Midlife Mommas: A Girlfriends Approach to Life After Menopause

Arrrgghh! What do I have as a snack? Protein snacks ideas

February 21, 2024 Amelia & Cam Season 3 Episode 142
Midlife Mommas: A Girlfriends Approach to Life After Menopause
Arrrgghh! What do I have as a snack? Protein snacks ideas
Show Notes Transcript

We all know the feeling....3 o'clock rolls around and we are starving. What should you eat?? The easy answer is a bag of chips or package of cookies from the office vending machine, but what does that do to your blood sugar? Does it provide any nutrients?
The short answer is that those types of snacks will satisfy the gnawing in your stomach, but a couple hours later, you're like to crash again.
In this episode of the Midlife Mommas Cam and Amelia give you some tips on better ways to snack. You've heard us go on and on about the benefits of protein in midlife, but how do you translate this into snacks??

00:00 Struggling with protein intake throughout the day.
04:20 Analyze meals to fine-tune your diet.
07:25 Protein snacks and turkey sauce for meals.
12:54 Portable snacks stabilize blood sugar and appetite.
15:28 Eating protein throughout day stabilizes blood sugar.
17:55 Moderation in fat intake without focusing on calories.
23:36 Prioritize health by eating and communicating well.
24:14 Agreeing on time for dinner, dealing with waiting.
27:22 Use fat source, add spices, enjoy yummy.


Our favorite Protein-rich snacks! (but don't forget eggs, cottage cheese, and tuna packets!)
Meat Sticks
www.chomps.com
www.paleovalley.com

