Let’s Talk Protein! Are you ready to sing?

OK Fit Girls, we think you might be ready for the big one. We didn’t wanna go all hard out and give you the protein lecture too soon but since it’s the beginning of the year and most of you are wanting a little excess tone, we thought we’d give you the heads up!

So here’s the thing. Protein keeps you lean. Let that be your mantra Fit Girls. PROTEIN KEEPS YOU LEAN!

Let’s just take a little look at the day in the life of a gal who is looking to ditch some pounds!

Breakfast = fruit smoothie
Mid-morning snack = an oat cake
Lunch = soup and a wholemeal roll
Mid-afternoon = herbal tea
Dinner = tomato and pesto pasta

What do you reckon? Now at first glance, it looks pretty good no? (I know, I know, it’s a little wheatified, but there’s no real bad stuff in there right?) That my darlings, is where you are wrong!! There is a distinct lack of PROTEIN!

Why are we getting all grouchy about protein??? Because…sing it girls… PROTEIN KEEPS YOU LEAN!!! So this is how it works. You can have all of the virtuous food in the world, like the array of delicious carbohydrates listed above. But, and this is a big BUT, your body sees it all as sugar in the end. Now you sit on your butt for too long, and that sugar turns to fat, oh yes, you read it right sistas, you be storin’ some extra cushy on yo’ tushy!! Now, what little wonder food group do you think slows this fat conversion down???? Are we ready to sing it again….PROTEIN…ah ha…KEEPS YOU LEAN!! See, eating protein with each meal slows down the rate at which your body converts sugar into fat!! Awesome!!

It also takes a lot of energy for your body to digest protein, so you get a little extra calorie burn by simply adding it to your meals!! This is called the thermic effect. So let’s compare two food groups…1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories, and 1 gram of protein = 4 calories. But if by eating protein, I’m gonna burn some extra calories, you know which food group I’m gonna be hangin’ with!! Now this magical thermic effect happens every time you eat protein, so we’re thinking that making sure you have some with each meal means that you’re gonna be burning calories all day – woop!! So let’s revise our little daily plan from above, this time with the stuff that KEEPS YOU LEAN…PROTEIN!!

Breakfast = Fruit smoothie + yoghurt or seeds or nuts
Mid-morning snack = an oat cake with some houmous
Lunch = soup and a tuna salad
Mid-afternoon = herbal tea and some almonds
Dinner = tomato, chicken and pesto with rice

Note the protein additions here are – yoghurt (all dairy is protein); seeds and nuts (all seeds and nuts are protein); tuna and chicken (all fish and meat are protein); and houmous (beans and pulses contain some protein). You’ll notice I replaced the roll with some tuna, and the pasta with some rice, the anti-wheat in me, just slipped out!!

Just in case you’re freaking out, and I know some of you will be…eating protein will not make you too muscley! You’ve got to trust us on this one – visions of muscle bound gym rats swigging back protein shakes, which are incidentally the easiest snack in the world, should be erased from your minds right now!! Try it for a month FGs, and you’ll be singing the mantra in your sleep!!!

Related posts:

1. Post-training snacks…
2. A Perfect Food Day – Part II