Mo Protein

A bunch of the girls at my gym, my own sis included, are in the midst of a month-long nutrition challenge where they follow The Zone Diet or The Paleo Diet. One of the theoretical benefits of these diets is improved athletic performance. It’s not like I’m an Olympic athlete or anything, but I wouldn’t mind cutting my running pace down and bringing my endurance up and heck, I’m always up for trying something new to see how it works. Both diets are big on cutting carbs and adding protein and while I don’t feel like following either (they’re pretty strict) I thought I’d try cutting some carbs and upping my protein to see what happens.

I track what I eat on a semi-regular basis at MyFitnessPal.com. I am pretty good about it during the week, but not so good on the weekend and sometimes I give it up altogether for a while. It is nice because you can set your calories wherever and then do percentages of the calories for each macro nutrient (protein, carbs, fat). I picked Zone, which is 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat and based on that, it looks pretty doable. I thought for sure I’d hit the right ratio with not too much change to my eating habits.

WRONG. I tend to eat vegetables and fruit. No fat, no protein (with some exceptions, of course). I can easily max out my carbs by lunch and I can go a whole day with only about half of the protein required under this scheme. So now I’ve started trying to find better ways to get more protein. And it ain’t been easy.

I am NOT much of a meat person. If I had to decide between going without meat and hunting/cleaning/dressing/skinning, etc. I would be a vegetarian. Though I guess I wouldn’t give up fish. Love fish and procuring and cleaning a fish would be OK. So the protein thing is not super easy. Hard boiled eggs are my fave. They’re still low in calories, but pretty high in protein and for $4/2 dozen, I can get them all ready to go at Costco, peeled and everything – I don’t like the yolks, so I just eat the whites. Cottage cheese is also a big win. Half a cup has the same protein as 3 egg whites and it’s good with fruit. Lastly, I have added some whey protein stuff to my diet. It isn’t my favorite, but it really does have a lot of protein and it is supposed to be well-absorbed protein. Between these additions and some carby subtractions and some obvious things, like a bit more meat, a bit less bun, I’m getting closer to the 40/30/30. Now if I could just do it for more than a couple days in a row, I might be able to tell if it’s actually making a difference or not.