What foods should I eat on a GLP-1 diet?

Start with protein at every meal, then fibre, then everything else. Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, eggs, chicken thigh, salmon, prawns, tinned fish, tofu, tempeh, lentils and edamame are the anchors. Berries, oats, beans, chia, leafy greens and avocado cover fibre. On a small appetite the aim is density: the most protein and fibre per mouthful.

How much protein should I eat on Ozempic or Mounjaro?

Most GLP-1 nutrition guidance lands between 1.2 and 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, roughly 90 to 130 grams for many women. Aim for 25 to 40 grams per meal rather than one large evening portion. Spreading it out matters, because muscle responds to each meal, not to a daily total.

What should I eat when I feel too nauseous to eat on a GLP-1?

Cold or room-temperature, plain and protein-rich food is usually tolerated best: Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, a chilled protein shake, boiled eggs, plain chicken, tinned fish on crackers. Hot, greasy or strongly smelling food is harder on a stomach that empties slowly. Eat small amounts often rather than waiting for hunger that may not arrive.

Are there foods I should avoid on a GLP-1?

No food is forbidden. The medication has already cut how much you eat, so the real risk is under-eating protein, fibre and micronutrients rather than overeating. Very fatty meals, very spicy dishes and heavy alcohol tend to worsen nausea and reflux, so most women eat less of them by choice. That is tolerance, not a rule.

GLP-1 Diet Foods to Eat: The List for a Very Small Appetite

The 30-second summary

Every list of GLP-1 diet foods to eat should start here: the medication already did the restricting. Your job is the opposite, getting 25 to 40 g of protein into each of three small meals.

A joint 2025 advisory from four US obesity and nutrition bodies puts protein at 1.2 to 1.6 g per kg of body weight a day on GLP-1 therapy, spread across meals, alongside resistance training.

Fibre is the second target. The adequate intake for women is 25 g a day, and most people manage about 17 g. On a shrunken appetite that gap widens fast.

The GLP-1 diet is a protection plan, not a restriction plan

Search "GLP-1 diet foods to eat" and you will find page after page of foods to cut. That advice is aimed at a problem you no longer have. Semaglutide and tirzepatide slow gastric emptying and quieten appetite signalling, so portions shrink on their own. Many women on a therapeutic dose are eating 800 to 1,200 calories a day without trying, and without noticing.

The risk changes shape at that point. It is not overeating. It is arriving at the end of the day having eaten 45 g of protein, 9 g of fibre and very little iron, calcium or B12, and then wondering why your hair is thinning and stairs feel harder. Body composition scans in the large semaglutide trials record a meaningful share of total weight lost as lean mass, and while DXA overstates true muscle loss, the direction is real enough to plan around.

So think of every mouthful as having a job. You have perhaps six to twelve bites of genuine appetite per meal. Spend them on protein and fibre first. Everything else is a bonus.

GLP-1 diet foods to eat, part one: the protein anchors

An anchor is a food that delivers 15 g of protein or more in a portion you can actually finish. Grams below are for cooked, realistic servings, drawn from USDA FoodData Central. Round numbers, not lab precision.

Protein anchor	Realistic serving	Protein
Cottage cheese	1 cup, 225 g	25-28 g
Chicken thigh, boneless, cooked	100 g, palm-sized	26 g
Tinned tuna in water, drained	1 small tin, 100 g	25 g
Salmon, cooked	100 g fillet	25 g
Whey or plant protein powder	1 scoop, 30 g	20-25 g
Prawns, cooked	100 g, about 10 large	20-24 g
Firm or extra-firm tofu	150 g block	18-26 g
Tempeh	100 g	19-20 g
Tinned sardines, drained	1 tin, 90 g	19-21 g
Lentils, cooked	1 cup, 200 g	18 g
Edamame, shelled	1 cup, 155 g	18 g
Greek yoghurt, plain	1 pot, 170 g	17-18 g
Eggs	2 large	12-13 g

Two practical notes. First, protein powder is not a compromise. On days when solid food is impossible, a shake made with milk or fortified soya milk delivers 30 to 35 g in something you can sip over an hour. Second, tinned fish is the most underrated food on this list: shelf-stable, no cooking, and sardines bring calcium and omega-3s in the same mouthful.

If you want the full picture on quantity, quality and timing, our complete guide to protein on a GLP-1 goes deeper than this list.

Part two: the fibre workhorses

Fibre does three jobs at once on a GLP-1. It feeds the gut bacteria that a suddenly narrow diet tends to starve, it adds bulk that keeps things moving when constipation sets in, and it blunts the glucose curve. The adequate intake for adult women is 25 g a day, or 14 g per 1,000 calories eaten. If you are eating 1,100 calories, 25 g of fibre is a genuinely demanding target.

Fibre workhorse	Serving	Fibre
Chia seeds	2 tbsp, 28 g	10 g
Raspberries	1 cup, 123 g	8 g
Lentils, cooked	1/2 cup	8 g
Blackberries	1 cup	7.6 g
Black beans, cooked	1/2 cup	7.5 g
Avocado	Half a medium	5 g
Rolled oats, dry	40 g	4 g
Spinach, cooked	1 cup	4 g

Notice how many of these do double duty. Lentils and black beans are on both tables. So are chia seeds, which stirred into yoghurt add 10 g of fibre and 4 g of protein for two spoonfuls of effort. Raise fibre gradually and raise water with it, because fibre without fluid makes constipation worse, not better. Our note on hydration on a GLP-1 explains why thirst signalling gets unreliable too.

