75 Soft Meal Plan: Food List and 7-Day Menu
75 Soft has no official diet. Here's a balanced food list by food group, a 7-day sample meal plan, the alcohol rule, and how to make eat well trackable.
The 75 Soft nutrition rule is two words long: eat well. That’s it. No approved-foods list, no macros, no calorie target, nothing to weigh.
Which sounds liberating right up until you’re standing in the produce aisle on Day 1 wondering what “well” actually means.
The rule doesn’t cover that part, so this article does: a 75 Soft food list organised by group, a full 7-day meal plan you can cook without thinking, a short grocery list, and a defined answer on alcohol. If you haven’t set your rules yet, start with the 75 Soft beginner’s guide and come back here for the food.
What the 75 Soft diet rule actually says
75 Soft was created in 2021 by Ireland-based fitness coach Stephen Gallagher as a lighter alternative to the two-workouts-a-day format. The nutrition rule, as documented by the Cleveland Clinic, is to eat well in general, with alcohol limited to social occasions.
There is no official diet, no calorie deficit, no banned ingredients. Order the fries and nothing restarts.
One correction worth making, because it’s spread across several 75 Soft pages: 75 Soft does not include “one cheat meal per week.” That isn’t in the original rules, and it can’t be, because there’s no prescribed diet to cheat on. A cheat meal is a deviation from a plan. 75 Soft never gave you a plan.
So the flexibility is real. The problem is what it does to your tracking.
A rule you can’t observe is a rule you can’t tick off. On Day 3 you’ll say yes, you ate well. On Day 22, after a long day and a drive-through dinner, you’ll shrug and skip the box entirely. That’s usually where 75 Soft quietly stops being a challenge.
The fix takes one sentence, and it’s the last section of this article. Read the food list first, then write your rule.
Dr. Matthew Sacco at the Cleveland Clinic frames it the way most clinicians do: goals should be action-oriented and attainable, and it works better to replace foods than to eliminate them. So what follows is a swap list rather than a ban list.
The 75 Soft food list
Nothing here is required. This is what “eat well” looks like when you put it on a plate.
| Group | Eat freely |
|---|---|
| Protein | Chicken, turkey, fish and seafood, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, tofu, tempeh, beans, lentils, lean beef and pork |
| Vegetables | Leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, frozen mixed veg |
| Fruit | Berries, bananas, apples, oranges, melon, frozen fruit |
| Whole grains and starches | Oats, brown or jasmine rice, quinoa, whole-grain bread and pasta, potatoes, sweet potatoes |
| Healthy fats | Olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, nut butters, olives |
| Drinks | Water, coffee, tea, milk |
Frozen counts. Canned counts. On a Tuesday night with forty minutes and no energy, frozen spinach and tinned tuna are often the only reason dinner gets cooked at all. Rinse canned beans to cut the sodium and you’re done.
Instead of an avoid list, use three tiers:
- Eat freely: everything in the table above.
- Eat mindfully: cheese, butter, red meat, white bread and rice, fruit juice, desserts, restaurant meals. Fine in normal amounts, just not the base of the pyramid.
- Minimise: sugar-sweetened drinks, packaged snack foods, fast food.
That bottom tier isn’t moralising. In an NIH inpatient trial where 20 adults ate ultra-processed and unprocessed diets matched for calories, sugar, fat, sodium and fibre, people ate 508 more calories per day on the ultra-processed diet and gained weight. Same nutrients on paper, different outcome. “Minimise ultra-processed food” is the most useful translation of “eat well” anyone has produced.
How much of each
The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released in January 2026, give the daily amounts 75 Soft doesn’t:
- 3 servings of vegetables
- 2 servings of fruit
- 2 to 4 servings of whole grains
- 1.2 to 1.6 g of protein per kg of body weight
That protein figure is the surprise in the 2025-2030 update. It sits well above the long-standing 0.8 g/kg RDA, and nutrition researchers are still arguing over how well the evidence supports it for every group of adults. For a 180 lb adult (82 kg), it works out to roughly 98 to 131 g per day. Split across three meals and a snack, that’s about 25 to 33 g a meal. Our protein intake calculator will do the arithmetic for your body weight.
