Meal ideas help!

[Teamustbefromateapot]

Starting a new gym challenge tomorrow and have been told I need to eat 2000 calories. (150g protein). My problem is figuring out wtf am I supposed to eat?? I can't eat eggs, nor can I stomach protein powder so I'm just struggling with ideas as I find it hard to eat that many calories, but my coach feels I'm not eating enough and so my body is hanging on to fat.

Could anyone offer ideas, especially for breakfasts? And how do you count calories while doing family dinners for kids. E.g. if doing spaghetti, do you just weigh your own?

Thank you!

My fitness pal lets you add ingredients then gives you the calorie total for the meal when you input how many portions it makes.
For spag Bol add the bol ingredients but then weigh & log the pasta separately.
Add lentils and/or quinoa to things like bolognaise/lasagna/curries/cottage pie for extra protein with really low calories.

Greek full fat yogurt, kefir, chia seeds, flax seeds and a handful of nuts make a filling breakfast full of protein.

Overnight oats with chia, Greek yoghurt, flax, and oat or almond milk?

Home made chia pudding? Super easy with a bit of cocoa and honey and nut or oat milk.

Nuts and seeds are really calorie dense and a great source of plant protein

Get a pack of chicken drumsticks and cook those off and eat for lunch or a snack?

A tin of tuna will give you around 25g protein.

Protein powder can be added to things like overnight oats or smoothies or Greek yoghurt if it is just the flavour with water that you don’t like. You can get some with added flavour (chocolate , vanilla) to help make them more enjoyable in yoghurt too.

if you make a blended soup add a tin of chickpeas to it or lentil soup.

Without eggs and protein powder I think you will struggle to reach 150g per day unless you eat a lot of meat or fish per day.

a slice of corned beef (which is one of the meats that have the least additives etc in it in the supermarket!) will give you around 7g.

Lots to think about but I would seriously consider a protein powder if you are way off your target from your diet alone.

Search 'Dave Fell' on social media. His recipes have helped me so much!

I use my fitness pal as well, its my life line. Its a pain to begin with but if you upgrade you can scan bar codes and it inputs the information for you. I would recommend getting some scales though to weight out food.

Most of my protein comes from (apart from eggs)
•Mince meat with low fat content
•Chicken breast is a must
•Tuna
•0% greek yoghurt (make sure its proper yoghurt not Greek style)
•Crayfish
•Salmon
•Steak, rump only for me, less fat content more protein but I do use steak as a treat.
•Turkey breast
•Makrel
•lentils
•Edemami beans are a new fad of mine

I also snack on babybel light, there is 5g of protein in a babybel light. Don't fall for the new protein ones, they are way more expensive and have 6gs of protein in them, not worth it.

You can eat the same as your family, but with slight tweaks. For example if I make spaghetti bol, I dont have the spaghetti, I make courgette spaghetti. Or a very small amount of protein spaghetti, if my carb allowance allows it. Parmesan cheese also has protein, but high fat content, like a lot of cheese.

Im not a fan of protein powder, loads have lots of added stuff you dont need, as well as high carb' content. For the sake of 18g of protein in a shake, I'd rather eat a food source, that will fill and nourish me more.

My go to breakfast is 200g low fat greek yoghurt, 50g berries, 10g of seeds (chia, pumpkin etc) 10g nut butter. This also makes a tasty dessert, just add a small meringue nest, it tastes like Eaton mess. You could swop out the berries for low sugar jam. Or I have a bagel thin with 10g low fat cream cheese and 20g bacon medallion.

I would 100% recommend tracking. You would be surprised where extra calories come from.