How do you get in your protein?

Hello,

I usually have a low intake of protein (around 80grams on a good day) so I was wondering what other people do to get in all the protein they need without going over their fat intake.

Thanks!

Well, 80 grams doesn't sound too bad... how many calories is that over?  I sneak it in wherever I can.

Hard-boiled eggs (I never have liked the yolk, so I pick that out)

Kashi's high fiber, high protein products

Special K's "protein plus" (or perhaps its called "carb control") cereal

Whole grain everything

Light bread (spend the extra calories on extra (lean) lunch meats)

Chicken Breast, Lean cuts of beef, 96% lean ground beef, turkey, fish

Beans? Not a personal fan of beans... but who knows? You might be...

I drink a lot of skim milk.  I have it with breakfast.  And then I eat a lot of meat at lunch and dinner, making sure to avoid the "bad" meats and go for the "good" meats.

My daily goal for protein is 75 - 100, with an average, it seems, around 80.  So I say you're doing just fine.

along with all of the above...

almonds, yogurt, peanut butter...a lot of other simple and easy to fit in finds

if you really need a big protein boost, you can always look into protein powder...there are a lot of them out on the market.  if you have a whole foods, you can find a couple of good ones there and if you have questions, there is usually someone on staff that can answer your questions. 

Grape Nuts cereal, kefir smoothies, Greek yoghurt (nonfat, 22g of protein), whey protein powder on workout days, BURGERS (95% lean meat cooked at home), beans

 

I limit my eggs and cheese but still get in about an ounce of cheddar cheese a day. 

Pistachios and almonds on days I'm having a hard time getting calories.  Peanut butter when I'm really lazy (this morning). 

How much protein you need per day depends on how much you weigh.

You need 0.36 g of protein per every pound. This is the standard.

I got that from this site:

http://www.thebody.com/Forums/AIDS/Nutrition/ Archive/Dietary/Q146825.html

Many others say the same thing. 80 grams of protein sounds like a ton! I don't think you need to worry. Be careful of getting too much protein. Excess protein leeches calcium from your bones, and it is not healthy. It also hurts your kidneys.

About animal protein and calcium:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0815/i s_n10_v22/ai_19989437

0.8g/kg is the daily recommended minimum for a sedentary couch potato whose only exercise is walking to the mailbox, and who isn't dieting. And even then it's only the minimum to avoid dying from protein malnutrition; it's only replacement level for what you lose through burning protein for energy, through sweat, and other excretions.

 Exercise and dieting both raise your protein needs. To about 1.4g/kg for dieting, and up to 1.8g/kg for exercise, depending on what you're doing for exercise.
 
 Read this from Journal of American College of Nutrition for details, but basically the minimum RDA is only valid for you if your only exercise is walking to the car, and the heaviest weight you lift is a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.
 

Hmm...Melkor, the advice nutritionist from this website (the one who does the daily column), said that 0.8 g/kg was for maintenance and 1 g/kg was for muscle gain - and that's kg based on your *ideal* weight, not your current weight. And yet what you say is *very* different. Is she working off old data or what? Please explain...because I am trying to build muscle and if I need to go by your calculations I'm getting way too little protein.

 

Edit: The question I really need to know the answer to, that the article does not answer as far as I can see, is this:

Do I base the calculation off my current weight or my goal weight?

tyrdrop - its over 1800 calories

Thanks to everyone who replied!  Lately I have been getting a lot of protein because I live in Alaska and the Salmon is out, its the winter that kicks my ass as far as protein goes. (Any meat that isn't caught around the area is horrible cuz its far from fresh)  :-) I'll have to try your suggestions.

Medicinal: you may have to resort to stuff that doesn't go bad that fast, in the winter months.  Vegetable proteins - beans and nuts - and things like protein bars.

Personally, I like to mix it up as much as possible, but it can be hard because vegetable protein sources tend to be high in calories (see aforementioned beans and nuts).  My other favs include cottage cheese (any cows up there?) and eggs.  You might also try canned fish, which is also unlikely to go bad, but use moderation or find low-sodium versions.

Good luck!

Hmm, it kinda depends on the goal - if you read the JACN article and associated research you see that protein needs vary wildly with what exercise you're doing; and whether or not you're running a calorie deficit.

 For general non-strenuous physical activities 1.0-1.2g/kg is recommended, for moderately strenuous 1.2-1.4g/kg, for endurance athletes and marathons 1.4-1.6g/kg, for resistance training 1.6-1.8g/kg. For dieters, a minimum of 1.4g/kg applies in all cases.

 Note that this is to optimise muscle retention and athletic function. If you're looking through the lens of "minimum intake to avoid dying of protein malnutrition" you get a lot lower values of course - for highly trained athletes you can go as low as 0.36g/kg before people start developing malnutrition symptoms.

