I am always looking at ways to include protein in my family’s daily diet. Why?  Protein is just one way to keep you on a path of good nutrition and weight management.

Protein is more satisfying than fats or carbohydrates.  Also by eating enough protein, you help preserve muscle mass and encourage fat burning, while keeping you feeling full.  You can include healthy protein sources in your diet with foods like yogurt, cheese, nuts, beans, or lean meats.

However, if you’re like my family, we have a variety of dietary differences.  For example, my son is a vegetarian, I only do fish, and my husband and daughter are hard core meat eaters.

So because protein is one way to keep you on a path of good nutrition and weight management, and I have a vegetarian in the family as well as members in my family that I would rather not eat meat all the time, I’ve learned to be creative on ways to include protein in each of our meals.

In addition to ensuring more protein is in our diets, I also try to ensure a mix of carbohydrates and protein.  Why carbohydrates and protein? When carbohydrates are taken with protein, there’s a blast of insulin. Insulin kicks the body’s glycogen making machine into high gear. Glycogen is considered the principal storage form of glucose and is found mainly in liver and muscle. Glucose supplies the body’s active tissues with energy.

Therefore, insulin will speed up the movement of glucose and amino acids into cells which are what you definitely want and secondly, it activates a special enzyme which is essential for glycogen synthesis.  This process is the preferred energy source for exercise, necessary for fueling muscles, supplying glucose to the brain as well as being required for burning fat.

I’ll be doing a series on simple recipes using protein powder that will help support more protein in your diet, as well as combining carbohydrates and protein to support energy for your body.

I’ll start with Peaches and Cream….

This is a very simple and easy recipe.  My daughter does not like to eat breakfast, yet breakfast is SOOO important.  This recipe is light enough that she will eat it, and I feel great that she ate and got a balance of carbohydrates and protein.  My son loves breakfast but is the vegetarian; this recipe helps me ensure protein to the start of his day.  This can be whipped up very easily and in no time.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 cup peaches (fresh or jarred organic w/o all the additives)
  • ¼ cup fat free or organic cream cheese (this is a personal preference – I use organic)
  • ¼ tsp. cinnamon
  • ½ scoop vanilla protein powder
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 500 F.  Slice up the peaches.  It is very hard (at least where I am from) to find good or organic peaches, so I use the jarred organic peaches from Trader Joe’s.  Trader Joe’s is great; you can find good foods without all the additives in them.

Lay the peaches in a baking dish and bake for about 8-10 minutes.

Mix cream cheese, cinnamon, protein powder and vanilla extract.  I usually make a larger batch of this, and then just leave the extra in the fridge.  You can use this spread on bagels, or whatever else you like cream cheese with (it’s delicious by itself).

Place the peaches in a serving dish, with a small scoop of the cream cheese mix.  You can also put the scoop under the hot peaches if you want it more melted (more your preference).  The mix will melt somewhat over your peaches.

Eat and enjoy! :)

- Jocelyn -