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What's the dietary effect of having a protein-only meal?

Not as a main diet, but as a single meal. I occasionally end with no time to eat one of my "snack" meals* so I'll just down a 100% whey plus water shake. Like 15-20g of protein plus water, less than 1g of carbs or fats. Is there any downside to doing that besides the loss of nutrients, fiber, etc. I'd get from coupling it with either fats or carbs?

Peter

* I work in a school and have 10 minutes from bell to bell...which isn't always enough time if one class runs long and the next is far away.

gas?

I don't have any problem with it. Gas generally comes from carbs. Meat just adds oder to it.

I do it a lot. No problems, no gas.
Tim

Yeah, no gas for me either. I was just concerned I was wasting the protein and not really getting the nutritional benefits/muscle building benefits/metabolism boost benefits I'd get from a more complete snack.

Good to know when I'm rushed I'm still getting value out of my protein.

If you do that, I'd say mix it with some fat (peanut butter) if using whey or if you get some casein then that would be ok.

ironmaiden, what am I losing out on if I don't do that?

It's unusual for me to have my protein drink without some nuts on the side (or fruit if I'm doing a carb/protein meal). But when I do, do I lose any of the value of that protein?

No, it will just slow down the digestion of the whey so 'it will hold you over' for longer. But if it's casein then you don't need anything to slow the digestion down.

Okay, thanks. More of a satiety issue than a nutrition issue?

That's not generally a problem. If I'm so busy I can't stop for more than a shake, I generally don't have time to worry about being satiated or not. Even if I'm hungry I'm in class until my lunch break anyway.

I'll try to mix in casein on the days I know this will happen, but occasionally I get surprised by schedule changes at my schools so I'm not prepared, and casein/whey mixes are expensive enough that I'd rather not use them exclusively for my snack drinks. 3kg of whey costs me about $100, 1kg of casein/whey mix costs me about $50.

really? is shipping that ridiculous?

That's buying the cheapest 100% whey protein from the store. Buying stuff online from outside Japan and shipping it costs about the same, ultimately. Though some of my resourceful gym buddies buy stuff from Yahoo Auctions, I find they pay only slightly less per kilo than me. Online Japanese sales sites tend to have a slight discount, but once you add in shipping and COD costs it's not any less than buying from the store.

Protein is expensive here. Weights, too. A 100kg standard barbell set is around $400 or so, OL bars are incredibly rare.
On the bright side I ate 300g of sushi-quality fresh salmon for lunch today, it cost me about $2.50. So I got that going for me.

Yeah, food like that would be marketed and hyped in some way in the united states, and we'd pay 15$ for the same thing. Whey is usually about 13$ per kilo / 7$ a pound on average, for good tasting isolates. There are some places where you can buy clearanced out stuff that expires in a few months that are good if youre going to use fast, though I don't know the shelf life of these products, past the shelf date.

I add 50-100g of peanut butter with my shakes, because it makes them taste less foul.

some brands of peanut butter have some sugar mixed in so be careful with what you get.

I do the PB thing too sometimes, using a salt-no sugar spread I found. All-natural doesn't seem to be sold here, so I'll settled for salt + peanuts. Should help the creatine get absorbed anyway.

Hard to mix in my daily at-work snack shakes, though, since I usually just pour the powder dry into a bottle and then add water at work or mix it around 7 am and drink it mid-morning or mid-afternoon, so I need something that won't separate and settle.