Transform Your Body Fast with The Ultimate Pescatarian Diet Plan for Weight Loss!

Interested in cutting meat out of your diet, but not fish? Or are you considering going vegetarian but want some protein options beyond plants? Consider the pescatarian diet (sometimes spelled “pescetarian”), which avoids meat from land animals but allows for fish and seafood. For any of you starting out on the pescetarian diet, it can be a daunting task to start mapping out your meals for the coming few weeks. Luckily, creating a delicious pescatarian meal plan has never been easier. This article provides a comprehensive guide to the pescatarian diet, its health benefits, potential drawbacks, and practical tips for weight loss, including a sample meal plan to kickstart your journey.

What is a Pescatarian Diet?

“Going pescatarian means choosing to avoid eating any type of meat that isn’t fish or seafood,” explains registered dietitian Anthony DiMarino, RD, LD. The word is a combination of pesce, which is Italian for “fish,” and vegetarian, for someone who doesn’t eat meat. That’s why you might also hear this eating style referred to as pesco-vegetarian.

Essentially, a pescatarian diet is a vegetarian diet that includes seafood. Pescatarians don’t eat meat like poultry, such as chicken and turkey, red meat, including beef, pork, and lamb, and wild game, like venison and bison. But unlike vegetarian and vegan diets, a pescatarian diet can include fish, seafood, like shrimp, crab, and oysters, animal products, such as dairy, eggs, and honey, and plant-based foods are A-OK, too, like fruits and vegetables, grains, and legumes, nuts, and seeds.

“There are no strict rules about how much of each food group you should eat on a pescatarian diet,” DiMarino clarifies. “You have the freedom and flexibility to choose which foods you want to eat and how much, based on your preferences and health goals.”

Is Fish Meat?

The answer to this question depends on whom you ask. Because fish and seafood come from living beings, vegetarians and vegans avoid them. But some people feel that sea creatures are less sentient (able to perceive feelings) than land animals, so they don’t see fish and seafood as being the same as meat.

Benefits of Following a Pescatarian Diet

Eliminating meat from your diet and focusing on plants and seafood can be a healthy switch. Others come from cutting red meat and increasing your fruit and vegetable intake.

Heart Health

A review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology shows that a pesco-Mediterranean diet - one focused on fish and plant-based foods - is “ideal for optimizing cardiovascular health.” There are a few reasons for that:

More omega-3s: Fish is one of the best sources of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA, which your body can’t make on its own. They’re linked to improved heart and blood vessel health, plus a decreased risk of high blood pressure, blood clots, and even sudden cardiac death. The huge benefits of the pescatarian diet is the abundance of omega-3 fatty acids that you get from fish, which lowers inflammation. Generally speaking, the pescatarian diet tends to have much lower levels of cholesterol, improving overall heart health.
Avoiding the risks of red meat: Regularly eating red meat can raise your risk of heart disease. It’s also higher in calories and saturated fats than fish or plant-based foods. “Eliminating red meat is a great way to boost your heart health,” DiMarino confirms.
More fruits and veggies: When you go pescatarian, you may naturally start to incorporate more fresh produce into your diet. These powerhouse foods contain antioxidants - compounds that lower your risk of heart disease.

Lean Protein

Every cell in your body needs protein, which is like a building block for your tissues. But getting it from meats high in saturated fat (like red meat) brings health risks. Pescetarian-friendly sources of lean protein, like fish and eggs, don’t bring the same risks. And plant-based proteins like soy, nuts, and legumes are great ways to get more of this important nutrient, too. It is really important when you’re following a pescetarian diet.

“We all need protein, but not all protein sources are healthy,” DiMarino warns. “When you choose lean proteins over high-fat meat, you’re eating the healthiest protein sources available.”

Reduced Cancer Risk

A large study found that pescatarians and vegetarians have a lower risk of cancer overall than meat-eaters and a lower risk of colorectal and prostate cancer, in particular. This is likely due to a lack of red meat, which is linked to cancer, and to a higher intake of fruits and veggies, which contain nutrients and phytochemicals that help fight changes in the cells that can lead to cancer.

Read also: Pescatarian Keto Meal Options

“Nearly everyone could benefit from adding more fruits and vegetables into their diet,” DiMarino notes. “These foods are the very best ones for fighting disease and living a healthier life overall.”

Improved Gut Health

High-fiber foods, which are typically a major component of a pescatarian diet, are great for your gut. The fiber in plant foods helps prevent constipation and feeds your gut microbiome, which is home to bacteria, fungi, and yeast that live in your small and large intestines.

“Your microbiome plays a key role in your immune system, digestion, and metabolism,” says DiMarino. “A healthy microbiome can also boost your mental health.”

