Protein Challenge Revision

I too have been doing a trial run of my protein and it's pretty challenging. I have also heard back from a couple of you with questions and valid concerns.

My solution follows.


Since many of us are on weight loss plans, and have a reduced calorie budget each day I am making a revision to the protein challenge that will allow everyone to still increase their protein, but also be able to stay within their calorie budgets for each day.

This will require some math, so get out your calculators.

I spoke to a physician friend of mine and did a little more research online.  So you'll have one of two choices for the protein challenge this week. The initial number, half your body weight in protein grams. Or this new one.

Decide which one works best for you & will be simplest for you to keep track of. Then let me know which one you'll follow when you send in your weekly report.

Instead of using body weight you can use caloric intake as your guide. 15-35% of your total calorie intake should be from protein. Since I want us to try and do more than we've been doing, I am challenging you to do at least 20% of your total calories from protein. If you are already using an app like loseit or myfitnesspal  you can select protein as a nutrient to track and it will tell you if you're doing that, but if you would like to figure out how many grams it is, you can do the following equation.

Daily calorie budget, multiply by .20 (20%), then divide by 4 (each gram of protein is approximately 4 calories)

So for me, 1400 X .20=280, 280/4=70. So I'll aim for at least 70 grams of protein a day. (As my bonus challenge I will try to divide it up in the following way-breakfast=15, morning snack=5, lunch=20, afternoon snack=5, dinner=25)

I hope this will help everybody find a way to meet this challenge.