Beef Jerky!

I recently read something that makes a ton of sense - it's important to eat protein before bed time. This way, while you are sleeping your muscles are still happy and repairing themselves for our inactive hours. You need to nourish your muscles especially while dieting! Dieting makes us lose fat but also makes us lose muscle, and we don't want to be flabby! ;)

I usually eat some fat free vanilla greek yogurt mixed with natural peanut butter or some 2% whipped cottage cheese while I'm unwinding at night.

I personally steer clear of nuts because I don't have the self control to buy a bag and only eat a few. Yes nuts are great in omegas, but full of fat.

I also don't eat protein bars because they are full of sugar, covered in chocolate, etc... and sugar is a drug to me - give me a little and I crave more.

Dairy can be a tricky part of dieting. We need calcium as women, but dairy can be fattening and full of cholesterol. Cheese makes me gain weight. So I stick to low fat or fat free yogurts and cottage cheese. Otherwise I don't eat dairy because low fat cheese tastes like plastic to me. All of the tofutti products are yummy but they have such little protein in them, I wouldn't suggest those as good sources of protein at all. Hard boiled eggs are good at night, and nourishing.

It's so hard to find a good variety for vegetarians that are low fat... I have been a vegetarian for 16 years! It's easy to slip into sweets or cheeses and thats where the weight gain comes from. It's challenging but important to keep our carb intake on the low side and our protein intake on the high side with a vegetarian diet.

Good luck veggie girls, you are all doing so great! :carrot: :hug:

Try Broccoli (suprisingly high in protein!!) with hummus... yum!

I agree about the broccoli. Green veggies are a surprisingly great source of protein...I never knew that before reading Eat To Live, but i checked it out and there it was.

I don't do meat or dairy or eggs, and can't do soy/tofu. Mostly I get my protein from green veggies, beans/legumes/lentils, and nuts/seeds.

I'm going to check out the hemp protein (veg) if I ever make it to the health food store.