What do you think?
Rate this book
Downshiftology Healthy Meal Prep: 100+ Make-Ahead Recipes and Quick-Assembly Meals: A Gluten-Free Cookbook
#1 AMAZON BESTSELLER - PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Discover an easier, more balanced way to meal prep as you whip up 100 fresh and healthy dishes that happen to be gluten-free, from the creator of the popular blog and YouTube channel Downshiftology.
"Lisa has revolutionized meal prep to be approachable, fresh, and easy, and her cookbook has everything you need to make healthy eating a breeze."—Emily Mariko, TikTok creator
Before Lisa Bryan began meal prepping several years ago as a way to save time and money, she quickly became tired of eating boring leftovers and wasting food. At the same time, she also wanted to "downshift" the too-fast pace of her life. So she flipped the script on meal prep by focusing on individual ingredients.
By prepping a handful of healthy ingredients at the start of the week, she learned that she could enjoy a variety of meals and snacks without getting bored. And she found she could control what she ate with more clarity: It became easy to eat more vegetables and simple proteins, eliminate processed foods and gluten (to manage her celiac disease), and reduce refined sugar. Her debut cookbook is packed with 100+ simple and ingenious big-batch recipes that can either be frozen or repurposed into totally different, delicious meals.
A dinner of Coconut Chickpea Curry with rice can be enjoyed the next day as a tostada at lunch, and a side of peas and crispy prosciutto becomes breakfast when you add a jammy egg on top. The recipes are all free of refined sugar, many are naturally anti-inflammatory, and dairy is minimal and optional. Lisa's approachable method for eating well and preparing meals with ease will inspire home cooks to downshift their lives, too, by making healthy meals without a fuss.
"Lisa has revolutionized meal prep to be approachable, fresh, and easy, and her cookbook has everything you need to make healthy eating a breeze."—Emily Mariko, TikTok creator
Before Lisa Bryan began meal prepping several years ago as a way to save time and money, she quickly became tired of eating boring leftovers and wasting food. At the same time, she also wanted to "downshift" the too-fast pace of her life. So she flipped the script on meal prep by focusing on individual ingredients.
By prepping a handful of healthy ingredients at the start of the week, she learned that she could enjoy a variety of meals and snacks without getting bored. And she found she could control what she ate with more clarity: It became easy to eat more vegetables and simple proteins, eliminate processed foods and gluten (to manage her celiac disease), and reduce refined sugar. Her debut cookbook is packed with 100+ simple and ingenious big-batch recipes that can either be frozen or repurposed into totally different, delicious meals.
A dinner of Coconut Chickpea Curry with rice can be enjoyed the next day as a tostada at lunch, and a side of peas and crispy prosciutto becomes breakfast when you add a jammy egg on top. The recipes are all free of refined sugar, many are naturally anti-inflammatory, and dairy is minimal and optional. Lisa's approachable method for eating well and preparing meals with ease will inspire home cooks to downshift their lives, too, by making healthy meals without a fuss.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published December 6, 2022
489 people are currently reading
531 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
June 28, 2023
I have to tell you. I hate cooking. HATE it. I never dreamed I would read a cookbook for the fun of it (much less, a 300 page one). But I literally read this one from front to back in one sitting.
At first I was intrigued. Then I was scared and overwhelmed - but only briefly. Then I was fully invested. Finally, by one of the last chapters, “side dishes and building blocks” I could actually understand how this could maybe, possibly, all start to come together to be a GENIUS way of meal prepping. After finishing it, I felt like I was one with the vegetables. In tune with the proteins, and less scared of trying new things involving ingredients I maybe hadn’t thought of using in the ways suggested. And instead of overwhelming myself, the idea of just double-batching as I try the recipes and freezing (with labels! That’s important!) is a simple way to go forth, stock, and conquer.
Many of the base ingredients are repeated with a twist so you don’t have to go insane-on-the-hunt for obscure things. I read through each recipe and ALL (with the exception of maybe 4 that sounded gross to me) both looked delicious and seemed easy enough for a monkey (myself) to make.
I can’t tell you if I will be successful in my cooking endeavors. But I can tell you this was a fun book to read through, and if nothing else, it will inspire you and make it feel possible.
At first I was intrigued. Then I was scared and overwhelmed - but only briefly. Then I was fully invested. Finally, by one of the last chapters, “side dishes and building blocks” I could actually understand how this could maybe, possibly, all start to come together to be a GENIUS way of meal prepping. After finishing it, I felt like I was one with the vegetables. In tune with the proteins, and less scared of trying new things involving ingredients I maybe hadn’t thought of using in the ways suggested. And instead of overwhelming myself, the idea of just double-batching as I try the recipes and freezing (with labels! That’s important!) is a simple way to go forth, stock, and conquer.