Protein shakes
www.truvani.com
www.fairlife.com

Stay Connected!
Amelia

Cam

Midlife Mommas IG: https://www.instagram.com/midlife.mommas/

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It's 3 o'clock, Cam. I think I need a snack. Hi. I'm Cam, holistic health coach, mom to 2 humans and 4 pets. Hi. I'm Amelia, laboratory scientist by day and food scientist by night. Welcome to our show. Join us as we share our holistic approach to life after 50. You can expect real life stories with a dash of humor and a ton of truth. If it happens in midlife, we're going to talk about it. So hit that subscribe button and follow along. We're the Midlife Mommas. Hi, Amelia. What's going on? Are you hungry? Girl, I just must have eaten lunch too early today or I didn't have enough protein this morning, but by 3 o'clock, I am starving. What in the world am I going to eat? I think that's pretty common. Like, I know our energy, like, changes throughout the day, but it seems midlife 3, 4 is like the witching hour. Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, back when I was drinking more, which is to say any because I'm not really drinking anymore, it was also the hour getting around 4 o'clock when it was or 5, let's be honest, when it was dinner time. Time to make dinner is when I started wanting that glass of wine too. So there's all kinds of you know, there's this old saying that says nothing good happens, like, between, like, midnight and 4 AM. Well, for me, not much good happens between, like, 3 and 5 PM. Like, yeah, I'd be really careful. I mean, I do miss those days of, like, cracking open some wine and Me too. Music on. Like, that is just such joy to me. Yeah. So moderation, ladies. Yeah. Moderation for sure. But let's talk about snacking today, Cam, because, I had this revelation, this real like, on Tuesday, I was working from home, and I don't remember what I ate, but believe it or not, my work from home days tend to be even busier than my in the office days, and not because I'm jumping up to do laundry and vacuum the floor. It's literally like I'm busy. And I thought, you know, I'm really hungry. What should I eat? And trying not to rely on packaged foods like a protein shake or a bar, I was like, I'm home. What what can I eat? So that kinda prompted a lot of this. So I wanna kinda unpack what are the goals and how can we find things that are good for us? It seems like we're always chasing our protein goal. You know, I had a conversation with a woman earlier this week, and she didn't start her morning with protein, and she's like, I was chasing that goal all day. Have you ever had a day like that? Yeah. Absolutely. And sometimes, Cam, I do great with breakfast. It sometimes lunch for me gets off the rails. Like, if I have soup, which is really easy for me to eat at work, it might not have as much protein as, like and some even if it has meat, it's just not enough to to satisfy that protein goal. And then if I don't have a snack that is protein rich, I may be only sitting at 50 grams or 60 grams of protein by dinner, and I I would like to be at more than that. Yes. And we're always chasing it. In general, the goal or, you know, what we're working towards is 1 gram per lean body mass, like your ideal body weight, and that's the goal. I know that sounds lofty. So, yes, that means if your goal weight is 1 40, that means a 140 grams. Let's just say it out loud. And that's my and that is my goal. That is not my current weight, but, I do chase a 140. And some days I actually get it. And if you had asked me 2 years ago about that, I would have said, you are crazy. I will never eat that much protein. So it does take work and it does take working into, but snacks are a great way to add some. Yeah. Absolutely. So to get started, just non judgmentally track your food to see where you are. And if you're, like, don't wanna track everything, just track your protein and, like, just decide where you are and then ask yourself, like, where is a room for improvement? Where is the easiest way to add more protein to my life? And that's where I would start for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. That's what I did. I started with just tracking protein, and I literally I didn't even use one of the 1st time I did it, I used a a little pad of paper. Like, I didn't even use an app. I mean, just totally old school ways and I learned, what helped me be satisfied, what I really enjoyed eating, and what got me the most protein. So it you're right. I love that that way to start. And I love what you said. So when you are eating something and you don't feel satisfied afterwards, you were doing guess and check, it sounds like, being an experiment of 1. If you do eat something and you notice that you're hungry again quick or you're not satisfied, always go back to the previous meal and, like, really look at what you ate. And was there protein? Was there fat? Was there carbs? What order did you eat it in? All the things. Because all of that's giving your body's giving you information so you can like really fine tune the you diet, your diet you. So I love that. Well, and I have to say, you know, I do use protein shakes. I don't do more than 1 a day and I try not to even do that if I cam, but some days they're really necessary and I always have 1 with me at work, and that's one of the things I use. If I've if I haven't had time for an adequate lunch or what I had wasn't enough, that's usually where the protein shake comes in because it it kinda put yeah. Puts me over the top to where I'm not hungry anymore and I can get through the rest of the workday. I love it. I found this really cool fact that protein is the only macronutrient that actually requires shifts as we age quantity and quality change as we age. And it's the only macronutrient like carbs and fat don't matter. They don't change as we age, but protein does. That is really interesting, and it makes total sense, especially with what we've talked about over the last 2 years. But I don't know that I've ever heard it in such concrete terms, but it does make a lot of sense. And especially if you're doing what you should do with strength training, you absolutely, need to to need to be getting that protein in there. Yeah. So we actually need more protein now than we were younger. That's the the moral of the story. So Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. So what let's kinda get into it. Tell us a little bit I know, Cam, one of the things you've been studying is like amino acid profiles and what we need to build muscle. