Wellness – Protein

Protein is essential if you want to lose weight and build muscle. Or even just to lose weight. Be less concerned about whether the meat etc is fatty. Fat doesn’t make you fat, over-eating, sugar and carbohydrates do. Stop eating the low fat versions of yoghurt and cheese, go for the normal ones. These have more butter fat so fill you up with less actual food. The low fat versions are often full of sugar (especially yoghurt), and other additives that are hard for your body to process. And they won’t fill you up, so you are left feeling hungry again sooner, meaning you over-eat.

Try to buy a butter spread with the most actual real butter in it. These ones are more expensive, but they aren’t full of the man made oils full of chemicals which stay in your system because they are too hard to process… the result, those ones with all the man made oils make you put on weight.

To give your adrenal glands a fighting chance to give you enough energy for the day, without requiring stimulants like caffeine. You need to eat around 1 gram of protein for every 1 kg you weigh. For people trying to build muscle this requirement is double if not more depending on the amount of muscle they are building.

That’s why I often put a sprinkle of a protein shake on my gluten free cereal in the morning. It helps since I am doing regular weight resistance training, so my muscles need the extra protein.

Most sports involve physically breaking down muscle during the activity and repairing it afterwards. Endurance athletes need about 50% more protein than a sedentary person. Body builders need twice as much protein as a sedentary person.

Here’s rough estimates of the amount of protein in food which I found by trolling various websites for information…

1 egg has 6g
100g of eggs has 13g
1 tub of Greek yoghurt has 10g
100g yoghurt, milk, soy milk 6g
Half a cup of cottage cheese 10g
100g chicken breast 30g
100g fish (tuna, salmon, halibut) 26g
100g cheese 32g
100g pork loin chops 25g
100g lean beef and veal 36g
100g tofu 7g
100g soy beans 17g
100g seeds, peanuts, almonds 33g

I try to have mostly protein for lunch and it keeps me going through the afternoon. Scrambled eggs or omelet etc. When working away from home we just need to be thinking outside a box a bit more. Instead of sandwiches, perhaps scrambled eggs etc that you can heat up. Or I use our family recipe for a easy as to make, home made egg spread that is great on sandwiches. Still getting carbs but at least a bit of protein as well. The egg spread keeps for several days in the fridge in an air tight container. But it never lasts long enough to go off, as it is popular in our place, and gets eaten.