How to Hit Your Protein Goals Without Supplements

Getting through the Protein Puzzle can be a challenge for some people. If you’re finding it hard to hit your protein goals, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered! This blog post will discuss five easy ways to boost your protein intake without supplements, or protein shakes four times a day. So we’ve got you covered whether you’re looking for quick and easy breakfast ideas or snacks to help you power through your day. Thanks for reading!

Bodybuilding and other competitive athletes often need up to 200 grams or higher of protein per day to support their active lifestyles. While this figure can be reached through supplements like protein powders, it is possible to reach this target solely through a balanced, nutritious diet. Remember the function; protein rebuilds muscle tissue. Healthy foods such as lean meats, dairy products, eggs, legumes, nuts, and seeds can provide the necessary high-quality protein to fuel an athlete’s performance and recovery. You do not have to do a massive protein shake at the end of the day to get adequate protein.

Constructing a Balanced Diet with Protein at its Core

To optimize your body’s protein uptake after exercise, consider portioning your protein intake over the day instead of one large dose. To add variety to your meals and snacks, use the National Nutrient Database to search for high-protein options within each food category. You can easily track and vary your protein sources to get the best results.

Jump-Start Your Morning with Protein-Packed Breakfast Choices

Reach Your Protein Goals with a High-Protein Breakfast! Eggs are a great source of protein: two large whole eggs provide over 12 grams and adding three or four extra egg whites ramps up the total to over 20 grams. Consider topping your dish with an ounce of cheddar for an additional 6 grams, and serve it with a 4-ounce ham steak for 22 more grams. An egg-based breakfast like this can get you close to 50 grams of protein before you even start your day!

Other options:

Greek yogurt
Skim milk
Breakfast sausage
Turkey Bacon
Low fat cottage cheese
Peanut butter and other nut butter

Enjoy a Range of Nutritious and Filling Midday Meals with High Protein Food

Boost Your Protein Intake with High-Protein Meals! Lunch and dinner provide ample opportunity to increase your daily protein intake. For example, a cup of roasted chicken breast can add 43 grams of protein to your meal, while a single small breast can bring 26 grams. Incorporating dairy products such as milk, cheese, and yogurt increases the protein content. Don’t forget legumes such as peas, beans and lentils; they are an excellent source of surprisingly high amounts of protein. Quinoa is a complete protein because it contains all the essential amino acids needed. The seed (most people think it’s a grain) is packed with about 8 grams of protein per cup.

Get Your Protein Fix With a Mid-Day Meal!

Grilled Chicken Breast
Greek Yogurt
Nuts and Seeds
Quinoa
Hummus and Veggies
Tuna Salad Sandwich
Hard Boiled Eggs
Edamame

Nourish Your Body with a Delicious and Healthy High-Protein Dinner

Dinner is the optimal mealtime to focus on high-protein foods, as you’ll have more time and flexibility to prepare the meal. Try using proteins like salmon, mackerel, trout, herring, or pike, which all come with a hefty serving of protein – a 5-ounce fillet can contain over 30 grams of protein! And don’t forget to add some nutritious and delicious side dishes for an extra boost. Beans rarely receive the credit they deserve for their impressive protein (and fiber !) content. For example, one cup of garbanzo beans or black beans offers 14 grams of protein and about just as much fiber, a nutrient most of us need more of. Like supplements and seeds, beans are easy to incorporate into your daily grub. Add a handful to your salad at lunch, snack on hummus, or swap traditional pasta for noodles. Want the rockstar of fish? Try Atlantic Cod, which has lots of protein and your daily recommended allowance of Vitamin B12. Here is how I make my infamous Chuck’s Chicken.

Feasting on High Protein Dinners!

Lean beef, pork, lamb, and other meats
Poultry
Shellfish, such as shrimp or crab
Soybeans
Baked Beans
Lentils
Cheese and Broccoli
Whole grains
Cheese and dairy products
Garbanzo beans

Satisfy Your Cravings and Stay Energized With Protein-Rich Snacks!

