Intermittent Fasters- what is your strategy to get in your protein?
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ivyjbres1
Posts: 7 Member
I'm considering starting IF, but I already struggle with getting my protein in. I only sleep about 6 hours, so it's taking me all 18 hours I'm awake to hit my protein goal. What are your strategies to fit your protein into only 8 or 12 hours?
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I have to ask: How high is your protein goal and calorie goal, for what current body size/approximate goal weight, and how active (doing what)?
I'm a believer in relatively high protein, but we do occasionally see folks here who've either set protein unnecessarily high (usually because of a blog or trainer), or calories punitively low . . . either of which will make it tough to hit protein goal and stay within calorie goal.
With reluctance, I guess I'd also ask what you hope to get out of IF-ing. It can be a great strategy in the right circumstances, for sure. But personally - though others will argue - I'd put getting adequate protein at a higher priority than sticking with a particular (and difficult for you) eating strategy. You may have excellent reasons I don't know about for doing IF, though.
ETA: Are there protein sources you find relatively less filling? For example, some people find it less filling to drink food (like a shake or smoothie) or eat it in a dessert-like form. That's about the only way I can think of to put more protein happily into fewer hours.1 -
Oh, this is going to get long...
My protein goal is about 155 g. Total calories between 1550 and 1800. So 35-40%, which I know, seems high, but I'm trying to build back from a post viral syndrome that caused 6 years of fatigue and my metabolism circling the drain. I'm a dietetics student, so I've got my macros where they need to be from a medical nutrition therapy standpoint. I'm sitting steady at 220. When I say my energy and metabolism were circling the drain.... Yeah, it got bad. I'm still very inactive, but slowly adding; if I let myself go as hard as I feel like I can, I get super tired and need to sleep so much it screws up my sleep cycle, if I don't do enough, insomnia kicks in. So I have to plan my energy output very carefully. What I'm hoping to get out of IF is stimulation my metabolism and getting it to utilize my fat stores. Pretty much all protein fills me up the same, but I can reliably get in 30ish grams per meal/snack about every 4 hours. I do have a dairy allergy, so all dairy products are off the table. I use various plant protein powders in smoothies as well. I only eat complex carbs in the evenings, they make me tired. I may just be stuck at this weight until I get my activity level up some, but I'm having a hard time being satisfied with that.1 -
Oh, this is going to get long...
My protein goal is about 155 g. Total calories between 1550 and 1800. So 35-40%, which I know, seems high, but I'm trying to build back from a post viral syndrome that caused 6 years of fatigue and my metabolism circling the drain. I'm a dietetics student, so I've got my macros where they need to be from a medical nutrition therapy standpoint. I'm sitting steady at 220. When I say my energy and metabolism were circling the drain.... Yeah, it got bad. I'm still very inactive, but slowly adding; if I let myself go as hard as I feel like I can, I get super tired and need to sleep so much it screws up my sleep cycle, if I don't do enough, insomnia kicks in. So I have to plan my energy output very carefully. What I'm hoping to get out of IF is stimulation my metabolism and getting it to utilize my fat stores. Pretty much all protein fills me up the same, but I can reliably get in 30ish grams per meal/snack about every 4 hours. I do have a dairy allergy, so all dairy products are off the table. I use various plant protein powders in smoothies as well. I only eat complex carbs in the evenings, they make me tired. I may just be stuck at this weight until I get my activity level up some, but I'm having a hard time being satisfied with that.
Utilizing fat stores for weight loss purposes is about calorie balance and doesn't facilitate some extra fat burning advantage from just engaging in IF. Utilizing fat stores longer as you put it, allows the body to be in a catabolic state longer which works with associated mechanisms like cortisol, HGH, glucagon and melatonin and facilitates autophagy and cellular repair along with allowing less overall insulin secretion's over a 24 hour session which for most people will increase insulin sensitivity and help to lower HbA1c over time and it helps reduce the frequency of first phase insulin secretion from meal frequency. If your really lucky your satiety will be increased and some weight loss may occur from not reaching out to grab a snack where otherwise your probably would have, at night for example, which is why most people engage in IF, which ironically weight loss never was the focus of the science but if eating less is a symptom of IF, then it's one that if a person is overweight will be thankful for.
I find an association with people that have a hard time getting enough protein while claiming to eat enough with a plant based diet and more so with vegans than vegetarians for obvious reasons but I will also say that the bioavailability and quality of plant protein isn't as good as animal proteins sources and if that's the case you'll need to increase protein consumption by at least 30% to compensate, imo. Good luck with your journey.0 -
So you plan to eat 50 grams of protein at one time? Or 75 grams? Can your body handle that much all at once?0
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Corina1143 wrote: »So you plan to eat 50 grams of protein at one time? Or 75 grams? Can your body handle that much all at once?