Many of the base ingredients are repeated with a twist so you don’t have to go insane-on-the-hunt for obscure things. I read through each recipe and ALL (with the exception of maybe 4 that sounded gross to me) both looked delicious and seemed easy enough for a monkey (myself) to make.
I can’t tell you if I will be successful in my cooking endeavors. But I can tell you this was a fun book to read through, and if nothing else, it will inspire you and make it feel possible.
February 12, 2024
Read a recipe book from cover to cover! Something I had never done until a few years ago! And this one is great. A special thanks goes to my youngest sister for introducing me to Lisa Bryan and her healthy cooking as well as meal preparation ideas. I may be too varied a cook for the preparation but love the concept especially for a few meals during the week and staples. I marked all the recipes I want to try and there are MANY! If you live to cook, or maybe even if you don’t, but want to prioritize healthy eating, check this book out!
Read
March 26, 2023You should know going into it that the approach is prep a bunch of different stuff and then combine at meal time. You might have a prepped & cooked meat dish, salad, and another veg, and then you pull them out to make a buffet-style meal. The author says she tries to prep with categories in mind: Protein, veggies, starch, snacks, breakfast. And then you can combine whatever you have from the different categories.
This is a good way to plan the meal prep process in my opinion. Make sure you have a couple different things available in each category, and you will be good for the week! This is a similar concept to The Vegan Week , where the author suggests "a grain, a green, a bean, a sauce" to help strategize meals.
Pros:
- The beginning has a list of common vegetables and different ways to prep & store them.
- The hearty salads section - not all veggies do well sitting together for a couple days and lots of meal prep influencers forget that
- Gluten and sugar free
- Good photos for every recipe
- Focus on fresh, whole ingredients
Cons:
- Lots of spiralizing and veggie-ricing
- The "Quick Assembly meals" section is so random (it has like... a chaotic energy) it should have just been left out and the recipes put into other categories
- 5/15 breakfast recipes were oat based, which may not be a con for you, but I don't eat oats so it seems kinda oat heavy.
- I think the author should have really stuck with the organizational concept of "protein, veggies, starch, snacks, breakfast." It is arranged like a traditional cookbook (3 sections of main dishes, salads, desserts, breakfast, random sides, plus a few other random sections), which doesn't align that well with seeing the bigger picture of meal prep components.
Overall I think this is a pretty useful meal prep book for me, considering it is all gluten-free. It has bright, colorful photos and plenty of new dishes to try.
This is a good way to plan the meal prep process in my opinion. Make sure you have a couple different things available in each category, and you will be good for the week! This is a similar concept to The Vegan Week , where the author suggests "a grain, a green, a bean, a sauce" to help strategize meals.
Pros:
- The beginning has a list of common vegetables and different ways to prep & store them.
- The hearty salads section - not all veggies do well sitting together for a couple days and lots of meal prep influencers forget that
- Gluten and sugar free
- Good photos for every recipe
- Focus on fresh, whole ingredients
Cons:
- Lots of spiralizing and veggie-ricing
- The "Quick Assembly meals" section is so random (it has like... a chaotic energy) it should have just been left out and the recipes put into other categories
- 5/15 breakfast recipes were oat based, which may not be a con for you, but I don't eat oats so it seems kinda oat heavy.
- I think the author should have really stuck with the organizational concept of "protein, veggies, starch, snacks, breakfast." It is arranged like a traditional cookbook (3 sections of main dishes, salads, desserts, breakfast, random sides, plus a few other random sections), which doesn't align that well with seeing the bigger picture of meal prep components.
Overall I think this is a pretty useful meal prep book for me, considering it is all gluten-free. It has bright, colorful photos and plenty of new dishes to try.
September 10, 2023
I’ve followed Lisa’s channel for a while and love her approach and attitude to nutrition and cooking, which is most definitely evident in her book. I bought my own copy after borrowing from the library because I continue to reference it in the short time and enjoy the meal prep format she employs. I can’t wait to give many of these recipes a try and relearn meal prepping with this knowledge in mind!
April 23, 2023
Bought this book less for the meal prep info and more for the inspiration on foods to have ready to go and to mix and match. I love the recipes, already planning on making a few next week and the photos are gorgeous. Very happy I got this book.
January 30, 2024
Love her website and YouTube channel. Wish her book wasn't so expensive.
December 17, 2022
This is a beautiful book! The recipes are nourishing, and include ingredients that I typically have on hand. I definitely recommend this cookbook!