Don’t feel behind if these numbers look far off. In CDC survey data, only 12.3% of US adults met the fruit recommendation and 10.0% met the vegetable one. Three veg a day would put you ahead of nine people in ten.
One note before the plan: this is general information, not medical advice. If you’re pregnant, managing a health condition, or have a history of disordered eating, talk to a doctor or dietitian before setting food rules for yourself.
A 7-day 75 Soft meal plan
Every meal below follows one template: protein + plants + a smart carb + a fat. Learn the template and you can rebuild this week forever. Or follow it literally, though you’ll probably be improvising by Day 10 anyway.
Meals repeat on purpose. Nobody cooks seven different dinners.
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner | Snack |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | Oats, berries, peanut butter | Chicken and quinoa bowl with peppers | Salmon, roast potatoes, broccoli | Greek yogurt and honey |
| Tue | Greek yogurt, banana, granola | Leftover salmon on greens with avocado | Turkey chilli with beans and rice | Apple and almonds |
| Wed | Eggs on whole-grain toast, tomatoes | Leftover chilli | Stir-fry: tofu, frozen veg mix, jasmine rice | Cottage cheese and pineapple |
| Thu | Oats, apple, cinnamon, walnuts | Tuna sandwich, carrot sticks | Chicken thighs, sweet potato, green beans | Handful of nuts |
| Fri | Smoothie: milk, frozen berries, protein, oats | Leftover chicken and sweet potato | Restaurant night: grilled protein, a vegetable side, whatever you want to drink | Dark chocolate |
| Sat | Eggs, avocado, whole-grain toast | Big salad: greens, chickpeas, feta, olive oil | Pasta with turkey meatballs and a side salad | Popcorn |
| Sun | Overnight oats with chia and berries | Leftovers night: clear the fridge | Roast chicken, potatoes, two vegetables | Greek yogurt and berries |
Friday is a restaurant. Sunday lunch is whatever’s left. Both are in the plan deliberately, because that’s how real weeks go, and a meal plan that pretends otherwise stops being followed around Day 12.
Want a version built around your own protein target and food preferences? The challenge meal plan generator will produce a week, a macro breakdown, and a grocery list in about a minute.
The short grocery list
Everything above, by store section:
- Produce: spinach or mixed greens, broccoli, green beans, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, potatoes, bananas, apples, avocado
- Protein: chicken thighs or breasts, salmon, ground turkey, eggs, tofu, tinned tuna
- Dairy: Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, feta
- Pantry: oats, jasmine or brown rice, quinoa, whole-grain pasta and bread, tinned beans and chickpeas, olive oil, peanut butter, nuts
- Freezer: mixed vegetables, berries
That’s roughly a week for one person. If you want the full version with quantities and a prep-day plan, we already wrote it: the 75-day prep week shopping list.
Can you drink alcohol on 75 Soft?
Yes, on social occasions. This is the single biggest nutrition difference from stricter 75-day formats, and it’s the question people ask most.
The rule is about context, not quantity. A wedding, a birthday dinner, a friend’s leaving drinks: all social occasions. A glass of wine alone on a Tuesday because the day was long: not one. The test is whether the drink belongs to an event or to a habit.
Federal guidance on how much is less specific than it used to be. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines removed the previous numeric limits (two drinks a day for men, one for women) in favour of non-numeric advice to drink less for better health. That change drew public objection from the AASLD, and plenty of clinicians still reference the old one-and-two figures. Either way, there is no official number to hide behind now, which means you set your own.
Do it before Day 1. Open a calendar, look at the next 75 days, and mark the events that count. Two weddings, a birthday, a work Christmas thing: fine, that’s four. Everything not on that list is a normal night.
Deciding in advance is the whole trick. It turns a nightly judgement call into a lookup. For handling the events themselves (what to order, what to say when someone hands you a drink), see drinking and social events during a 75-day challenge.
How 75 Soft food rules differ from 75 Hard
75 Hard, created by Andy Frisella in 2019, treats food as a discipline test. 75 Soft treats it as a direction of travel. The gap is wider than most people expect.
| 75 Hard | 75 Soft | |
|---|---|---|
| Diet | Pick a structured diet, follow it exactly | Eat well, no diet required |
| Cheat meals | Zero | Not a concept, nothing to cheat on |
| Alcohol | None for 75 days | Social occasions only |
| Miss a day | Restart from Day 1 | Continue, no penalty |
| Tracking | High: every meal is pass or fail | Low: one self-set rule |
The practical difference is what happens on a bad night. On 75 Hard, an unplanned burger is Day 1 again. On 75 Soft, it’s dinner.