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So leucine and lysine are definitely 2 amino acids that I know about, and those are found in animal products. And if you know a little of my story, I started eating well, I started with collagen when I turned 50, the 1st year of my hysterectomy. I knew innately, intuitively, however you want to say it, that I needed manhole protein in my midlife. Like I needed it for sure. And things really changed after menopause for me. My body composition changed. It was harder to keep muscle. The where my I was holding weight changed. And so like I made it my business to figure out how do I keep my muscle and how do I keep it on my body with food and exercise. So any of your animal proteins, chicken, beef, pork, tuna, turkey, all of those contain 3 essential amino acids. Are they essential? I don't know, I might have set a fib there. I'm not sure. I know I'm pretty sure leucine and lysine are. I'm not sure about that methionine, which is the third one. I have to look that up, Cam. I'm not sure if that's one of the essential ones or not. Well, anyway, we know that these 3 amino acids are part of the story of building and keeping your muscle around. And so that's what that's what we need to know. We need to eat food that contain these. Yeah. So, you know, what some of the things you mentioned, chicken, beef, pork, turkey, tuna, these can be translated into snacks. In fact, the one one of the things that I do keep are the, the tuna in water, like the packets. And you can get good quality like, I don't know if it's considered organic, but you can get good quality of those. Those little packets have, like, 19 grams of protein just in that packet. And I gotta be honest with you, I just eat use a fork and just eat right out of the packet. Like, I don't even mix it with mayo or put it on crackers, like, none of that stuff. But, you know, there's other things too, like, chicken, beef, pork, or turkey. Like today, I had had made, a sauce earlier in the week to go on spaghetti squash, which was ground turkey, some tomato paste, red roasted tomatoes, some onion, and something else. I literally just ate the sauce in a bowl. I I didn't have any more spaghetti squash, and I didn't wanna make spaghetti, so I ate the sauce and it was fantastic. And it it satisfied you. Absolutely. A 100%. I love that. And then there's stuff like cam sticks too. Like, Chomps is one brand that's the grass fed, grass finished. So that's another way you can get, and it comes in all different sorts of animals, I believe. Yeah. And, paleo valley is another meat stick that I've used. Sometimes, I don't know what's in them, and I had I had it's been a long time since I've tried the chomps, but occasionally, it get I feel like it gives me a headache and I don't know why. I don't know what's in it. It might be one of the spices or or something like that. So when we talk about these things, certainly, some of this stuff does have preservatives. So maybe you make turkey meatballs and you put those in a ziplock bag or, you know, in a little container to keep or something. So there's good there's ways to get some of these foods that that is, that isn't loaded with preservatives and that's easy, but it does take a little bit of prep sometimes. Yeah. I think you have to have a plan. I love that you take a protein shake with you. When I was coaching at the gym, I always had a tuna packet and in my gym bag always. And then, yeah, I always tried to figure out what where is this gonna come from? So I would eat tuna a lot anyway. Yeah. I keep tuna in my desk at work. I mean, it's just a little packet. It doesn't like stink up the place because it's not open, but it's always there in case I need it. Or, you know, sometimes, Cam, I'll get a salad at lunch, and if the protein they provide in the cafeteria isn't enough or, God forbid, there's not any, I can use my protein packet on top of my salad too. Yeah. So it doesn't only have to be animal protein. You also can get protein from plant sources. But I just wanna say word of warning, you need way more than Mhmm. Your body uses the animal protein more efficiently than the plant protein. And so we have some actual examples as far as this goes, as far 20 almost 24 grams of protein. If you were gonna only eat peanut butter, can you guess how many tablespoons you need, Amelia, to get only Let's see. I don't know. 20? I don't really know. It's 8 tablespoons of peanut butter to get the 24 grams, which I mean, okay, whatever, but let's look at the calories, 6 32 calories. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. So I mean, a spoonful of peanut butter is gonna give you a little bit of protein, but, you know, it's you can't eat 8 tablespoons for a snack, so that's not a good example. No. Exactly. And things like quinoa are really good too or even lentils, but, again, the volume so the graphic is telling us that 3 I think it's 3 cups of of quinoa is that same amount of protein. Yep. But can you think about eating 3 cups of quinoa and how full you would be? Like, I don't even know if my stomach could hold that much. So, you know, what I like to do in meals is, layer protein. So if I have animal protein, I might also have quinoa and also beans or something like that to actually layer that because we know that there's more nutrients in the foods rather than just the protein. But if you build the the the meal around the protein, you're you're getting those other nutrients as well. And your black beans there. So 1 cup of black beans, 409 calories and twenty