Reaching Protein Goals

CrazyMermaid1

At 1400 calories, I’m having trouble getting to 140 g of protein. High protein foods are either high calorie per gram of protein (take up too many calories for the protein or expensive. How do people reach these goals without exercising for extra calories? I’m trying Muscle Milk but it’s 300 calories for 50 g of protein.

CrazyMermaid1

Actually MFP says I should get 178 g of protein. How am I supposed to do that on 1400 calories?

sollyn23l2

CrazyMermaid1 wrote: »

Actually MFP says I should get 178 g of protein. How am I supposed to do that on 1400 calories?

I've never seen the standard mfp protein recommendation to be that high a percentage of calories. Somehow the protein percent must have gotten pushed up. I won't speculate on how that happened, but you can go into your goals and toggle it back down to whatever percent you want. Are you trying to do super low carb?

yirara

that's not the standard setting. So what's going on. Can you give us a bit more information? Did you change the macros by hand? Are you male or female, or maybe trans? There's certainly something odd going on. With the standard settings on 1400 calories you'd get about 75gr protein.

Lietchi

1gr of protein is 4 calories, so you will always have a certain number of calories to reach your protein goal.

Low fat dairy (in my case skyr, but greek yogurt is also a possibility) has a lot of protein for few calories. Lean meat and seafood is good too.
Pulses and legumes can help boost protein intake.

But I'm also wondering where your goal is coming from. A goal of 178 seems very high, and even 140gr is still fairly high (though not unhealthy) for a goal of 1400 calories.

CrazyMermaid1

Thanks so much for the clarification that the goal is wrong. Seventy five is quite doable.

yirara

Why don't you use the guided setup again and see where you end up with? Use a realistic weightloss goal, depending on your weight. If you find that the food you eat doesn't make you feel full play with macros. There's no need to use the standard setup, but it's a good starting point.

Retroguy2000

140g is probably high for you. MFP's rec is whatever macro % you chose, as a % of total calories. You're better off treating your goal as a grams count for the day. If you're resistance training, then between 0.7g/pound (if obese, not morbidly obese) to 1g/pound (if lean) is a good high daily target. If you aren't resistance training, then it's more than you need.

I also wouldn't recommend taking 50g at once with protein powder. Space that out.

AnnPT77

Another possible source of an evidence-based recommendation based on individual goals is here:

https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

The guide suggests it can make sense to use a goal weight in the calculator if currently substantially overweight.

If you still have challenges meeting a more moderate protein goal, this thread may be useful, in case you haven't already seen it:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10247171/carbs-and-fats-are-cheap-heres-a-guide-to-getting-your-proteins-worth-fiber-also