1 oz of chicken (or any protein) is NOT 38 grams of protein. It varies somewhat between protein sources, but 1 oz = ~6-9 g protein.

My Dr. told me my protein levels seemed low, so FWIW, I try to get at least 20g per meal. There's a calculation you can make - IIRC it's 2g protein per kilo of body weight, which comes out to around 108 g per day for me. I take into account that lots of things contain protein besides meats, legumes, eggs, etc..

And recently came across these in the store - hubby really liked it:

Annie....I just want to commend you for changing your diet....and not taking a pill or injection to get the weight off.

We eat a lot of steamed spinach, boneless/skinless chicken breasts, broccoli, garbanzo beans, nuts and yogurt. We still go running....very aerobic and burns a lot of calories! And, lift weights 3X a week.

I'm experiencing a lot of hypoglycemia. I've read from trusted sources eating protein along side carbs is key. I cannot eat legumes, dairy, or salmon. The idea of a tin of sardines makes me want to hurl. I don't like chicken but can certainly force myself to eat it.

Maybe getting bottled protein shakes would be helpful? There are only so many eggs and hunks of lunch meat I want to grab throughout a day.

I welcome any other ideas for protein, preferably fast protein. I'd like to not do shakes and bars, but in reality, that just might be the way to get the protein I'm lacking.

Kendra, given your dietary limitations, a high protein shake or bar (watch for too much sugar) might be the extra boost that you need. I found adding egg whites to my salads helped get lunch protein in me, but after about 6 months the thought of another egg white bite made me want to vomit.

Snacking on seeds like pumpkin and sunflower is another good source.

" Snacking on seeds like pumpkin and sunflower is another good source. "

I guess if you don't care about fat or calories, they're a good source of protein: it would take a cup of shelled sunflower seeds to give you about 25g of protein, about as much as in a boneless, skinless chicken breast. But the cup of sunflower seeds has about 63g of fat, compared to about 3g of fat in the chicken.

I'm headed to Trader Joe's now to look at protein bars! Thanks for the reminder about the sugars.

I do have collagen peptides powder which I can sprinkle on stuff. I used to add it to my breakfast smoothies, but I got away from them years ago. I do better with real food and I try not to drink my calories. 1 scoop is 40 calories and 11g complete protein.

Just thought of one other thing-Oikos yougurt (plain) has a complete protein. It contains all the essential amino acids your body needs. Thought of it when I saw the image in Carol's post. I use the plain yougurt in my homemade morning smoothies.

Yes I often have plain nonfat greek yogurt for breakfast which I then doctor up with vanilla cinnamon, nuts, fruit, etc.

Back from Trader Joe's. Bought some protein bars. The ingredients seem so gross. I was much more enticed by bresaola and prosciutto. Also purchased some peanut butter granola with added protein powder. Wish I ate dairy. It seems so complete.

Kendrah, eating fiber with carbs will help prevent sugar spikes. Have you tried Quinoa? It too is a complete protein.

Do not underestimate your protein needs unless you enjoy slowly dissolving into a frail noodle. Yes, you might be losing weight, but some of that success might actually be your muscles packing their bags and leaving the country.

Protein is annoying because you have to chase it like it owes you money. And the older you get, the worse it gets. After age seventy, your body basically looks at protein with disappointment, “oh, protein again,” and absorbs it with the enthusiasm of a teenager told to clean their room. So older folks actually need more protein than the youngsters.

My target is about 135 grams a day. That is a lot and I think I live at the grocery store to get those levels of protein. But I go after it every day because not getting enough protein is way worse than getting too much. Your body doesn’t store protein like fat. It turns some of it into amino acids and stores it away for only a few hours until used up, and the rest not needed gets used as energy, so nothing is wasted.

If you are eating like a church mouse or you have a deep emotional fear of meat, brace yourself. To get one hundred grams of protein from soybeans, you need to shovel down more than 3 cups. From regular beans like pinto, kidney, navy or black beans, you need more than six cups a day. If you try to get one hundred grams from rice, you will be eating twenty four cups of cooked rice, and vegetables? Good luck and you may need a wheelbarrow.

