Eating Well on a GLP-1

One rule above the rest: protein first

If you take one thing from this page, take this. Eat the protein on your plate before anything else. You will fill up sooner than you expect, and whatever you have not eaten by then is what you miss out on. Make it be the bread rather than the chicken.

Why so much? In any calorie deficit, some of the weight lost is lean tissue rather than fat. Protein intake and resistance training are the two things that reliably shift that ratio — the full argument, with the numbers, is in Protecting Muscle While You Lose Fat. If you are over fifty, the target is higher rather than lower, for reasons set out in GLP-1 Medication After 50.

Protein that is easy when nothing sounds good

What sits well, and what does not

Note that the difficult column is about *volume and fat*, not virtue. A small portion of almost anything is usually fine. A large portion of anything greasy, within 48 hours of an injection, is how people learn this list the hard way — as Managing GLP-1 Side Effects describes.

Hydration is not optional

GLP-1 medication reduces thirst signalling along with hunger. A large share of the headaches, dizziness, fatigue and constipation people attribute to the drug is straightforward dehydration.

• Keep a bottle in sight. Out of sight genuinely means not drunk.
• Drink between meals rather than during. Filling your stomach with liquid at mealtimes displaces food you need.
• Add electrolytes if you are eating much less — sodium, potassium and magnesium all come from food you are no longer eating as much of.
• Soup, broth, herbal tea and water-rich fruit all count.

A day that works

Not a meal plan — a shape. Adjust portions to what you can actually manage, which on some days will be less than this.

• Breakfast — Greek yoghurt with berries and a spoon of nut butter. Around 25g protein, no cooking.
• Mid-morning — a small handful of nuts, or half a protein shake if breakfast did not happen.
• Lunch — cooked chicken or tinned fish over rice or greens, with olive oil. Around 30g protein.
• Afternoon — cottage cheese, or an apple with cheese.
• Dinner — a palm-sized portion of fish or lean meat, a cooked vegetable, a small starch. Eat the protein first.
• If you fell short — a protein shake in the evening. Getting to your target imperfectly beats missing it neatly.

Fibre, and why it earns its place

Aim for 25–30g a day. It manages the constipation that catches most people out in week two, feeds gut bacteria, and adds bulk without much energy. Increase it gradually over a week — a sudden jump swaps constipation for bloating. Beans, lentils, oats, berries, chia, and vegetables with the skin left on all do the work.

Supplements worth asking about

• A daily multivitamin — sensible insurance when total food volume is low.
• Vitamin D — commonly low regardless, and worth testing rather than guessing.
• Magnesium — helps constipation, sleep and muscle cramps.
• B12 — particularly if you are eating little meat.
• Protein powder — not really a supplement so much as portable food.

Run any supplement past your prescriber. It is a short conversation and it occasionally matters.

Building for afterwards

Here is the part worth thinking about early. The months when appetite is quiet are the easiest months you will ever have to build eating habits — protein first, vegetables present, slow meals, water between them. Those habits are not there to accelerate weight loss. They are there so that when the medication changes or stops, the structure underneath it is already yours. That is the whole premise of Maintenance: Keeping the Weight Off.

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“I stopped thinking of it as a diet somewhere around month three. I was not depriving myself of anything — I just genuinely did not want the second helping. So I used that time to learn to cook properly, for the first time in my life, at fifty-eight.”