If you’re not a fan of large meals, you can still reach your protein goals by snacking throughout the day. Nuts and seeds are great high-protein snacks that are sometimes hard to incorporate into large meals – for instance; pumpkin seeds come in at about 9 grams per quarter cup, and almonds at 16 grams per half cup!

Try These High-Protein Snacks For a Satisfying Boost!

Nut Butter
Quinoa
Biltong
Hemp Seeds
Protein Smoothies
Nuts
Sunflower seeds
Hummus
Cottage cheese
Cheese
Low-fat milk or chocolate milk

Fuel Your Performance and Reach Goals With Nutrient-Dense Foods for Optimum Nutrition!

Make Sure You Give Your Body Everything It Needs With Balanced Meals of Protein, Carbs, and Fats! To maximize your performance level and reach your goals while maintaining a balanced diet, pick nutrient-dense foods to get the most nutrition bang per calorie. Try choosing whole grains, nuts, and avocados instead of highly processed items like chips or sugary snacks. As you continue your journey towards health and fitness, it will become easier to make those wise choices that boost nutrition with every bite.

What is your favorite protein snack?

Bonus Recipe

Honey Greek Yogurt Parfait

Prep time: 5-minutes | Cook time: 0 minutes | Serves 2

Ingredients

2 cups nonfat plain Greek Yogurt

Two tablespoons creamy unsweetened peanut butter

One tablespoon honey

One teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 large sliced banana

1/2 cup granola

Prep:

Mix the yogurt, peanut butter, honey, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Stir until completely combined and smooth.
Into each of 2 airtight containers, place a heaping cup of yogurt topped with half a banana and two tablespoons of granola and seal.
Store the airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Per Serving (1 parfait)

Calories: 343 | fat: 15.9g | carbs: 53.1g | protein: 31.3g

nutrition training

When Counting Calories, do you weigh them before you cook or after?

With the New Year barely in the rearview mirror, many want to make healthier choices and shed some unwanted pounds. If you’re trying to lose weight, one of the critical things you need to do is understand your caloric intake and count calories. But when it comes to counting calories, there’s a debate over whether you should weigh your food before or after cooking it. So which is the better method? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of both approaches.

The difference between pre-cooked and post-cooked weight

Knowing the difference between pre-cooked and post-cooked weight can be essential when preparing meals. Pre-cooked weight refers to food that is weighed before being cooked, which can be beneficial in determining portion size. Post-cooked weight includes the food item’s original weight and any added liquid or fat while cooking, making it a good indicator of nutritional value. When recipes call for pre or post-cooking weight measurements, they should always be considered, as ingredients may behave differently when subjected to different cooking techniques. Keeping track of pre/post-cooking weights throughout preparation can help one understand their dish’s true contents and impact on their overall diet. However, this can be tedious, so let’s figure out which to do, pre- or post-.

Why Weighing Food Before and After Cooking Creates Inconsistent Results in Meal Preparation

Accurate and consistent measurements are achievable with simple practices. For instance, logging foods before cooking yields the most definite figures because nutrition facts panels reflect a food’s packaged state. This is especially true for uncooked items like whole grains, lean proteins, and vegetables since their nutrient count remains unchanged by heat or other preparation methods. Remember that altering temperature, altitude levels, or seasoning can influence an item’s weight, as salt has mainly been known to alter moisture content in seafood and meats, changing both volume & mass.

When it comes to cooking, the consequences can be more than just a loss in flavor: Meat and seafood may experience up to 25% shrinkage, while vegetables’ volume could decrease by as much as 50%. This means that what starts as 150g of sweet potatoes before roasting might become merely 75g after maintaining the caloric count of 150g! Making sure your entries are accurate is an essential step toward achieving diet goals; always opt for entering food in its raw state where possible.

How Weighing Food Before Cooking Can Help Ensure Accuracy in Meal Prep and Calorie Counting

When tracking your diet and calorie count, it’s important to remember the extra ingredients that are often overlooked. For example, don’t forget about cooking oils when weighing foods after they have been prepared – those added fats can drastically change macro-nutrient ratios! Entering raw food before preparation helps ensure all the elements of a meal recipe are factored into your calculations.