like, cottage cheese is a great one or, Greek yogurt is another really good one for snacks. Yeah. That's my favorite. If I do like a cereal bowl of Greek yogurt, that's well over 30 grams of protein and that's a really that's my most satisfying snack, I think. Throw some frozen berries on there, if you slice almonds or some kind of nuts, something crunchy, it's so good. It really is. And that's super easy to prepare. And if you put it in a little bowl with a lid, you can actually take that with you. So that would be yeah. That's one of the things I really like too is Greek yogurt. And you know what? Boiled eggs are pretty transportable. We don't really think about those as snacks, but they certainly can be. Yeah. So really my favorite go to snack right now is two, string cheeses from Trader Joe's. So that's, like, 14 grams, I think, and then 2 eggs. There was one day I ate 3, and it was too much. Oh, really? Yeah. That was too much. But I have had 3 boiled eggs, like, in the car last Saturday when I was driving. I was like, I need protein, so I just put eggs in my purse. But, yeah, so just that, some string cheese and hard boiled eggs is what I've been going to at 3 cam or 3 pm, not Cam. Yeah, hopefully not. Yeah. No, I hope I hope I'm sleeping. Yeah. Those are my favorites. And those cam are transportable. I wanna I keep coming back to that because I think at 3 PM, whether you're still at work or whether if you you still have children at home, maybe you're shuttling kids to some sort of sports practice. These are things you can take with you. So what we don't want is you're so busy at this time that you're hungry and you don't eat, and the minute you hit the door, you're eating naked carbs because you your blood sugar literally has dropped, and so now you're grabbing the first thing. And as you've already mentioned, food order is really important. So, you know, it it kinda we started with a little bit of a joke about snacks, but they have an actual purpose in in your eating and keeping you your blood sugar stable and keeping you from kinda eating your house at in the meal in the hour. Don't go raid your cabinet right before dinner. But really, as a I was a school teacher for 18 years, like, that is the witching hour. Like, school is over and you're like, oh my goodness. And then you're trying to finish up to get home and then pick up the kids or wherever. You know? There was such that was such a busy time, and then you get into that angry, hangry Yes. It's a real thing. It's a real thing. And, you know, those are all the it's also the times where we come back together as a family, and our time is limited as a family. So we don't wanna be sniping at each other because we're hangry. I mean, I really do believe that. It's so unfortunate that that phrase hangry came with Snickers or whatever candy bar, because I think we could really leverage that word for, like, some healthy eating advice. I'm just so bummed that we didn't up with that. But Yeah. I actually think I saw a snickers commercial recently, and I feel like they're still doing that. I do too. Yeah. They you just need this, and this will help you. And we know that it won't. I mean, because there's peanuts in it. Okay. There's some protein there, but what else is in there? Like, that's not gonna help your problem. Right. Exactly. And that kinda brings me to another point about snacks. There's a lot of foods on the market that are packaged and sold and marketed as health foods and they're candy bars. Yep. I mean, these are candy bars. So be very realistic about what you're eating and what your goals are, and look at the freaking label. Like, don't don't accept the mark. I mean, I'm in marketing and I'm telling you don't accept the marketing. It might be false. Yeah. Don't read just the front. You gotta turn it over and actually read the ingredients. I'm with you a 100%. I would like to talk about meal timing for a second. Sure. I'm reading this great book right now, and I'm in the protein section. But having in midlife, this matters. And this is something new to midlife, I thought, yeah, whatever. It doesn't really matter. It does matter. Keeping your blood sugar stable by eating protein throughout the day. So, like, if you ideally could have 30 grams at breakfast, 30 grams at lunch, 30 grams at dinner, and then a protein forward snack that is loaded with protein, then you would be at least north of a100, and you're keeping that energy stable throughout the day and you're feeding your muscles throughout the day. And I used to think that was a whole bunch of garbage, but now that I'm in menopause, these little things really do add up and matter. I don't know. That's that's my take on that. Yeah. I definitely agree. And I have noticed my meal timing tends to be more lax on the weekend than it is during the week. I'm pretty regimented just because, you know, routines and habits are easy when we go to work or we take kids to school, whatever it is we do during the week. And I do I tell a difference, Cam, in the way I process information because I eat later on the weekends. Some days, I get, it's probably hangry. I get short with my husband or I get frustrated slobbering on the floor. I mean, random crap that, like, drives me crazy. And I'm like, have I had anything to eat today? And that's another thing, Candace, for me, I do lead a life that's fairly rich in protein, but I don't feel hunger cues in the same way I did when I was a carb heavy eater or carb prominent eater. It doesn't always feel like knowing in my stomach. Sometimes it manifests itself in these mental, like, slowdowns or irritability, and I'm like, oh, I need to eat. That's very interesting. So you definitely feel a difference. So it it sneaks up on you quickly. Is that what you're saying? Oh, well, yeah. It does. Like, I'll be fine fine fine and then all of a sudden I'm like, I I've really got to have something to eat because there's not that like, when I when I ate the cereal for breakfast or the bread or the bagel or the whatever, I would feel the hunger