Protein dense foods

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When I started out on this endeavor, I was eating only 1400 calories and exercising quite a bit, every day. Even later, as I raised my calorie count to 1800, I still faced the challenge of getting my necessary protein (100g or more) at that calorie level.

Doing the math, you can see that I need to average almost 6g of protein per every 100 calories eaten to get the protein I need. That's not easy considering that a) a lot of foods aren't nearly that protein-dense and b) I didn't want to subsist on nothing but chicken and tuna indefinitely.

So, when I read product labels, I'm very tuned into protein/calories and I love it when I find items that have 1g of protein for every 10 calories (there aren't that many of them). Here's a picture of a few of my favorites.


Several of these, I combine into my almost daily breakfast burrito. Of course, chicken, tuna, and certain other lean meats make the grade. And of course, there's my absolute favorite tortilla; it's amazing to me that a tortilla can have this high a protein/calorie level. And some forms of greek yogurt meet or exceed the 1g/10 cals goal; Dannon's Light & Fit Greek has 12g of protein and only 80 calories!

Note: Dannon's packaging is VERY confusing. The Light & Fit Greek package looks almost exactly like the Light & Fit non-Greek yogurts which are much lower in protein. Currently, the Greek version with all the protein only comes in 4-packs and looks as pictured above.


The only nit some would pick with the Dannon Light & Fit Greek Yogurt is that it uses artificial sweeteners (sucralose and ace K) to keep the calorie count down to 80. If you want to avoid those sweeteners, I've found that Lucerne's non-fat 2X PLAIN protein yogurt (in the topmost picture of this post) has only 100 calories and 14g of protein, and you can add some honey or sugar to sweeten it up and still be above the 1:10 goal.

My other recent find is the Pure Protein energy bars. I try to eat regular food rather than energy bars as much as possible, but I like being able to throw one in my bag in case I run out of energy during the day when nothing's available. Unlike many high calorie energy bars, these provide pretty good protein at a reasonable calorie count -- the strawberry shortcake version has 19g of protein in a 180 calorie bar, and their other flavors are nearly as good. Compare them to the label of your favorite brand and you might want to give Pure Protein a try. I was enjoying Think Thin bars, but these are about 15-20% lower in calories (15-20% smaller, too), and a little more protein dense.