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  #1   ^
Old Mon, Jul-19-04, 21:27
diemde's Avatar
diemde diemde is offline
Posts: 7,547
 
Plan: lower carb
Stats: 333/199.8/172 Female 5'8"
BF:??/39.0/25
Progress: 83%
Location: Central Ohio
Default How do you get enough protein?

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a thread here.

Being fairly new to lifting (started in Feb) and still wanting to lose fat, I'm struggling with getting in enough protein to hit the 1 gm per lb of LM (132)and keeping calories reasonably low. I'm still at the point with my lifting that I'm not burning enough calories to eat high cals, so a steak or 2 a day just won't work for me.

I hit 91 gms of protein today, but that was by adding an Atkins shake. I know a lot of folks eat cottage cheese, but even a cup a day has just 26 gms of protein. Besides the obvious meat choices, what else do you eat that is high in protein, but low in calories, too?

Thanks for your suggestions.
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  #2   ^
Old Mon, Jul-19-04, 22:58
mps's Avatar
mps mps is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 392
 
Plan: NHE/UD2/General LC
Stats: 175/175/175 Male 6'
BF:10/6/?
Progress:
Location: Michigan
Default

Dimde,
I know what you are saying... I also have been wondering lately about the amount of protein I'm eating... I average between 100-150 grams/day and seem to do well at that level. (Even though I am lean at 175 pounds)

I don't really think one HAS to eat 1 g./ pound of LBM to build muscle. I look at it as something to shoot for. I eat 5 (or 6) meals per day with anywhere from 17 g. - 50 g per meal (usually about 25 g).

I think that 100 grams of protein would be a good amount for you, but it's just my opinion. If you want to get more protein and keep cals. low, you will have to eat less fat. But I would not recommend going below 50% fat. Even if that means eating less protein.

Any way... skinless chicken is almost pure protein so you get 30 g. at just over 120 cals.
Tuna fish is a similar situation.

I don't recommend getting extra protein from shakes. Whey in particular can raise your insulin level and cause hunger later. When I do drink Whey I add a couple tablespoons of oil (at least 50/50 ratio) and it does seem to help.

I hope this helps.
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  #3   ^
Old Tue, Jul-20-04, 05:00
caverjen's Avatar
caverjen caverjen is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,217
 
Plan: The Primal Blueprint
Stats: 148/119/120 Female 66 inches
BF:29%/14/12%
Progress: 104%
Location: Alabama
Default

How many calories do you want to take in a day? I have no trouble getting 150 - 200g protein, which if anything is probably too much for me, but I do eat about 2200 cal/day. I think a whey protein shake with added oil or cream is fine before a workout, but I wouldn't just drink one in the middle of the day. Any of the lean meats are good low-cal protein sources. The trick is to eat 6x/day. My fitday gets a little jumbled, and keep in mind Tues & Sat are carb-up days, but maybe you can get some ideas from it.

Jen
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  #4   ^
Old Tue, Jul-20-04, 05:19
diemde's Avatar
diemde diemde is offline
Posts: 7,547
 
Plan: lower carb
Stats: 333/199.8/172 Female 5'8"
BF:??/39.0/25
Progress: 83%
Location: Central Ohio
Default

Thanks mps and caverjen. I don't really want to drink the shakes either, other than pre-WO, so that's why I'm wanting some ideas.

As far as calorie intake, I don't have a set goal there. My goal is to have a defcit of 1000 calories between how much I eat and how much I burn. That would give me 2 lb loss per week. I'm having trouble hitting that, though. My average deficit for the last 28 days is 766, which is more like 1.5 lbs lost per week. Still a reasonable weight loss per week... but that's with hitting an average protein intake in the low 90s. If I try to hit 132 gms on the protein, that calorie deficit is going to be lower. I'm already at an average of 57% fat.

How do you know how much protein you really need? Is 100 gms a reasonable goal for me at this stage of the game... especially since I'm still at low weights with the lifting (10-20 lb dumbbells)?
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  #5   ^
Old Tue, Jul-20-04, 07:11
caverjen's Avatar
caverjen caverjen is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,217
 
Plan: The Primal Blueprint
Stats: 148/119/120 Female 66 inches
BF:29%/14/12%
Progress: 104%
Location: Alabama
Default

I would aim for the higher protein/lower calorie deficit. You will probably lose some muscle if you are losing 2#/week, and that muscle will be hard to gain back. At the lower calorie deficit you may even be able to GAIN muscle, so even if you are not losing as much weight, your body composition will be more favorable. 90g protein sounds low to me, but it may be one of those YMMV sort of things. The usual guideline I've read is 1gr/#lbm, but since a ketogenic diet is protein sparing, you might be able to get away with less protein. Do you have a way to keep up with your body fat? You could see how the trend is and make sure you're not losing lbm.

Jen

P.S. 10-20# weights can be pretty serious for a woman!
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  #6   ^
Old Tue, Jul-20-04, 15:37
jonthepa jonthepa is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 87
 
Plan: just low carb
Stats: 238/211/190 Male 74 inches
BF:
Progress: 56%
Location: Fort Mill, SC
Default

For the past three weeks I have been drinking 5-6 protein shakes (yes, whey) a day. 110 calories and 23 grams of protein. They are pretty good and I feel terrific. Although I have not lost a tremendous amount of weight recently, I have had to buy 34 inch waist pants (from 36 previously). I try to get over 200 gm of protein daily.
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  #7   ^
Old Tue, Jul-20-04, 19:29
diemde's Avatar
diemde diemde is offline
Posts: 7,547
 
Plan: lower carb
Stats: 333/199.8/172 Female 5'8"
BF:??/39.0/25
Progress: 83%
Location: Central Ohio
Default

I do have a BF monitor, a handheld unit (not a Tanita scale). I am losing LM, 5.5 lbs since 4/12/04. But I've lost 13.5 FM since then. It may have more to do with the lack of protein, rather than losing too quickly. I wasn't aware of needing to eat more protein until recently.

