My Hungry Year: Big Meat

So, I did the math yesterday and was a little shocked to see that I've only been getting about .5g of protein/kg of body weight, which means I've really only been getting about half of what I need. Having been a mildly athletic vegetarian for twenty years, I always scoffed at those folks who warned me about low protein, but I'm wondering if some of my exercise-ennui lately isn't maybe connected to a protein-related failure to recover. That said, I'm going to try to drop some carbs from my diet (if you can call something as disorganized as my eating habits a diet) and replace them with protein with a daily goal of 100 grams of protein.

According to many sources, including probably the stoutest Ph.D. I've ever seen, the standard recommended daily intake of the big P workes out to between 1.4 and 2.0 g of protein per kg of body weight. A quick trip to a metric conversion calculation on the web pegs me at 88.9kg, which would suggest that I should be eating between 124 and 178 grams of protein every day. The big guy's article goes on to say, however, that new research suggests that people of the athletic persuasion might actually make more efficient use of protein than sedentary types. So I don't really need that much, right? No. He goes on to write, "those of you who staunchly believe that you're only required to eat enough protein to meet your needs,go right ahead and reduce your protein intake from 2.0g/kg to 0.65g/kg. In the meantime, I'll be encouraging everyone else to actually increase his or her protein intake beyond the current 2.0g/kg recommendation"1. Following this advice I'd need to jack up the protein in my daily diet to almost 200g.

Ok, so how did I come up with 100g? Simple--I thought about what it would take, given my vegetarian eating, to come up with 200g of protein and one day might look like this: eleven eggs, one cup cooked pinto beans, three eight ounce protein shakes, 1 cup Qinoua , a box of tofu, and a bagel with peanut butter for a grad total of 2300 calories and 201 grams of protein. Once I stopped laughing I decided that I can just boost my protein intake a little at first, and see if I get any results. If so, maybe I'll feel motivated enough to do the sort of dietary gymnastics it would take to get it higher.

We ended up going out last night so the curry I was planning for then will probably be what hits the dinner table tonight.

If the cat's don't keep me up late again, I'm going to try to fit in a run, lift, 100g of protein, and a couple of hours at the office tomorrow. Whew, I'm already tired.