Any advice on swapping out foods for alternative healthy options?

hpetty65

Hi, I'm 170cm and 59 years old. I've restarted a weight loss programme after comfort eating since I became a widow. I've put on 6 kg this year on top of the 6 Kg I put on last year. I've been logging in daily for a month or so, but am still finding my fat and carbs intake way over what it should be, whilst protein is too low. I eat around 90% vegan/vegetarian and am finding it hard to increase protein without increasing fat/carbs even more. I've googled high protein foods but you have to eat a huge amount of cottage cheese and eggs to hit the protein goal! Any suggestions welcome. TIA.

springlering62

Hi @hpetty65 welcome to MFP!

I’m very sorry for your loss, but happy to hear you’re ready to pull yourself out of your funk.

First of all,I’m going to page @AnnPT77 because she is a vegetarian, and also a widow, but mainly because she probably offers the best advice around here.

I’m not a vegetarian. When my daughter declared she was in HS, the best compromise I could come up with was chili, spaghetti, lasagna with 3/4 cooked with meat and the remainder without. There was very little info back in those pre internet days, and I haven’t advanced much since then in the vegetarian regard.

Protein is in lots of products, though, and a gram or two or eight here and there add up.

Chickpeas (garbanzo) and lentils have about twice the protein as other beans, according to some reading I was doing yesterday.

I eat almost a full tub of cottage cheese per day, but I either amp it up with something like honey/whole grain muesli/dried coconut, or I disguise it in smoothies. I even use masses of it in batter to make my pancakes in bulk.

I make homemade skyr, which is almost identical to making homemade yogurt, except that you add a few drops of rennet. I’m not sure if there’s a vegetarian substitute for that. But even if you make homemade yogurt, you’ll have whey leftover, and that can be a great protein additive to baked goods, pancakes, smoothies. Some people even drink it straight up. Haven’t tried but the….errrr….appearance puts me straight off that.

Homemade kefir is easy to make and nutritious.

You can make terrific low cal, high protein ice cream, cheesecakes etc out of any of these.

If I need to up protein I use butter instead if olive oil or margarine. Little things like that.

If you will go into the nutrition tab of your diary and drill down to protein, you can see where most your protein is coming from. That might give you an ide where you can add on or cut back in order to replace with protein.

Nugo makes a really tasty plant protein. I bake with their chocolate, and make apple/ginger smoothies with their vanilla. I’ve not had much luck with other brands. The others I’ve tried taste bad to me. Their protein bars are also excellent, and vegan.

Sorry, that’s all I got. I do eat unusually high protein myself, but the bulk of mine comes from chicken and meats, and, of course, cottage cheese.

Best of luck to you. I don’t know if you’re eating vegetarian for ethical reasons, but to confirm, it’s not necessary to lose weight. I lost a ton (well a fraction of a ton!) eating foods I like, just less of them, and weeding out Little Debbie and all her villainous friends. 🤣

springlering62

Btw one trick I used early on- and still do sometimes- is to take Greek yogurt and whip it with sugar free pudding and chill. It makes a lovely mousse textured low calorie dessert.

One lady here used to add a can of puréed pumpkin and pie spice, and some sugar free syrup to her vanilla “pudding”. Wonderful. Tastes just like a crustless pumpkin pie without the baking.

Lemon is awesome with a small dollop of canned whipped cream, and chocolate likewise. Tastes like a restaurants style mousse.

hpetty65

Oh my goodness, thank so much, that is great advice. I had no idea it was ok to eat a whole tub of cottage cheese! I'll definitely make a note of all your other suggestions - and love whipping some greek yoghurt into things to bling it up. Got loads of inspiration now 😊

AnnPT77

hpetty65 wrote: »

Oh my goodness, thank so much, that is great advice. I had no idea it was ok to eat a whole tub of cottage cheese! I'll definitely make a note of all your other suggestions - and love whipping some greek yoghurt into things to bling it up. Got loads of inspiration now 😊

It's OK to eat anything that fits in your calorie goal, if the key objective is managing body weight. But nutrition is important for health, of course. So if health is also a priority (as it should be ), I'd modify that to saying it's OK to eat anything that fits in your calorie goal, and contributes effectively to your nutritional goals.

Let's get one thing out of the way: I hope you know that you don't need to be exact every single day on all of the macros. Pretty close on average over a few days to a week should be just fine. Protein and fats are essential nutrients (in that our body can't manufacture some of their essential components out of anything else). Carbs aren't essential in that sense. For me, that makes me consider protein and fats goals the more important ones to treat as minimums.