 I tend to think that we should aim a bit higher than "barely avoiding death" when planning our diets, but that's just me :-P

 The  JACN study and citations use current weight, but note that they're studying athletic individuals. There's very little research out there about the protein needs for overweight and obese individuals - except for that little footnote about the 1.4g/kg cutoff, which appears to be based on current lean mass instead of current bodyweight. Which makes sense - I know that my lean mass hasn't changed significantly in a while even if I've lost 60lbs counting calories. 

whole grains, quinoa, nuts, tuna, all fish for that matter, eggs.

dont worry about having "low intake" of protein...80g is not that low and plus we get more protein than most society's...assuming you are of "western" descent and trust me, its plenty :)

Thanks Melkor, your answer was very illuminating.  I did read the article but I still found it somewhat confusing.

What I'm hearing is that if I want to gain muscle while I lose fat, I have to be eating a whole shedload of protein.  :)  Assuming I can go by my goal weight, I'm still looking at 130g/day minimum and 168g/day ideally...which means I'm eating way too little.  Yeesh!  Not sure I can do that!  It's too bad I don't like meat more.  Sounds like every time I would normally eat a handful of crackers I need to get out a fat-free turkey dog instead.

Original Post by oink420:

whole grains, quinoa, nuts, tuna, all fish for that matter, eggs.

dont worry about having "low intake" of protein...80g is not that low and plus we get more protein than most society's...assuming you are of "western" descent and trust me, its plenty :)

Actually other societies get plenty of protein (fish, beans, lentils, whole grains); western societies get more *meat*.

 

the bad part about the study melkor posted is that it was partially funded by the 'egg nutrition fund'- if you look at the bottom of the page, so of course they want you eating more protein (more eggs!)

what i've found is that the more nutrition-oriented sites say that .6-.8g's are plenty, and we should all be eating less meat. the bodybuilding sites/weight lifting sites say that you need more protein, and there are recommendations like the 1.4-1.6g (which is crazy for us women doing lower-cal diets.... that's about 1100 calories of protein for 5'4", 154 pound me. It would be near impossible for me to eat that much protein, still stick to my calorie limits every day (I'm 28% bf, so my daily intake is 1540... and i'm zigzagging through a plateau, so some days i'm eating 1800, but others i'm eating 1250), and get enough nutrition.

for myself, i have been following 1 g of protein for each pound of lean body mass (weight minus fat mass). i think that this is good because it usually balances out my macronutrient ratios, so that 30% of my daily calories usually come from protein. because i rarely buy full/high-fat anything, this pretty much guarantees that my ratio is in the 30/40/30 or 30/50/20 range.

as to how i get my protein:

-scrambled eggs/egg beaters

-1% cottage cheese w. pb and walden farms choc. syrup (this is amazingly good)

-special k protein cereal or Kashi GoLean protein cereal

-canned tuna or canned chicken (make salad w. low fat mayo or hummus, sprouts, tomatoes, and cucumbers)

-fish, shellfish (shrimp, crab, cod, tilapia, salmon, tuna)

-chicken breast (Trader Joe's has grilled chicken strips... i put a few in my lunch and eat them like chicken fingers)

-lean beef (look for 95/5)

-turkey (look up the DASH turkey meatloaf recipe-- v. tasty)

-lentils w. ff shredded cheddar cheese

-great northern beans w. chopped tomatoes and olive oil

-black beans and brown rice

-ff yogurt

-low carb south beach cereal bar

-whey protein pancakes: 1 scoop whey protein powder, 1 TBS flour, 1 TBS milk, 2 servings of egg beaters (1/2 cup). add some sugar free, low fat or natural maple syrup and you're good to go!

the fat free "hot dogs" are actually not all that high in protein, and very high in sodium-- check your labels! i was eating those for lunch every day for a while, but now i only have them when i have something else high protein to eat with it. all that processed food is so bad for you.... i try to limit it as much as possible (i fail quite regularly, but i am so much better than when i was just eating 100 calorie packs all the time)

really try the cottage cheese thing-- you might want to take the cottage cheese, a tablespoon of chunky peanut butter, and the free-everything walden farms chocolate syrup and put it in a blender if you're not a cottage cheese fan (i wasn't, but i am now). it's an awesome snack for 170 cals, and keeps me full for a long time.

Zoraj,  Part of the confusion stems from the measurements mixup - you're looking at gram per pounds on the more pop-science sites, but reputable science journals like the Journal of the American College of Nutrition use scientific notation and give the figures as grams per kilo.

 154lbs is (154lbs:2.2lbs/kg=) roughly 70kg, and even at the strength training bracket of 1.8g/kg that's only 126g of protein a day. I think you must have used 1.8g/lbs; which would of course lead to a severe overestimation of your protein needs.

 The 1g/lbs rule of thumb from bodybuilding is a rough approximation of the 1.8g/kg level that radiologically-marked protein uptake studies give as the maximum amount of protein you retain when building lean mass in a calorie surplus.

 Funding for the study was partially from the egg council, but funding for the JACN is not; it's a peer-reviewed scientific journal. If the goal was solely to get you to eat more protein you'd get a glossy flyer in the mail, not a dry-as-dust paper in a nutritional science journal :)