A working nutrient plan is the plan that is a result of enough knowledge and observations – on your own self and on how your body reacts to particular foods, particular combinations of ingredients, in different parts of the day and in different conditions (rest day, training day, a day with less sleep, a day with more stress and so forth.)
During the past couple years, I’ve been testing a lot of things on myself. I could say that I have found what are the foods and macro ratios that work for different people and how they can help us achieve our goals. Still, I often go out of the working model and test on myself – so I can then share with you my success or lack of it and share with you if something works or not.
(here, you can read about my experiments with fasting)
From my online work with a lot of women and men, I notice the chaotic choices of foods. I observe the chaotic choices of protein, carb and fat sources. If, more often, we take the time to think how we feel after we eat a particular food, what is missing, what is our energy level, how much time we had satiety and what was our mood, probably we would collect enough information about when and what we need to eat in order to feel great.
I see a lot of women, who eat curds all day long or they have eggs on every meal as their protein source. Then, they wonder why they have digestive issues, why they get bloated and why things do not work out. They wonder why they get in situations where they feel an uncontrollable urge to eat particular foods.
Women and men, who eat particular foods, always in the same combinations, even though their body is giving them a feedback, saying that this is not enough or that it doesn’t feel good from these foods.
How to pick protein sources in different parts of the day?
Today, I will give you a different point of view. I will make you think deeper about your protein sources in different parts of the day. I will make you ask yourself and then answer the question, why after some meals you feel satiety for 4-5 hours, and after some meals, it hasn’t been an hour and a half and you are already starving. This is just the speechless voice of your body, which is trying to communicate with you and help you –too bad that we don’t even bother listening to it.
Do You Eat Eggs?
If you’ve been eating healthy, you probably eat eggs. How do you like eating them? Boiled, scrambled, poached, in an omelet or probably raw?
Do you pay attention to the way you feel after a meal that has boiled eggs and on the contrary how do you feel after a meal that has scrambled eggs? Have you noticed the difference? How many boiled eggs do you need in order to feel satiety? And how many scrambled eggs do you need in order to feel the same fullness?
The different ways we cook eggs, denatures amino acids in the egg white and makes them easier and faster to digest or on the other hand slows down digestion. The way we cook eggs, can determine how much time we will feel satiety. You do not need to know the science behind that, in order to track your body and notice that you get satiety for a longer time when you eat hard-boiled eggs or fried eggs, than you get when you eat soft boiled or scrambled eggs. The digestion of a soft boiled or scrambled eggs, takes about two hours, while fried or hard-boiled eggs take more than 3 hours to get digested.
For the geeks:
What happens with the protein, depending on the way we cook eggs?
You can eat raw eggs, but they need to be pasteurized. Pasteurization is when eggs are heated to a temperature that kills bacteria and what is more important for today’s topic – the protein inhibitors (avidin). If you eat raw, unpasteurized eggs, then the body cannot use protein the same way, because of the protein inhibitors.
Avidin is a glycoprotein, which can be found in raw egg whites and blocks the absorption of vitamin B6 and biotin. Cooking neutralizes avidin and allows the body to digest the protein and use all available amino acids. Cooking the egg white in a high temperature denatures some of the amino acids, which makes the proteins slower to digest. Soft boiled egg, gets digested a lot easier, than a hard-boiled eggs.
Egg white is about 10% protein and 90% water. Proteins in the egg white make it get harder when we cook it. Protein in egg whites are long chains of amino acids. In the raw egg, these proteins are curled up and folded. Weak bonds between amino acids, keep proteins in a ball like shape, until we heat them up. When they are exposed to higher temperatures, weaker bonds tear and the protein unfolds. Then, the amino acids of the protein, form weak bonds with amino acids of other proteins – this process is called coagulation. The result of this net of proteins, collects water, which turns it into a smooth and digestive gel.
If when we cook eggs, the temperature is too high or if we cook eggs for longer periods of time, proteins in the egg white form more and more bonds, squeeze water from the net of proteins and turn egg white into a rubbery state and increase the time for digestion.
Thus, the easiest to digest protein is the one of pasteurized eggs or soft boiled eggs, as well as poached eggs, which haven’t reached 160 degrees (the temperature above which coagulation takes place.)
How much time does it take to digest the protein of different food sources
Probably you have noticed it yourself – that you can go a long time without foods if you eat a steak, but you get hungry quickly, if you had yogurt, for example.
All of this has its logical explanation and it has to do with the speed of digestion and the absorption of protein from different foods.
This post doesn’t have the goal to praise one food as better than another one, but just to show you why you get hungry faster after you have eaten some foods and why you feel satiety long after you have eaten other foods. I think that once you have that knowledge and observations about yourself, you can make better decisions about what and how much you eat.