in my stomach first, and I don't feel that anymore. It's very rarely that I consciously think, oh, I am hungry. Like, my stomach needs to be filled. Now it's more other things like yeah. This coping, this anxiety. That's that's that's awesome biofeedback. That's really cool. I know you have some, like, criteria as far as your snacks go, so we have, well, obviously, protein. But what else is, like, on your list when it comes to, like, yeah, it hits the mark? Well, satiating for 1. But, you know, just for me and with midlife, biomarkers as it were, I try to not do too much fat because, you know, there's a lot of animal source proteins that may have a lot of fat and a lot of protein. Now, I am not a fat foe, don't get me wrong. But let's just take for instance, nuts. Like you said, with with with the peanut butter, it's a lot of calories, and we don't preach counting calories or counting fat grams here, but I think we need to be realistic. So if I eat a handful of nuts, that's a lot of fat. So that's one of the things. And honestly, Cam, again, I don't police my sodium. I salt my food legitimately, but a lot of processed foods have a lot of sodium. So what I try and it's very difficult, is for the portion to have about the same number of milligrams of sodium as it does calories. And people, if you have not looked at this, it's very hard to live by that. But it's just a loose guideline and I'm again, I'm not policing it. It's just more of being conscious of what I'm consuming. I have never thought of it that way, so I'm gonna start reading my labels for what did you say calories and sodium equalish equal ish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if it's got like, this is the I mean, soup would be an obvious example, but let's do something that's not so obvious. Something like I'll I use roasted red tomatoes in a lot of things. They come in a can, I'm not gonna I don't roast my own tomatoes, they're about 35 calories per serving. Typically, the number of milligrams of sodium in a serving is about 70, so that's twice. So, you know, I do look for when I buy canned foods and I don't buy a lot, but I do buy canned beans and I do buy canned tomatoes, I do usually buy the low sodium ones because I prefer to enhance the flavor of my food with actual salt than have that sodium in the can. I gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. Very good. Yeah. Do you have any, like, guidelines as far as percent of calories or, excuse me, percent of protein and carbs? Is there any connection there for you? I mean, I I look at it, so I do occasionally engage in a a bar. And so, I don't have a percentage per se, but I do want. And it's not so much carbs, it is sugar. So a lot of these bars have a lot of sugar. So I look for ones that have have lower added sugar or it's natural like, some of them are naturally sweetened with honey or dates, which are preferable to any kinda sugar alcohol, which we know is not great for us. So I look for that higher, content of protein. And what is the protein source? Like, is it something yucky or is it some actual ingredient that I know what that means? That totally makes sense. Yeah. And they're and they're tough, Cam. I mean, some of the bars that are really high protein have so much crap in them, and it's hard to say no to that, but it's a balance. Right? Like, I I don't want the chemicals, but I do want the protein, so I have to have to balance that out. And you don't wanna go and eat the whole kitchen. So No. Exactly. Yeah. I Costco Costco right now, there there are 2 bars that kind of pass the test, I would say, the RX bars That's one's out there. 14, yeah, 14 grams of protein. It does have natural flavors. Yes. I know that's chemicals, but it's sweetened with dates. And it's like I can read all the words except for natural flavors. I don't know exactly what they're putting in there, but I just kinda go, okay, this is worth the protein. It hits the sweet tooth. It yeah. It hits the mark. And then they also have one that's nut based and I think that one is sweetened with honey and I can't think of the protein off, but it's all nut based. It has more calories, I feel like, more than it's more of a fat snack than a protein snack for me. Is it the Kind bars? Because I know Kind bars fit that bill. I used to really rely on the KIND bars, but then there's a lot of sugar in some of those flavors. So I've kinda come off that. It's like nature or something, it's in a round box. If you go to Costco, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Okay. I'll have to check that out. Something. And and you can look like, Amazon. You can look on Amazon and see on Amazon, the cool thing is you can actually read the ingredients. And so that's kinda I do a little bit of research online and then I'll kinda try to go find the thing. But RXBARs are really good. There's there was another one that I've used recently, but I remember what. But the ones that aren't don't have a lot of sugar or sugar alcohols clearly aren't as sweet. So some of the ones that have those nut butters and stuff like that, they're not as sweet, but I'm okay with that. Yeah. And, sugar alcohol may disrupt your gut health and so I'm just gonna say that. And also it may make you want more sugar like others. Yeah, absolutely. It increases your craving. I just want to put that out there. So we talked about timing your protein throughout the day, but do you have, like, a hard cutoff? Like, I I just see dinner instead of the snacks. Do you have, like, a timing of when that goes a really good question. I more or less use biofeedback rather than a cutoff because, you know, unfortunately or fortunately, I'm I'm fortunate enough to have a wonderful spouse, but, unfortunately, I like to eat dinner with him. And I've decided for that for our family, I will wait for him most of the time unless it's gonna be really late. So that may be like, I gotta be honest with you, last night, I think it was close to 7 before we ate, which is later than I would like, but I made a conscious choice to say, I'd