The Skinny

With consistency being the key to accurate tracking results, it is essential not to enter some foods before cooking and others after. However, all tracking apps are designed conveniently – they’ll remember your most frequently used foods, so you don’t have to log them every time from scratch! As a bonus tip: The more that’s logged into the app regularly, the faster food entries will become for any mealtime situation.

Bonus: What about when I am eating out?

When eating out, it can be difficult to keep track of your calorie intake. However, there are ways to ensure you’re still counting calories accurately. First, try and opt for meals that have nutrition information listed on the menu or website. If that’s not an option, use a smartphone app like MyFitnessPal, which allows you to quickly and easily look up the estimated calorie count of multiple restaurant dishes. Additionally, it can be helpful to stick with familiar menu items of which you already know the approximate calorie content. Knowing how much food is on your plate can also help estimate a dish’s caloric value; remember that the bigger the portion, the more calories it is likely to have. Lastly, try splitting portions or taking meals home to reduce caloric intake. With a little effort, counting calories while eating out can still be done accurately!

One more bonus: Log before you eat!!

It pays to research and plan beforehand to help ensure you stay within your caloric budget when dining out. Choose what you’d like to eat ahead of time so that when the occasion arises, you can order confidently without making any hasty decisions due to hunger or holding up your dinner guests!

nutrition

Five habits that will help you become a better endurance athlete

This article will teach you habits that can help you reach your peak performance.

Endurance athletes need to maintain a balanced diet, introduce protein-rich meals, and increase types of training. People who wish to become endurance athletes have little time during their days of work or studies, so nutrition is often overlooked. They must ensure that they are fueling their bodies correctly to improve their performance levels. Reaching peak nutrition should be an essential consideration especially during an endurance training session. Food is necessary for muscle growth, repair, and maintenance throughout the body, all crucial components of endurance events.

Habit #1: Eat a balanced diet as part of your endurance athlete nutrition

Get a balanced diet to fuel your aerobic exercise

One of the most important habits you can have is to maintain a balanced diet. A balanced diet should consist of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and lean proteins. A balanced diet also means consuming the right types and amounts of food. You should also include lean protein in their diets, such as chicken or fish. Fatty acids are also a necessity and are gained through eating a balanced diet that includes healthy fats, such as avocado and olive oil. It should not contain too much sugar or salt. Skipping meals or eating unhealthy foods can sabotage training goals and optimal performance.

Habit #2: Introduce protein-rich meals into your sports nutrition plan for endurance athletes

Endurance athletes can find it difficult to incorporate enough protein into their diets due to time constraints or lack of energy in their food choices. Protein-rich foods can help endurance cyclists with recovery after exercise as well as provide nutrients needed during long periods with minimal eating (such as long endurance races), especially for ultra-endurance athletes. Protein intake comes from different sources such as meat, eggs, and some vegetables. Find the protein-rich foods that you enjoy eating the most and base your diet around them. It is also important to get your essential amino acids which are not produced by the body and must be obtained through diet. They are crucial for repairing muscle tissue and promoting muscle growth. Some good sources include meat, dairy products, eggs, fish, and legumes.

Adequate protein intake

How much protein should I eat? The amount of protein you need varies. For endurance cyclists, endurance runners or swimmers, the most important amino acid is the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) sometimes eaten as supplements before intense physical activity to hasten recovery. Endurance cyclists might consume up to six grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

When it comes to nutrition for endurance athletes, one of the most important things to keep in mind is increasing the types of training you do. This will help your body become stronger and better able to handle long periods of intense endurance training. There are many different types of training that you can do to improve your endurance.

