One-week anti-inflammatory meal plan: my realistic, no-fuss batch cooking

We've all saved two hundred recipes on Instagram. And on Tuesday night, we make pasta. It's not a lack of motivation, it's a logistics problem: a single recipe is useless if the ingredients aren't in the fridge and you don't have twenty minutes to spare.

What got me out of that wasn't one more recipe. It was a system: a cooking session on Sunday, bases that recombine all week, and a shopping list that barely changes. Here's exactly how I do it, with a full seven-day plan.

My philosophy: anti-inflammatory without perfectionism

Before the plan, three principles, otherwise you'll last a week and no more.

The average score is what counts, not each meal. In Solaia, every recipe is scored out of 100 for its anti-inflammatory profile. The database average is 82. This plan aims for that zone. There are meals at 100, and a Saturday dinner at friends' that I don't score. It's the weekly average that acts on your body.

Repeating is fine. Sunday's dahl gets eaten on Monday and Tuesday. Breakfast is the same three days in a row. Variety plays out over the month, not the day.

Everything has to take under twenty minutes on weekdays. The recipes in this plan are either prepared in advance or assembled in a quarter of an hour. The scores and times given are those of the recipes in the app.

How I build a balanced week

Every day has the same structure, and every meal ticks four boxes: a protein, vegetables in two colours, a slow carb, a good fat or a spice.

• Breakfast: protein-rich, with omega-3s (flax or chia seeds) and berries.
• Lunch: a complete warm dish or a big salad with legumes.
• Snack: only if I'm hungry, never sweet on its own.
• Dinner: lighter, more cooked, often a soup or a stew, especially in the luteal phase when my digestion prefers warm food.

Two stews made on Sunday cover four dinners. Two legume salads cover three lunches. The rest gets assembled.

The full 7-day plan

Saturday is free. It's not a "cheat day", it's a normal life. A plan with no room for a restaurant or a dinner with friends doesn't last more than a month.

My Sunday batch cooking session in 2 hours

Here's how I split my two hours. The secret is to start the long cooks first and assemble while they're going.

0 to 15 min: start the bases.

• Oven at 200°C. One tray of diced butternut squash and one tray of diced sweet potatoes, olive oil, salt.
• A big pot of green lentils (for the salads) and one of red lentils (for the dahl).

15 to 45 min: the dahl.

• Onion and garlic in olive oil, turmeric, grated ginger. The red lentils, the coconut milk, a little water. Twenty minutes on low heat. Fresh spinach at the end. I make a double portion: two dinners.

45 to 75 min: the butternut curry.

• Same onion, garlic, turmeric, ginger base. Half of the roasted squash, chickpeas, coconut milk, spinach. Two dinners as well.

75 to 95 min: the cold assemblies.

• The warm lentil salad: green lentils, the other half of the roasted squash, hemp seeds, walnut oil. It keeps three days in the fridge.
• Two jars of chia pudding: chia seeds, almond milk, frozen raspberries. They swell overnight.
• The tamari pumpkin seeds: ten minutes in the oven, into a jar.

95 to 120 min: the velouté and the tidy-up.

• The turmeric squash velouté for Sunday night, with whatever squash is left.
• Everything into boxes, labelled with the day. The salmon I buy fresh on Friday, it cooks in ten minutes.

Result: four dinners, three lunches and all the snacks are sorted. For the rest of the week, I never cook for more than fifteen minutes.

Adapting the plan to your cycle phase

This is what's missing from every meal plan I've read. Your body doesn't have the same needs the week of your period and the week of ovulation. In the app, every recipe is tagged by phase, and I use that to adjust the base plan.

Period week: I keep the dahl and the curries, rich in iron, and I swap the cold salads for the red lentil soup with tomato and harissa (95). I add a raspberry leaf and ginger tea in the evening.

Follicular phase: this is the week for raw vegetables and fermented foods. I swap one curry for the Mediterranean tempeh bowl (92) and add kefir at breakfast.

Ovulation: I raise the fish. Salmon and mango tartare (100) or the black rice bowl with salmon and avocado (100) replace one legume lunch.

Luteal phase: I keep the warm dishes, I raise the slow carbs at every meal to smooth blood sugar, and I swap the chia pudding for the cacao and avocado smoothie bowl, rich in magnesium. I also cut back on salt from the start of the phase to limit water retention.

The shopping list, ready to copy

For one person, one week. Quantities are deliberately generous, it's better to have some left over.

Dry goods

• Red lentils (500 g), green lentils (500 g), jarred chickpeas (3)
• Rolled oats, chia seeds, ground flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds
• Walnuts, almonds, 70% dark chocolate
• Coconut milk (3 tins), almond milk
• Sardines in olive oil (2 tins), hummus
• Rye bread or wholemeal sourdough
• Turmeric, fresh ginger, cumin, paprika, tamari, olive oil, walnut oil, tahini
• Raw cacao, maple syrup

Fresh

• Butternut squash (1 large), sweet potatoes (4), fresh spinach (2 bags), kale (1 bunch)
• Avocados (4), radishes (1 bunch), tomatoes, red pepper, onions, garlic, lemons
• Frozen blueberries and raspberries, bananas, seasonal fruit
• Greek or plant-based yoghurt, eggs (6)
• Salmon fillets (2), to buy on Friday

My tips for never wasting anything

• One squash, four uses. Roasted for the salad, stewed in the curry, blended in the velouté, and the seeds toasted as a snack.
• Leftover curry becomes a bowl. A bit of curry over black rice with a soft-boiled egg is a lunch.
• Tired vegetables end up in soup. On Thursday, everything hanging around in the drawer goes into a ginger broth.
• Freeze by portion, not by dish. A dahl frozen in single portions saves a Tuesday night the following week.
• Photograph your meals. That's what let me see, over a month, where I kept repeating the same mistakes and what was really missing. Solaia's scanner does that work for me now, but a simple photo album is enough to start.

This plan isn't perfect, and that's not the point. It's sustainable. Do it two weeks in a row, without changing it, and watch what shifts in your afternoon energy and in your belly. That's where you'll understand what all this is for.