Well an 8 oz steak is 60 g of protein, which is not something I could eat right now, but plenty of people do. But that's basically my question- is it even possible ( for me) to do IF without being it completely ridiculous?0 -
Corina1143 wrote: »So you plan to eat 50 grams of protein at one time? Or 75 grams? Can your body handle that much all at once?
Well an 8 oz steak is 60 g of protein, which is not something I could eat right now, but plenty of people do. But that's basically my question- is it even possible ( for me) to do IF without being it completely ridiculous?
Honestly, I don't think IF would be ideal in your situation for your goals. I've tried cramming that much protein into 2 meals and it was... unpleasant. And unhelpful.1 -
Oh, this is going to get long...
My protein goal is about 155 g. Total calories between 1550 and 1800. So 35-40%, which I know, seems high, but I'm trying to build back from a post viral syndrome that caused 6 years of fatigue and my metabolism circling the drain. I'm a dietetics student, so I've got my macros where they need to be from a medical nutrition therapy standpoint. I'm sitting steady at 220. When I say my energy and metabolism were circling the drain.... Yeah, it got bad. I'm still very inactive, but slowly adding; if I let myself go as hard as I feel like I can, I get super tired and need to sleep so much it screws up my sleep cycle, if I don't do enough, insomnia kicks in. So I have to plan my energy output very carefully. What I'm hoping to get out of IF is stimulation my metabolism and getting it to utilize my fat stores. Pretty much all protein fills me up the same, but I can reliably get in 30ish grams per meal/snack about every 4 hours. I do have a dairy allergy, so all dairy products are off the table. I use various plant protein powders in smoothies as well. I only eat complex carbs in the evenings, they make me tired. I may just be stuck at this weight until I get my activity level up some, but I'm having a hard time being satisfied with that.
That does make things difficult. I'm relieved to hear that you're coming from a well-informed perspective. You say you're sitting steady at 220 . . . does that mean you don't have weight you want to lose, or just that you're not losing at this time?
(I'd always encourage people to set protein gram goals based on a healthy goal weight, rather than an overweight/obese body weight, but I'm sure you're familiar with that line of thinking. I'm asking because your profile says you're female, and 220 is an unusual weight for a woman unless unusually tall or muscular. At 5'5", I aim for 110g protein daily as a minimum, usually get more like 120g. Some of my powerlifting or bodybuilding friends might go higher at similar height, like maybe up to 140s grams or so. But I'm not a dietetics student, just an interested amateur. For protein goals, I tend to trust these guys to summarize the research well: https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/ and https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/ . Their guide does suggest goal weight can be used in the calculator if overweight.)
From an exercise perspective, do you also have personal expertise about that, or a good professional(s) advising? Exercise seems to be fraught in your case, too, because of your recent health history. I suspect you have things under control, but another common thing to see here is people thinking exercise has to be some brag-worthy intense routine, or there's no benefit . . . but that couldn't be further from the truth, as I'm sure you know. If you're managing a gradual, sensibly moderate increase in combined daily activity level plus exercise, you're doing fine. I get that it's frustrating to go slowly, though.
I admit I have my biases, but if I were you, as I mentioned before, I'd put the priority on optimizing protein intake, and moderate the IF plans for now. If there are benefits, I think the risks of too-low protein intake are more problematic than those benefits would offset. If your goal is fat loss, sensibly gradual weight loss (via calorie counting or other methods) would accomplish that, even without IF.
I'd also say that with multiple health issues in the picture, keeping weight loss slow could help with overall stress management (since calorie deficit, however achieved, is a physical stress). I (re-)lost some pound very slowly a year or two back, like half a pound a week or less on average. That's very slow, but for me it was practically painless, certainly low physical stress.
If you want to pursue IF, possibly you could gradually compress your eating window as you get accustomed to eating more protein? "Gradual" seems to me to be a good thing given all of your health challenges . . . but like I said, challenging to go slowly, psychologically.
Obviously, that's all just my opinion. I also feel like the research on IF benefits is still fairly young, so I could be missing something, for sure.
Best wishes for finding a path through these difficulties!2 -
By steady at 220, I'm not losing weight (obviously I would like to, and should) but I don't want to restrict my calories any further since I'm already having a hard time eating 1550 calories some days and not losing weight. At worst in April, just before my doctor figured out that sleep apnea was complicating the situation, I was barely eating 1200 calories (not from trying to restrict calories but) because I just didn't have the energy to stay awake long enough to eat more than that. And hadn't been losing weight then; my metabolism was just slightly higher than the average coma patient (that's a small exaggeration, but not much). Which is where the increased protein comes in. Sleep is when your body cells repair themselves, and having not gotten appropriate oxygen at night for 6 years, my immune system was very low and I wasn't able to recover as usual. So normally, you'd go with .8-1.2 g of lean body mass or goal weight, but repair takes precedence, so we upped that to 1.4 of current weight to accommodate for metabolic stress and facilitate recovery. It has been 6 months, and most of the generalized aches and pains have gone, so I can probably reassess and lower to 1.2 g.Oh, this is going to get long...