rather enjoy this meal with my spouse and wait rather than eat at 5:

30 by myself. And I love that because we talk about health off the plate. And, yes, health is on your plate, but it's also who's at your table and your conversation and investing in that relationship. I 100% understand. I think what I happens in my world because there are some times if if, my husband's at the office, which is in, you know, a half hour away, whatever, and then there's stuff going on after school, if our our person's here, our stepson's here, or whatever, then I'll just go ahead and eat. But I understand what you're saying. I would rather there are some days I would rather just go ahead and eat dinner early than have a snack and a later dinner. I that's what I guess I'm Yeah. And I totally agree and I've done that. I mean, some sometimes the tipping point is, well, how far are you? Like, are is it gonna be another hour, or is it gonna be 30 minutes? And in all fairness, I don't think I got home until 6. So we're not talking about, like, I had been sitting there waiting for hours. So, you know You weren't there at 3 o'clock, where's dinner? No. Exactly. And so I think I think that plays a part too, right, is is coming to terms with, because, Cam, I did go through a period where I was pretty strict about it and I was like, if you're not here by 6, I'm gonna eat without you. And I didn't feel good. Like, that made me feel like a crap not a crap not a crappy wife in the sense I'm not taking care of my spouse, but I miss his company. So I think everybody's got to figure out, and believe me, there are times, especially in summer when it's when it

