Dear Sphria,

Any protein powder supplement which is not fake is effective because after all, it is just plain and simple protein and it will fulfill your protein requirements if in any case you are not getting enough through real food consumption. And about side effects, as I always recommend buying a protein supplement with least ingredients, it is not a concern. If you buy any protein powder supplement without only one or two ingredients, it will generally never have any side effects. But I appreciate your comment.

Thank you.

Glad to help. Hope you have a healthy life ahead of you.

Thank you.

Thanks for that rough diet scheme! I am going to follow the new diet from Thursday onwards.

You are welcome brother. I myself have made so many mistakes and that is the reason I am answering with so much detail, so that you can learn my from experiences. “Bas Dua Mein Yaad Rakhna…”

Now, firstly let us understand one thing. A healthy diet plan consists of foods that provide you all the macro nutrients as well as all the micro nutrients that your body needs. If you research very deep and read many studies and articles on the internet, you will finally come to a conclusion that I and many people have already come to; that an optimal diet for most of the people is high carbs, medium protein and low/medium fats. This is the best diet plan in my opinion.

The second most important thing is that you must NOT consume a lot of saturated fats as well as a lot of sodium. Stay away from these two as much as possible. Also watch out for Trans fat and hydrogenated oils if you eat some junk food sometime. Unsaturated fats are healthy but saturated fats are bad and clog your arteries, or at least that is what most people believe. Try to consume not more than 1500 mg of sodium per day and not more than 20 grams of saturated fats per day. Don’t worry about consuming too less sodium as normally you will automatically consume good enough amounts of sodium.

Thirdly, please do not be afraid of sugar. Eating refined sugar or added sugar is not advocated by me because it has no nutritional value, but please do not worry at all about sugars from natural sources like fruits. They are very healthy and will only improve your health. Just make sure that the fruit itself is not fake aka artificially sweetened or something, which is common in Indian market.

Now, here is an example diet plan:

50 grams of almonds, raw
25 grams of walnuts
25 grams of cashew nuts, raw
100 grams of mung beans, mature seeds, raw or 100 grams of chickpeas, etc. etc.
1.5 cups of Whole wheat flour, whole-grain (i.e. around 180 grams to make around 12 rotis)
250 mL of Soy milk, plain or original, unsweetened, not fortified, ready-to-drink (I put pin-khajoor in it and coffee beans and grind it and make awesome chilled coffee)
3 slices of watermelon or any other similar fruit
50 grams of Toor dal aka Pigeon Pea, raw
25 grams of Spinach

Of course you will not be eating All these things directly. You will cook them, add spices (with minimal salt and minimal oil and minimal refined sugar), eat some more vegetables, make mung dal and toor dal, etc. It might appear as toooooo much food, but is actually very less if you do not consume any junk food at all. And you don’t have to eat the same things every day. Keep rotating and switching the ingredients. Some day eat rotis, some day brown Basmati rice, some day Dal Baati, etc. I have kept this diet plan so simple that any person in India can easily follow it without any discomfort.

This diet plan is around 2000 calories and provides you with 315 grams of carbs, 90 grams of protein and 65 grams of fat. Surely you won’t be eating just 2000 calories. You would probably need at least 2500 calories per day if you are active. Mostly around 3000 calories if you are a very active and hard working person (like me hahaha). So as you see, you will most certainly be consuming way more than 100 grams of protein per day without any supplements.

Now, I strongly urge you to go to http://www.cronometer.com, sign up for an account for free and you can actually put the things you eat there and check how you stand on your daily macro and micro nutrients needs.

Do know that protein is over-rated. Don’t worry about it. And if you do not feel comfortable following this diet plan, please do not do it. It will make you feel bad all the time and eventually you will switch back to what you are doing right now. Rather, modify this diet plan according to your taste buds and likes. So if you don’t like soy milk, don’t drink it. Maybe substitute it with non-fat cow’s milk. You get the point, right? Do what you like and look at the broader picture. Try to consume real foods and a variety of foods. And please note that this diet plan lacks vitamin B12 (you have to take a B12 pill or consume Nutritional Yeast or consume cow’s milk), little bit of calcium (which you can fulfill by eating not 2000 calories but 3000 calories, or by drinking cow’s milk or both ) and vitamin D (which you can get by being exposed to the sun for 10-15 minutes)

I spent a lot of time writing this comment. So you better learn from it. No need for any kind of animal cruelty for proteinnnnnn…

And BTW, Taekwondo is nice. This diet will perfectly suit you and you will have so much energy, you can’t even imagine! And you said you do not want to consume too much of anything. Well, please don’t be afraid of carbs, especially complex carbs. I myself eat around 450 grams of carbs per day. This is not too much if you are active as your body needs easily available energy.

Thank you.

