Ok, that is a great start. Let's think now about shifting into Step One. There are 4 parts to Step One:

 

Ÿ    Eat enough protein for your weight

Ÿ    Eat a complex carbohydrate

Ÿ    Eat within one hour of getting up

Ÿ    Eat breakfast every day

 

You will not need to jump from nothing to all in one step. Let's break these parts up into a sequence that you can actually do.

 

Ÿ    Eat breakfast every day

 

Starting tomorrow, you will have breakfast every morning. Plan now what you can have for tomorrow's breakfast. Make it something you like and can manage. If you will fix it at home, make sure you have what you need in the house. If you will go out for breakfast, think through how much time you will need and where you will go.

Do not scare yourself. If you are used to having just coffee, have your coffee first so you get the caffeine hit and are not cranky. If you cannot stand the idea of eating, just get a bagel with cream cheese or something really simple.

Ÿ    Eat enough protein for your weight

 

Ok, do this one in two phases. First simply make sure you get some protein. Use your fist as a guideline: have a fist-sized portion of protein at breakfast. Obviously, if you weigh more or have a bigger fist, you will need to eat more protein. The fist-sized portion applies to protein that you can actually hold in your hand. So milk wouldn't count as a good meal protein. Cottage cheese does. Protein foods include

Eggs	Meat	Fish
Beans	Cheese	Protein Powders

 

Your body needs protein for a whole number of things. Your body needs protein to produce amino acids that run your body. They build and rebuild cells and repair things that are broken. For sugar-sensitive people, one particular amino acid, tryptophan is particularly critical. Tryptophan is the raw material that your body uses to make serotonin. Without sufficient raw material from tryptophan, your serotonin factory can't make what you need. Protein supplies the tryptophan that is the raw material.

 

This is NOT a high protein plan. It is a regular and consistent protein plan.

 

How much protein should you have?

 

As you master getting some protein into every breakfast, you can being to look at how much you actually need for your body weight. If you divide your total body weight in half, you will get the approximate number of grams of protein you should have in a day. For example if you weigh 150 pounds, you would have about 75 grams of protein in a day. Divide the result by three to find out how much protein you should have at each meal. Your breakfast will include that number of grams of protein each morning.

 

 So a 150-pound person would be having approximately 25 grams of protein at each meal. If you are a very large person (over 250 pounds), you will want to have less than proportion because the ratio of your body fat to your lean muscle mass is so much higher.  Have no more than 42 grams of protein at breakfast regardless of your weight.

 

Work out how much protein you need for breakfast:

 

My weight = ___________

 

Half my weight = ______________  This equals the grams of protein I need every day.

 

One third of the total grams for the day  = __________This is what I need at each meal.

 

I need _________ grams of protein for breakfast.

 

 

Ok, terrific. Let's do one more exercise to make sure you understand that process. Circle the best breakfast protein gram estimate for each body weight given:

 

 

Weight
150 pounds	25 grams	20 grams	35 grams
180 pounds	30 grams	20 grams	90 grams
240 pounds	120 grams	40 grams	30 grams
400 pounds	66 grams	100 grams	42 grams
280 pounds	46 grams	65 grams	43 grams
300 pounds	150 grams	42 grams	30 grams
190 pounds	95 grams	42 grams	32 grams
120 pounds	20 grams	32 grams`	15 grams

 

 

How does this translate to food?

 

 How much *food* you should have to get the number of grams of protein you want for your meal plan.  You may remember from high school that there are 28 grams in one ounce. Don't be fooled into thinking if you need 28 grams of protein, you will just eat one ounce of meat. Even though 28 grams equals one ounce, grams of protein do NOT equal ounces of food. 

 

A food item is weighed in ounces.  Each ounce of that food contains grams of fat, carbohydrates, and water.  So, each protein food source includes different amounts of protein Ð measured in grams.  Dense protein sources (meat, chicken, fish) contain more grams of protein per ounce than not so dense sources (milk, yogurt). In our program, we mainly count the proteins from dense sources to maximize your body's healing and keep things really simple. When you are getting started, you can count the less dense ones like milk and yogurt as well.

 

The more dense protein sources contain somewhere between 7 and 9 grams of protein in an ounce.  So for example, a 4 ounce chicken breast has about 32 grams of protein, but 4 ounces of tofu has only 16 grams of protein.

 

 

 

Here is a list of typical protein contents for many of the protein foods you might eat:

 

Meats and fish:	There is about 10 grams per ounce of a standard cut of meat.  Ground meat gives about 30 grams of protein in a ¼ pound of meat.  This is true for beef, pork, lamb or fish.
Poultry:	Chicken and turkey have about 20 grams of protein in a 3 ounce cutlet or about 30 grams in a ½ a chicken breast.
Eggs:	Eggs have 7-9 grams of protein per egg depending on the size.
Beans:	Beans have 8-9 grams of protein per ½ cup cooked serving.

 

 

If you are a bigger person and need more protein, this may seem hard at first. The trick is to mix and match your protein. So you might have eggs and sausage  or make an omlette with cottage cheese in it.

 

To get you started, here is a list of breakfast foods with their protein content.

Cheddar cheese 3.4 oz	25
2 TBS protein powder	24
Sliced turkey - 4 oz	20
3 eggs	19
Sausage 3 links	15-45 (read labels)
Cottage cheese 4 oz	14
Skim milk - 12 oz	12
Peanut butter - 2 TBS	8
Yogurt - 8 oz	8

 

Let's play with this and see what will work for you.