I don’t think there is an effective healthy eating regime that overlooks protein. For a meal or snack to be healthy and contribute to weight management and emotional regulation, I’d suggest it should be a combination of natural slow release carbs, healthy fat and a bit of protein. I’d also suggest that most healthy eating regimes are probably based around 6 meals a day (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack)
However, this often leads to “protein blindness”.
Protein blindness is where you simply cannot see how to include protein at each meal or even see what proteins are available to you. Whilst most shops offer you a mind-boggling variety of carb, very few offer a range of protein snacks.
To help you out, here is a mini protein list. I’m not a vegetarian, and I only work with vegetarians if they come up with a viable list of protein they will eat, so you’ll have to look here for veggie protein concepts.
Here are some proteins you can spread through out the day:
Eggs
Bacon
Cottage cheese
Meats (either hot or cold (once cooked)
Do remember you can stew them, fry them and roast them. There are probably some other cooking techniques as well.
Beef
Chicken
Lamb
pork
Turkey
Fish
From cans
Tuna
Mackerel
Salmon
Fish cooked: cod, mackerel and all the fishes you find at the fish store (which I obviously don’t do!)
Deli meat
Corned beef, salami, ham plus the Italian stuff (although some say preserved meats are bad for you, so its probably worth moderating)
Protein powder
As I mentioned above, vegetarian folk, and the curious, should look here.
Generally recommendations vary as to how much protein you should have, from “eat only protein” to ratios of 40% 30% ,20% 10%. You choose. If you want me to assess free of charge how much you should have according to different objectives, send me your email address and I’ll send a worksheet back (email andrew@andrewstemler.com)
To give you a worked example, you can have eggs for breakfast, cottage cheese as a mid morning snack, some tinned tuna for lunch, a protein shake for the mid afternoon snack, beef for dinner and a slice of ham for an evening snack. All these proteins need to be combined with fat and slower releasing carbs, so a slice of meat, a few nuts (for fat) and half an apple.
That said, if you have an emotional connection with food you are probably going to find even this basic instruction difficult to do, so do use this questionnaire to see if you eat due to stress Click here
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