A good suggestion was protein shakes. I convinced my wife to take protein seriously about a year ago. Her doctor backed me up, which helped me win one argument for a change. She barely eats anything, so she went through a list of shake brands before finding one she likes. It's Shamrock Rockin Protein Builder with 30 grams a bottle.

OP, a number of people have offered differing points of view to your apparent concern with protein. You seem to have ignored the comments, by not addressing or responding to them.

If someone takes the time to offer their own views about what an OP has said, I think a response or mention in return is polite if not expected.

Kevin, I never said I had a "deep emotional fear of meat". Not sure where that came from. I am aware of the need for protein. What I wasn't aware of was how little protein I was getting from even high-quality sources compared to what the target levels are.

And certainly I don't eat like a church mouse as that's why I'm with WW. It's about eating too much and apparently not yet the right things. But I appreciate your protein comparisons and the shake recommendation.

I looked at the Oikos and while the vanilla is only 2 ww points, and it says it doesn't contain artificial sweeteners, but it does use Stevia. It might be worth trying for my 4pm hungries I get every day...the Shamrock is really high in calories and 5 points, so probably not.

I see too that the Mayo Clinic has a much lower estimate of protein needs, so maybe I'm not that far off, or at least I should shoot for the low end of the ww target.

How much protein do you need?

Protein should account for 10% to 35% of your calories. So, if your daily needs are 2,000 calories, that's 200-700 calories from protein or 50-175 grams.

If you're an average adult.
The recommended dietary allowance to prevent deficiency for an average sedentary adult is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. For example, a person who weighs 165 pounds, or 75 kilograms, should consume 60 grams of protein per day.

If you're over age 40-50.
Once you're between the ages of 40 and 50, sarcopenia — losing muscle mass as you age — begins to set in. To prevent this and to maintain independence and quality of life, your protein needs increase to about 1-1.2 grams per kilogram or 75-90 grams per day for a 165-pound person.

If you exercise regularly.
People who exercise regularly also have higher needs, about 1.1-1.5 grams per kilogram. People who regularly lift weights or are training for a running or cycling event need 1.2-1.7 grams per kilogram. Excessive protein intake would be more than 2 grams per kilogram of body weight each day. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/are-you-getting-too-much-protein#:~:text=Protein%20should%20account%20for%2010,per%20kilogram%20of%20body%20weight.

Kendrah, be aware that a lot of protein supplements are based on dairy (whey) or legumes (pea protein). It's important to check labels. It's a pity your diet needs to be so restricted. Sardines in olive oil are incredibly good for you. Not just protein but calcium, Omega threes, vitamins etc. And dirt cheap. I eat them at least once a week, mashed into a pate with lemon juice and pepper. Needing to swap real food for uhp products is so unfortunate.

Sardine Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits https://share.google/wS2xDTmL9EsJ9l9tC

I'm with Kendrah...the idea of eating sardines! I also don't eat rat tails -- otherwise knows as anchovies. DH loves kippered snacks and herring. No thank you!

Like Floral, VgQn will whip up a batch of sardines into a pate' plus add some olives to the mix, great on crackers for a light lunch.

Another sardine lover checking in. I mash mine with a bit of mustard and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

As for protein, it seems to be the food industry's darling du jour. With a few exceptions, I'm sure most of us get enough from the foods we normally eat that we don't have to think about adding more, especially from processed powders and the like.

It's a pity your diet needs to be so restricted.

I'm sure most of us get enough from the foods we normally eat that we don't have to think about adding more, especially from processed powders and the like.

I couldn't agree more. Philosophically, I'd love to get all the nutrition I need from whole foods instead of supplements. Physically, my body is another story. Too bad I've developed a salmon allergy. Lox is such an easy grab and go form of protein. I don't love the taste but don't hate it as much as sardines!

