SSP

It depends on who you ask...

The above might be overstated a bit...but, not by much.

For instance, "Research supports a range in protein needs from 1.2 to 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram body weight for endurance athletes such as marathoners". That's 0.64 g / lb. For a 170 lb athlete, that works out to 108 grams of protein per day.

Or, "because deficiencies in total protein or in specific amino acids may occur, we suggest that athletes consume 1.8 to 2.0 g of protein/kg of bodyweight/day." At the upper end, that works out to 0.91 g / lb per day. For a 170 lb athlete, that would require protein intake of 155 grams per day.

These levels of protein, and the need to get a balanced mix of amino acids, make it pretty hard to achieve adequate protein intake on a typical vegetarian diet. Clearly, it's possible, but it requires a great deal of vigilance and dietary planning, when compared to non-vegetarian sources.

Carbonfiberboy 

Real simple thing you can do: take about 15g of whey protein about 1/2 hr. before every meal. Just stir it into half a glass of water. Then another after workout. That gives you 60g right there, which is enough to put an ovo/lacto vegetarian in the right range. It also depresses appetite. And it's cheap, compared to meat sources. I mail order Optimum Nutrition Gold.

Univega

I am not sure why you want to avoid protein powders. Many taste good and if you drink two a day, you will add 80 grams of protein to your diet.

Plus it is good to eat small meal throughout the day. So you can have breakfast, shake, lunch, shake, dinner.

Some of the ones that I think taste good are:

Metabolic Drive - Milk Chocolate (https://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=525024)

And

Beverly International: Ultimate Muscle Protein (https://www.beverlyinternational.com/products/ump.html)

trigger

Ok - having been trying *really* hard to up my protein in my regular diet, and having looked into some the of the information mentioned here, I'm going to go the route of a protein powder. There doesn't seem to be any other way to get the protein I need while training without a) eating animals (no) and b) becoming seriously obsessive compulsive about my diet (also, no).

So - can someone recommend a good, naturally sourced, mostly (if not totally) chemical free protein powder suitable for a vegetarian. Preferably available in Canada, but I go to the US frequently enough that that's not a huge deal.

I will look into the ones already mentioned by brand name, but I'd like a couple of other options.

Thanks everyone, very much.

ModoVincere

Look for a soy protein isolate if you want to remain vegetarian. Whey should be fine if you are ovo-lactarian (or whatever that's called now) vegetarian.

umd

Huh? Vegetarians can have animal by-products, just not the animal itself. Its vegans that can't have the by-products such as milk, eggs, etc.

ModoVincere

There's all sorts of "vegetarians" out there, and without quizzing the crap out of the OP, I just simply advised that if you want a vegetable sourced protein powder...soy isolates are available. If it does not matter to the OP...then whey should be fine. In addition there are egg & milk protein powders which I did not mention. These are good sources too.
But i can see how my wording in the other posts may have caused some confusion in what I was trying to say.

RideMore

I am a big fan of 40/30/30. There is way too much focus on 'low fat' without the consideration of what else you are eating. Most people's carb intake is so high that lowering your fat intake effectively increases your carb %. Look at a carton of milk: Read the carb amount on whole vs. lowfat/ nonfat. Watch the carb calories go up as you take out more fat. IMHO: DUMB!

Personal choice: Mountain High Original Style, Plain yogurt. Low carb, no crap

Drop your carbs to 40%, raise your protein to 30%, pay less attention to your fat intake. As a vegetarian it's hard to get too much fat unless you eat a TON of nuts. Please eat some however; many, many nutrients to balance out your intake. Good luck!

UmneyDurak

At least with AltaDena milk this is not the case. Going from whole to NoneFat carb amount stays the same, protein increases by 1g.
https://www.altadenadairy.com/products/milk-cream.html

catherine96821

I think this is key. Also, You might consider B 12 shots, I give myself one every month.