I always try to track the feedback from my body. I do not think about the table below, but I just know how my body reacts. I know that if I do not have the time to eat in the next 5-6 hours, I won’t rely on scrambled eggs or yogurt, in order to feel full. Instead, I will choose a steak. I know that if I eat and I have a workout in an hour or two, I don’t want to feel heaviness and that is why I will choose a faster to digest protein source – for example soft boiled eggs, yogurt with nuts and seeds and so forth.
I use the information I have collected about my body, in order to choose different protein sources in different parts of the day. This gives me enough energy for the periods when I won’t be able to eat, without forcing me to starve and then make up for the period I’ve gone without food. Besides that, I do not feel the need to eat every two hours.
Protein | Speed of absorption (grams/hour) |
Protein from raw eggs | 1.4 |
Cooked eggs | 2.9 |
Pea protein | 3.5 |
Dairy protein | 3.5 |
Soy protein | 3.9 |
Casein Isolate | 6.1 |
Whey Isolate | 8-10 |
Pork steak | 10 |
Table source: The Protein Book, Lyle McDonald
Source | Absorption of protein (%) |
Eggs | 97 |
Milk and cheese | 97 |
Nut butters | 95 |
Meat and fish | 94 |
Wheat | 86 |
Oats | 86 |
Soy | 78 |
Rice | 76 |
How much food do we need in order to feel satiety?
I’ve always said, that a person doesn’t need a lot of food in order to feel satiety and in order to be healthy. What matters are the food sources. The easier they are to absorb, the more macro and micronutrients we get and this means we do not feel the urge to eat more.
For the geeks:
Whey protein increases amino acid levels in the bloodstream, faster than casein, but also the levels of amino acids in the bloodstream fall down faster. On the other hand, casein takes longer to digest and provides amino acids during the next 8 hours.
Casein and whey protein, reach the bloodstream for the same time (about an hour). But whey protein increases amino acid levels faster for that one hour frame. Thus, whey protein increases protein synthesis without having an effect on protein breakdown, while casein decreases protein breakdown, without having an effect on protein synthesis. Thus, whey is famous as anabolic protein and casein as anti-catabolic. That is why a lot of bodybuilder take casein or eat foods rich in casein before they go to sleep – so they can provide a constant stream of amino acids o their muscles, during sleep.
Here is a table with the bio-availability of protein in different foods. Bi-available means that the body can absorb protein more effectively from these foods.
Protein sources | Bio-availability index |
Whey Protein Isolate | 100-159 |
Whey Protein Concentrate | 104 |
Whole eggs | 100 |
Cow’s milk | 91 |
Egg whites | 88 |
Fish | 83 |
Beef | 80 |
Chicken | 79 |
Casein | 77 |
Rice | 74 |
Soy | 59 |
Wheat | 54 |
Lentils | 49 |
Eggs | 43 |
Table source: The Protein Book, Lyle McDonald
Probably, you’ve already found the answer to the question why when your diet is abundant of some foods – with less quantity and with less calories, you feel satiety, but when your diet is abundant in other type of foods, you need more food and you still do not have satiety.
Sure, in this post I am talking about protein, in an isolated manner and I am not talking about eating it with fats and carbs.
My goal is not to make you walk around with the tables, printed on a paper and I don’t encourage you to check the rate of digestion of your meals every time you eat. It is more than enough, if after each meal, you ask the question: “How do I feel?”; “How long do I feel satiety after the meal?”; “Is something missing in my meals?”
These are just part of the questions that I encourage my online clients to answer and write down after each meal, so we can track how their body responds to the nutrition plan.
Most of them say that this makes them be more conscious about eating and learn how their body reacts.
Thus, if you are about to have lunch and you know that your next meal will be at 7-8 p.m., you will know that it is better to eat a steak, than eat a “diet” yogurt and then wonder why you lose control during dinner and why you eat everything that is in sight.
If you are about to have breakfast, but you know that you will train in an hour, it is better to eat scrambled eggs, than hard boiled eggs, so you do not feel heaviness and discomfort during the physical activity.
Thus, you can ask yourself the question, how long you feel satiety after you eat a particular food or a combination of foods. In order to understand what are the foods that satisfy your hunger, for the longest amount of time and make them the staple of your diet.
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5 minutes are not a lot of time. Everybody can take them. 5 minutes dedicated to something on a daily basis, are enough to light up the fire of your desire, inspiration and motivation. Five minutes are enough to make the first step towards reinventing yourself.
Today I have a new challenge for you. There we go.
interesting. Rice makes me feel satiated longer from lunch time til my next meal which is dinner. However right now I am avoiding rice and bread, eating just greens and protein. without rice, i have to eat snacks like peanuts or something similar. With rice and chicken breast for lunch, I can skip the afternoon snack without feeling hungry. Thing is I want to lean out and have more muscle and hopefully get a six pack 😀