Appetite Control

Many foods in the pescatarian diet, like legumes, nuts, and seeds, can help curb afternoon cravings.

“These foods are naturally high in fiber and protein, which take longer to digest than simple carbs like chips and ultra-processed foods,” DiMarino explains. “The result is that you may eat fewer calories throughout the day and feel less hungry.”

Potential Disadvantages of a Pescatarian Diet

Following a pescatarian diet can improve your health. But depending on the food choices you make, there are still some possible pitfalls.

Processed Foods

Pescatarians can still eat unhealthy foods like pizza, French fries, and packaged snacks. “Processed foods tend to be higher in calories, unhealthy fats and sugar,” DiMarino states. “They’re also low in vitamins and minerals.”

Mercury and Contaminants

For most people, the benefits of eating fish outweigh any risks, but it’s best to stick to low-mercury types. “As long as you’re not pregnant or nursing, you can eat high-mercury fish on occasion,” he adds, “but for most of your intake, focus on low-mercury fish.”

One study found that a low to moderate level of mercury exposure from fish is not associated with an increase in cardiovascular mortality or death from any cause. As a result, the authors recommend that the current guidelines for eating fish as part of a healthy diet remain in place.

Important: If you're pregnant, pay particular attention to your choices and aim to consume no more than 8 to 12 oz of fish per week. The nutrients in fish support healthy fetal growth, and experts recommend consuming two to three servings of lower-mercury fish per week. Ideally, these will come from fish with the lowest levels of mercury, which includes crab, shrimp, tilapia, salmon, sardines, and cod. Children are also encouraged to eat two servings per week of these fish.

Nutrient Deficiencies

Pescatarians, like vegetarians, need to be mindful of nutrients that aren’t readily available in many plant foods, especially if you don’t typically eat a ton of fish, eggs, or dairy. “You can get enough zinc, protein and iron with them, but it takes some planning,” DiMarino says.

Pescatarian Keto Diet

The pescatarian keto diet is an eating plan that mixes pescatarian and keto diets to get the benefits of each.

Benefits

Improved Glycemic Control: Studies have shown that a low-carb diet approach may lead to rapid improvements in glycemic control. Furthermore, it reduces insulin resistance to prevent the onset of diabetes. A 2021 narrative review also shows that limiting the intake of carbs prevents glucotoxicity or the impaired function of your beta cells, which are cells that secrete insulin.
Weight Loss and Fat Oxidation: This is because carb restriction depletes glycogen stores, causing your body to burn its stored fat to produce ketones for fuel. A study shows peak whole-body fat oxidation (or fat breakdown) is greater on a keto diet during exercise than other diets with varying macro ratios.
Appetite Suppression: Low-carb diets have been known to suppress hunger better when compared to other traditional weight loss approaches.
Muscle Mass Preservation: Since the low-carb pescatarian diet has more protein sources than a vegetarian diet alone, you can work on gaining muscle mass while losing body fat.

Considerations

Nutrient Deficiencies: A plant-based diet can lack certain nutrients that are more abundant in animal-sourced foods. This is why people following a vegetarian diet must ensure they’re obtaining all the nutrients they need - whether through supplementation or finding other foods containing them.
Electrolyte Imbalances: If this is your first time trying a low-carb pescatarian diet, you might experience electrolyte imbalances from water weight loss.

Tips for Weight Loss on a Pescatarian Diet

Focus on Whole Foods: To go the healthiest route, eat lots of whole foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Eat processed foods (including fried fish!) sparingly or not at all.
Meal Planning: Meal planning helps you save time and makes it easier to stick to your diet.
Quick-Cook Meals: Include quick-cook meals for busy days. Explore 5-ingredient, easy recipes that can be ready in 15 minutes.
Prepare in Advance: Washing, peeling, and chopping veggies and fruits in advance will reduce meal prep time.
Vary Your Menu: A varied menu gives a more enjoyable experience.
Sustainable Seafood Choices: Choosing seafood responsibly is important for the health of our oceans.

Sample Pescatarian Meal Plan

Here’s a monthly pescatarian meal plan! This 14-day pescatarian meal plan offers a sample guide into the delicious variety this diet can provide. Feel free to adjust it to your preferences, dietary restrictions and seasonal availability. The goal of this plan is to help you make a sustainable practice of cooking and eating healthy food at home. We hope you’ll become inspired and find pescatarian recipes you’ll make again and again.

This meal plan is right for you if you eat a variety of foods but want to focus on eating lots of vegetables. This meal plan includes pescatarian recipes, which includes fish, shellfish, vegetarian, and plant based or vegan recipes.

