The GLP-1 Grocery List: One Lap of the Store, One Week of Eating
The exact list that stocks every plan on this site — five proteins, four produce, three dairy, two pantry, one treat.
Fifteen things, one lap, one week. Five proteins do the actual work — a rotisserie chicken, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs and deli turkey — and between them they carry from 11g to 24g a serving with almost no cooking. The other ten items exist to make those five taste like different meals.
Everything on the list keeps for the full week, which matters more than it sounds: a plan that depends on day-five spinach has a built-in excuse. What the list can’t do is decide what each item becomes on each day — that is a different job, and it is the one that turns a full fridge into a fed week.
The first time I shopped after the medication started working properly, I filled the cart the way I always had — and then stood in the kitchen unpacking food for a person who no longer existed. Half of it went in the bin the following Friday. It took me three weeks to work out that the list, not my willpower, was the thing that needed changing.
The 5·4·3·2·1 lap
Five proteins, four produce, three from the fridge, two from the pantry, one treat that is not a fight. Fifteen items, in the order you meet them walking the perimeter of almost any store.
The structure matters more than the specific items. Five proteins is enough for variety and few enough that none of them goes off. Four produce is what one person eating four bites a sitting can actually get through. And the one treat is on the list on purpose — a shop with nothing enjoyable in it is a shop you will start avoiding.
The five that do the work
-
One rotisserie chicken
24g
Three or four servings off one bird, and it needs no cooking from you at all. Pull it the day you buy it — cold pulled chicken is the single most useful thing in the fridge. Feeds Monday and Sunday dinner on the 7-day plan.
-
Greek yogurt, plain 5%, the big tub
17g
Six or seven servings. With a scoop of whey stirred through it becomes the densest sitting on this site — five bites that do nearly half a day. Breakfast most days, every plan on the site.
-
Cottage cheese, 4%, two tubs
13g
Four servings a tub. Goes sweet or savoury, which is why it survives the taste changes. The mid-afternoon sitting, and ten bowls of its own.
-
A dozen eggs
12g
Six servings. Buy a box of pre-boiled ones alongside if peeling is the step that stops you. Breakfast and the five-minute plates.
-
Deli turkey, half a pound sliced
11g
Four servings. Cold from the packet, standing up, counts as dinner on a bad day. Lunch on three days of the plan.
Protein per serving across the five proteins: rotisserie chicken 24 grams, Greek yogurt 17, cottage cheese 13, two eggs 12, deli turkey 11.
Protein per serving, not per bite — this is a shopping chart, and you buy servings. Between them these five carry the whole week without anything more demanding than a pan of eggs.
Notice there is no fish counter, no butcher, no recipe ingredient in that list. Everything is cold-case or dairy aisle, everything keeps a week, and nothing needs a second item to become edible.
Want the lap on one page, in store order?
All fifteen items with protein per serving, sorted the way you actually walk the store — so you can shop from your phone without scrolling. Free.
The other ten
Four produce
- Berries — whatever is not sad this week
- Cucumbers, two or three
- Cherry tomatoes
- A bag of something roastable for the family — you will eat two bites of it
Small quantities, deliberately. You are not going to eat a bag of apples. Buy what you will finish in five days and go back if you want more — the second trip is cheaper than the bin.
Three from the fridge
- String cheese, a bag — Ten servings, zero prep, lives in a drawer. 7g a serving.
- Milk, or ultrafiltered milk — Ultrafiltered has about five more grams a cup than regular, which is free protein for the same shake. 13g a serving.
- A block of cheddar and a tub of soft cheese — Cubes for grazing, spread for pinwheels. 7g a serving.
Two from the pantry
- Tuna pouches, a few — No draining, no smell. The lunch that never fails. 18g a serving.
- Whey protein, one you have already tasted — Small tub first, every time — you are auditioning it, not committing to it. 25g a serving.
And one treat
Whatever it is for you. Mine is dark chocolate with sea salt, and I eat about two squares a week now, which is roughly a tenth of what I used to. Put it on the list. A shop that contains nothing you want is a shop you will find reasons not to do.
