Are You Getting Your Meat and Two Veg? A Great Healthspan Needs a Protein First Approach
Slurping spinach smoothies? Worse still, pretending to enjoy them? You can stop grimacing, we’ve got your get out of jail free card.
Still carbing up hoping to feel like the Duracell bunny? Lane change ahead for you!
Ghosting butter and cheese as if they’re sus? Get grass fed goodness in your gut!
Fasting without fat and collagen? No need to be a masochist!
What is Nutrition? Back in the box, baked beans! We’re beating the good fat, quality protein drum!
We’ve good news for your WillPowders Way: The real stuff that will keep you full and fuelled are good fats and quality proteins. Think steak, chicken thighs, full fat dairy like Greek yoghurt and say hello to: growing, repairing, maintaining and longevitying! These foods are all part of a feckin’ flavoursome drill for helping your healthspan. Thank fat for that!
Myth-busting
Dee reminds us in FUTUREPROOF ‘facts’ about food aren’t always facts. If we think we’re doing ourselves a cast iron favour with spinach, we’re wrong. Some scientist stuck the decimal in the wrong place and Popeye the Liar was born.
Finding your boost from carbs? Energy, yes, but petrol’s also energy. You see where we’re going?
Think good fat’s the enemy? Fat’s a friend and food that your brain and cells love.
Fasting cold turkey in the hope that weightloss will come? Unless you’re following religious observance, you CAN give yourself a leg up with a teaspoon of collagen and ketogenic fat. Try C8 MCT Oil to cull food chatter. Coffee and Keto Creamer with Irish full fat, pasture raised grass fed butter, anyone? Don't mind if we do.
Before the deets, give it to me in shorts!
To protein-power up hormones, immune system, structural support (looking at you, fascia and bones) and muscle development, we do this:
- Use protein to barricade the refined carb floodgates. Feel in control of you and the fridge. No more chasing the dragon - the petrol station holds no fear.
- Take a quality, animal protein first approach - it’s what you’re made from! Eat protein first as a meal, a couple of veg in tow, and, if after 15 mins you still want more, have a clean bone broth protein shake - Chocolate Orange, Award Winning Milk Chocolate, or Vanilla - what’s not to like?
- Ditch thinking red meat will kill you when veg oils and chemicals are ahead in the queue. Order the steak! Cull veg oil and additives. Instead, welcome onboard fat that comes with quality protein. Wild-fish-omega 3 delish. Chicken thigh, skin on. Get in!
Amp GLP 1 satiety hormone levels with glycine. Get the best Swiss Bovine Collagen. It’s award-winning. No nasties in there at all. You can’t say fairer.
Curb carbs - your body’s not designed for excess
Don’t fall for the Hell Plate bullshit. The ‘Eat Well’ guide suggests wellness comes from less protein and massive carb portions. It doesn’t. It’s been debunked by Dr. Zoe Harcombe, who calls it the 'eatbadly plate'. Your body replaces fat stores with carbs. They repair nothing. No one wants to stuff saddlebags for fun. Think of fat stores as the hangover from excess carb consumption. It’s your body’s emergency way of getting dangerous levels of sugar in your blood out of the way.
If you're asking, how do I stop eating bad foods, we've plenty help for you:
Try our blog Why Can't I Stop Eating? It'll help start you on your way.
You could also try a reset. We've a couple of options - How to Reset and How to Do a 3 Day Reset - which also contains useful videos with Davinia to talk you through the process. We promise, that craving for UPFs and high bad fat, high sugar food will dissolve once you reset and take control.
Your brain's your own, there are ways to stop it being hijacked for the profit of Big Food. You've got this. And Nature's got you too - good fats and protein are satiating.
And what about energy drinks? ARe energy drinks bad for you?
High street energy drinks tend to have certain common qualities:
- sugar
- artificial sweeteners
- carbonation
- unmitigated caffeine
- a strange collection of e numbers
For a drink to boost energy, avoid sugar - it will only spike blood sugars then you'll crash and want more carbs and artificial sweeteners are chemicals so avoid those too. Carbonated drinks are a personal choice - it boils down to making sure carbonated drinks don't eclipse those points in the day when a different drink might be more nutritional. You can always swap in a WillPowders Coffee. That has caffeine from the coffee plus MCT Keto Creamer for ketone energy. Get caffeine to offer you all its energy boost effects but keep the cool focus and dodge the jitters by taking Calm whose L-theanine mitigates the heebie jeebies. Or go the whole hog and try a Brain Powder. Those sickly-sweet monstrous drinks won't be calling anymore!
