Here’s what you need to know…
- Protein is an essential nutrient that increases satiety and helps preserve lean muscle mass when following a calorie restricted diet. Despite these benefits, many people struggle to increase their daily protein intake.
- Increasing your Protein intake is as simple as eating more protein at each meal, or eating more meals that include protein.
- If you’re still struggling to meet your daily protein requirements it would be worth considering supplementing with a good quality whey protein.
The ability of high-protein diets to suppress appetite, promote feelings of fullness, increase metabolic rate and preserve lean muscle mass makes them extremely effective for losing weight and improving body composition. However, despite these benefits, many people struggle to increase their protein intake and transition from a diet that is high in convenience foods and carbohydrates, to one based almost exclusively around meat. In this article, I’m going to give you simple, practical advice on how to increase your protein intake.
1. Increase The Amount of Protein You Consume At Each Meal
If you’re already eating 30g of Protein at each meal, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to eat an additional 15g of Protein per meal. If you’re eating 3 meals a day, that equates to an extra 45g serving of protein per day. Whilst eating slightly more food might seem painfully obvious, you be amazed at how many people overlook this simple strategy which can boost your daily intake by almost 50%. Of course, you don’t necessarily have to eat more food to eat more protein and those that struggle with appetite might want to consider eating foods that have a higher concentration of protein per serving. For example, 100g of Turkey contains twice the amount of Protein as 100g of Cottage Cheese. This obviously means you only need to eat half as much of the Turkey to obtain the same amount of protein that you would from the cottage cheese. For people that do struggle with their appetite, it is always wise to go for the foods that have the highest concentration of protein as it usually constitutes a smaller volume of food.
2. Increase The Number of Servings of Protein Per Day
Eating an additional serving of Protein per day is a simple and easy way to increase your daily protein intake. Whether you increase the number of meals you eat from 3 to 4 or if you decide to incorporate some high protein snacks into your diet, this is a sure fire way to increase your daily protein intake. Personally, I recommend a serving of protein around 3 hours after lunch as this typically falls half way between lunch and dinner for most people. The reason I suggest a serving of protein at this time is that it can help prevent over-eating around dinner time. Hunger typically heightens after 3-4 hours so if you haven’t eaten anything since lunch by the time you get home in the evening, odds are you’ll snack until dinner shows up or over-eat on deserts afterwards. Having a small meal, protein bar or even a protein shake can help take the edge off your hunger and prevent this from happening, whilst at the same time ensuring your reach your daily protein target.
3. Supplement With Whey Protein
If you have followed both of the steps outlined above and are still struggling to reach your daily protein targets, I would recommend supplementing with a good quality Whey Protein. Whey protein is one of the two proteins found in milk, with the other being casein. When a coagulant (usually renin) is added to milk, the casein, and whey separate. The whey is then skimmed off, processed and sold as a food supplement. Whey Protein is very useful for hitting daily protein goals as it’s concentrated form makes it easy to both consume and digest, especially if consumed as a shake. Drinking 1-2 shakes per day (depending on your protein target) is usually more than sufficient to meet any protein deficits in your diet.
Closing
With most high protein diets recommending intakes of around 1.6g p/kg/p/d (double the recommended daily intake), hitting your daily protein targets can be a bit of a challenge. However, armed with the strategies I’ve outlined above there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to adjust your diet gradually and hit intakes of even 2.4g p/kg/p/d. Remember, protein is an essential nutrient that’s not only important in the context but also overall health and well being as well. Whilst meat remains an excellent source of protein with a complete amino acid profile it’s important to incorporate other sources such as poultry, fish, dairy, nuts, seeds, and pulses into your diet as well.