Habit #3: Incorporate other types of training into your endurance training

Leg Day is the best day

In order to become a better athlete, you need to incorporate other types of training into your endurance training plan. This will help your body become stronger and better able to handle long periods of physical activity. There are many different types of training that you can do to improve your endurance. Some good options include strength training, High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workouts, and endurance-specific workouts. You can also mix up your routine by doing interval training, which involves alternating between high-intensity exercise and low-intensity exercises. Strength training or resistance exercise is a vital component of any endurance athlete’s routine, as it helps build muscle mass and improve overall athletic performance.

Habit #4: Drink water to stay hydrated and maintain electrolyte balance

Determine your daily need per kilogram of body weight

Water is essential for sustaining life, and it’s also crucial for an athlete’s nutrition plan. When exercising, your body loses fluids through sweat and other bodily functions. Failure to replace those fluids will lead to dehydration. Dehydration can lead to decreased performance, or even worse, heatstroke. To prevent this from happening, make sure you drink fluids before, during, and after a workout. Drink a couple of bottles of water each day and follow the nutritional suggestions. For most endurance athletes it is recommended that you take in about 50 ml (1.7 fl. oz.) per kilogram body weight throughout the day. The nutrition plan should include a combination of water and electrolyte beverage or sports drink. The benefit of electrolytes is that they can help maintain their fluid balance during training sessions, particularly when this involves endurance training in hot conditions or prolonged exercise.

Habit #5: Get enough sleep to recover from endurance exercise and gain muscle strength/endurance

Muscle fatigue or just sleepy?

Getting enough sleep is important in many ways. One of the most notable benefits of getting enough sleep is gaining muscle strength and endurance. Sleep also helps your body recover from workouts, reduce cortisol levels, and improve overall endurance performance. It’s recommended to strive for eight hours of sleep each night for optimal athletic performance. There are many athletes who don’t get enough sleep. If you’re one of them, try to add an extra hour on weekdays and on weekends for a total of nine hours each night. This small change can make a huge difference in your performance. An app like Rise can help determine how much sleep you are actually getting. The app will also track your night-time movement and provide a detailed analysis of your sleep quality. Another great product is the Oura ring. It’s a wearable device that tracks your sleep, activity, and recovery. It can help you see how your habits are affecting your sleep and endurance performance.

Bonus Habit: Prepare for your event with proper nutrition habits

Endurance athletes must not wait until the last minute to prepare for an event. In other words, you must set up an endurance nutritional routine before the big day comes. Nourishment begins even before the race with proper hydration (about four days before). Proper endurance event nutrition starts the night before by eating anything that will give you good energy production without feeling too heavy or bloated on race day. It’s best to avoid high-fat foods and eat more carbohydrates/proteins. You should consider eating unprocessed foods, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, beans or seeds. Eating lean proteins like eggs or fish is also a good endurance nutrition habit. During endurance events, it’s important that endurance athletes take in electrolytes through sports drinks or chews. Hydration will depend on the length of the endurance event; endurance athletes should drink when they’re thirsty rather than force themselves to drink according to a rigid schedule. However, during long endurance events (3+ hours) you may want to start hydrating before the race begins with beverages containing electrolytes – this could help delay fatigue during your endurance event.

Wrapping it up

In endurance sports, performance is often determined by endurance and strength. Your body composition and body weight play an enormous role in predicting your optimal performance during endurance exercise.

If endurance athletes want to improve endurance performance and strength, they should make sure their nutrition habits are up to par. They should drink fluids before, during, and after a workout; for optimum hydration during endurance training sessions.

In this article, we’ve covered 5 nutrition habits that will help you become the best possible! If these sound like something you want to put into action immediately or if you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to contact us so we can provide further assistance.