Let’s faceplant in bioavailable complete animal protein
At WillPowders, nanna’s kitchen is back! Grandma knew best with her meat and two veg approach. Veg’ll support your vitamins and your microbiome, serving it one of the things it likes to chow down - fibre. If you’re going all out, try less carb-rich veg - mushroom, broccoli, peppers. Meat provides the bioavailable contribution of protein you need for bones, ligaments, tendons, liver, brain, skin and fingernails. Even then, that’s not a complete list of what protein’s doing for you. Sit down, carbs, you’re not what we’re made of!
Meat protein is complete protein - made up of the 20 amino acids the body needs to do its thing. That can’t be said for protein in the veg kingdom. Unless you’re happy to eat hemp seeds, quinoa and buckwheat daily, (you do you), you’re going to need to keep a register. Blue-green algae, anyone? Yeah, didn’t think so.
We’re not talking about the sort of eating body builders do in the run up to a comp. We’re talking about feeding you and the fam meals with protein as the star. There’s loads of ways to switch it up with a meat and two veg combo: mix up your flavours with our Chicken Puttanesca or Moussaka. Bang our Cauliflower Mash or Honey and Caraway Beetroot next to it and no one’s going to feel like they’re missing out, least of all your muscles and hormones. Nom nom nom.
After eating, take a breath. Leave it for 15 and decide - do I need anything else? If you do, make it protein. We’re wheeling a different type of dessert trolley - a protein first one: Coconut, Vanilla and Lemon Chia Seed Pudding, Cottage Cheese, Strawberry and Vanilla Ice Cream or Chickpea Protein Cookies. Pudding never got so protein.
Be bosom buddies with the butcher. Get friendly with farmers.
Grass fed, pasture raised meat, like lamb or beef (and goat, we kid you not), has been sustaining our ancestors forever. Have you been neglecting the meat raised by your local farmer and sold by your local butcher? They’ll tell you how the animal was reared, what it was fed (grass) and might well point out the pasture it roamed from the shop window. Rolling fields of green? We think so. Provenance? You bet.
You’re not just getting quality protein, you’re getting vitamin B12, folate and heme iron, the most easily absorbed iron for your body. Red meat, organ meats, oily fish, and dairy products contain methylcobalamin, the best B12 for bioavailability and retention for your body. It’s probably one of the reasons red meat isn’t killing you, but veg oil and chemicals could be.
We’ve been taught to love vegetables, right? But veg oil hasn’t been skillfully cold-pressed from a kernel of corn under a harvest moon by a buff farmhand called Randy. Ditch the fantasy romance. It’s been mechanically tortured and fettled and was never meant to be placed in your diet in the quantities it is. You can read more about our take on veg oil in our blog Vegging Out, or Inflamed? and there’s a breakdown of a Tesco’s sausage roll done Dee style in FUTUREPROOF, driving home what’s really giving your body a kicking. Hint: it’s not the red meat.
Eat for GLP-1: the glucagon like peptide Ozempic and Mourjana wanna be
GLP-1 is linked to appetite regulation and satiety. The amino acid glycine is key in this process. Bovine Collagen Peptides are rich in glycine - it makes up 30% of ‘em.
Davinia tells us in FUTUREPROOF, ‘Basically, when we eat foods containing glycine, it triggers this hormone release, which sends the messages to our brain telling us we’re full – the satiety response. This is exactly what the weight loss drug Ozempic is mimicking! That's the pathway that everyone from Hollywood to Holyhead is attempting to access with pharmaceutical drugs’.
Don’t forget, in your protein goals, that collagen peptides will support you taming the food noise for that reason. If you’re intermittent fasting to support health, you can add a teaspoon to your cuppa and cream the whole thing up with MCT Keto Creamer. The fats help your brain fuel all the shit you need to get done, rather than wasting your day fantasising about cake.
Overall, remember:
- Prioritise animal protein and slip it a couple of veg
- Control carbs - you won’t want many if protein’s priority
- Stay good fat-fuelled
- Red meat, wild fish, chicken thighs rebuild, repair, maintain
- Keep it clean - ditch veg oil and chemicals
- Pimp with collagen peptides for satiety
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