December 11, 2022
Excellent book
Very helpful with meal prep and easy to follow. Really enjoying the whole process. The tips are very helpful. Very easy to follow
Very helpful with meal prep and easy to follow. Really enjoying the whole process. The tips are very helpful. Very easy to follow
December 7, 2022
Very excited to be celebrating Lisa's cook book release!
It's been inspiring to watch the transformation journey of this book come together threw her Downshiftology youtube channel & I'm delighted to have saved a few new irresistible recipes to try out later.
It's been inspiring to watch the transformation journey of this book come together threw her Downshiftology youtube channel & I'm delighted to have saved a few new irresistible recipes to try out later.
February 18, 2023
1.5 stars rounded up - and rounded up ONLY because there was 1 recipe included that I could try because it seems quick, easy, and doesn’t have 5000 off the wall, expensive, and/or difficult to source ingredients.
The first 20% of this book was a disaster from a format and “what the hell is going on?” perspective. The whole 100% of this book was yet another skinny white chick gatekeeping health and wellness. It’s great that she had the means to quit her job and go on this “journey of wellness” and find a diet that is both time consuming and cost prohibitive to those who are not nearly as privileged as her.
I guess if we all lived near a Whole Foods/ample farmers markets and had the cash (and time) to spend at each, we, too, could reach her level of perfection.
Cookbooks like this piss me off. The white privilege is galling.
The first 20% of this book was a disaster from a format and “what the hell is going on?” perspective. The whole 100% of this book was yet another skinny white chick gatekeeping health and wellness. It’s great that she had the means to quit her job and go on this “journey of wellness” and find a diet that is both time consuming and cost prohibitive to those who are not nearly as privileged as her.
I guess if we all lived near a Whole Foods/ample farmers markets and had the cash (and time) to spend at each, we, too, could reach her level of perfection.
Cookbooks like this piss me off. The white privilege is galling.
November 26, 2024
What a beautiful and captivating book! I want to try so many exciting and delicious ideas right away. I've been following Downshiftology for a while, so this book came with enormous expectations. As always, Lisa brilliantly shows a lot of her ideas here. Meal prep is one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen, and I've learned a lot from her about improving my cooking strategies without sacrificing fun. Enjoying cooking is truly an art, and with this book, I expect to unlock the next level. Thoroughly recommended; I'll try to update this review according to the recipes I try.
October 10, 2025
“... she flipped the script on her meal prep by focusing on individual ingredients. By prepping a handful of healthy ingredients at the start of the week, she learned that she could enjoy a variety of meals and snacks without getting bored”
Uniquely organized cook book. Has tons of helpful tips about storing veggies and I loved the meal prep ideas (laid out a week of things to prep and various meals to make from the prep). Recipes have additional information about storage, reheating, tips, and health info.
Uniquely organized cook book. Has tons of helpful tips about storing veggies and I loved the meal prep ideas (laid out a week of things to prep and various meals to make from the prep). Recipes have additional information about storage, reheating, tips, and health info.
December 27, 2022
I've been following Lisa's YouTube channel and blog ever since she released her first meal prep video almost 5 years ago. I can safely say Lisa changed my life. I fell in love with cooking and experimenting in my kitchen. And her first cookbook is just the icing on the cake. Every recipe looks amazing and I can't wait to try them all. I highly recommend giving this book a try if you're looking for easy to follow recipes that are packed with flavor.
April 4, 2023
Lots of good recipes and helpful planning ideas. Great for saving time and money, and to eliminate wasting food.
January 12, 2025
I absolutely loved this cookbook, I read it beginning to end. I took thorough annotations and notes on my iPhone. I saved pretty much all recipes except for maybe five in total. The photography was amazing and there was a photo of each recipe for every single recipe, which was helpful.
I also liked how the book was divided into categories from breakfast, to durable salads, meaty mains, desserts, etc. — and it ended with quick healthy recipes for vinaigrette and sauces. It was a very comprehensive cookbook.
I also learned a lot about how to properly store and use the freezer for bulk, healthy dishes. 100% recommend this cookbook and following Lisa Bryan on social.
I also liked how the book was divided into categories from breakfast, to durable salads, meaty mains, desserts, etc. — and it ended with quick healthy recipes for vinaigrette and sauces. It was a very comprehensive cookbook.
I also learned a lot about how to properly store and use the freezer for bulk, healthy dishes. 100% recommend this cookbook and following Lisa Bryan on social.