I'm not a fan of fish in general, but can often doctor up tuna well enough to have on a sandwich with lettuce. I don't mind Ina Garten's tuna tapenade. I just leave out the mascarpone. Perhaps I can try to eat more of this. One jar of Italian tuna in olive oil is 32 grams of protein.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK - Yes, I was disappointed to see how many of the protein bars contained milk. It makes sense. Dairy has got so much going for it.

"I cannot eat legumes, dairy, or salmon"

Kendrah: I'm confused. You chimed in on Elmer's dairy thread, over there it sounds like you consume dairy.

"Kevin, I never said I had a "deep emotional fear of meat""

You for sure did not say this, and I didn't say you did. I can't believe I'm doing this, but the first sentence of the paragraph, "If you are eating like a church mouse or you have a deep emotional fear of meat, brace yourself.", was a set up line with a bit of humor to hook readers to read the rest of a boring paragraph. I guess I should have said "If someone" and not "you" to avoid your confusion. .

speaking of confusion, many smoothies people build are a poor choice for any meal, especially breakfast. If "a person" can build a good smoothie with the right ingredients it will be nutritious. But what a smoothie won't do compared to a solid breakfast is keep "a person" satisfied until the next meal and "a person" will have a tendency to snack. A smoothie will also not give the gut a good workout and burn very little calories compared to a solid breakfast that can burn up to five times more calories.

Good catch @porkchop_z5b_MI . I'm not allergic to dairy. I found a correlation between how much dairy I eat and how many sinus infections and colds I get. Cutting it out has made a tremendous difference in my health. I still use it when baking and cooking for others so they can enjoy what I cannot. And on holidays I will eat a bit here and there. Blue cheese is my downfall.

Salmon, walnuts, and pineapple I do have an actual allergic reaction to.

I have an immune dysfunction issue that is impacted by a host of foods. Over the course of years I discovered what foods gave me debilitating cramps that killed my energy. I cut them out and it made a huge difference. More recently, I discovered that most of the foods I have trouble with are also on the high FODMAP list. Who knew I wasn't the only one experiencing these symptoms?

My food limitations are both irritatingly confining and bring so much freedom from not feeling ill as often.

Kendrah: Thanks for the clarification. that's unfortunate that you have so many restrictions.

Kendrah’s comment ’I found a correlation between how much dairy I eat and how many sinus infections and colds I get‘ made me think a bit about what triggers body reactions as I have gotten older vs what I experienced when I was young. Keep in mind I grew up in basically the same area where I live now so I don’t believe our external environment has been altered all that much.

Growing up I do not recall being sensitive to anything (I won’t use the term allergic b/c that is a whole ’nother matter). As long as we didn’t stop breathing, have a rash, fever, threw up, or were bleeding, all the kids I knew seemed to just carry on. We played outside all year and in the woods except in deep summer when the snakes were out, swam in the lake, ate pretty much everything including fresh dairy from my uncle’s farm, and hardly ever got terribly sick except for the usual childhood maladies. I’ve had more than my fair share of insect bites and bee stings.

I still don’t react to most foods, but during C i did have a quite odd bout of an IBS (Colitis). I saw both my PCP and a specialist and had a c’scope to verify. Totally unexplained what triggered it, and it stopped as quickly as it started once I eliminated a few things (foods in the nightshade family) from my diet for a while. After reading about it I realized I had probably had mild symptoms for quite a while, I just didn’t know what they meant. Kendrah, I do know dairy can affect many the way it does you. Some never make the connection. I think these foods that cause inflammatory response incidents may be something we learn to live with in some cases until we finally make the connection to whatever category of food is the cause. Did we really have those responses back when were young and just not realize it?

