Non-meat sources of protein

This month, I’m “cutting” with Body Beast, which means it’s time to make my new muscles pop!  I’ve reduced my caloric intake by 20% to 1600 calories/day, and the calorie break down should be  40% protein, 30% fat, and 30% carbs. This is how I eat when I stray above my weight ceiling, so I’ve got this system worked out pretty well. It’s not always (or ever) exactly 40/30/30, but I do come quite close most days.

Now, I don’t eat meat. I do eat fish, but not everyday, so I have to rely on other methods to get protein. Here are a few:

• Egg whites – I buy a box of these from Costco on a regular basis. I use half a carton, one real egg, a cup of broccoli and four mushrooms for 230 calories and 35 grams of protein. I usually dump some salsa on there too, but I don’t measure it out because a. I’m already obsessive enough; and b. the 30 or 40 extra calories isn’t going to make or break my diet. The sodium might, but that’s a topic for another blog post.
  
  
• Cottage cheese – My favorite is the low-fat cottage cheese from Trader Joe’s. One cup has 28 grams of protein.
• Greek yogurt – I buy whatever single-serve brand is on sale at Target. Sometimes it’s plain Fage and I’ll chop in my own fresh berries, or sometimes it’s something like Chobani or Oikos that has more sugar and less protein.  Whichever one I get, it’s around 15-20 grams of protein for one container.
• Veggie Patties – I don’t eat these too often because they are chock full of sodium, but Morningstar patties are pretty good! They have 16 grams of protein. I slap some mustard on there and and it’s a party on my plate.
• Protein bars – my favorite is Pure Protein. These bars have anywhere from 18-20 grams of protein for ~200 calories. They’re a good snack to keep around in case of emergencies!

I also drink three protein shakes a day. A friend told me that I should eat Real Food instead and sent me an article from WebMD stating how unnecessary they are…but I’m pretty sure protein shakes help me maintain my weight so I’ll stick with them. Here’s what I drink:

• Whey protein – I have this in the morning and gives me around 25 grams of protein. A PR company just sent me a bag of Vanilla Raspberry MyProtein for evaluation (apparently it’s a European company that’s moving into the US market) and it’s freaking delicious.
  I also drink CrioSport (I buy this at Costco) and Optimum Nutrition (I wanted the graham cracker flavor for my Pumpkin Pie protein shakes).

  

• Shakeology – I have this every night instead of having dessert because the chocolate flavor is like drinking a liquid brownie. I’m pretty sure I’ve saved myself thousands of calories with this switch. Shakeology has 15 grams of protein and it seems to keep my plumbing in good working order, too.
  
• Casein protein -I drink this before I go to bed. Casein is slow-digesting so it’s supposed to help with hunger. Cottage cheese has casein too, so I could just eat more of that, I suppose. But casein is good enough for Craig David, so it’s good enough for me.

  

For carbs, I might have oatmeal or a sweet potato or a couple slices of bread. But I get most of my 30% of carbs-calories from produce – carrots, red peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, berries, maybe an apple or an orange or a banana or all of the above. My one and only food rule is that I eat at least 5 servings of fresh veggies every.single.day, whether or not I’m counting calories or macros. I used to limit myself to 2 servings of fruit…but nobody ever got fat from eating too many bananas.
With all that produce-eating, we go to Costco once a week to load up. It ain’t cheap, but what can you do.

For fat, I eat a little bit of cheese, nuts, and/or my beloved peanut butter.  I have to measure all this out lest I go overboard.

There you have it – not much cooking, and no meals; I pretty much just snack all day. I’m pretty happy with this eating plan since it got me down to my current weight of ~135 pounds a couple of years ago. Since I’m ~135 now, I don’t know where I’ll be at the end of my Body Beast program. I’d like my new ceiling weight to be ~130 pounds, but that will take some discipline that I’m not sure I’ve got. (At my height, those 5 pounds are pretty noticeable).

Do you stick to any sort of eating plan?

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