The six-bites foods: most nutrition per mouthful

Some days you will manage a third of a meal. These are the foods worth reaching for when six bites is the whole budget, because each one carries protein, fat and micronutrients together rather than water and volume:

Tinned sardines on a cracker. Protein, calcium, omega-3, vitamin D, no cooking.
Cottage cheese with chia and berries. Around 28 g protein and 12 g fibre in one bowl.
Two boiled eggs with salt. Choline, B12, and the most reliably tolerated protein there is.
Greek yoghurt with nut butter stirred through. Adds 100 dense calories and 4 g protein per tablespoon.
Edamame from frozen, microwaved. Protein, fibre, iron, folate, three minutes.
A shake blended with milk and half a banana. Roughly 35 g protein when nothing solid will go down.

This density matters most in the first days after a dose increase, when appetite falls off a cliff. If that pattern is familiar, what actually happens around day three is worth reading.

How much, in what order, and when

Per meal: 25 to 40 g of protein. Muscle responds to individual meals, not to a daily average. The research on protein distribution points to roughly 25 to 30 g per meal as the threshold that reliably switches on muscle protein synthesis, and higher for women past 50. Three meals at 30 g plus one 20 g snack lands you at 110 g. Steady's default daily target is 120 g, which suits most women between 60 and 80 kg.

The order: protein first, then vegetables, then starch. Eating protein and non-starchy vegetables before carbohydrate lowers post-meal glucose peaks in controlled trials, and on a GLP-1 it does something more useful still. It guarantees that the food you stop eating is the rice, not the salmon. We cover the sequencing in detail in what to eat on Ozempic, including how to build the plate.

The timing: eat on the clock, not on hunger. Hunger is the signal the medication removed. Waiting for it means skipping meals. Three anchored eating windows and one planned snack beats improvising, and it is far easier when food noise has gone quiet and nothing sounds appealing.

None of this works without the other half. Protein is the raw material, and resistance training is the instruction to use it. Two sessions a week is enough to change the outcome, as strength training on a GLP-1 sets out.

Assemble, do not cook

On low-energy days, cooking is the barrier, not appetite. Keep the components in the house and the meal becomes a two-minute assembly job:

Rotisserie chicken, bagged salad, half an avocado. 30 g protein, 6 g fibre.
Cottage cheese, tinned peaches, cinnamon. 26 g protein.
Tinned tuna, tinned white beans, olive oil, lemon. 32 g protein, 8 g fibre.
Greek yoghurt, frozen berries, chia, honey. 22 g protein, 12 g fibre.
Frozen edamame, microwave rice, soy sauce. 20 g protein.
Smoked salmon, cream cheese, oatcakes. 22 g protein.

Stock the freezer and the cupboard for the version of you who has no energy. Frozen berries, frozen edamame, frozen prawns, tinned fish, tinned beans, long-life milk, protein powder. None of it spoils, and none of it needs a decision.

And to be plain: no food is off the list. Bread is fine. Pasta is fine. Cake at a birthday is fine. The medication is already limiting intake, so the only meaningful question about any food is whether it earns its place among your limited mouthfuls, and sometimes the answer is yes because you love it. What tends to shrink naturally is very fatty and very spicy food, because those aggravate a slow-emptying stomach. That is your body reporting tolerance, not a rule you are obeying. For the wider context on eating patterns across the whole medication journey, start at our GLP-1 diet hub, and if fatigue is your main symptom rather than nausea, low energy on a GLP-1 is often a nutrition problem in disguise.

What Steady does with this

Steady tracks protein, water and fibre against daily targets, and shows protein per meal rather than only a daily total, so you can see which meal is the weak one.
Log a food and Steady records the grams. Log 14 GLP-1 symptoms and your cycle phase alongside it, so patterns between what you eat and how you feel become visible over weeks.
A month of that becomes one page you can hand to your prescriber, covering protein intake, weight trend, dose history and symptom load.

Sources

Mozaffarian D, et al. Nutritional priorities to support GLP-1 therapy for obesity: a joint Advisory from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the American Society for Nutrition, the Obesity Medicine Association, and The Obesity Society. 2025. Full text via PubMed Central
US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central. fdc.nal.usda.gov
The Role of Dietary Fiber in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention: A Practical Guide for Clinicians. StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf. Adequate intake of 25 g per day for women
Impacts of protein quantity and distribution on body composition. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2024. Per-meal protein thresholds and muscle protein synthesis
Carbohydrates-Last Food Order Improves Time in Range and Reduces Glycemic Variability. Diabetes Care, 2025. Meal sequencing evidence

Medical disclaimer: Articles in the Steady research hub are educational, not medical advice. Nutrition targets vary with your weight, kidney function, medical history and medication. Speak to your prescriber or a registered dietitian before changing your protein intake, particularly if you have kidney disease. See our full medical disclaimer.