Annie, I’m glad someone caught the error in the chicken protein content. I missed that in your OP. As others pointed out a 3-oz piece of boneless chicken breast is about 24 g. We’ll never get an exact number here as I guess everyone measures it a bit differently. The point is I still go mostly by individual weight, plus factor in age and activity level, and believe if you get somewhere near half your body weight on most days you’re doing very well. If not, look at a supplemental drink part time. I don’t care for beans all that much, especially garbanzo (love hummus tho), or quinoa by itself, protein powders (still have not found one that isn’t awful for some reason or another), or sardines. I do enjoy other fish. I tire easily of yogurt and some other things. Here is the drink I sampled and then bought. No aftertaste, tastes like a chocolate ice cream bar when cold. The only downside i find is a wee bit high in sodium but i can deal with that as i usuallydrink only half the carton.

Well, never having given my protein intake a second thought and just assuming I got enough, I did an experiment today. I don't eat meat Monday to Friday and I eat very little dairy for saturated fat reasons.

First I had to find out how much protein I was supposed to require. 59g per day. Then I weighed everything I ate all day and found out the protein content. I've just totted up the total. 59g.

I ate nothing I wouldn't normally eat and I take no supplements. So it is possible.

"The idea of a tin of sardines"

I love sardines. If it is the idea rather than the sardines themselves, perhaps some day you might give them a try, they are not terribly expensive.

'they are not terribly expensive. '. You can say that again. 65p in water. £1.00 in olive oil.

floral, curious if you don't eat meat, how did you get to such a high protein number?

I was quite surprised myself that it came out exactly right working on the recommended ca. 1 g per kilo for an active older female.

Breakfast: porridge. Soy milk, pumpkin seeds, apple.

Lunch: wholemeal toast with a poached egg and baked beans. A few nuts.

Dinner: beetroot and chickpea patties (which also contained an egg) Warm potato salad, horseradish yoghurt, parm shavings.

I do eat meat at weekends.

I am (self diagnosed) allergic to cow's milk dairy, and it makes me very much more congested and snotty when I eat it - but it's dose dependent. So I can eat a little, if I'm willing to be more congested for a day or two. That's why I'll eat cheese every now and then (maybe once a week or less), but eating dairy daily would leave me constantly congested. That's both annoying, and uses a lot of Kleenex. It took me until I was in my 50s before I figured that out, and that was sort of by accident.

@OutsidePlaying - Thank you so much for the OWYN recommendation and nutrition facts pic. I'll try picking some up. I really don't like things with monk fruit extract. It gives me a weird after taste. But, it can't taste worse than the protein bar I had today that was sort of like a Kit Kat but made with saw dust instead. During cancer treatment I learned that drinking things on ice often helped with the taste.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK - Cool that you were able to get so much protein in a day. I think the beans are the savior. 39 g of protein in one cup of chickpeas. 14 g in a cup of baked beans. 6 g of protein in an egg.

@lucillle - You are right. It isn't just the idea, the smell makes me want to run too. My husband can no longer eat small boned fish because of a swallowing disorder, but he used to thrive on sardines and we'd have to close the kitchen door and open a window when he ate them. Grilled whole at restaurants, the didn't smell quite as vile.

Did we really have those responses back when were young and just not realize it?

Yes! My parents joked about how even though I was very thin, my shirts never covered my big tummy. And we still roll on the floor laughing about the longest fart in history that I had when the next door neighbor came for dinner. Well, I was a bloated, farty little kid whose stomach hurt a whole lot of the time. But, it was just funny and nothing to be taken seriously because we were kids, it was the 70s, and you ate the food that was put in front of you.

I missed so much school because of colds. But it was "oh you were always catching something", not "hum, I wonder if you have an inherited immune disorder from mom and grandma and if altering diet could help." Again, no internet, the 70s, buck up and deal. Every one was doing the best the could.

Salmon, walnut, eggplant, pineapple allergies all started in my mid-40s out of the blue. In recent months, I tried eggplant again and it wasn't too bad.

Interesting TV...DH has a chronically runny nose...I never thought it might be from the food he's eating.

Drives me nuts when my parents nurse their colds with dairy and sugar - pudding and orange juice. So mucus producing. You don't notice it until you cut back on it.