The Approach

Pick 3. Each week, we offer 3 healthy pescatarian dinner ideas. You can make them on any day that week! A problem with many meal planning calendars and weekly meal plans is that they offer little flexibility. Many meal plans call for cooking something new every day of the week. They’re overwhelming with the amount of food prep! They also don’t account for your schedule: what if Monday nights I have a weekly meeting where I eat dinner? Or this Friday night I’m going out with friends? It focuses on dinner ideas. Dinner is the main meal where Alex and I cook and get the majority of our nutrients for the day. Our approach is this: Go big on dinner.

It’s possible this pescatarian meal plan might not work for you - and that’s ok! This meal plan might provide too much flexibility. There might not be enough options. Or, you might not like the style of these recipes.

Pick at least 3 dinner ideas. You don’t have to cook every night! Think about making enough for leftovers and re-purposing them into new meals. For this meal plan, just pick 3 days that you want to cook dinners. Fill in the other days with eating leftovers, “clean out the fridge” meals, or allowing for meals out.

Fill in easy breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Keep breakfast, lunches, and snacks SUPER simple. If possible, things that don’t use recipes are great: like carrots and hummus, English muffins with peanut butter, yogurt with fruit.

Copy the links into your Pescatarian Meal Plan spreadsheet. Using a spreadsheet makes things much more tangible! Once you’ve taken stock of what nights you’ll have time to cook, fill in your dinner ideas accordingly.

Meal Prep Planning Notes

Pick at least 3 dinners to cook at home and copy them into your Meal Plan spreadsheet on the days for Week 1!

Shrimp Tacos: If you’re using frozen shrimp, throw it in the refrigerator the night before to thaw it. Make the shrimp taco sauce in advance and refrigerate until serving.
Hummus Bowls: If serving with a grain, you could make it in advance: try couscous, quinoa or rice.
Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo: Make the sauce in advance and refrigerate until serving. Reheat and serve with fresh cooked pasta for a quick and easy meal.
Ahi Tuna: It literally cooks in 5 minutes!

Pick at least 3 dinners to cook at home and copy them into your Pescatarian Meal Plan spreadsheet on the days for Week 2!

Salmon: If using frozen salmon, make sure to refrigerate the night before. The broccoli comes together quickly and you can make it while the salmon bakes.
Shrimp: Make sure to thaw the shrimp if using frozen. This is quick and easy; you could serve with leftover broccoli from the salmon and rice.
Lentil Sloppy Joes: Cook the lentils in advance, then make the sauce the day of. Even better, make the entire filling in advance (it tastes better as it sits).
Nicoise Salad: This classic French salad has lots of components, but they can all be made ahead! Make the hard boiled eggs, beans, potatoes, and lemon vinaigrette in advance and refrigerate until serving.

Pick at least 3 dinners to cook at home and copy them into your Pescatarian Meal Plan spreadsheet on the days for Week 4!

Poke Bowl: You can whip up the entire ahi tuna 1 day prior and let it marinade overnight; just stir and add salt to taste before serving. Or, whip it up and eat it with no marinading time: it also tastes great! You can make the rice or quinoa in advance and reheat prior to serving. To reheat: place in a pan with a splash of water and simmer until it’s heated through and moist.
Tuna Cakes: These are very easy to make in advance and refrigerate - you can refrigerate before or after cooking. Serve with remoulade sauce and greens for a full meal.
Lentil Soup: You could make the entire soup in advance and refrigerate: it saves well.
Chickpea Burgers: These save well! Make the entire burger in advance and refrigerate or freeze until serving. Consider making a double batch. You can also make the shiitake bacon in advance.

Pick at least 3 dinners to cook at home and copy them into your Meal Plan spreadsheet on the days for Week 4!

Baked Fish: If using frozen fish, make sure to refrigerate the night before to thaw it. The recipe comes together quickly the day of and is best eaten day or leftovers within 1 day.
Curry: This one is quick to put together, but you could chop the veggies in advance and refrigerate. Make the Basmati Rice in advance.
Shrimp: This is easiest to make the day of.

Breakfast Ideas

Here are lots of simple ideas for healthy breakfasts! Pick any of these to eat throughout the week and copy them into your Meal Plan spreadsheet. We’ve offered quite a bit of options to account for your breakfast tastes and style.

