What percentage of calories from protein?

[Erin514]

I've just started easing into the LE diet. I'm 5'10, vegetarian, exercising, breastfeeding a 1 year old (with no AF yet) and my BMI is 18.5 to start with. Because of all this, I'm aiming for 2100 calories and upper limits for fat and protein. I may gradually aim for 1800-2000 in the next few weeks if I can maintain my weight there.

I'm confused/concerned about my protein. I've seen studies that show a low-protein, high-carb diet preconception can cause insulin resistance and blood pressure issues in the children later in life, EVEN IF the mother went back to a normal diet during pregnancy.

The day before yesterday 15% of my calories were from protein, which put me at 81g ! Yesterday I only had 57g protein, but that's only 11% of my calories. I'm worried that in order to stay within LE limits I'm going to be consistently around 10% of Cals from protein, which seems to be in the territory of causing problems for any future babies. Can anyone put my mind at ease? Atomic?

[atomic sagebrush]

But the LE Diet is NOT low protein. It's just the lower range of normal. The protein requirements of LE Diet come straight from the World Health Organization recommendations for a healthy safe food intake for women of childbearing age. Additionally, we are NOT counting the protein and fat in fruit and veg - we treat those as free - the studies you are referencing do NOT do that. They count that protein and so we are actually getting MORE pro and fat than we think we are.

The people who need to be concerned are the gals that eat a Yoplait Light and a banana for breakfast, a spinach salad and pretzel sticks for lunch, and pasta for dinner. They habitually come in at 20-30 g protein. much of the protein they DO get is coming from fruit and veg. I've read the studies and I do not think they are cause for doing anything any different.

I would have you not worry about the %. Do grams. Since you are tall and breastfeeding I would actually recommend you increase to 60-70 if you are concerned about it.

[Erin514]

OK, thanks so much, Atomic. That makes me feel a lot better.

[atomic sagebrush]

Also it occurs to me, Erin, if you were eating fewer grams of fat and carbs but the same amount of protein - your % would be higher but it would STILL be the exact same amount of protein intake... see what I"m saying??? Let's say for the sake of argument you were only eating 1500 cals, because you were not eating fat and had cut carb intake in half, as an example...your % would be higher, but it would NOT be any better or healthier of a diet (and in fact probably far worse prepregnancy!!)

[carmella_marie]

Like atomic said, its about the grams of protein, not the %. I never worried about the % just kept a rough estimate of the grams of protein I was eating so as not to drive myself batty. Doing complex mathematical equations to find the % of calories from protein is something we crazy boy moms (myself included) do that we need to stop--it sways blue!

[Erin514]

You're right, I get that my percentages could potentially fluctuate a lot without my total amount of protein changing. I started thinking about percentages because the low-protein, high-carb diet studies that worried me (or maybe just an article summarizing them, I can't find it again now), used percentages rather than grams and when I check my fitness pal totals I would definitely be in the low-protein category on that basis. But it's true that since I'm taking in more calories than an average woman who is shorter and not breastfeeding, plus the studies probably counted low-carb veg, this is not really an accurate comparison.

Besides which, it's occurring to me that an average north American high-carb diet is often loaded with highly processed, refined carbs, sugar, trans fat, etc, so it's hard to say whether it's actually even macro proportions that are causing problems as opposed to something else that high-carb people are getting more of. I am taking a pretty healthy approach to LE by focussing more on fruit/veg than refined carbs so I probably shouldn't worry too much. I'm just going to stick with 50-60g protein I think.

[carmella_marie]

I worry about those kinds of studies too, but I agree that the sample size could have included moms eating a lot of high-processed foods and sugar and all kinds of chemicals and additives. Hard to know if it's simply the high carbs or something else in high carb foods. I also think a lot of moms who eat all that processed food when then feed their children that high processed junk, so maybe it isn't even the mom's diet but the fact that the mom feeds the same thing to her kids, whereas moms who ate more protein before pregnancy ate better and fed their kids better. Just a thought.

[skillet04]

Yep agree it may have to do with what the kid is eating as well as to how they fair health wise as they hit the teen years and beyond....trying to blame health problems that stem from the typical sad American diet on how mom ate when preggo is akin to everyone blaming their mom because they went and committed a felony....grow up and take responsibility for your own actions ykwim ;)
There is a youtuber mom with pcos that went 80/10/10 hclf vegan and it seemed to help her pcos issues and hair to regrow and she did fall pg and with a girl (her 2nd, i think her first dd was conceived with clomid) & then she has videos with her scary pg issues and the doc trying to get her to up protein intake.....
Now i know mcdougall and the china study etc all claim humans dont need animal sources of amino acids aka complete proteins and i myself may someday go vegan but when it comes to growing another human being imho think it best to at least get the minimum 40grams to 60grams of protein from a complete source again just my .02 and sharing things i have come across since in my years of having desired another child and it taking a while to come to fruition.

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[atomic sagebrush]

Yes I was trying to find the study to post because it was very much the "yoplait light, bagel with ff cream cheese, iceberg lettuce salad with rasp. vinagrette" ladies who THINK that they're eating so healthfully but it destroys their fertility and isn't good for babies either. And yes yes yes they counted the non-existent grams of protein in fruit and veg in that too. There was also a study that people were woried about that was done in an African country and the people were subsisting on millet and squash or something and everyone extrapolated that to the rest of us. No.

[atomic sagebrush]

:agree: skillet that's why I do it the way I do - only the "better" sources of protein are counted, the incomplete ones we don't count, and then we err on the side of caution.