The ten minutes that make the list work
This is the part people skip, and it is the part that decides whether the food gets eaten. Before anything goes into the fridge:
- Pull the chicken off the bone into a container. Whole birds do not get eaten; containers of pulled chicken do.
- Roll the turkey slices. Rolled turkey is a snack; a stack of turkey is an ingredient, and ingredients require a decision.
- Put three zero-prep proteins at the front of the top shelf, at eye level. The decision has to survive a five-second door-open.
- Line up a few dry jars with a scoop of whey in each, lids on. Add milk when the day goes sideways.
None of that is cooking. All of it is a version of you with energy doing a favour for a version of you without any. That trade — ten minutes on Sunday for seven days of ninety-second sittings — is the entire system this site is built on.
The cart I used to push
- Bought for the appetite I remembered
- Recipes with eleven ingredients each
- Produce that rotted by Friday
- Nothing ready without thirty minutes first
The lap I do now
- Bought for the appetite I have
- Fifteen things that need no recipe
- Small quantities, finished or frozen
- Three things ready at eye level
I was unpacking food for a person who didn’t live here any more.
The only number that matters is waste
Here is the shift that took me longest, and it is worth stating plainly because it runs against twenty-six years of training: on a medicated appetite, the cheapest shop is not the one with the lowest total. It is the one where nothing gets thrown away.
I used to shop for the week I intended to have. Ambitious produce, ingredients for three recipes, a bag of something virtuous. Then I ate four bites a sitting and most of it decomposed quietly in a drawer while I felt guilty about it. The cart total looked responsible. The cost per gram of protein I actually swallowed was appalling.
The fifteen items above are built the other way round. Everything keeps at least a week, everything is edible with no second ingredient, and everything can be eaten in four bites without being prepared into something else first. If a thing on your list fails one of those three tests, it will probably end up in the bin, however sensible it looked in the aisle.
Fails the three tests
- A bag of spinach — wilts by day four
- Recipe ingredients — useless without the other ten
- A big tub of anything — goes off before you finish it
- Anything needing thirty minutes before it is edible
Passes all three
- Keeps a week or lives in the freezer
- Edible with no second ingredient
- Small enough to actually finish
- Ready in ninety seconds or already ready
Questions people actually ask
How much does all this cost?
It varies too much by region and store for me to print a number I would stand behind, so I am not going to invent one. What I can tell you is the shape of the change: this cart is smaller than the one you used to push. You are buying for an appetite that is a quarter of what it was, and the single biggest saving is not a cheaper item, it is the produce drawer you stop emptying into the bin every Friday.
Costco or a regular store?
Regular, mostly. Bulk works against you now — a three-pound tub of yogurt goes off before one person eating three-quarters of a cup a day can finish it, and throwing food out is its own quiet discouragement. The exceptions are the things that keep: whey, tuna pouches, frozen anything. Buy those big and everything else small.
What about the rest of the family’s food?
This list is your layer, not the household shop. Theirs stacks on top of it, and the overlap is larger than you would think — the rotisserie chicken, the eggs and the cheese all feed everyone. The trick at dinner is cooking one meal and pulling your small bowl out before the volume goes in.
Is frozen fine?
Better than fine. Frozen berries, frozen edamame and frozen cooked chicken are all on my list permanently, and none of them guilt-trip you from the crisper drawer on a Friday. On a medicated appetite the enemy is waste, and the freezer is the answer to waste.
The one-lap list — screenshot this before you shop
- 5 proteinsrotisserie chicken · Greek yogurt · cottage cheese · eggs · deli turkey
- 4 produceberries · cucumbers · cherry tomatoes · something roastable
- 3 fridgestring cheese · ultrafiltered milk · cheddar and soft cheese
- 2 pantrytuna pouches · whey you have already tasted
- 1 treatthat isn’t a fight
The shot decides how much you eat. Your bites decide what you lose.
fewbites.com Every bite has a job
The list on one page, in store order
- All fifteen items with protein per serving
- Sorted the way you walk the store, not the way lists are usually written
- The ten-minute unpacking routine that makes it work
- What to buy big, what to buy small, and what to freeze
The list got shorter and the fridge stopped accusing me. Nothing has gone in the bin in months. Dana Wells, Few Bites