I really want to gain muscle, so I'll go ahead and give up the goal of 1000 calorie deficit for now to get the protein in. I just don't want to slow down too much on the scale loss. I need to get this excess weight off my knees so that I can do more in my workouts.

Thanks for your help.
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  #8   ^
Old Sun, May-20-07, 18:31
RobinDBois's Avatar
RobinDBois RobinDBois is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 165
 
Plan: Any low-carb
Stats: 280/270/185 Male 6'1"
BF:
Progress: 11%
Default

I worry not about protein intake, but how much fat I need to eat so that i don'T get protein poisoning.

I'm a big meat eater. I eat cheeze to add fat to the meal. Veggies for me are like garnishing. Just a little to make it look pretty and healthy.

Not much Carbs in that, meat and fat, but I still wonder what is the best protein:fat ratio?

ChÉ
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  #9   ^
Old Mon, May-21-07, 06:40
cs_carver cs_carver is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,629
 
Plan: Generic LC with tweaks
Stats: 204/178/165 Female 72 inches
BF:
Progress: 67%
Location: NC
Default I don't worry about it.

"enough."

I eat enough. It's been my experience that my body is pretty efficient at figuring out what it needs, and I don't need to worry too awfully much about exact ratios. The biggest thing for me is to listen to what it's wanting. Saturday night, it wanted seafood not steak. Presuming that my recent low-sodium experiment left me a little low in iodine too, and ergo, seafood. YMMV.

I think bodies are variably efficient; if they're getting lots and lots of something, I don't think they process it anywhere near as closely as they do when there's a bit of a lack. But if people dropped dead by being 10% under "ideal," there would be a whole lot more dead people in the world.

I have to be careful about eating cheese as a form of fat; cheese comes loaded with lots more sodium than many other foods and that's turning out to be a problem for me. Also, cheese is a known staller.

I just don't think that at my current level of activity (which includes hoop dancing for six hours straight this past Saturday), I have to track to the gram.

One protein-sufficiency test--are your fingernails growing fast enough that you notice? When my diet was at its worst, they didn't. Never had to cut them--they wore down about as fast as they grew and an occasional pass with a file was all the attention they ever got. Now? Clippers every week.

YMMV.

Good luck.
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  #10   ^
Old Mon, May-21-07, 12:03
kbfunTH's Avatar
kbfunTH kbfunTH is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,240
 
Plan: UDS
Stats: 199/190/190 Male 69
BF:12%/11%/6%
Progress: 100%
Location: Pflugerville, TX
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by diemde
Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a thread here.

Being fairly new to lifting (started in Feb) and still wanting to lose fat, I'm struggling with getting in enough protein to hit the 1 gm per lb of LM (132)and keeping calories reasonably low. I'm still at the point with my lifting that I'm not burning enough calories to eat high cals, so a steak or 2 a day just won't work for me.

I hit 91 gms of protein today, but that was by adding an Atkins shake. I know a lot of folks eat cottage cheese, but even a cup a day has just 26 gms of protein. Besides the obvious meat choices, what else do you eat that is high in protein, but low in calories, too?

Thanks for your suggestions.


I don't have near the protein intake I did 10 years ago, but at one point in time, I was eating 10-12 eggs for breakfast every morning. Sometimes I would omit a few of the yolks to bring the volume down if I wasn't that hungry.

Averaging 30 grams per meal over 5-6 meals each day is easily done. Your best bet might be to add an extra meal (cottage cheese 26 grams + 91 = 117). 117 grams a day is probably going to be plenty for you. If not, add a can of tuna or a chicken breast and now you're at almost 150 grams/day.
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  #11   ^
Old Thu, Apr-10-14, 09:58
ImOnMyWay's Avatar
ImOnMyWay ImOnMyWay is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 3,831
 
Plan: OWL
Stats: 177/168/135 Female 5'1"
BF:50.5/38/25
Progress: 21%
Location: Los Angeles
Default

Just found this interesting article on different types of protein:

Whey protein or casein?

Why drink whey protein? Even if I mix in a little cream, it doesn't hold me long. I get ravenous, it digests so fast. Cottage cheese keeps me satisfied longer. Aside from portability issues (easier to bring whey protein to the gym, I guess, than carry around a container of cottage cheese), is there really any advantage to having it digested by your body in, say, an hour, rather than over several hours?
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  #12   ^
Old Tue, Apr-29-14, 01:10
baubo baubo is offline
New Member
Posts: 4
 
Plan: Custom
Stats: 210/192/170 Male 170cm
BF:
Progress:
Default

I've never found that meeting some sort of protein requirement has been necessary for dieting or exercising. I eat basically green vegetables and protein-rich food like meat, eggs, cheese, and beans until I'm full. I did this when I exercised a ton, and I still do this when I'm not exercising that much.

Perhaps what I do is not optimal. But I've found that when I'm really restrictive about food to meet certain requirements, is when I'm more likely to fall off the wagon. So these days, I basically have a general criteria and not worry too much about the details. The weight loss isn't as fast, but to me it's more about being able to stay consistent. The only supplement I use is a multi-vitamin on days when I'm not eating enough veggies. Otherwise, all natural for me.
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  #13   ^
Old Tue, Apr-29-14, 16:41
Carol1 Carol1 is offline
New Member
Posts: 21
 
Plan: Paleo
Stats: 260/240/200 Female 63
BF:
Progress:
Default

I get my protein mainly from meats with being on the Paleo diet. I do not drink milk or eat cheese that much really only on my cheat days.
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