My protein goal is about 155 g. Total calories between 1550 and 1800. So 35-40%, which I know, seems high, but I'm trying to build back from a post viral syndrome that caused 6 years of fatigue and my metabolism circling the drain. I'm a dietetics student, so I've got my macros where they need to be from a medical nutrition therapy standpoint. I'm sitting steady at 220. When I say my energy and metabolism were circling the drain.... Yeah, it got bad. I'm still very inactive, but slowly adding; if I let myself go as hard as I feel like I can, I get super tired and need to sleep so much it screws up my sleep cycle, if I don't do enough, insomnia kicks in. So I have to plan my energy output very carefully. What I'm hoping to get out of IF is stimulation my metabolism and getting it to utilize my fat stores. Pretty much all protein fills me up the same, but I can reliably get in 30ish grams per meal/snack about every 4 hours. I do have a dairy allergy, so all dairy products are off the table. I use various plant protein powders in smoothies as well. I only eat complex carbs in the evenings, they make me tired. I may just be stuck at this weight until I get my activity level up some, but I'm having a hard time being satisfied with that.
That does make things difficult. I'm relieved to hear that you're coming from a well-informed perspective. You say you're sitting steady at 220 . . . does that mean you don't have weight you want to lose, or just that you're not losing at this time?
(I'd always encourage people to set protein gram goals based on a healthy goal weight, rather than an overweight/obese body weight, but I'm sure you're familiar with that line of thinking. I'm asking because your profile says you're female, and 220 is an unusual weight for a woman unless unusually tall or muscular. At 5'5", I aim for 110g protein daily as a minimum, usually get more like 120g. Some of my powerlifting or bodybuilding friends might go higher at similar height, like maybe up to 140s grams or so. But I'm not a dietetics student, just an interested amateur. For protein goals, I tend to trust these guys to summarize the research well: https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/ and https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/ . Their guide does suggest goal weight can be used in the calculator if overweight.)
From an exercise perspective, do you also have personal expertise about that, or a good professional(s) advising? Exercise seems to be fraught in your case, too, because of your recent health history. I suspect you have things under control, but another common thing to see here is people thinking exercise has to be some brag-worthy intense routine, or there's no benefit . . . but that couldn't be further from the truth, as I'm sure you know. If you're managing a gradual, sensibly moderate increase in combined daily activity level plus exercise, you're doing fine. I get that it's frustrating to go slowly, though.
I admit I have my biases, but if I were you, as I mentioned before, I'd put the priority on optimizing protein intake, and moderate the IF plans for now. If there are benefits, I think the risks of too-low protein intake are more problematic than those benefits would offset. If your goal is fat loss, sensibly gradual weight loss (via calorie counting or other methods) would accomplish that, even without IF.
I'd also say that with multiple health issues in the picture, keeping weight loss slow could help with overall stress management (since calorie deficit, however achieved, is a physical stress). I (re-)lost some pound very slowly a year or two back, like half a pound a week or less on average. That's very slow, but for me it was practically painless, certainly low physical stress.
If you want to pursue IF, possibly you could gradually compress your eating window as you get accustomed to eating more protein? "Gradual" seems to me to be a good thing given all of your health challenges . . . but like I said, challenging to go slowly, psychologically.
Obviously, that's all just my opinion. I also feel like the research on IF benefits is still fairly young, so I could be missing something, for sure.
Best wishes for finding a path through these difficulties!
My exercise experience in Jr high and high school was pretty psychologically unhealthy (working out through severe illnesses and broken bones, etc.) If it didn't require surgery, you were expected to keep going. Current medical advise is to just take it very slowly and try and thread the needle between too little and too much. Right now I'm up to an average of 2800 steps a day (1800 in April). And I'll be adding in body weight exercises like squats over the next few months.
It seems like IF isn't going to be a good choice for me in the immediate future, maybe an option to revisit in another 6 months or a year depending on how my health progresses.
2 -
Your story sounds a lot like mine did 20 or so years ago. I lost 60 pounds eating about 12 hours a day. Trying to keep the balance of feeding my body the nourishment it needed while cutting enough calories to lose weight. Balancing exercising enough to help my body with managing cfs.
I'm good now!
Wish you the best.1 -
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