That’s also the trade. Frisella’s version is unambiguous, and unambiguous rules are easy to track. 75 Soft hands you the ambiguity and expects you to resolve it. Penn State Health’s Brei Hummer-Bair, a clinical exercise physiologist, makes the case for the softer end: the stricter format is “not something most people are going to want to stick to,” and lowering the intensity improves the odds a habit outlives the challenge.
For the full rule-by-rule breakdown, see 75 Hard vs 75 Soft.
Turning “eat well” into something you can tick off
This is the sentence I promised at the top.
Write one nutrition rule you can answer yes or no to in under two seconds. One rule, one sentence. A philosophy won’t work here, and neither will another food list.
Good ones:
- “A protein and a vegetable at every meal.”
- “No sugar-sweetened drinks.”
- “I cook dinner five nights a week.”
- “Fruit or yogurt instead of packaged snacks.”
Bad ones: “eat clean,” “be healthier,” “watch my portions.” You cannot check those off at 10pm, which means by Week 3 you won’t try.
Then log it nightly alongside your other tasks. Ten seconds, same time every day. The record itself barely matters. What matters is that a rule you check is a rule you notice yourself breaking.
That’s the job Reset75 does: the 75 Soft template ships with a Follow Diet checkbox next to workout, water, reading, progress photo and weigh-in, in forgiving mode with no restart penalty. If your rule is more specific, swap in a task from the library instead: Eat Protein + Greens, No Alcohol, No Sugar, or Track Meals with a photo. It stores everything on your device and doesn’t need an account. If you’d rather stay in the browser, the free 75 Soft tracker works the same way.
Pick your sentence today. Eat well is a good intention and a bad rule, and 75 days is a long time to run on intentions.
Start your 75 Soft challenge in Reset75 →
Frequently Asked Questions
What can you eat on the 75 Soft challenge?
Anything. 75 Soft bans no foods. The rule is to eat well: build most meals around lean protein, vegetables and fruit, whole grains, and healthy fats, with sensible portions and minimal ultra-processed food. There is no calorie target and no approved-foods list.
Is there an official 75 Soft meal plan?
No. The original 75 Soft rules only say to eat well, so any 75 Soft meal plan you find online is one person's interpretation. Pick a simple template you can repeat (protein, plants, a smart carb, and a healthy fat at each meal) and write down one nutrition rule you can check off daily.
Can you drink alcohol on 75 Soft?
Yes, on social occasions only. A drink at a wedding, a birthday dinner, or drinks with friends fits the rule. A glass of wine alone on a weeknight does not. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans no longer set a numeric per-day limit and instead advise drinking less for better health, so decide your own boundary in advance.
Are cheat meals allowed on 75 Soft?
There is no cheat-meal rule on 75 Soft, because there is no prescribed diet to cheat on. An off-plan meal doesn't restart the challenge and doesn't break a streak. Some online versions add a weekly cheat meal, but it isn't part of the original rules.
How much protein should you eat on 75 Soft?
75 Soft doesn't set a protein target. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day for adults, roughly 98 to 131 grams for someone weighing 180 pounds. Spreading it across meals is easier than backloading it at dinner.
What should you avoid eating on 75 Soft?
Nothing is forbidden. In practice, most people cut back on sugar-sweetened drinks, packaged snacks, and fast food. An NIH randomised trial found people ate about 500 more calories a day on an ultra-processed diet than on a matched unprocessed one, which is why minimising ultra-processed food is the most useful version of eat well.
Do you have to count calories on 75 Soft?
No. 75 Soft has no calorie or macro requirement. If you want numbers, use them because they help you, not because the challenge demands them.
What's the difference between the 75 Soft and 75 Hard diets?
75 Hard, created by Andy Frisella, requires you to choose a structured diet and follow it for 75 days with zero cheat meals and zero alcohol, and any slip restarts Day 1. 75 Soft asks you to eat well in general, allows alcohol on social occasions, and has no restart penalty.