Avocado is the perfect morning meal. These can be made up the night before (or even a few days before) and stored in the refridgerator.
These egg muffins can be made in big batches at the start of the week and will last all the way through to the end. They’re incredibly simple to make and you can add all kinds of different veggies depending on what you prefer.
One batch of huevos rancheros will get you through a whole week, and it also doubles up as a great lunch meal.
Avocado. Mushrooms. Sour Dough. Need I say any more? This is breakfast heaven for me.
Sardines are another super-cheap fish that are full of omega-3 fats that are ideal to eat near the start of the day. When you buy the sardines fresh and fillet them or get sustainably sourced tinned sardines it doesn’t really matter.
Similar to the spanish-style egg muffins shown above, these take very little time to make and can be done in large batches near the start of the week.
I can’t think of many things that will go better with your morning coffe than a blueberry and lemon muffin.

Lunch Ideas

Lunches can be hard, especially if you’re eating at your desk! Again, our philosophy for lunches is: keep them very simple, without a recipe if possible.

Recipe Inspirations

We eat a lot of Thai food because it’s both really filling and really healthy.
Who doesn’t love mac n cheese? This recipe has cauliflower and spinach within it to boost the nutritional value.
Tilapia is probably one of the most cost-effective fish to purchase in your weekly shop. It helps that it’s absolutely delicious, too.
Chickpeas are a solid source of protein and they’re one of those ingredients that boh stay fresh for a long time and are cheap to buy. I’d put them into the ‘storecupboard essentials’ category.
It’s worth remembering that you don’t need to follow the vegan diet to eat vegan food. This is an optional side, but it’s really tasty with a lentil curry. Other options can be tandoori rotis or papudums.
Cauliflower, cilantro and chickpeas. This recipe couldn’t be simpler.
This is a go-to meal for whenever either of us are feeling slightly ill. Tomato soup heals all!
This is a classic pasta dish that involve minimal prep, ingredients and cooking time.
This recipe looks more complicated than it actually is. If you’re having friends over then we’d highly recommend making these kebabs. Bonus points for barbecuing them.
Carrot hummus is available in most grocery stores but if you want to go and make your own then it won’t take you long at all.

Shopping List

No meal plan would be complete without a shopping list to follow. We’ll make some assumptions here that you have a few storecupboard essentials, but by and large this shopping list will be able to make all the meals above and leave you with a ton of leftovers to make some meals for the following week. Stocking your kitchen with the right ingredients is essential for enjoying delicious pescatarian meals. This sample grocery list provides a starting point for your shopping trip, categorized by food group for easy navigation.

Sustainable Seafood

Sourcing and cooking with sustainable seafood isn’t some passing trend or activist cry: It’s essential for the health of our oceans and our planet. Overfishing and irresponsible fishery practices have led to significant collapses of major seafood populations globally. The decline of any marine species may cause other populations to skyrocket or plummet, depending on their place in the food chain. As a result, our ocean ecosystems can fail, driving down availability of viable seafood options.

Finding quality, sustainable seafood can be difficult. But arming yourself with knowledge as well as the right tools can make it a heck of a lot easier. We recommend following the seafood recommendations published by The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch® program. Responsibly sourced seafood will always taste better, be healthier, and benefit the environment.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch® is the leading authority on sustainable seafood. Based on extensive environmental research, the program publishes lists to better inform consumers on how to select the most environmentally sound seafood choices.

Making the Transition

Start Simple and Slow

Transitioning to a pescatarian diet doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Plan Your Meals

Planning your meals ahead of time is key to success. It helps ensure variety, reduces food waste and simplifies grocery shopping.

Create a Grocery List

An organized grocery list is your best friend in the grocery store.

Explore Different Cuisines

Discover the incredible diversity of pescatarian dishes by trying recipes from around the world.

Preparing Fish

Luckily, fish and shellfish are relatively simple to prepare.

“People have an impression that cooking fish is difficult and elaborate, but in fact, it’s easier than chicken,” says Nicole Hallissey, RDN, a registered dietitian-nutritionist in New York City and the author of The Truly Healthy Pescatarian Cookbook: 75 Fresh & Delicious Recipes to Maintain a Healthy Weight. One fear is undercooking, and it’s common to swing in the other direction and totally overcook the fish, leaving it dry and unpalatable - and leaving you wondering why you’re even trying this in the first place.

Hallissey suggests learning a few easy cooking techniques - such as baking a fillet in a pan with veggies for a one-pan meal, or drizzling fish with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and sautéing in a pan (don’t forget to flip). Canned fish, like sardines, light tuna, and salmon are great options, as they’re inexpensive and already cooked, requiring no prep.

Also, be mindful of how you're preparing your fish. Broiling, grilling, baking, poaching, steaming, and sautéing are preferable to frying. The right preparation for fish is key if you want to reap the health benefits, in particular those that affect your ticker.

In fact, a review of 24 studies revealed that nonfried fish could reduce the likelihood of cardiovascular disease events. In comparison, the consumption of fried fish was linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular events.

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