So I have found over the years and more specifically in the past year that things made with white flour do bad, bad things for my weight. A simple bagel can spike my weight by up to 2 pounds in a single day! While that will work itself out of my system usually over a few days, if I do those kinds of carbs every meal of the day things get nasty real quick.
Last fall when I started trying to get my weight under control for a concentrated and proper attempt at the Goofy Race and a Half Challenge, I found some info (I wish I remember where I found the info so I could link it) that spoke about having a high, high protein breakfast everyday (on the order of 50 grams of protein). I tried that and in combination with my running training the weight almost started to fly off – sometimes on the order of 2 to 2.5 pounds a week. I dropped a 25 pounds in just a few months and had my best Goofy Challenge yet (out of 3).
After that things got a bit unfocused – I wasn’t training as hard or as focused and my breakfasts probably dropped to 40 grams of protein or so (maybe less). I also started having less protein during the day as snacks while at work. I did have some weight bumps but really now about 7 months later I am about another 10-12 pounds down but about 7 of those happened in the past month when I started watching my protein again and got focused on running harder. So yay that the weight didn’t come back but I do want to get lower again. So I have to get focused – I have just posted a new item about my running and weight loss goals (http://biggoofyrunner.com/weight-and-running-goals-time-to-revisit/) but to make those happen I have to get my protein intake back up!
So this post is to be about my plans for getting my protein back up to around 50 grams for breakfast and for sure over 100 grams for the day. Now recommended daily intake of protein is much less than that for a male but those numbers are a minimum and are for folks of a more average size (maybe 50-60 pounds less than my current weight). Some weight lifting and health articles I read point to something closer to a gram of protein per every 2 to 2.5 pounds (I will have to see if I can find the articles again so that I can link them here) – thus the 100 gram number I came up with.
I also don’t want to get that protein in just one meal – I want to do several small intakes through the day to keep hunger at bay and keep a steady supply in my system and make sure I don’t crash after each meal when all the blood rushes to my stomach.
To do this I will be doing a few things:
- Very high protein breakfast – 30 grams from a protein shake, 12-15 grams from 2 scrambled or hard boiled eggs and approx. 6-8 grams from dry roasted almonds (will have to watch these due to the salt on them, raw almonds would be better but those were messing with my system so I cut them out) – gives me a total of 48-53 grams – say 50 grams on average (50 to go). Eventually I would like to move away from using the protein shake as a crutch and maybe add bacon and milk to balance out the 30 grams but I will revisit that later.
- Snacks for work – one serving of beef jerky (12-15 grams of protein – again will have to watch the sodium here), one serving of dry roasted almonds (6-8 grams) – this gives me another 18-23 grams of protein – average to 20 (30 to go) – I will also have a banana and an apple for fiber most of the time as well
- Lunch for work – 4 slices of roast turkey (deli roll) rolled in lettuce (maybe) with some barbecue sauce or salsa to dip it in for more flavor. I was finding the tortilla wraps were tasting a bit funny by the time lunch rolled around even in the fridge and in a ziplock bag so trying to avoid those now – gives the bonus of removing a bit more wheat flour from my diet. This should give me another 14-15 grams of protein leaving about 15 grams to go.
- The remaining 15 grams will be more than covered by supper (supper must have meat…period!) and if I am hungry later in the evening a serving of almonds would give me another 6-8 grams.
I suspect following the list above I will hit closer to 110 or 120 grams a protein a day and will have a satisfied tummy while still losing weight and having energy to hammer out the training miles.
Awesome – let’s see how it goes.
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