Day Three Hundred and Forty Six!!!!

Protein


For a while now I have been aware that a lot of people on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, what have you, posting about the veto diet include the amount of protein that is in a recipe or product. I never payed any mind to it because for me the keto diet was about excluding carbs, not including protein.


Another member of the Emotionally Focussed Eating program was talking about how they had had bypass surgery but has sadly gained the weight back. They were instructed to consume at least 80 grams of protein a day for nutrition purposes, so what my fellow member did was turn to protein shakes which contained 20g of protein per shake.


I don’t know if you are familiar with protein shakes, but typically they are a meal replacement that contain all you need to help gain muscle, protein, fat, carbs, potassium, salt, and more. How they work is that you drink it, go to the gym, shred up the place, go home and make a proper meal, bing bang boom Arnold Schwarzenegger time.


What my friend was doing was drinking the protein shake to get her recommended amount of protein, then eating, then snacking, then going out to get more food, then binging. No where in this equation was there any muscle building (except to carry it all in the house). I started to wonder to myself, how hard is it to get protein on the keto diet?


Here is a typical day for me,
Breakfast: 
2 eggs-12g protein
5 slices bacon-20g protein


Snack: 
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds-17g protein


Dinner:
1 chicken breast-30g protein
4 slices of cheese-28g protein


= 107g of protein.


This doesn’t even include the variety of leafy greens that I might have with dinner. Calculating this actually surprised me, I thought it would be so much more difficult to come to 80g of protein, but instead I surpassed my expectations and went way over! Granted, sometimes I forgo the pumpkin seeds and substitute them with these awesome little ready to eat sausages I get from Walmart because pumpkin seeds do contain some carbs but still, a good source of protein. 


If the keto diet is something that you would like to try but are feeling overwhelmed by counting the carbs, the calories, and the protein, relax. I don’t count the protein because honestly, I don’t see the point. Everything in the diet has protein and sufficient sources of other nutrients people need to survive. If there is something that I would warn you about it would be to watch the salt content as some keto friendly products do hype up the sodium to make it taste good. 

​