I'm ovo-lacto vegetarian, and have been for 50 years now.

If you want to stick with vegetarian protein sources (or mostly those), it should be doable, with a bit of attention, IMO. When I was losing weight (at age 59-60, BTW), so at reduced calories, I was hitting a minimum of 80-90g most days, and sometimes more. Now, on maintenance calories, I shoot for a minimum of 100g, and usually exceed it.

I do eat a lot of dairy foods: Plain nonfat Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, skim milk, other cheeses (calorie-efficient ones in greater amounts, richer ones in smaller amounts). I don't eat a lot of eggs, but do eat some. Year round, when not away from home, I'm sure it averages fewer than a dozen a month, probably lots fewer. (I eat more eggs when traveling because it's harder to get good veggie protein in restaurants otherwise.)

Beyond that, some of my core protein sources that are complete proteins (in essential amino acids, EAAs) are traditional soy foods (tofu, tempeh, occasionally natto, etc.). I know many people don't like the texture of tofu. If that's you, I'd point out that it can be blended into many things unnoticeably to amp up the protein, because it's very neutral tasting.

It's incomplete, but another good source is seitan (it's gluten, so that won't work if you're sensitive). I eat a lot of legumes, including peanut butter. I eat other nuts and seeds regularly in small amounts, but all of those are more a fat source than a protein source. (Fats are the macro I need to pay attention to, or I often wouldn't get enough.)

Quinoa is also a complete protein, though I don't often eat it (not sure why, honestly).

Other sources I like (that are incomplete so need complementing somewhere along the line to get all the necessary EAAs):

* Red lentil pasta (the closest taste/texture to wheat pasta, but nearly double the protein),
* Edamame or black bean pasta in skinny shapes (chewier than wheat pasta, but I like it in pseudo-Asian preparations, such as with stir-fried (or stir-steamed) veg),
* Peanut butter powder (partially defatted), which is good for making peanut sauce to use on veggies, and the chocolate peanut butter powder is tasty mixed with plain yogurt and frozen mixed berries (still frozen, or thawed fully/partly), plus I put it in my oatmeal,
* Nutritional yeast, which I put in my cottage cheese or mix into bean soups or the like.

When I first started trying to get enough protein on reduced calories, what I did was review my diary every few days, looking for foods that had relatively many calories, but little to no protein. I'd then consider whether I could reduce those foods (in portion size or frequency) to make calorie room for other foods I enjoy that had at least a bit more protein. Repeating that process over time, I gradually tweaked my routine eating habits to the point where I was getting adequate protein regularly without having to micromanage it daily.

As @springlering62 said upthread, it's worth even including some smaller protein sources alongside the one or two "big proteins" in each meal. They add up.

One thing that was helpful to me in remodeling my habits was this thread:

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

It links to a spreadsheet that lists many, many foods ordered by most protein for fewest calories. Many of the things at the top are meaty/fishy, but you can find plant foods further down the list. Many of those are incomplete (in EAAs), but eating a variety of sources regularly, and relying on traditional complementary combinations (like beans and rice, or beans and corn for example) can mitigate that to some extent.

Like Spring said, I'm also a widow, but I've had a lot of time in that status: I was widowed at 42, in 1998. It's excellent that you're finding your way past some of the immediate (but not so productive) forms of grieving, and finding a new path toward thriving. Please give yourself some time and grace to fully find that new path; I know you'll succeed if you keep working at it when emotional bandwidth allows.

I'm cheering for you to succeed, too: The results are worth the effort, in so many ways.

Apologies for the long ramble! If you have any specific questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Best wishes!

springlering62

Off to see wth “natto” is……

springlering62

I love tofu. My husband kicks and screams at the mere sight of the package in the fridge.

Invest a few bucks in a tofu press. It’s well worth it. I also used it to press some homemade paneer and it worked great!

AnnPT77

springlering62 wrote: »

Off to see wth “natto” is……

Scary, most people think.

It's a traditional fermented soybean product with a kind of funky (literally) flavor and odor. Weirdly stringy, too. Not everyone's cup of soybeans. I like it, at least in moderate amounts.

Hobartlemagne

Tempeh.
I'm an omnivore and I still like the taste of tempeh. Its made out of soybeans which are the highest protein bean.