This post is part of the Soy Simple campaign. Read my disclosure here.

If you’re with me, and I ever just get kind of quiet, I either:

• have a terrible stomachache and am thinking about just how soon I can get to a bathroom
• or am really hungry and am trying to not rip your head off.

Before getting my act together a few years ago, I never really snacked, thinking that clearly people I would know overweight if I were snacking, eating extra calories. (Because my appearance clearly didn’t show it.) If I really did get hungry in between meals, I’d wait until I couldn’t take the hunger any more and usually grab something unhealthy. Once I decided to start being nice to my body a few years ago, I realized that snacking in between meals could actually be good for you if they were healthy snacks.

Since then, I always try to have some sort of snack with me in case I get stuck without food.

Now that I’m getting back on a normal schedule and am just in an office all day, I can obviously use the fridge for snacks, but over the summer running to interviews and meetings, I needed something that I could throw in my bag that wouldn’t make a mess. I ate a lot of bars because they were so easy to grab and had protein to keep me satiated.

The trainer I used to work out with used to talk about having chicken or turkey as snacks, but that never really appealed to me, and I didn’t start eating hard-boiled eggs until this summer. I don’t eat yogurt any more because I limit dairy in my diet to be kind to my stomach (even though it’s not kind to me), so soy protein is the easiest way for me to get some protein in between meals.

What are some other ways you can snack on soy protein?

• soy milk (mmm chocolate soy milk)
• energy bars
• smoothies with soy protein (true story: I used to bring out little pre-portioned baggies of soy to my fave smoothie truck near work because I didn’t like their whey protein.)
• soy yogurt (can’t say I’ve tried this yet, but I do miss yogurt so want to try it.)

[via]

Contest:

This week’s prize is, again, a $50 grocery store card to your local grocery store. In order to enter, you must partake in this Soy Scavenger Hunt.

When doing your grocery shopping this weekend, find a great snack made with soy and tweet a pic at me with the hashtag #soysimple.

Example:

Now that the marathon is over (just in case you forgot: I ran a marathon Sunday. It was awesome.), I’m focusing a bit more on my nutrition. I’d like to say that I only started carb-loading the last week of marathon training, but I definitely started replacing some veggies and protein in my diet with carbs, oh, pretty much after I hit “register” for the race. Now that I’m not running for hours at a time, I need less calories.

While I’m nowhere near a vegetarian, I do occasionally consume soy products for some extra protein–especially soy milk, since my stomach seems to be happier when I stay away from cow’s milk. I recognize some of the dangers of too much soy, so it’s something I try to eat in moderation. I’ve been chosen as a “Soy Simple” ambassador, and I’ll be writing about soy protein and its benefits for the next few weeks. Two of my posts a week will be part of this campaign–one will be an informative one, like this one, and the other will be a giveaway for a gift card to your grocery store. I’ve mostly been blogging once a day lately, but I’ll have two posts on the days I’m participating in this campaign to keep my regular content coming.

I’ve long been leery of sponsored posts and ambassadorship programs, but I was curious to give this a try. Although this campaign is sponsored by Solae, I will be discussing the benefits of soy in general, rather than a specific product. As this campaign continues, please let me know your thoughts. I am being paid for my participation, but–insert standard disclaimer here–all thoughts are my own.

So. With that out of the way, let’s talk about soy for breakfast.

Since one of my big reasons for soy is my avoidance of dairy, one of the biggest sources of soy in my diet is soy milk.

Adding some soy to my breakfast–especially since my breakfast is usually fairly carb-heavy–is a good way to keep me full until lunch and add some extra protein, since I’m usually too lazy to make eggs or any kind of breakfast meat.

Oatmeal with both soy milk and sunflower butter? Definitely keeps me full until late afternoon.

Granola or cereal with soy milk and fruit? Sort of tastes like dessert for breakfast, but the soy milk adds protein.

How do you add soy to your breakfast?