'I Doubled My Protein Intake With This Easy Plan—And Saw Immediate Changes In My Energy Levels'
I’m a planner—except when it comes to meals. As a writer and editor juggling multiple deadlines and projects, assembling a balanced plate of food can feel daunting when I’m already making so many other decisions. So when I heard that the Women's Health High-Protein Meal Prep Manual would help me put healthy eating on autopilot, I was all in.
Because of my schedule, I knew I wasn't always getting the right balance of protein, veggies, and fruit in a given day. I'd heat up some frozen Costco's Starbucks Egg Bites for breakfast, then throw together a snack plate for lunch, only to find myself in a major energy slump by 3 p.m. I'm pretty active—I walk a ton, run, and typically take cycling classes up to three times a week. So when I’m not fueling myself properly, I can feel it. I knew I needed to make some changes to have the energy to make it through my busy days and my workouts.
The underlying issue, if I’m being honest, is that I don’t like to cook. Maybe that's because I’m not particularly good at it. While my husband and I typically fend for ourselves for breakfast and lunch, we eat dinner together most nights—and that means takeout quite a bit. Even if I order a salad for myself, I always take plenty of bites of his chicken fingers and pizza.
It’s also become clear that the older I get, the better I need to be about eating protein in particular: to avoid those dips in energy after a full day of meetings and to offset the muscle loss that often occurs with aging. So I committed to the Women’s Health High-Protein Meal Prep Manual for a week, and here’s what happened.
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The plan isn't overly complicated, which was a huge win for me.
The manual contains 21 recipes that the team at WH developed. Flipping through them is kind of like having a set of playing cards of protein-rich meals. Your choices all come down to your preferences, since the manual offers a nice variety across breakfast, lunch, and dinner, from multiple egg dishes and grain bowls to pork tenderloin, bison chili, and tempeh. They’re all solid, fairly simple recipes. But the idea isn’t just to eat those same meals forever.
What you’re getting is a crash course on assembling protein-forward plates. There’s a cheat sheet breakdown of the best animal and plant proteins, as well as a list of easy high-protein snacks (cottage cheese, nuts, etc.) to keep in the house. You’re also encouraged to over-prepare foods—beans, meats, hard boiled eggs—to use as a base for other meals or as healthy snack options.
Here's a peek at what I signed up for:
Open-Face Frittata Sandwiches
Three-Bean Bison Chili
Stuffed Quinoa Wraps
Overnight Carrot Cake Oats
Chocolate PB Shakes
Pumpkin Spice Protein Pancakes
The first step was calculating my recommended daily protein intake, which depends on weight in kilograms. I’m 5’9” and usually hover between 155 and 165 pounds, which equals about 70 kilograms. Conventional wisdom used to be that you need roughly 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. But for an active premenopausal woman, the RDN expert behind the WH manual, Willow Jarosh, suggests a number more like 1.2 grams per kilogram. That put me at a goal of about 84 grams of protein a day. It was a shocking number to me—I struggled to get even half of that most days.
To reach my goal, I aimed for about 20 and 30 grams of protein per meal, plus snacks.
This plan is fairly flexible, both in terms of how you use it to map out your week of meals and the recipes themselves. Obviously, the closer you stick to it, the more you guarantee you hit your daily protein intake goal.
I was just coming off of a vacation, so I wanted to ease into things.
I figured I’d swap in one or two of these meals a day, which wouldn’t be too hard considering I’d have leftovers from making multiple servings per the instructions. You can also batch prepare some of the ingredients for use in multiple meals, like rice or quinoa. I had a few work events, dinner with a friend, and a street block party on my calendar for the week, so I knew those meals would probably be off-plan. But I committed to doing a recipe for every breakfast, which I typically always eat at home, and about half of the lunches and dinners.
Because the recipes use common ingredients and seasonings and had super-simple steps, it was easy to shop for the week. I spent about an hour at the grocery store, and a good three hours and change on Sunday knocking out the first two meals. The rest of the week wasn’t as time-intensive since I was more or less just heating things up. (My husband also got in on a few of the dinners.) Toward the end of the week, I spent another hour or so fixing two of the salads. The chopping and prep created the bulk of the work for those.