There is no scientific evidence behind the idea that dairy produces mucus.

My blood sugar has felt much more stable in the last two days since I have tried to couple my carb intake with protein intake. I've been able to do it mostly with cured meat, lean grassfed ground beef, and a few protein bars thrown in.

I might opt for homemade soy protein smoothies and carrying protein bars just for emergencies. I think monk fruit is going to put me off of the bottled protein drinks.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK I'm a big believer in science. I cried when I first saw the pubmed message during the US gov't shutdown. Yet, I don't need research or science to tell me what my body experiences when it comes to something as simple as snot. If I can gain a modicum of control over snot, I feel it is a victory. Perhaps it is a placebo effect. I'll take that too.

" There is no scientific evidence behind the idea that dairy produces mucus "

I don't know whether or not it causes more mucous production or just locally more mucous, but there are several references to respiratory signs (including congestion and a runny nose) from dairy allergies - they're a less common (but real) symptom:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4979917/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/milk-allergy/symptoms-causes/syc-20375101

https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/hc-sc/documents/services/food-nutrition/reports-publications/food-safety/2017-milk-lait-eng.pdf

https://foodallergyinstitute.com/severe-food-allergies/casein-allergy-symptoms-and-treatment/

" Interesting TV...DH has a chronically runny nose...I never thought it might be from the food he's eating. "

Annie, I discovered it by accident - I was doing a one week dairy-free trial for a different purpose, and discovered that I was less congested and blowing my nose much, much less often.

It seems there is plenty of evidence that dairy thickens phlegm and mucus. It is possible that thicker mucus increases the perception of larger volume of mucus. It could be why double blind studies show people experiencing less mucus when they don't eat dairy products.

I'm curious now about greek yogurt and if it has less of something in it that would make me snotty. It is rather high in protein and seems so much better for me than eating protein bar, drinks, or lots of meat.

I recommend a couple daily slices of meat lovers pizza as a good source of protein.

Dairy allergies are of course real, but that's not the same as saying dairy causes mucous in non allergic people. Note the word 'perception'.

There are all kinds of intolerances that are not actual allergies, for example lactose intolerance. I never claim to be allergic to dairy. I just perceive myself to not be gagging on phlegm as often and not getting colds with fevers as often. I used to average 6 serious colds per year when I ate dairy. Now none. I'll take it. I have enough serious illnesses that reducing any extra colds is a total win for me.

I'm lactose intolerant too. It's weirdly widely variable, for me. Sometimes I can eat a fair amount and not be too bad, other times a little bit makes me miserable. I always have Lactaid nearby, because I love dairy. Cheeses, creams, butter....yum.

Anyway, dairy is definitely correlated with increased mucus production for me too. During the winter I love a hot beverage while I'm winding down in the evening, and for a long time it was hot chocolate. It took me far too long to figure out why I was more congested at night in the winter - bad enough it was making it harder for me to sleep.

I switched to hot tea, no more ongoing winter congestion. Hot toddies also work. Ha.

floral, is your "patty" concoction a combination of grated raw beets and mashed chickpeas, which are then fried?

I like the two ingredients but can't easily imagine the combination. What does it taste like and how did you come upon the recipe? Thanks

The beetroot are boiled and skinned. Then they're blended with chickpeas, garam masala, or any other spicy mix. an egg and some oats. I just use a stick blender. The recipe is made up. I also make beetroot hummus and the patties taste similar.

That's interesting, thanks. So it must taste mostly like beets seasoned as you describe?

" saying dairy causes mucous in non allergic people. "

I didn't mean to say that.......I thought I said that in people with an allergy, it can cause congestion and runny nose, etc.

" while I'm winding down in the evening, and for a long time it was hot chocolate. It took me far too long to figure out why I was more congested at night in the winter "

I occasionally treat myself to a steamed milk (with hazelnut) at Starbucks - I can enjoy a bit, without having the temptation of a litre of milk in the fridge.