Weighing and Measuring Protein-Special Considerations
In this video we talk about certain special considerations you should keep in mind when keeping track of your protein macros.
1. When calculating your macros/calories be sure to take account of the protein AND the fat from your quality protein sources.
While oils tend to be pure fat and most vegetables/plant foods are almost exclusively carbohydrate, most quality protein sources are a combo of protein AND fat. An exception would be something like a boneless skinless chicken breast which is almost exclusively protein.
For example, 8oz or half a pound of 85/15 ground beef would be roughly 42g of protein, 0g of carbs, 34g of fat. If you only accounted for the protein you would be missing a substantial amount of fat in your calorie/macro calculations.
2. Weigh and measure your protein sources RAW.
There’s debate about this online and you’re welcome to do it however you’d like. Generally speaking, though, the best way to go about things is to weigh and measure your protein raw because it shrinks
while cooking. Furthermore the nutrition facts on the label are for the RAW food not the cooked food.
For example, if you weight 8oz of 85/15 ground beef on a scale before you cooked it it should be 227g, but if you weighed it after cooking, depending on the cooking method, it would be as low as 150g by weight. There’s a significant difference between entering 227g of ground beef in MyFitnessPal and 150g.
3. Grams of weight is NOT the same as grams of protein.
For example, when you put 8oz/half pound of ground beef on a scale it should weigh 227g. However, that is NOT the total amount of protein in the ground beef. 227g by WEIGHT of ground beef would yield roughly 100g of protein (depending on the leanness of the beef or other meat).
Hopefully these are useful tips for when you weigh and measure your protein.
___________________________________________________________________________TRANSCRIPT
– Now let’s finish by talking about some special considerations.
Okay, so with a lot of foods that we’ll be talking about, they are just typically one macronutrient, so I’ll give you an example. So oils would typically just be healthy fat. Carbs, or excuse me, vegetables and fruit would typically just be carbohydrates. With the animal protein sources that you’re consuming here, typically they are also gonna contain a decent amount of fat in them as well. And this balance is important. So take a couple examples on either end of the spectrum. Chicken breast would be an example of a super, super lean protein, so very high in protein, about 50 grams of protein for having half a pound or eight ounces. Super low in fats. So if you’re doing more of a bodybuilding diet, or a leaner protein diet, that’s going to be fantastic. Bacon on the other hand is gonna be the exact opposite, total reverse. And most pork in general, with the exception of pork tenderloin and pork chops, is gonna be much higher in fat and lower in protein. So bacon, not a great protein source. It’s gonna have some, but it’s gonna be mostly fat and not as much protein. So if someone’s doing a ketogenic diet. Much higher fat, moderate protein, super low carb, then bacon’s gonna be a really good option there. But you should remember that with these animal protein sources, it’s gonna be mixed not just of protein, but also of fat, and we’ll talk about this when we get to the macros video on fat as well.
Raw versus cooked. So you’ll see a lot of debate and discussion online about this, and you’re welcome to weigh and measure however you’d like, but if you’re weighing and measuring in MyFitnessPal or something like that, I would advocate that you weight your stuff raw, or really the easiest way is look, you’ve got a pound of ground beef, you know and you’re cooking it up, and you put half of that pound, let’s say after it’s cooked, on your plate, then you write just eight ounces in MyFitnessPal and that will calculate out the rough amount of protein you’ve consumed based on whether you’re eating ground beef or chicken. The problem is that there’s going to be a decent discrepancy between these two. So just to give you an example, if you cooked up a, let’s just use a half pound for right now, let’s say a half pound of 85/15 ground beef. By weight, that’s gonna be 227 grams before you cook it. And then depending on the method you cook it, you know, I’ll typically roast it in the oven, or saute it, that can come out anywhere around like 150 grams by weight. So we’re talking a pretty significant difference there, in terms of what it’s going to yield when you enter that into MyFitnessPal or some other program.
Which leads me to my final point, which is a very common source of confusion, grams versus grams, so this is a question I hear all the time about protein that people get very confused about that let’s try to clear up. Let’s take eight ounces, or half a pound of something. Eight ounces of protein, whether it’s ground beef or chicken or what have you, would be roughly 227 grams by weight of that meat. So if you put that meat on the scale, it’s going to say 227 grams, before you cook it typically. That’s what it will weigh. Because a full pound is 454, so half that, 227. But that same eight ounces precooked is going to be 100 grams of protein. Why? Because, well for many reasons, but the main reason being that not all of that weight is made up of protein, some of it is made up of water, some of it’s made up of fat, some of it’s made of other things, so the weight of the protein is not the same as the total amount of grams of protein. Which brings me back to one other point that I should have made up here. A lot of times when you’re looking on the back of raw meat, or even on a nutrition facts label, whether it be online or in MyFitnessPal, they’re giving you the nutrition facts data for raw, not cooked. Sometimes you can find cooked, but generally it’s raw. So that’s one of the other reasons why it’s important to weigh and measure things typically raw. Alright guys, so we covered how much protein you should be having per day, what kind it should come from, and some special considerations to take into account. Hopefully now, if you’re looking to make macros a part of the way that you get a sense of what to do with your food, you have a sense of how to go about doing this now, especially with protein. In future videos we will cover carbs and fat. Alright guys, thanks so much for tuning in, see you next time.
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