It was simple to make adjustments when I forgot something at the store. For example, I bought a big rotisserie chicken for the Chicken Salad and had extra meat after shredding it. So, instead of making the Turkey and Red Lentil Stew as written, I used leftover chicken and the garbanzo beans I had in my pantry. (I somehow forgot the lentils when shopping.)
I couldn't find broccoli slaw, so I picked up a mostly shredded mix—and discovered that I like raw broccoli when it’s prepped this way! The frittata called for an 11” by 14” baking sheet, but I used my Dutch oven because that's all I had. All that meant was that instead of 16 rectangular slices, I had eight triangular ones, which I sliced in half to put on Ezekiel bread.
Some recipes felt more like assembling (like the salads), which was such a time saver. Being able to rely on semi-homemade ingredients helped me cut corners—and that’s how I cook anyway.
What my week of high-protein meals looked like:
I’m not the most adventurous eater, and I’m not the best cook. So I picked recipes from the manual that felt doable. On Sunday, I made Open-Face Frittata Sandwiches and Red Lentil Stew to kick things off. The frittata really kept me full in the morning, probably thanks to the chicken sausage (and it was definitely heartier than my usual Costco egg bites). The dish even felt special enough to serve for brunch with friends.
The stew was also really filling and made enough for four meals; my husband ate this with me one of the nights, and he was a fan as well. Like the egg dish, it reheated well.
Throughout the week, I drank the Chocolate PB Power Shakes for lunch, which packs 20 grams of protein. I worried that it would be chalky and have a weird aftertaste, and I was shocked by how non-artificial it tasted. It wasn’t far off from my favorite Juice Press smoothie, the Peanut Butter Split.
Later that week, I gave the Broccoli and Chicken Salad with Miso Dressing a try. I absolutely loved it, and had enough servings for one dinner and a lunch. (This is a heavy-hitter in terms of protein, since one serving packs 45 grams, more than half my daily intake!) My husband was a huge fan, too; he ate this with me one night as well.
By Friday night, I had eaten my way through most of what I had prepared. So I tried the Tuna Salad with Avo, Edamame, and Ponzu to bookend the week. Like the Broccoli and Chicken Salad, this felt big enough for dinner, so I ate these when I got home from work.
After one week, my energy soared.
I’ll absolutely stick with many of these recipes now that they’re in my repertoire.
Trying the program made me realize that I wasn't hitting my protein target for the day—and my energy levels reflected that. Plus, it helped me see what 20 to 30 grams of protein really looks like. I'm really trying to be better about getting more protein at every meal, and this program is what kicked this off for me.
Starting my day out with more protein carried me through to lunch without snacking. I didn’t feel ravenous by 12 p.m.! And that helped me make better choices on the days when I didn’t have a prepped meal at the ready.
Sometimes, I used to feel like I was running on empty by the end of the day, but that wasn’t the case on the days when I stuck closely to the plan. I also track my workouts with my Apple watch, and I noticed I burned more calories than usual during my regular spin classes that week. It’s hard to say if that was a direct result of eating more protein, but I didn’t feel like I was dragging as much. So maybe that allowed me to exert myself a little more, resulting in a more efficient, harder workout.
When I asked Jarosh, she told me that my guess was on track. “Many of my clients come to me not eating enough,” she says. “Once they increase food a bit, they do find they generate more power for workouts!”
By the end of the week, the plan helped me eat better (and more!) than I normally do. “Meal plans can often help steer more consistent and more robust eating,” Jarosh says. “And the WH plan is also really balanced with regard to blood sugar stability.” All of these factors, she said, could have contributed to my ability to go harder during workouts.
I’m not sure I’ll ever see a day where I prep every one of my meals for the week. But that’s not really the point. The goal is to have go-to recipes—and the building blocks of high-protein meals and snacks at the ready—so it’s easier to make choices that keep you feeling fuller, longer and with more sustained energy.
I can totally see myself whipping up a couple of these dishes on a Sunday night to help take the pressure off of figuring out meals during a busy week. Since taking on this challenge, my husband and I have already made the Broccoli and Chicken Salad with Miso Dressing twice.
Maybe the most important thing this experiment taught me is that I need more protein than I assumed. And I make better choices when I don’t wait until the end of the day to get my fill of the macronutrient. As with the rest of my life, I’m striving for progress, not perfection.
If you’re ready to dive into the High-Protein Meal Prep Manual, you can access the PDF here—an exclusive perk for our Women's Health+ members only.
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