Disclaimer, of course

All nutrition advice should be followed through nutritionists to maintain healthy eating habits. With a balanced diet, athletes will have more stamina to train and have an advantage over those who do not eat nutritiously. Endurance athletes must reach their peak nutrition to stay competitive during races.

nutrition

Performance Nutrition – Setting the Record Straight

Intermittent Fasting

Be honest. Have you given some thought to trying Intermittent Fasting (IF) in hopes of becoming leaner, stronger, and faster? Caveat emptor. While mice may find IF reduces obesity and related medical problems, results for humans are a little more complicated, less clear, and more research is definitely required before any definitive statements can be made. Despite a lack of scientific consensus, there is quite a bit of research on the subject and the story of IF is worth exploring. As is my preferred trademark, I like to begin with the end in mind; despite messaging by the latest diet influencers on social media, fasting is not the golden way to improve performance and health. Remember the well-balanced, nutrient-dense diet? It still wins. But, if you are going to try IF, you should definitely read this, and you should definitely consult with a nutrition expert such as a board-certified sports dietitian or a medical expert before you embark on something that could actually be, quite unhealthy for you, depending on your personal circumstances, training requirements, goals, and medical history.

When I introduce myself as a performance dietitian, the next question that typically follows is “So……what do you think of _______ diet!?” In the last few months, that diet in question is Intermittent Fasting. While many would characterize IF as more of a behavior than a diet, we can think of IF in diet terms with different categories. Patterson and Sears[i] characterize several different types of IF in their review on this subject. For simplicity, I’ve modified their categories and just describe the four presented below, with the primary focus on the second type, which includes the very popular 5:2 diet.

Fasting Type	Explanation
Complete alternate day fasting	Alternate between fasting and eating days. How many eating days between fasting days seems to be variable and author dependent.
Modified fasting or the popular 5:2 diet	5 days of eating normal, 2 days of eating only about 20-25% of needs or approximately 500 kcals
Time-restricted	Fasting intervals vary . For example, fasting after 5pm.
Religious fasting	Undertaken for religious or spiritual purposes. From a metabolic standpoint these are often “time-restricted” of varying lengths.

The term “Intermittent Fasting” refers to the intentional actions of a person to restrict the food they eat for a period of time. IF has been practiced for centuries, often for religious reasons (think fasting for Ramadan) and has been purported to have many health effects. From a research standpoint, a simple PubMed search of “Intermittent Fasting” studies in the past 10 years returned more than 52,000 results and more than 1000 review studies of human research in the past 5 years alone! From a popularity standpoint, people are searching for information. Figure 1 shows a quick look at the popularity of the search term of “Intermittent Fasting” (blue line) compared with the search term “Healthy Diet” (red line). (An interesting side note: the yearly spikes correspond to those eternal New Year’s resolutions.)

Even with thousands of studies looking at various forms of IF and corresponding health outcomes, several important research constraints exist. Many of the studies use mice for the subjects and you should not generalize effects that you might see in mice to something that would surely happen for you. For studies using human subjects, you’ll find they are often plagued by a very small sample size, use short intervention periods limiting time for an effect to occur, and often focus on chronic disease outcomes and not on athletic performance. Don’t get me wrong though, there is some great research on the topic with a growing supply of positive results that are at least worth scientific consideration.

IF for athletes?

So, what about IF and athletic performance? In my experience, I tend to see three types of athletes express interest in implementing some sort of IF diet.

Religious Fasting

First, athletes with religious fasting requirements. For example, I worked closely with several Islamic athletes fasting during the day for Ramadan. We modified training, following hydration status, watched weight loss (we didn’t see any) and experienced what the research shows– that athletic performance is only minimally affected by this type of IF. If this is you, the importance of having a good coach is paramount. A good coach will work closely with an athlete to adjust workout duration and intensity to meet goals and avoid severe caloric deficits during long bouts of exercise in a fasted state.

