A 7-Day Low-Carb Meal Plan
General guidance, not medical advice. If you take diabetes medication — especially insulin or sulfonylureas — cutting carbohydrate can require dose changes, so involve your care team before changing how you eat. Full disclaimer.
“Low-carb” means almost nothing without numbers — one person’s low-carb is another’s keto and a third’s “skipped the bread.” This plan defines it plainly: every meal at 20 grams of carbohydrate or less, counts printed on every dish, days totalled so you can see where the week actually lands.
This guide is a complete 7-day example week built from real recipes in the Plate Planner library. Every dish below carries 20 g of carbs or less per serving, with fiber and protein shown alongside — because what replaces the carbs matters as much as removing them. Tap any dish for its full ingredients, method and complete nutrition.
Carbs, fiber and protein are per-serving estimates from each recipe’s nutrition panel; counts are total carbohydrate with fiber shown separately. Tap any dish for the full recipe and complete nutrition.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Carb, fiber and protein values are per-serving estimates from each recipe’s nutrition panel — planning numbers, not lab measurements. The counts shown are total carbohydrate with fiber listed separately, so if you track net carbs you can subtract for yourself; nothing is blurred to flatter a number.
Honesty about where this sits: three meals at 20 g or less puts a day around 45–60 g of carbohydrate — solidly low-carb by the usual under-130 g definition, but not ketogenic, which typically means under about 50 g total per day with everything counted. If ketosis is your goal, use this as a base and tighten your own caps in the planner; this page won’t pretend a 55-gram day is keto.
What fills the gap decides whether the week works. Carbs removed and replaced with protein, vegetables and good fats leaves meals that hold you for hours; carbs removed and replaced with nothing leaves you raiding the bread bin by nine. Every dish here is built the first way — that’s why the protein number rides along on each meal.
Guard the fiber. Cutting carbs carelessly also cuts the vegetables, beans and grains that carry fiber — the most common reason low-carb weeks feel bad by day four. The fiber count is printed on every dish so you can watch the week keeping it, not losing it.
The first week is the strange one. Energy dips and headaches are common while your body switches fuel, and most of it is water and salt — drink more, salt food normally, and judge the approach by week two, not day three.
In the planner, set a daily carb target and generate a week — every meal, swap and side leans lower-carb, with per-meal counts and your dashboard totalling each day against the target. If diabetes is part of your picture, use the diabetes-friendly profile instead: it plans lower-carb with steadiness, not minimums, as the goal. Free, no account needed.
No. It’s an example week of lower-carb meals with the counts shown — organizational help, not medical advice. If you take glucose-lowering medication, talk to your care team before cutting carbohydrate; doses sometimes need adjusting.
No, and it doesn’t claim to be. Days here land around 45–60 g of total carbohydrate — low-carb by the standard definition, above the ~50 g-total ceiling most ketogenic approaches use. If you’re targeting ketosis, tighten the caps in the planner and treat this week as the starting scaffold.
Total — with fiber printed separately on every dish, so net (total minus fiber) is one subtraction away. Showing both beats picking the flattering one.
Look at the diabetes-friendly guide first: it uses a moderate, consistency-first carb pattern that suits glucose management better than a minimising one. Either way the counts on this site are planning estimates — never dose insulin from them — and medication plus carb changes is a conversation for your care team.