My heartfelt thanks for this level of detail. So place for any supplements in the diet is out of the windows when we just can’t trust the purity of the end product. I am practicing taekwondo so need a proper diet. If i can manage about 90-100g of protein daily (without resorting to non-veg), i would be satisfied. But the thing also remains that i don’t want to end up consuming too much of anything.

If it is not a lot of inconvenience to you, can you please put up your diet scheme for us newbies?

Look Prashant, here is the thing. I wrote this blog post a few months ago when I was a lactovegetarian. But since March, I have been following a vegan diet and will mostly do the same for the rest of my life. So I won’t be consuming any milk or milk products. This is the reason I cannot review anything which is non-vegan from now on as it would be weird reviewing something that I can’t even consume.

That being said, I surely can give my unbiased opinion on it. So here are my two cents on the “Hyp Protein Bars” (no added sugar ones).

• I checked the macro nutrients and the ingredients of the Hyp protein bar.
• First, lets talk about the most important thing, the ingredients.
• Ingredients: Protein Blend (Whey Protein Concentrate, Milk Protein Isolate, Whey Protein Hydrolysate), Oats, Almonds, Sweetener (MaItitol), Dietary Fiber (Oligofructose), Humectant (Vegetable Glycerin), Edible Vegetable Oil, Cocoa powder, Cocoa solids, Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Guar Gum, Saltand Antioxidant (Viit E).
• As you can see, they do not contain added sugars! But so what?! To make up for the lost sweetness, they have added sweetners. And please do not be fooled by the labels saying that they have used no artificial sweetners and only natural sweetners have been used. The natural sweetners are no good either. And also, as you can see, they contain so many other shitty ingredients as well. Now, I am not saying this product is bad. But surely it is not a very good product. Surely one may argue that consuming so little amounts of these ingredients would not affect anyone’s health. Yeah, that MAY be right. But its best to avoid regular consumption of such things.
• This is not it though. Let’s talk about the macro nutrients now. Each bar contains 10 grams of protein, 20.8 grams of carbohydrates (out of which 5.2 grams are fiber; and 10.5 grams are polyols, also called sugar alcohols, which are a group of versatile, reduced-calorie carbohydrates that provide the taste and texture of sugar with about half the calories, and may have laxative effects on you!), 6 grams of fat (out of which 2 grams are saturated fat and approximately 0 grams of trans fat). Each bar contains only 90 mg of sodium, which is not bad. Also, only 2 grams are saturated fats, which is also not bad.
• Now, you have to pay 300 Rs. for 6 bars. That means you have to pay 50 Rs. for 1 bar. Carbs and fats are super cheap, so basically you are paying around 40-45 Rs. for 10 grams of protein.
• Now, you may buy this and keep it with you for rare cases where there is no food in your house and you need to consume something. But I would strongly recommend not consuming it daily or regularly.
• What is a better option? If you can, consume some Basmati brown rice or whole wheat rotis with some legumes and beans like mung beans, chickpeas, vatana (white peas), etc. They will provide you with not only macro nutrients that you require for staying lean and building muscle, but also provide you with all kinds of micro nutrients (vitamins and minerals) and make you feel better and full.
• I know cooking can be boring and difficult, but you have to do it if you want to have a healthy and sustainable life. It hardly takes half an hour to one hour every day, and that is if you cook all the food by yourself. If someone else cooks the food in your house, you don’t even have to worry about that! Think of this protein bar as a convenient treat that you can have once in two-three weeks, but not often.
• You may agree to disagree with my opinion, but I hope you understand what I am trying to say. You can get 100 grams to 150 grams of protein from your foods itself if your diet if proper (more if you are a non-vegetarian), and you don’t need to take any supplements if you are a normal athelete.

Sorry if it was too long.

Thank you.

Thanks for the prompt reply. Well, I have shot off an email to Paradise Nutrition – authorized reseller of UN in India. Amazon.com will have to be the last option given the problems with customs.

And by the way, can you please do a review for Hyp protein bar which is supposed to have no artificial preservatives/additives.

http://www.hyprote.in

Hello, Prashant. It is sad to see that the market here in India is filled with flavoured proteins and there are rarely unflavoured ones available. I would advise you to go to ‘amazon.com’ instead of ‘amazon.in’ and order it from there. You will find at least one of the protein powders that I mentioned available there, if not both. Ultimately, the cost should turn out to be the almost the same as it would have been if you would have ordered from an Indian website. It’s just that it might take very long for your protein powder to ship to your home.

But let me tell you that protein powders are not at all necessary. You should focus more on meeting your daily micro-nutrients needs first whilst keeping your saturated and trans fat levels consumption in control, as well as consuming Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. This all can be done on a whole plant foods based diet. Eat more fibrous and unprocessed foods and don’t worry about protein.

Thank you.