Fasting for Weight loss

The second type of athlete is one targeting weight loss and wants to try IF. Although I don’t personally recommend or use IF as a means to have an athlete lose weight, there is no shortage of folks trying it. Research results show some promise regarding weight loss. However, (and this is very important) the weight loss really is not any better than following a calorie-restricted, nutrient-dense diet. There is an interesting caveat to this and for some people, if you suffer from binge eating tendencies (i.e. you often overeat, finish your plate, eat until overfull), you might be the kind of person that would benefit from IF more than others. The forced calorie restriction (i.e. not eating after, say 7pm) or the 5:2 method, reduce calories enough to produce weight loss. If you are going to try IF as a means for weight loss, you really should consider discussing this with a dietitian. Although we typically prefer other methods for weight loss, a good dietitian will help you to meet your nutrient requirements, address the underlying binge eating behaviors that are a root cause, and hopefully, help you avoid the disruption that an IF diet can cause. This is also a great time to mention that IF, as with any diet, really isn’t a sustainable long term plan. It’s a diet and like any diet, you have to stop doing it at some point–and if you don’t have a plan, that is when the weight returns. Instead, your focus should be on eating healthy, making healthy food choices, and connecting your eating behaviors to your athletic performance.

Training your “systems”?

The last category of athletes uses IF to “train their fat-burning system.” I’ve heard it put 100 different ways, but the premise is always the same. In order for you to become better at burning your stored fat, you force your body to burn fat by exercising in the fasted state. Keep in mind that eating before you exercise supports exercise performance by providing key nutrients for the activity, which puts these two concepts at complete odds. Is one better than the other? Does exercise in the fasted state really enhance one’s ability to better burn or oxidize fats? In a recently published review, Aird, Davies, and Carson[ii] present meta-data on 46 studies looking at the effects of a fasted vs. fed-state on exercise, performance, and metabolism. The authors note a few important connections. First, eating prior to exercise “bolstered” longer distance exercise but had no effect on shorter distances. Additionally, exercise in the fasted state-led to potential beneficial metabolic adaptations. They do note that further research is required to fully understand both acute and chronic physiologic adaptations to exercise in the fasted state. This is exciting data but, as an athlete, you need to understand that exercising in the fasted state may not produce the results you want, may actually hamper your performance, not help it, and that long terms effects have not yet bet evaluated.

The effect of IF on men v. women

Another important area that has not been well established is how IF might affect men and women differently. I wouldn’t be quick to dismiss this important consideration as time and again, as researchers look into how males and females respond to various stimuli, utilize nutrients, produce and metabolize hormones, we find important differences. For more on this topic, you might consider listening to a wonderful TEDx talk by Dr. Stacy Sims [iii] The bottom line: an exercise in a fasted state appears to do something…but, that “something” may not be what you actually want it to do. Interpretation of the science does not suggest we start recommending athletes exercise fasted in hopes of “teaching their bodies to burn fat better.” Certainly, don’t go off and start doing this without input from your coach and/or dietitian. I’d also suggest that exercise in the fasted state not be undertaken without some concern for safety by the athlete and coach. Consultation with a medical professional is prudent to ensure safety. A story comes to mind of a fellow coach’s athlete that went out for a 5-hour (low intensity) bicycle ride after fasting for 24 hours. Somewhere around hour 3, the athlete fainted, injuring themselves and several others in the group.

Final thoughts

A final observation as both a dietitian and endurance athlete coach…both the science and the scientific process seem to always be under attack. Marketing genius, anecdotal evidence, and social media propel often unproven and unstudied activities into the daily lexicon of human behavior. Sports science and nutrition are notorious domains for this problem to emerge. Dieting is a perfect example. Despite a mountain of evidence regarding the composition of a healthy diet, you still find dozens of “non-experts” suggesting a wide range of the “best way” to do things. I suggest you as the reader and athlete remain vigilant, question everything, demand evidence, don’t be shy to try new things, but also try to minimize bias and remain objective.

Got an idea for Dr. Weinstein and the Setting the Record Straight team? Send us an email at [email protected] and if we choose your topic for the next blog post, head coach Chuck Kyle will send you a surprise gift!

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[i] Patterson RE; Sears DD; Metabolic Effects of Intermittent Fasting. Annu Rev Nutr. 2017 Aug 21; 37:371-393. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28715993

[ii] Aird TP, Davies RW, Carson BP; Effects of fasted vs fed-state exercise on performance and post-exercise metabolism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2018 May;28(5):1476-1493. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29315892

[iii] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5LYGzKUPlE

nutrition