10 ways I get more protein in my diet
Proteins, they are literally the building blocks of muscle, yet many riders are falling vastly short of essential nutrient in their diet. Without it, we are not going to get the most benefit out of our strength training, we will hit plateaus, and we may even be setting ourselves up for potential injury. So how do we go about getting the right amount for our body?
This has been the focus of my nutrition recently, and I have found some ways to make this more attainable that I thought I might share with you here. I have often mentioned that nutrition is the place where I really struggle in my program, and while I am not a nutritionist, I do spend a lot of time considering my behaviours and how I can make small adjustments to my habits to be just a tiny bit better over time.
I also know that the tried, tested and true basics and consistency are the key to anything I want to achieve be it riding, exercise, or nutritional habits. What do we already know about nutrition that has stood the test of time? Anyone could tell you: adequate protein, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, minimizing processed foods and sugars. We don’t need complex math or degrees to know these things… and unless we are already at the top of our game, we probably don’t need an advanced degree to find room for a small improvement here.
So if this sounds like you too, here are some of the things that I do to help me hit my protein goals (mostly) daily!
1) Start tracking your food. I know this sounds tedious, but if we want to improve on anything, we first need a good understanding of where we actually are and how we are going to measure our improvements. The hardest part here is to track without judgement. Once we start tracking our brain automatically starts making adjustments. Try your best to avoid changing anything for the first 2 weeks of tracking. Get an accurate picture of what normal eating looks like for you before making any changes. (I use MyFitnessPal which is free)
2) Continue tracking! You can start letting your brain do what you resisted before, just seeing the numbers, understanding a portion size, and seeing how it all adds up, you will likely find it starts to happen naturally. The key here is to ignore everything but the protein. The app likely will set goals for you for calories and other nutrients, but if we try to achieve it all, we are likely overcomplicating it, and doing too much will make the consistency part difficult. Let me say that again. LOOK AT THE PROTEIN ONLY. Keep your goals small too, take the average daily protein from your 2 weeks and add 5% every two weeks. Eventually we want to get you up to about 1g per lb of bodyweight, but if we have a big gap here, we need to make small adjustments so we can make it maintainable not just for a few weeks but as your lifestyle indefinitely.
3) Eat the protein first. This one makes me giggle a little bit because it was something my parents taught me as a kid, but it was because the meat was the expensive thing on the plate and I often would leave food behind. Anyone else relate to this? Lol! Well the same thing applies when we want to make protein the priority in our diet. Anything that we prioritize should be done first. Eat the protein first!
4) Up the serving. Do you eat 4oz of your protein in a meal? Try increasing it to 5oz. No matter what your portion size is, try adding just a little more than you would naturally gravitate to..
5) Try collagen in your coffee - collagen is a flavourless protein that easily dissolves in hot water. I put a scoop in my coffee every morning which gets me a small headstart on my protein for the day. This is a great option because its pairing a habit with something you already do on a daily basis… also called habit stacking. I get mine in bulk from Revolution Nutrition
6) Try a shake as a snack, or half of a shake at the end of a meal. While whole foods are always best for protein, a shake now and then when you are falling short is an easy way to bump up the numbers. Taking just a half a shake is a good option too as sometimes a full one can seem a little too intimidating. I get mine from Revolution Nutrition as well and like them because they only use a small amount of liquid and are much less thick than other brands I have tried so the sheer volume is less but I still get the same amount of protein as the bigger shakes.
7) Prep protein rich snacks - I have a tupperware full of hardboiled eggs in my fridge right now! It makes it easy for me to have a protein rich snack (and the dog loves my snack prep too as he gets an egg when I do!) When I travel, I keep jerkey in my purse. I call it my purse jerkey. Its a thing. LOL
8) Prep meals in advance - meal prep is no longer just for bodybuilders. Its super helpful for those of us who live busy lives trying to fit in all the fun things we want to do AND make good food choices. That doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes still stop by the pizza place on my way home, but it helps me to do it less often because I know I have good tasting, more nutritious food at home that will actually take me less time to heat (and cost me less too!). I invested in a bunch of these bento boxes and once or twice a week I make up a full nutritious meal and fill as many of them as I can to put in my freezer. Over a couple of weeks I have built up enough that I don’t have to eat the same thing more than twice in the same week. My spouse loves them as quick and easy lunches for work too and brags to everyone about how he cleaned up his diet (ummm…. who cleaned up your diet? LOL!)
9) I buy some premade meals - yes, even with my premade meals, I can use some help here and there. Right now I don’t have a lot going on so I have time to cook, but when the riding season was in full swing I bought meals that were prepped for me from Factor Nutrition. I got all the same benefits of the point I made in #8, but without the time spent cooking and cleaning. Price was about the same or a little less than if I were to stop at the drive through on my way to the barn, but the nutrition and satisfaction factor was way higher.
10) I forgive myself for my slip ups. I think any hardfast rule isn’t actually beneficial towards creating momentum. If I can be 80% compliant, I find satisfaction in hitting that goal instead of admonishing myself if there are day’s I don’t hit it. If I can’t get my protein for the day for any reason, I still see how close I can get without stressing too hard, and reward the effort. I look back to where I was and see how far I have come instead of where I fell short. Mindset is everything and without it, its so easy to undercut ourselves. Just like when you are working with horses, reward and celebrate the “try”. You ARE doing amazing things.
Now I do realize, I am preaching simplicity here and then giving you a lot to think about! Oops!
Try doing one thing at a time. Start at the top and work your way down the list, bit by bit, slowly. You might also dread the tracking thing, but it is a worthwhile exercise. You don’t need to do this forever, its just a way to measure and get you on track. Once you have started building your routine, there is less value in the tracking. However, at the start, its like studying before implementing the techniques. You will learn a ton which will give you a good foundation that will apply to the real world.
Me personally, I track for a couple of weeks each time I have a change in my routine, goals or activity level. It becomes a study check in every so often to keep me on track, and beyond that, I don’t think too hard about the small details, just riding with the momentum.
I hope this helps you with your protein goals and help you make progress with your nutrition. As I mentioned, this stuff is hard for me too, but making small simple changes that I can do consistently has really helped me gain confidence in my ability to make change!
-Sarah