El Julioso

A few things to keep in mind if you want to lose fat. First, if you want to keep the fat you lose off, you can't restrict your calories that severely. 1,300 Calories is downright starvation, and 1,500 Calories is borderline. To safely lose weight, you should only eat 250-500 Calories/day less than you burn. Given that you're a female who is at least moderately active, you probably need 2,000-2,400 Calories/day just to maintain your weight. The Harris-Benedict equation seems to work quite well for calculating this, available here: https://www.weightloss.com.au/weight-...calculator.htm

There are a lot of problems with severe Calorie restriction. One is the body's tendency to catabolize (eat) its muscle tissue when it detects starvation. This is because muscle mass is expensive to maintain in terms of energy; one pound of muscle consumes about 60 Calories/day. Don't want all that energy-chugging muscle around when one is barely eating. Remember, we didn't evolve from athletes with a secure food supply. We evolved from nomads who quite often were not entirely sure when they would eat their next meal.

Your goal is not weight loss. It is fat loss. Losing muscle is bad - not only because it makes you slower and weaker, but because muscle mass helps you lose fat. To lose weight, you want a high basal metabolic rate, not a low one. Also, it is difficult to eat all the vitamins and minerals you need to stay healthy while only eating 1,300 Calories/day or so.

Eat your egg yolks. I say this for a number of reasons:
1) They contain a lot of excellent nutrients;
2) They contain the beneficial fats of eggs (such as Omega-3), whereas the whites are only protein;
3) A lot of people don't eat egg yolks because they contain a lot of cholesterol (170-220mg/egg). However, cholesterol intake has next to nothing to do with cholesterol levels in your blood stream. Over 70% of the cholesterol in a typical omnivore's body is produced by his/her own liver. The three prime factors controlling your cholesterol levels are, in order of importance: physical activity, types and amounts of fats consumed (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated being good, saturated being bad in excess and trans being very bad in any amount), and genetics;
4) Since you are a vegetarian, you eat next to no cholesterol anyway. Cholesterol is used as a component of many vital organs, especially the skin and nerves, in animals, but not in plants;
5) Egg yolks taste pretty damn good IMO.

Dense vegetarian protein sources: cottage cheese (watch out for the sodium content of this, however; you shouldn't eat more than 2,400mg. of sodium per day), regular cheese, yogourt, fermented soy products, eggs, milk, nuts, kidney beans.

Protein shakes really aren't necessary, especially for a non-bodybuilding female, but if you really want to go that route, get a whey/casein mix. Whey is used by the body very quickly, whereas casein is digested much more slowly. This ensures that your body will have protein available as it needs it, rather than a sudden spike of protein and then nothing a couple hours later, as would be the case with a 100% protein mix.

Excellent choice staying away from processed soy products. The only good soy products are fermented ones, such as tempeh, miso, and fermented soy sauce. The problem with fermentation is that it takes time, and therefore money, so a lot of unscrupulous companies skip that part and try to sell us unfermented soy products as "health food." For about a billion reasons I won't get into here, unfermented soy products are very bad for one's health.

Don't be afraid of nuts because of their fat content. The fats you get from nuts are excellent. Peanuts and almonds (which are technically seeds, but treated as nuts) are also excellent sources of protein. They are very energy-dense, however, so you have to watch how many of them you eat.

Of caloric ratios: I find that a 50/20/30 carb/protein/fat diet works well for general use. That's what I eat. Bodybuilders would be better off on a 50/25/25 ratio, whereas some endurance athletes prefer 60/20/20 or even 60/15/25, presumably because of greater energy expenditure and muscle glycogen requirements. Anna Kournikova eats a diet of 60/15/25, by the way.

Note that I'm talking about caloric ratios, not mass ratios. If you calculated based on mass, you would eat more than twice as much fat as you intended, since fats have 9 Calories/g. and both proteins and carbs have only 4 Calories/g.

Stay away from refined grains and refined sugar. Foods such as white bread, white rice, white sugar, etc. cause huge postprandial blood sugar spikes followed quickly by huge insulin spikes, because the glucose in these unnaturally processed foods is so readily available. Insulin spikes not only tax the pancreas and can lead to diabetes, but they also cause the body to undergo anabolism - basically, the body's storage mode. The main function of insulin is to signal fat and muscle cells to store glucose in the bloodstream, which results in blood sugar levels dropping - the consequence being that the stored glucose in fat cells becomes fat. So eat whole wheat bread, brown rice, and use blackstrap molasses and/or honey as sweeteners if you need to (honey tastes a lot better than any other sweetener anyway).

