A month of cooking built around beans, vegetables, and protein, for anyone whose bloodwork just came back with a warning.
The bloodwork comes back and something's off. Cholesterol creeping up, triglycerides high, blood sugar edging toward a line you didn't want to cross. The good news: food and daily movement move these numbers, and you don't need a crash diet to do it.
This is a lower-carb Mediterranean pattern, not an all-cheese keto plan. Vegetables, beans, lentils, olive oil, nuts, fish and poultry are the base. Bread, rice, pasta and potatoes still show up, in a deliberate portion. Cheese is a flavouring, a small handful on a meal.
The trick is systems, not willpower: keep the replacement food in the house, build dinner around vegetables and protein first, and if a meal goes sideways, restart at the next one.
Every recipe here shows its real per-serving numbers (fibre, sugars, saturated fat, sodium), calculated from official government food data. You can see for yourself why it fits.
This is a cooking pattern, not medical advice. It follows the Mediterranean and lower-carb approach that dietitians and Diabetes Canada point to, but it doesn't replace the plan from your own doctor, pharmacist, or dietitian. If you're managing cholesterol, blood sugar, or blood pressure, use these recipes alongside their care, not instead of it.
Dinner
Lentils carry the sauce: high fibre and plant protein, no added sugar, freezer-friendly.
Dinner
Beans and vegetables do the work; rice is a small side, not the base.
Dinner
Chickpeas with cauliflower and spinach. Filling and high-fibre, light on refined carbs.
Dinner
A tray of roasted vegetables and chickpeas. Olive oil, lemon, herbs, no fuss.
Dinner
The approved pizza fix: whole-grain base, loaded with vegetables, a little cheese.
One tray, mostly vegetables, meat as one component of the plate.
Oily fish twice a week is one of the few changes that directly moves triglycerides.
The once-a-week red-meat slot: lean beef, thin-sliced, mostly broccoli.
Lean turkey on the batch sauce you already froze. Oats instead of breadcrumbs, no egg.
Dinner
The workhorse: beans and lentils, a huge batch that freezes in single portions.
Dinner
Beans plus extra plant protein. Very high fibre (the soluble kind that helps lower LDL), almost no saturated fat.
Beans do double duty as protein and fibre, so the chicken is a component, not the plate.
Side Dish
Make once, eat all week. The base for bowls, toast, and quick dinners.
Breakfast
Oats, chia, peanut butter, berries. Steady-release carbs, made the night before.
A five-minute lunch that's one of the highest omega-3 foods you can keep in the cupboard.
Salad
Low-GI whole-grain quinoa, vegetables, and olive oil. A low-sugar lunch that won't spike blood sugar.
Soup
A cold bowl of blended raw vegetables and olive oil. Almost no saturated fat, and it keeps in the fridge.
Build any of these in Nutrifax and get a print-ready Nutrition Facts label, free.