How much protein to eat and how to consume more of it?
Protein! The most important macronutrient that should be prioritized regardless of your goals.
Now a lot of people don’t like it when people say that – which I understand. Each macronutrient serves an important purpose. And we can get into the importance of the other macronutrients in a future episode. If that’s something you would like me to do, share this episode to your Instagram stories and tag me and I will talk about that in a future episode.
But the reason I personally say that protein is the most important macronutrient is because it is the most challenging macronutrient for most people to consume enough of and it is often the underconsumption of protein that is holding people back from accomplishing their body composition related goals.
So why protein? What makes it so special?
Regardless of if you are trying to lose weight, build muscle or get strong, consuming enough protein is essential to accomplishing these goals.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that all calories we eat are not created equal. There’s this concept known as the thermic effect of food (TEF), which is basically the calories burned from what we eat
When it comes to fat & carbs, your thermic effect of food for fats are only 2-3% & carbs are 6-8%. You still burn calories during the digestion of fats & carbs, but it's not even close nor comparable to the calories burned from consuming protein, which is around 25%.
Therefore, when people tell you to "just eat less" to lose weight, it’s not 100% accurate. If you eat less protein, you actually make it harder to lose weight. However, if you replace some fat & carbs with protein, you should make it easier to lose weight, even if you eat the same amount of food (calories).
This is just one of MANY reasons why protein is so important when we are trying to make body composition changes.
In addition, protein makes up about 20% of your body’s mass. It is also comprised of your hair, blood, fingernails, and toenails. It is the key structural component of your cells, forms your hormones and enzymes and allows cells throughout your body to communicate with each other. We are trying to optimize our body composition goals not to just survive. So, because of that, lower protein diets when you are trying to diet or build muscle is not the answer.
When trying to change your body composition goals, it’s safe to assume that you are following a resistance training program, right? What happens when we train? We experience muscle-protein breakdown. This is the goal when we are doing resistance training, to create new muscle tissue so we build muscle.
What about if we are dieting?
We know that you must be in a calorie deficit when you want to lose fat. We also must remember that dieting puts a lot of stress on our bodies, including our muscle tissue. As we lean out, you lose fat, yes. But often you are losing muscle as well (depending how quickly you are losing weight). To offset these negative effects, having a higher protein diet can help mitigate these issues.
Now that we understand WHY protein is so important, let’s break it down how you should calculate it.
After listing off all the benefits, you might be thinking “well I’ll just eat as much protein as possible.” We must keep things in reason and remember there is a law of diminishing return here. Too much of anything isn’t a good thing.
So, the goal is not to eat as much protein as possible. Believe me, the digestive issues of consuming 200g of protein a day when you are a female is not fun, nor is it necessary.
When deciding on your protein targets, it’s important to consider 4 variables
1. Are you dieting?
2. Are you maintaining?
3. Are you building?
4. What are your go to protein sources?
The following table breakdowns down the number of grams of protein for 1 lb of bodyweight you want to consume daily based on your goals.
It’s important to note that if someone is considered obese, then it’s best to use the estimated lean body mass when making this calculation. Another method is to take your target bodyweight and use that as your benchmark.
You can see that the protein target is higher when you are dieting compared to when you are maintaining or even building.
There are a few reasons for this:
1. Higher protein when dieting helps you stay more satiated, which helps mitigate hunger
2. Higher protein when dieting helps mitigate muscle lose
When you are trying to build muscle, you want to of course be in a calorie surplus, where it’s better to increase your carbs versus your protein because it’s your fuel source and will help give you the energy you need to perform in the gym.
Please note that these ranges are just suggestions and can be adapted to fit your needs. For example, say the protein target when you are building feels too low and you are super hungry and may be gaining weight too quickly, then don’t be afraid to bump your protein targets up to the 1.2g per lb of BW to help offset that hunger. This will also increase your thermic effect of food, so you slow down the weight gain as needed.
Going over an example here. Say you weigh 120lbs and want to maintain your results. Your protein range would be 84g-120g (120*.7) (120*1.0)
Now if you are a vegan, you want to pump up this total by 5-10%. Which would change your targets to 88g-132g (84*1.05) (120*1.10)
You would apply this percentage increase when all you consume are plant-based protein (meaning no animal products) regardless of if you are dieting, maintaining, or building.
So why do we do this is you are a vegan?
There are 9 essential amino acids that we need to consume from our food when it comes to having a complete protein source. Typically plant proteins are lower in certain essential amino acids.
Leucine is the primary amino acid responsible for stimulating muscle protein synthesis. We want to consume about 3-5g of leucine a day, which is lacking in plant-based proteins compared to animal-based proteins.
As you can see in the graph here, you can see which protein sources have a higher amount of leucine compared to others.
What should you do?
Don’t worry, you don’t have to go out and start eating meat if you don’t want to. You just must focus a little more diligently when it comes to consuming enough protein. Therefore, I recommend increasing your protein targets by 5-10% to help ensure you are getting enough leucine.
I also would recommend consuming a leucine supplement
And finally, try to focus on eating complementary proteins to ensure you consume all the essential amino acids. For example, rice is high certain amino acids and beans are higher in other amino acids, therefore eating them together or within the same day will help ensure you are consuming an adequate amount of essential amino acids.
Lastly, let’s discuss how can we include more protein into our diet?
1. Select high protein options
When you are selecting your cereal, oatmeal, bread, pasta, rice etc, always select the brand that contains the highest amount of protein
2. Stock up on lean protein sources
Egg whites, chicken, protein milk, shrimp, Greek yogurt, turkey, cod, extra lean ground beef, tofu
3. Stock up on supplements
Supplementing your protein is often essential for most people. Protein isn't palatable and it's really tough to consume all your protein needs in a day just from food. So don't be afraid to supplement your protein. You can get protein powder, protein bars, protein chips and even protein water.
4. Try new recipes
My go to high protein recipe is the protein crepe. Egg whites and protein powder are king for convenience and might be a good option for you to consider. You can even mix up vanilla protein powder with egg whites (you’ll have to play with the serving sizes) and mix it up for protein crepe! This is basically 100% protein and a nice treat!
Also be sure to check out the following sites for some high protein options:
www.eatthismuch.com (also an app)
Overall, I know protein is tough to consume enough of. I am right there with you. But that’s not an excuse to avoid it and not make it a priority. With some preplanning, mindfulness and creativity, we can be successful with our protein intake and make it a priority.
Hope this was helpful!
Coach Krys