Eat smaller meals more frequently. This will help keep your metabolism from dropping, will provide a more consistent supply of nutrients, and keep your body from being able to store large amounts of energy at any given time.

On a side note, I saw a magazine at the grocery store check-out today which exclaimed "LOSE 9lbs IN 5 DAYS!!!" Since it's impossible to lose 9lbs of fat in 5 days even if one were to eat nothing at all (barring third-degree burns or amputation) said "diet" no doubt accomplishes this mostly by muscle and water weight loss. Just goes to show how terrible popular diet plans are... there is a lot of money to be made in promising quick, easy results to people who don't understand biology. Proper dieting is really no more complicated than what I've described above, but it does take time and discipline. Keep it simple, eat cleanly, exercise a lot, and you'll succeed.

trigger

Whoa .... thanks!! I think I'm going to print off that reply. Thanks.

I've heard that my caloric intake (1300 - 1500) is too low, but I vowed from the start not to be hungry on this regime, and that I would eat if I needed to. I've not yet felt weak, or hungry. I'm doing push ups and core work as well as the biking to help with the muscle building, and because my upper body strength is pathetic. I have either put on muscle in my legs, or lost enough fat to show that muscle better, as there is a definite difference in tone / amount.

Generally, I think I eat OK, but here's a sample day for your scrutiny as you obviously know WAY more about this than me.

Breakfast - 1 cup (cooked) organic whole oats with 1/4 cup organic skim milk, tablespoon organic honey and some raspberries or dried cranberries. 1 mug of tea sweetened with honey. If I'm still hungry after this, I will eat a banana.

Lunch - usually a sandwich made from two slices of whole grain / seed bread. (230 cal, 10 g fat, 11 g protein, 30 g carbs). For filler it's often 1 table spoon of peanut butter, sometimes mustard and egg whites, sometimes cheese, tomato and sprouts. Piece of some sort of fruit, and if I'm at home, 2 cups of spinach with a tablespoon of some sort of light dressing.

Dinner - whole grain pasta and tomato sauce (1 cup cooked), or a tofu based stir fry, or soup, or on days when I can't bring myself to cook I'll microwave a cup of corn or peas or broccoli (or all three), add some chick peas, tofu if I've got it and eat that with more salad or more bread, or both. Another cup of tea with honey.

Snacks - leaving out the snacks is the biggest change I've made. I'll snack on fruit, those single serving yogurt cups, egg whites, plain popcorn (microwaved 'smart pop' or on the stove with some sea salt) ... that's about it if I'm being good. I do sneak the occasional cookie.

I have managed to eliminate most refined sugar, a lot of extraneous salt, and just about all junk food from my diet with amazing results. I've also kicked coffee other than the odd espresso and feel A LOT better. Won't give up my black and green tea though. I don't drink much alcohol, and when I do, it's usually red wine. I try to drink 2L of water every day, and other than my two cups (breakfast and lunch) of black tea a day, I stick to green tea and herbal tea for beverages. Very little fruit juice, and zero soda (which I gave up years ago).

I understand as I start to ride outdoors again I'm going to need to eat more (I did last summer), but is this really a restrictive diet??? If it is, I'll try to make the changes you suggest, but I feel fine. I'm self employed, so I don't have commute to work, which makes all of this easier to deal with.

And really, despite the ascetic list of "things-I-don't-eat", I am actually a lot of fun. At least I think so.

... and yes, I do take a multi vitamin geared toward a vegetarian diet (heavy on the B vitamins).

BTW - I've been at this since last August with 35lbs dropped so far, and my goal is 50lbs within a year or so. I think that's reasonable. Next goal is to stay at that weight! (that's just a titch over a pound a week, I think).

And of course I eat the occasional cookie, and can't say no to the whipped cram on my mocha at starbucks etc. Generally though, I've been pretty good at retraining my taste buds .... most sweets / refined sugar products don't taste all that good to me anymore, and I need less sweets to feel satisfied.

Dubbayoo

40/30/30 is good for sedentary folks and/or endurance based sports like running, cycling. You probably won't find too many NFL'ers using it.

