Weekly menu for small appetites

How it is built

There is no official “Ozempic diet.” This menu is one way to spread protein over small portions, built with simple rules from the site’s food pages, whose nutrition values come from the USDA FoodData Central database. Of the 215 published foods, 164 can go into the menu; drinks, ultra-processed and fried foods, prepared dishes, popcorn, onion (it is a seasoning), Parmesan, and olive oil, which you add yourself, are left out.

• What goes into each meal. Breakfast: a dairy food, egg, cheese, or sliced ham, a piece of fruit, and bread, oatmeal, nuts, or avocado. Lunch and dinner: meat, fish, egg, queso fresco, or beans, a vegetable, and bread, rice, pasta, quinoa, corn, or a starchy root. Afternoon snack (with 4 meals): a dairy food, egg, ham, or nuts with fruit or bread. Mid-morning snack: the same, with fruit. Two foods from the same group never go in one meal, and egg, cheese, and ham are paired with bread or avocado, not with oatmeal or nuts.
• Portions. They start from the typical serving on each food’s page and are adjusted between half and 1.5 times to approach each meal’s share of your protein figure: breakfast counts 1, lunch and dinner 1.25, the afternoon snack 0.75, and the mid-morning snack 0.5. If a meal is still short, bread or nuts grow too; and if the whole day falls short, the protein food of other meals gets bigger, never above 1.5 times. Eggs are counted whole (one or two), drinks stay at one glass, and everything else is rounded to 5 g or 5 ml. Amounts are in grams, with ounces (or fluid ounces) alongside.
• Variety. The protein food does not repeat in two meals in a row, there is at most one bean or lentil dish a day, and foods that have not come up that week are preferred. The first two rules are relaxed only if your preferences leave no other option. “Make another week” changes the draw; the same link always gives the same menu.
• Symptoms. With nausea, foods tagged as easy to digest are four times as likely to come up, beans and cruciferous vegetables less likely, and foods with a nausea risk (fatty or fried) never appear. With constipation, high-fiber foods are four times as likely to come up; it is best to raise fiber gradually and with enough fluids, as the advisory notes. Each food’s page explains these tags.
• Preferences. “Lactose-free” removes dairy and queso fresco, and also bread and sliced ham, because depending on the brand they may contain milk. “Vegetarian” removes meat and fish (keeps eggs and dairy) and aged cheeses such as Parmesan, which are often made with animal rennet. “Gluten-free” keeps only rice, quinoa, and corn among the grains; removes bread, pasta, oats (unless certified, they may carry traces of gluten), and sliced ham. If you have celiac disease or a diagnosed allergy or intolerance, this does not replace your doctor or the label of each product.
• Numbers. Protein, fiber, and energy are calculated from each food’s values per 100 g for the weight shown. There is no calorie target anywhere: energy is shown so you can see how much the example provides and how much it makes sense to add.

Further reading

• What to eat on GLP-1 medications: a phase-by-phase guide.
• 7-day meal plan for Ozempic, Wegovy or Zepbound when your appetite is small, a fixed week with a shopping list.
• Filling recipes with protein for small appetites, with the numbers per serving.
• 12 high-protein breakfasts for days when you have no appetite.
• Nausea on Ozempic, Wegovy or Zepbound: what to eat and what to avoid.
• Constipation on Ozempic, Wegovy or Zepbound: why it happens and what helps.
• Daily protein calculator, to get your own figure.
• Filling foods finder, to swap a food for a similar one.