 25 grams of protein per serving. To keep whey protein from clumping in hot coffee, use your immersion blender and mix your whey protein with a few ounces of cold water. Then add this to your hot coffee.
Then, maybe have an earlier lunch. Pick from any of these quick and simple options.
4 High-Protein, No-Cook Lunches for Vacay
🥪 The Sandwich
Sandwiches are so satiating. The combo of bread, meat, and veggies makes this the ultimate hand-held meal. It’s travel-friendly, so you can toss it in a bag and take it on your day’s adventures.
But unlike a sub you can snag at the store, this sammie packs in almost 40 grams of protein.
🍜 The Soup
Lunch can be as simple this: store bought soup + rotisserie chicken.
I use this hack all the time because the store bought soups that look flavorful and delicious often don’t match my protein goals for lunch. So, I make a simple adjustment. Grabbing a rotisserie chicken and tossing in an extra 4 ounces of rotisserie chicken breast meat gives me about 30 grams of extra protein.
Trader Joe’s has perfect soups to grab before vacation. Try their Organic Lentil Vegetable Soup, Kettle Cooked Chicken Soup, or Organic Hearty Minestrone Soup with extra rotisserie chicken.
🥙 The Salad
Skip the slicing and chopping, and grab a salad kit. This is vacation!
Target and Sprouts carry this amazing bagged salad option that contains 21 grams of protein and 340 calories per bag (yes, please eat the whole thing).
Here’s how you’ll zhuzh it up:
- Crumble 4 ounces of your turkey meat (leftovers from sandwich day) on top.
- Add 1-2 ounces of prosciutto
This simple salad will land somewhere around 50 grams of protein. And you won’t even have to turn on a burner.
🥙 The Snack Pack
Feeling snacky for lunch? This packable smorgasbord is packed with protein and calorie-friendly. I always grab these easy grab-and-go ingredients when I’m at the store because lunch time is crunch time.
Don’t go hungry on vacation. If you’ll be out for the day, throw this Snack Pack into your cooler:
- One 8-ounce bag of sugar snap peas
- Chomp Beef or Turkey Sticks
- Quest Protein Chips
- A Hummus Singles cup
A satiating vacay-friendly lunch couldn’t be simpler.
4 High-Protein, No-Cook Dinners for Vacay
🥙 BBQ Pulled Pork with Sweet Potatoes
I can’t stop coming back to this recipe because it just checks every single box. It has the perfect balance of macro nutrients while providing my body with tons of micro-nutrients. It’s so filling, it’s mouth-watering good, it whips up in the microwave, and my family loves it too. So, it’s a total win!
If you haven’t tried my BBQ Pulled Pork Stuffed Sweet Potato yet, get on it.
🥙 Fiesta Dense Bean Salad with Cocktail Shrimp
Have you whipped together a dense bean salad yet? It’s hard to turn back to wimp, limp salads after this.
Packed with flavor, texture, protein, and colorful veggies, this is one of my favorite combos. For dinner, we serve it with cocktail shrimp. It’s fresh and delicious.
🥙 Charcuterie Board
Charcuterie boards make excellent dinners on vacation. Everyone can build their own plate to their liking, meaning you don’t have to please the crowd.
I love picking three or four proteins, like smoked salmon, roast beef, capocollo, or pre-cooked grilled chicken strips.
Next, pick the cheese. Some macro-friendly options include part-skim mozzarella, Babybel Light, and reduced-fat cheddar.
Then pack the rest of your board with cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, bell peppers, pickles, olives, grapes, blackberries, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, hummus, and my favorite crackers.
On vacation, don’t overcomplicate it. Making a fun macro-friendly dinner can be as simple as tossing a handful of ingredients on a cutting board.
🥙 Fried Chicken and Avocado Ranch Salad
When I’m on vacation, I have to keep my goals simple and realistic. Are all my meals going to be as clean as your house when the MIL comes to visit? No. Will I reach my protein and calorie goals? Yes. Will I spend hours making it happen? Nope.
Enter another store-bought shortcut: Readgood Chicken Breast Strips. These ones, specifically, contain 23 grams of protein per 180-calorie serving. So, on vacation, I grab that.
Pile them on top of this avocado-ranch drenched salad, and you’ll be wanting this meal all week long.
Your Vacation Grocery List
📝 Pantry Items
- Salt
- Pepper
- Everything bagel seasoning
- Olive oil
- Coconut extract
- Hot honey (use this for both the smoked salmon toast and fiesta dense bean salad)
- Mustard
- One of these BBQ sauces (Stubb’s, Mark’s, or Primal Kitchen)
- Apple cider vinegar
- Monkfruit sweetener drops
- Ranch seasoning
- Pickles
- Olives
- Pistachios
- Pumpkin seeds
- Unsweetened coconut flakes
- Chia seeds
- My favorite crackers
- Hero bread
- Quest Protein Chips
📝 Supplements
📝 Dairy
- Oikos Pro Yogurt
- 3 cups plain, non-fat Greek yogurt
- Good Culture’s low fat cottage cheese
- Kerigold butter
- Sliced swiss cheese
- 4oz Cotija cheese
- Part-skim mozzarella
- Babybel Light
- Reduced-fat cheddar
📝 Produce
- Pinapple
- 3 cucumbers
- 2 avocados
- 2 pints of cherry tomatoes
- Arugula
- Sprouts
- Taylor Farms salad kit
- One 8-ounce bag of sugar snap peas
- Sweet potatoes
- Bagged coleslaw
- Shredded carrots
- 3-4 red bell pepper
- Red cabbage
- 1 jalapeno
- 2 red onions
- 4 bunches of fresh cilantro
- Carrots
- Grapes
- Blackberries
- 3-4 limes
- Pickled red onions
📝 Meat
- Smoked salmon
- Kirkland turkey breast (or similar)
- Rotisserie chicken
- 1lb cocktail shrimp
- Smoked salmon
- Sliced roast beef
- Capocollo
- Chomp Beef or Turkey Sticks
- Prosciutto
- Pulled pork
📝 Beans/Canned Food
- Hummus singles
- 1 can kidney beans
- 2 cans chick peas
- 2 cans northern beans
- 1 can rotel
- Boxed/canned soup (like Trader Joe’s Organic Lentil Vegetable Soup)
📝 Frozen Food
- Readgood Chicken Breast Strips
- 1 12 oz bag frozen corn
Get Back to the Beach
A diet should support your life, not the other way around. Finding a healthy lifestyle you love is the foundation of LEAN. We are constantly shocking our clients when they realize what sustainable weight loss looks like. Since our team has been doing this for decades, we know (and live) what we teach. That means everything you learn in LEAN has to work in the real, gritty day-to-day, year-after-year world you live in, vacations included.
Join LEAN, and find your plan.