Almost half the protein from eggs is in the yolk so if you're throwing that away plan on eating twice as many. I'm a big fan of the liquid egg white products like www.eggwhitesint.com. I also like black/kidney beans for protein. A typical lunch for me is beans mixed with wild rice and a few ounces of ground beef ( browned, drained and rinsed). You can also try Instone chcocolate pudding. It's about 20 grams of protein per serving. I buy it by the case.

Good source for cheap protein in Canada = https://www.wheydepot.com

umd

Not very useful as a vegetarian protein source methinks...

SSP

Ummm...with your success to date, you should be the one giving recommendations for successful weight loss. Clearly, you're on the right path.

Congrats on your success to date, and keep at it!

El Julioso

Trigger, looks like you have an excellent and very clean diet, bravo!

The reason you haven't noticed any loss of muscle since beginning your diet is because you've been exercising. If you ate 1,300-1,500 Calories/day and lead a sedentary lifestyle, your body would eat a fair bit of muscle. However, since you exercise, your body realizes a need to keep the muscle, and instead uses mostly fat for the extra energy it needs.

Since you've been losing just over a pound a week, it sounds like your average caloric deficit is just over 500 Calories/day, since 1lb. of fat contains 3500 Calories, and it sounds like you've managed to maintain your muscle mass. 7x500=3,500. So, when you reach your desired weight and want to maintain it, throttle up your caloric intake to about 2,000 Calories, probably a little more in the summer. Keep an eye on your weight after that; if you continue to lose weight or start gaining weight you'll know whether to eat more or less. It's a lot easier to keep fat off than lose it.

Don't feel guilty about drinking green and black tea; they're actually very good for you. They have certain antioxidants and other beneficial compounds that coffee doesn't. If you drink more than 3 cups/day however, decaffeinated tea would probably be best. There are ways to very easily decaffeinate your own tea, which you can find with a google search if you're interested.

It's good that you pay so much attention to how you feel. Your body can tell you a lot. If you aren't feeling hungry or weak, or getting sick very often, then you aren't eating dangerously little. I didn't think that many people could eat just 1,300 Calories/day without feeling hungry; but then, I'm a tall male in my 20s with a psychotic metabolism who's been know to eat that many Calories in a single sitting

The only other thing I can think of to recommend for your diet is that you keep vitamin solubility in mind. All vitamins and minerals except for vitamins A, D, E, and K are soluble in water; therefore, you can absorb them efficiently almost any time, since you always have water in abundance. However, A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble, so you need some fat in your digestive tract to absorb these vitamins properly. This is why carrot juice is often served with a little vegetable oil; carrots are nature's best source of vitamin A (well, technically beta-carotene, which is actually better than vitamin A because you cannot overdose on it; your body converts it into vitamin A only as it needs it). So when you eat a food that contains vitamins A, D, E, and/or K, also eat something with a little fat, like extra virgin olive oil, nuts, flaxseeds, 1% milk or something of the sort. It doesn't take much.

This is why I drink 1% milk. Both it and skim milk contain vitamins A and D, but if one were to only drink the skim milk, the A and D would not be absorbed. Note that calcium is pretty much useless without vitamin D as far as the bones are concerned; they need vitamin D in order to make use of calcium. This is especially important in winter, when your exposure to the most natural source of vitamin D (the sun) is limited. So I would suggest switching to 1% milk; the little bit of fat won't hurt you, it tastes better, and usually contains less salt than skim.

Those are recommendations for general health, though; looks like you have the weight control aspect of health well in hand. Well done, and keep it up!

iain.dalton

What lots of people seem to forget is bean soup. I have a simple recipe.
First, some beans. I like a colorful soup, so I often choose black beans (which I just love), soy or anything white, mung (green), and azuki or anything red. I add cumin, onion, garlic, and bell pepper. Pressure cook or boil for the amount of time required by the longest cooking bean with enough water to cover. Eat with some nice, crusty bread (this used to be called "sops" back when peasants couldn't afford meat and ate a lot of beans and other stews). I'm pretty sure white bread has almost as much protein as whole grain, just less fiber and fat. So a baguette isn't evil.