While protein comprises the building blocks that your body uses to repair and create tissues, there are certain medical conditions that can necessitate adherence to a permanent or temporary period of protein restriction. While this is hardly an optimal nutritional practice, sometimes you must confront the lesser of two evils in order to to survive. If your doctor has put you, or someone you know, on a protein-restricted diet, you came to the right place for information.
About low protein
Low-protein diets are often used in the case of individuals suffering from renal (kidney) failure. As the kidneys are responsible for processing all the protein that is ingested into the body, lessening that amount reduces the workload of diseased kidneys, allowing them to concentrate on warding off disease (or prolonging the inevitable total failure). Low-protein diets are not specifically defined by any specific percent of protein intake per day, but a good ballpark figure to comply with a low-protein diet is to keep protein intake at or below 10 percent of your total daily calories.
Low-protein menu
As protein is off the table as a meal option, you will have to compensate for its absence by ingesting additional calories from the other two primary macronutrients--carbohydrates and fat. A low-protein diet does not necessarily mean a low-calorie diet. A number of individuals will make the critical mistake of removing protein without replacing those calories with an alternate source. This leads to fatigue and unwanted weight loss, which makes enduring the low-protein diet that much worse.
A sample day of eating on a low-protein diet should contain plenty of fruits, vegetables and healthy fats.
Breakfast: Consume a half-cup of milk, an egg, a half-cup of rice, an orange, and some whole-wheat bread.
Lunch: Consume an ounce of turkey on whole-wheat bread, an apple, and broccoli drizzled with olive oil (for the healthy fats contained therein).
Dinner: Consume an ounce of beef, spinach, a baked potato, whole-wheat rolls with butter, and some fish oil capsules (for the health-boosting properties of omega-3 fats).
Snack: Consume almonds, walnuts or cashews with a glass of milk and a piece of fruit.
This sample diet will keep protein low while fueling the body with sufficient carbs and enough calories from fat to ensure proper hormonal functioning.
Considerations
Remember that low-protein does not mean "no-protein." Your body still requires some protein to perform basic repair functions, so do not entirely deprive it of this resource. Aside from remembering to keep calories fairly constant between your old higher-protein lifestyle and your new low-protein diet, remember to consume at least 25 percent of your daily calories from fat. Ordinarily, you receive most of your fat intake from protein-laden foods such as meat. With heavy meat consumption no longer an option, substitute in various healthy-fat sources such as avocados, coconuts and oils (such as fish, flax and olive).
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