Tag: Protein Diet

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

How to Handle Snack Attacks on the Paleo Diet

Snacks are part of life and on any healthy diet you are told to eat something every few hours. This is very true if you are following the Paleo Diet. The problem is finding out what to snack on. You need to have snacks that are quick and easy to prepare and that fit in with the principles of the Paleo diet.

One easy snack to prepare in advance is sliced vegetables. This can include celery sticks, carrot sticks, cucumbers, radishes and cherry tomatoes. Plus you can serve it with a low calorie dip or dressing. This type of snack is perfect for when you are at home on the weekend. Or it can be prepared ahead of time and packed for work or school.

Eggs are another suitable snack choice for anyone on the Paleo Diet. You can prepare them as hard boiled eggs, slices of frittata or as egg muffins.

Fruit is a quick and simple snack to prepare. Choose berries, slices of oranges, apples and grapefruit. These are easy to pack if you need to take your snack with you as well.

Small amounts of nuts and seeds can be packed into small containers and popped into your bag. They are easy to eat no matter where you are plus full of nutrients that help you get through a busy morning. As nuts are higher in calories it may be best to eat them as a mid morning snack. By eating nuts early in the day your body has lots of time to burn off the calories.

Leftover pieces of meat or seafood are wonderful snack choices. Just dice them up into chunks the night before and place them into a small container. By eating leftover meat you are adding protein to your diet which will provide you with energy during the day.

Chicken or turkey breast diced or sliced makes a good snack choice. So does canned tuna, peeled shrimp and slices of leftover meatloaf or meatballs.

When having vegetables or meat as a snack it is nice to eat them with a dipping sauce. Some good sauces to use that won’t affect your Paleo Diet are salsa, nut butters, pesto sauces and guacamole.

Once you get into the habit of making snacks that fall in line with the Paleo Diet principles you won’t be lost for what to eat. Instead you will have tons of choices which are healthy and taste wonderful.

Remember eating snacks is a good healthy choice and you should try not to go more than 4 hours without having some sort of snack. Now you won’t have to worry about what snack to make.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Canned Tuna
  • Related Blogs on Celery Sticks
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Protein in your diet | protein in diet




Protein is one of the basic building blocks of the body so it is an essential part of your diet and can influence your strength but probably not your energy. Your muscles are built with protein and in fact protein is made up of 20 amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein and 9 are essential, they cannot be created and must be eaten meaning the other 11 amino acids can be created by our body.

Many times we hear that you need to eat steak for energy but in actual fact as we learned earlier carbohydrates are the body’s favored energy source. I always think of muscles as being made out of protein but really muscles are mostly water and protein so if you think about how people tend to diet they will cut out things like steak and carbohydrates so the body is not getting as much protein and carbohydrates as it needs to burn for energy so it will tend to burn protein and fat in equal parts to get energy. This is great for losing weight and good for losing fat but it is really bad to lose muscle. One of the ways to stop your body from burning muscle for energy is to do a fair amount of exercise, especially weight training to increase your muscle mass on a consistent basis.

So what kind of foods contain protein and how much do we need? Full proteins are found in steak chicken and fish and non-full proteins (those without all of the essential amino acids) are contained in lentils, beans, corn, peanuts. A can of Tuna has 20-25 grams of protein and if you look around you can probably get about 80 grams of protein a day comfortably.

One critical thing to look out for is the amount of protein that you eat at each meal. Your body can only metabolize about 25-30 grams of protein at a meal which is only about 4 ounces of steak or chicken. In the past I had taken digestive enzymes with my main meals to help to metabolize more but I now think that this may be a bit of shaky science behind it.

Some bodybuilders will eat 250-500 grams of protein a day but realistically if you have protein in a couple or three of your meals you are doing pretty good. One of the things to concentrate on is drinking a lot more water when you are eating a lot of protein, a lot of water is needed for your body to break down protein so if you are increasing your protein intake drink more water to help take the load off of your kidneys.


Protein in your diet

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on 20 Amino Acids
  • Related Blogs on Basic Building Blocks
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Atkins in bankruptsy


I am not a big fan of the Atkins diet although I do like the idea of increasing ones protein in your diet. I read a series of news articles today that talked about how the skeptics were wrong and the Atkins diet is a fad. I do not believe that this could possibly be true for several reasons. First, I hear as many people talking about Atkins and starting Atkins diets as I did 5 years ago. Secondly, a fad, especially with diets is not going to last more than one year tops and the Atkins diet has been around for twenty years at least. Thirdly I do not like the idea of Atkins being called a fad because most studies that I have seen show that people on the Atkins diet lose at least as much weight in the first six months as on any other diet…the problem seems to be that people have trouble staying on the diet as it seems to be artificial in what you eat, how long can you eat steak and fish and no carbs and feel to great.

The thing that the media loves is a company that is in the news going into bankruptcy but what we should really be looking at is what we can learn from the Atkins diet and looking to science as to why it seems to work at least in the short term. The reason that I am against the diet is that by it’s very nature it will be hard on your kidneys and over the long term even if the risk of heart disease is not increased there can not be any real health benefits besides some weight loss. I believe that a weight reduction diet should not just drop fat but make a person healthier as well that is why I always try to stress the importance of exercise.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Atkins Diets