doesn't get dark till late, he may work until 7:

30 at night. And I'm like, no, babe. Not waiting for you. And he's fine with that. Like, it's not like he gets angry. But, yeah, done it both ways. Yeah. It seems like our pattern right now is every other week, there's running after school, after dinner, all that. And so, anyway, that's just how our pattern is right now. It's our stage of life. I love that. I just wanna say in Amelia's town, you can go to dinner and get a discount if you go out early. Yeah. If you go early, you get the senior they call it like a c they maybe they call it early bird. But, yeah, if you play there I know there's a couple where if you're seated by

5:

30 and place your order by 6, you get a 15% discount. Like, how cool is that? All the discounts. I love eating early. I love it. And yet you show up that. When you show up, you're like the youngest person by, like, 15 years. It's like, hey, there's the I don't even care. And I love it because my husband likes cedarly too. So we're we're matched that way. Yeah. Absolutely. So we mentioned you mentioned the eggs and the cheese and the Greek yogurt. Are there any other snacks that you would, like, wanna point out? Yeah. And I know this sounds gross. And I remember when my friend, Karen, who listens to this podcast, gave me this recipe. I was like, that is disgusting. I'm never drinking it. And now I love it. It is a bone broth latte. And I've mentioned this to so many clients. Some people are like, yep. That's for me, and some people are like, nope. I'm not doing it. So maybe they'll come around. So it's a thing of bone broth. I get mine from Trader Joe's organic, whatever. It's 22 grams of protein. Heck, yeah. And you heat it up. Yeah. It's you drink it like tea. It's very cozy and nurturing. I will say that. And it doesn't make me too full for dinner. So it's really, like, on those kind of days. So, you heat up brown broth. You put turmeric. You put ginger, which we know have benefits for anti inflammatory, all the things. And then sometimes I put a little extra salt in there depending on, again, the bone broth, how much salt is in the bone broth because there's also Kettle and Fire. So there's 2 brands I use And then you need a fat source. And so right now, my husband's putting MTC oil in his. I don't know why he chose that, but he did because it was out on the counter. I like a little bit of grass fed butter. Amazing. You could also do coconut oil, but you need a fat source in there. And so the fat source is gonna satisfy you and it, you know, just gets that in your mouth, that buttery feeling in your mouth. And, it's I don't know how many calories it is, but it's just really it's 22 cam. And, again, it doesn't make me too full for dinner. You can also spice it up with, like if you have rosemary growing, you can put a swig of rosemary in there. Anyway, it's it's yummy. That sounds amazing. The fat source, I've used all 3 of those and I too prefer the the grass fed. Ghee is what I usually got. You can use ghee too. Yeah. Just because it's, you know, you it's okay at room temperature. The MCT oil, I will say, has upset my stomach. When I used that, that didn't go as well as the butter or I think I've used coconut oil, but I'm not sure. We have this is not bone broth, but we have a local coffee shop that does a golden latte and it's based and it's got, almond milk, turmeric, cinnamon, maybe something else, and they put coconut oil in that. And so that is not a great source of protein per se because almond milk don't have very much, but it's very tasty and satisfying. So Yeah. Was it called golden milk? Did you say it was golden milk? Well, that that particular one is called a golden latte at that particular coffee shop, but you can actually buy either in powder form or it you know, already mixed go a golden milk or golden latte at some places. Years ago, I've made my own. There's I have an Ayurvedic cookbook upstairs, and golden milk is one of the things. It's so yummy. I use milkadamia, which is milk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I use, and it's been many years I forgot about that recipe. Yummy. Again, cozy, but the bone broth has way more protein. So it's protein. For sure. Yeah. But, you know, I just wanna point out with your with that description is fat is satiating, and so in your snack, it would be good. And most of the time, Greek yogurt and the string cheese and the hard boiled eggs, the things we've already mentioned, does have fat. So, you know, we don't want too much, which tends to happen more if we go with, like, a bar. Steps? I'm just kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That too. There's no protein there. Yeah. Exactly. So I think it's a good as a good guideline, Cam, is, you know, we know we're gonna get hungry. Let's plan ahead and let's make sure it's got protein in it. Yeah. And for me personally, if I I'll say breakfast. If I eat breakfast that's protein forward, but it doesn't have enough fat, then I get hungry sooner. That's I've watched myself over and over. So it does need a little fat in my opinion. I'm with you. I think it's great. I think those are great guidelines for snacks. I'm I'm glad we talked about it. Now I feel inspired to have healthy snacks. Are you gonna put them in your purse? Yeah. Probably. Okay. Thanks for listening today. You can find us on Instagram@midlife.mommas. For all of our other contact info, check out the show description below, and we will talk to you next