Protein is the most important part of your nutrition plan.
Why is protein so important?
Your muscles, your hormones, your immune system are composed of protein.
Your body looses protein constantly. Without adequate incoming dietary protein, critical body functions slow down to inefficient levels.
But most important, eating protein at every meal helps control excessive insulin production.
It is excess insulin that makes you fat, makes you hungry all the time, makes you mentally tired, decreases your physical performance, decreases the immunity system and increases the likelihood of chronic disease.
One of the main rules of perfect health and performance diet about protein is to eat it with every meal. For it’s insulin controlling effect eat the protein with every meal.
The best protein choices:
- Chicken breast
- Turkey breast
- Cod
- Crab meat
- Egg whites
- Lobster
- Mackerel – fish
- Milk – whole
- Salmon
- Sardines
- Scallops
- Sea bass – fish
- Tuna
- Cottage cheese – regular, not fat free
- Shrimp
- Soybean imitation meat products
- Soy cheese
- Tofu
- Trout – fish
- Yogurt – full fat
- Soy milk
- Soybeans boiled
How much protein should you eat at a meal?
If you really want to keep it simple, fallow these simple rule: Never consume more protein in one meal than you can fit on the palm of your hand.
Your body can use only certain amount of protein at the time.
If you want to be more precise about exactly how much protein you need:
You can use part system. 1 part = 7 grams of protein. 1 part of protein could be 1 ounce of meat, like chicken breast, sliced turkey. 1 part of protein could be 2 egg whites, 1.5 ounce of fish or 3 ounces of firm tofu.
The simple rule:
If you are a typical American female, you will need between 2 and 3 parts (7 grams of protein per part) of protein at every meal, and if you are the typical American male, you will need between 3 to 4 parts of protein at every meal.
How much protein should you eat per day?
Everybody has daily unique protein requirements.
It depends mainly on your physical activity level and lean body mass on your body. Your lean body mass is everything your body consist of (muscle, bones, water, tendons, intestines, teeth) minus fat mass.
Check my article: Your daily protein requirement and how much protein should you eat to build extra muscle, if you want to know exactly how much protein you need to consume every day.
Last thing you need to know is to spread your daily protein requirement through 3 meals and 3 snacks through the day.
More about healthy and performance eating:
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