June 28, 2023
Healthy does not have to be expensive, but this one has so many ingredients that I would have to go to a specialty store to find, that it is not a practical book for me. The instructions in the beginning are decent, but other books, and even using search engine can help you with that. I also was not happy with set up of book. I tried to open it for a table of contents, and I could not find one in my book. I gave it three as there were a couple of good recipes, and the beginning, but not full points because of the two items I mentioned.
March 4, 2023
This is exactly the cookbook you would expect to come from Lisa if you watch her Downshiftology YouTube channel. It is positively bursting with bright, colorful, gluten-free recipes (including a picture for every one).
The only thing holding me back from a five star rating is the beginning section, which is essentially a produce primer. While the information is useful enough, I could have easily done without it.
The only thing holding me back from a five star rating is the beginning section, which is essentially a produce primer. While the information is useful enough, I could have easily done without it.
August 27, 2023
I discovered Lisa a few years ago on YouTube and was immediately impressed with her meal prep ideas, recipes, and approach to nutrition. I’ve used a bunch of her recipes, but have yet to do the actual meal planning. I’m at stage in my life where I could benefit from the meal planning, so I’m about to begin.
This book is pretty much what I expected it to be. It’s practical and well thought out, just like her videos. I have a bunch of new things to try, and I’m ready to try out food prepping.
This book is pretty much what I expected it to be. It’s practical and well thought out, just like her videos. I have a bunch of new things to try, and I’m ready to try out food prepping.
January 18, 2024
Every recipe we’ve tried from this book has been excellent!
I struggle to figure out my menus quickly and love it when that mental work is already done for me. That’s why I wish there were more meal plans to show how to use the recipes for a weekly meal prep. (There are four plans in the book.) If there were more meal plans, and if most of the recipes were included in those meal plans, I’d give this book five stars.
I struggle to figure out my menus quickly and love it when that mental work is already done for me. That’s why I wish there were more meal plans to show how to use the recipes for a weekly meal prep. (There are four plans in the book.) If there were more meal plans, and if most of the recipes were included in those meal plans, I’d give this book five stars.
January 23, 2023
This is a beautiful food prep/cookbook to read and look at. Lisa Bryan’s approach to preparing good is really quite ingenious. I especially love the tips on individual ingredients that might have intimidated me when looking at them in the grocery store. Very inspired to try these tips for prep and organizing and trying new ingredients and combinations.
February 26, 2023
Some easy recipes, some require a few more ingredients, but none that require a specialty shop. The first third of the book talks about how tos shop, store and cook particular vegetables, as well as equipment. A few pages showing meal prep ideas and then the recipes. Pictures galore and calorie count, etc. all in all a nice book.
February 3, 2023
Easy to follow along. Recipes are fairly simple. I enjoyed how the author separated the cookbook into sections. Lots of the recipes include ingredients most people already have cooked with and probably already have in their kitchens.
July 17, 2023
Great cookbook checked out from JCPL -- must put on my gift-to-myself-suggestion list.
I made several of the recipes -- while I'm not a meal prepper, it was interesting to see how the book shows you how to do this for one person.
Great photos; easy to follow recipes.
I made several of the recipes -- while I'm not a meal prepper, it was interesting to see how the book shows you how to do this for one person.
Great photos; easy to follow recipes.
May 13, 2024
Top notch recipe book
As clear and delicious as the recipes we've come to expect from Lisa. Was thrilled to be able to read this and can't wait to try even more of Lisa's amazing recipes xx
As clear and delicious as the recipes we've come to expect from Lisa. Was thrilled to be able to read this and can't wait to try even more of Lisa's amazing recipes xx
January 22, 2026
Such a good cookbook. The recipes are simple, realistic, and actually doable for everyday life. I love how practical it is for meal prep without feeling boring or repetitive. Everything feels balanced, nourishing, and easy to stick with.
Definitely one of those cookbooks I’ll keep reaching for.
Definitely one of those cookbooks I’ll keep reaching for.
December 31, 2022
The best meal prep cookbook I’ve read all year. The recipes are amazing.
December 31, 2022
Beautifully crafted book that is more than delicious recipes. Lisa Bryan clearly has a passion for creating healthy meals that you want to eat.
January 1, 2023
Great healthy recipes
I have been following Lisa for some years and love her recipes. Great to have some of them in printed format. Love the recipes all with quality photographs.
I have been following Lisa for some years and love her recipes. Great to have some of them in printed format. Love the recipes all with quality photographs.
January 1, 2023
Meal prep with accessible foods!! This is a great book.
January 24, 2023
Nicely laid out and photographed. The recipes are accessible and healthy. This would be a lovely gift.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews