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If you searched for this exact phrase you were almost certainly looking for one specific book: Best Body Cookbook & Menu Plan: You’re 52 Days Away from Your Best Body, by registered dietitians Sohailla Digsby and Lauren Beavers. It is a real title, ISBN 9780692603017, and it pairs recipes with six weeks of pre-planned dinner menus rather than leaving you to assemble a week yourself. That distinction — recipes plus a plan — is the thing most people are actually shopping for and the thing most cookbooks do not provide. A cookbook gives you two hundred choices. A menu plan gives you Tuesday. If you are trying to change how you eat, the second one is far more useful, because the failure point is almost never a lack of recipes; it is standing in the kitchen at 7pm with no decision made. So this guide starts with the book you came for and then covers ten more titles that combine recipes with a structured plan, across quite different philosophies — clean eating, Whole30 elimination, macro-counted bodybuilding, and straightforward batch-cooked meal prep. Read the plan style before the recipe photos: the one you will actually follow is the one whose rules you can live with for a month.
| # | Product | Price | Where to buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Best Body Cookbook & Menu Plan (Sohailla Digsby, RD, LD and Lauren Beavers, MS, RDN) | $25–$40 | Amazon · eBay |
| 2 | Countdown to Your Best Body Success Journal (Sohailla Digsby) | $15–$25 | Amazon · eBay |
| 3 | The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom (Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig) | $20–$30 | Amazon · eBay |
| 4 | The Whole30 Fast & Easy Cookbook (Melissa Urban) | $18–$28 | Amazon · eBay |
| 5 | Tosca Reno’s Eat Clean Cookbook | $22–$35 | Amazon · eBay |
| 6 | The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook (Tosca Reno) | $8–$20 | Amazon · eBay |
| 7 | Your Best Body Now (Tosca Reno) | $12–$22 | Amazon · eBay |
| 8 | The Bodybuilder’s Meal Prep Cookbook (Erin Stern) | $18–$28 | Amazon · eBay |
| 9 | The Ultimate Bodybuilding Cookbook (Kendall Lou Schmidt) | $14–$22 | Amazon · eBay |
| 10 | The Bodybuilding Cookbook (Jason Farley) | $10–$18 | Amazon · eBay |
| 11 | Skinnytaste Meal Prep (Gina Homolka) | $20–$30 | Amazon · eBay |
The picks, in detail
Best Body Cookbook & Menu Plan (Sohailla Digsby, RD, LD and Lauren Beavers, MS, RDN)
The book behind the search. Two registered dietitians with backgrounds in food and fitness built it around a 52-day timeline, with six weeks of pre-planned dinner menus, on-the-go breakfasts and recipes written with a real budget and a real schedule in mind. There is a companion success journal and an online programme at bestbodyin52.com if you want the structure reinforced.
- Six weeks of pre-planned dinner menus
- Written by two registered dietitians
- On-the-go breakfast options for weekday mornings
- Recipes designed around budget and time constraints
- ISBN 9780692603017
- The menus are planned for you — no weekly assembly required
- Dietitian-written rather than influencer-written
- Companion journal and online programme available
- A small-press title, so it is less widely stocked than the big-name diet books
- The 52-day framing suits people who want a defined finish line, less so open-ended eating
Countdown to Your Best Body Success Journal (Sohailla Digsby)
The companion volume, and worth mentioning because half the people who buy the cookbook end up wanting it. It is the tracking half of the system — the place the plan gets recorded day by day, which is the part that determines whether a 52-day programme survives past week two.
- Designed to pair with the Best Body Cookbook & Menu Plan
- Day-by-day tracking through the 52-day programme
- Space for food, activity and reflection notes
- Supports the bestbodyin52.com programme
- Turns a plan into a daily habit rather than a book on a shelf
- Written by the same dietitian, so the two match exactly
- Consumable — it is used up in one run through the programme
- Of little use without the cookbook it accompanies
The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom (Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig)
The strictest structure here, and the most complete. Thirty days of eliminating whole food groups, then a staged reintroduction designed to show you which ones actually affect how you feel. Over 100 recipes, but the real product is the protocol — a New York Times number one bestseller for good reason.
- Complete 30-day elimination and reintroduction protocol
- Over 100 recipes
- Detailed rules, shopping guidance and troubleshooting
- No calorie counting or weighing
- Unambiguous rules — there is no daily decision to make
- The reintroduction phase teaches you something lasting
- Enormous community and free resources online
- Genuinely restrictive; social eating gets difficult for a month
- Not designed as a permanent way of eating
The Whole30 Fast & Easy Cookbook (Melissa Urban)
The practical follow-up: 150 compliant recipes built around 30-minute meals. If the first Whole30 attempt died from cooking fatigue in week two — which is the usual cause of death — this is the book that fixes it.
- 150 Whole30-compliant recipes
- Focused on 30-minute weeknight meals
- Everyday supermarket ingredients
- New York Times bestseller
- Directly addresses the time problem that sinks most Whole30 attempts
- Recipes stay useful after the 30 days are over
- Assumes you already know the Whole30 rules from the main book
- Recipe-led rather than a day-by-day menu plan
Tosca Reno’s Eat Clean Cookbook
Tosca Reno’s Eat-Clean series has sold more than two million copies, and this is the flagship cookbook: over 150 recipes with full-page photography, built on the clean-eating principle of minimally processed food eaten in regular, protein-anchored meals.
- Over 150 recipes with full-page photographs
- Built on the Eat-Clean principles of minimally processed food
- Hardcover, heavily illustrated
- Part of a series that has sold over two million copies
- Beautiful photography that makes the food genuinely appealing
- Clean eating is easier to sustain than an elimination protocol
- Large, well-supported back catalogue
- Principles rather than a fixed daily menu — you still plan the week
- Some ingredient advice reflects when it was written
The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook (Tosca Reno)
The earlier, cheaper entry point to the same system, subtitled Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean. Widely available second-hand for very little, which makes it a low-risk way to find out whether clean eating suits you before buying the newer hardcover.
- Recipes built around the Eat-Clean approach
- Emphasis on lean protein with complex carbohydrates
- Long print history, widely available used
- Paperback format
- Very cheap on the second-hand market
- Simple, repeatable recipes
- Good test of the approach before committing further
- Dated presentation compared with the newer hardcover
- Less photography than the later books
Your Best Body Now (Tosca Reno)
Reno’s book aimed squarely at eating and training well later in life, subtitled Look and Feel Fabulous at Any Age the Eat-Clean Way. More narrative and programme than recipe collection, and the one to pick if the goal is sustainable habits over a defined countdown.
- Eat-Clean approach framed for readers over 40
- Combines eating guidance with activity recommendations
- Available in paperback and Kindle editions
- Written from the author’s own late-start transformation
- Addresses the realities of changing metabolism and recovery with age
- Motivational as well as practical
- Cheap Kindle edition
- Fewer recipes than the dedicated cookbooks
- Heavier on encouragement than on structured menus
The Bodybuilder’s Meal Prep Cookbook (Erin Stern)
The macro-counting option, from a two-time Ms. Figure Olympia. Sixty-four make-ahead recipes and, crucially, eight macro-friendly meal plans — so it is a genuine plan-plus-recipes book rather than a pile of recipes with a protein bias.
- 64 make-ahead recipes designed to batch cook
- 8 macro-friendly meal plans included
- Written by a two-time Ms. Figure Olympia
- Macro breakdowns given per recipe
- The eight plans do the weekly assembly for you
- Batch-cooking format suits busy weeks
- Credible author for the training audience
- Macro tracking is a commitment some readers will not want
- Portions and protein targets assume you are training seriously
The Ultimate Bodybuilding Cookbook (Kendall Lou Schmidt)
High-protein recipes written to be eaten repeatedly rather than admired once. The strength here is variety within a narrow nutritional brief, which is what keeps a training diet from collapsing into chicken and rice for the fourth week running.
- High-protein recipes across all meals
- Nutritional information provided per recipe
- Written for muscle gain and strength training
- Paperback
- Solves the monotony problem of eating for training
- Straightforward ingredient lists
- Well priced
- Recipes rather than a scheduled plan
- Assumes a training programme is already in place
The Bodybuilding Cookbook (Jason Farley)
One hundred recipes aimed explicitly at building muscle, burning fat and saving time — the third of those being the one that matters most in practice. The budget pick of the training-focused books, and often the cheapest way to test whether this style of eating suits you.
- 100 recipes for muscle gain and fat loss
- Time-saving preparation as an explicit design goal
- Part of a larger series on muscle and fat loss
- Inexpensive paperback and ebook editions
- Very low price, especially as an ebook
- Short preparation times throughout
- Simple, supermarket-available ingredients
- Less polished production than the mainstream titles
- Little photography
Skinnytaste Meal Prep (Gina Homolka)
The least ideological book here, and for many people the most useful. Gina Homolka’s recipes are lighter versions of food people already want to eat, and this volume organises them into prep-ahead plans with shopping lists — no elimination, no macro maths, just a planned week.
- Prep-ahead meal plans with matching shopping lists
- Lightened versions of familiar comfort food
- Nutritional information and freezer guidance per recipe
- From the long-running Skinnytaste series
- No restrictive rules to fall off
- Food the rest of the household will also eat
- Shopping lists remove the weekly planning step
- Not aimed at a specific training or body-composition goal
- Prep-ahead cooking still means one long session each week
Buying tips
- Buy the plan, not the photographs. The number of recipes in a book is almost irrelevant; what determines whether you follow it is whether it tells you what Tuesday looks like. Check the contents page for the words menu, meal plan or week one before you buy.
- Match the restriction level to your life, not your ambition. A 30-day elimination protocol is very effective and very difficult to run through a holiday, a work trip or a house full of other people’s food. A clean-eating or meal-prep book survives all three.
- Look at whether shopping lists are included. Compiling a week’s list from twenty-one recipes takes about an hour, and a book that has done it for you saves that hour every single week.
- Check the recipe yields against your household. Books written for one training adult often produce four portions of something nobody else in the house wants to eat, which is how food gets thrown away.
- Second-hand is fine, and often much cheaper. Cookbooks are not perishable, and the older Eat-Clean titles in particular sell for a fraction of their cover price used.
- If you have a medical condition or take regular medication, run any restrictive plan past a doctor or dietitian first. Elimination protocols in particular can interact with diabetes management and with some medicines.
- One book, followed, beats five bought. The failure mode with this category is collecting plans rather than running one — so start with whichever of these you would be willing to cook from tomorrow night.
As an Amazon Associate and eBay Partner, toptenpick.com earns from qualifying purchases. Prices and availability are subject to change.