Episode 90: How Much Protein Do I Actually Need?!

In an industry filled with 150,973,217 answers per questions Googled, ya' KNOW I'm here to cut through the BS ;) So, let's talk PROTEIN...

In this week's episode we're talking about: 

• The recommended protein range for your body
• Why you absolutely should NOT jump to these goal numbers
• How to start increasing your protein intake in a way that doesn't require drinking protein shakes 'til you want to puke (including if you're vegan or vegetarian)

To schedule your free 1-1 Strategy Session visit:
www.MindStrongFitness.com

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Podcast How Much Protein Do I Actually Need?!

 | 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and today we are talking about one of the topics I get asked the most whether it's on my website, social media, wherever everyone wants to know how much protein should I be eating. Now I want to say up front, I could have made this a 15 second podcast. I could have told you the generic range we want to aim for. But you know me, and I am an educator, and if we try to jump to these numbers, the pun totally intended. It's going to leave a bad taste in your mouth if you have not listened to the three part series I did on why some people have a bad experience with macros, listen to those three episodes before you listen to this one, because in this episode, yes, I'm going to give you the blanket statement range. More importantly, I'm going to talk to you about how to increase your protein. Check it out. So once again, as I said in the intro, I could have made this a 15 second podcast. I could have told you the range to aim for, and said, There you go. Have fun eating more protein. And what would have happened is you would have come back to me in I was going to say six months, but really it's like a week. You would have been back in a week, and you would have been like, Rachel, I can't do this. Macros aren't for me. It's too hard. And the reason is, you've heard me say it a million times. Our bodies and our minds hate. Massive change. Now I'm going to keep referring back to that three part podcast I did on why some people try macros and it didn't work for them. What most people do, and I'm including a lot of macro coaches in there, is they use a generic formula or an online macro calculator, and I'm going to tell you the formula they're using for protein specifically in a second, and they're handing their clients some numbers, and they're saying, Here you go. Eat this much protein. So then I get on strategy sessions with with people, and they're like, you know, I tried macros before, and I couldn't do it. It was too hard. I couldn't stick with it. And the first thing I say to them is, let me guess You felt like you were chugging protein shakes till you wanted to vomit. And they're like, Yes, how did you know? And the answer is, because our bodies and our minds hate massive change. So yes, I'm going to tell you the blanket formula for a range of protein. However, I do not suggest you jump to that number. I'm going to walk you through the process that we take our members through, and that I suggest you do if you're going to do this on your own. Okay, I also want to say I'm going to be speaking in grams. I know I have a lot of listeners in in different countries, and when we work with people, we get quite a few members in New Zealand and Australia specifically. I don't know why, but it's happened that way. And anytime I'm having those conversations, I have a conversion chart up on Google because I have not mastered doing that in my head. So for the ease of this podcast, I apologize to anyone 02:39 who's not using grams, but I'm going to speak in grams for each ease of use, the goal amount of protein for most of us is you're going to take your body weight and you're going to multiply it by either point eight or one. Okay, so if you weigh 150 02:55 

02:55 

pounds, again, I'm speaking pounds grams. If you weigh 150 pounds, you would take 150 times point eight. That's your grams of protein. If you weigh 150 pounds, you would multiply 150 times one. That's your grams of protein. Okay, now I'm going to talk about how to know which one of those to use, and then, more importantly, why I don't suggest that you jump there. 

03:17 

If you are someone who's looking to get healthy, right? Especially if you're perimenopausal. You're menopausal. You know that protein is more important than ever in your life. You're just trying to lose some weight. You're just trying to be healthy. You're not trying to put on tons of new muscle. You're not trying to be a bodybuilder. This point, eight times your body weight is perfect for you. People who would gear more towards the one times their body weight are people more like me, like I am, someone who goes through stages where I'm actively putting on new muscle, right? I identify. I don't live a bodybuilder life, but I lift like that. So for someone like me, I'm going to go more towards the one times my body weight, the the average woman who's not living that lifestyle. Point eight is fine. Now here's the problem, and again, if you listen to that three part series, you you already know what I'm going to say, but I'm going to be able to be able to speak more specifically here. Let's say that you do your body weight times point eight, and it says you should be eating 120 grams of protein a day. Okay, let's say that we could get a glimpse, and I'm going to talk about how in a second, but let's say we could get a glimpse into what your body is used to right now, and that glimpse showed us that you're used to 40 grams of protein a day. In what universe are you going to triple your protein intake overnight and stick with it? And the answer is, you are not. You're either going to come back to me very quickly and say, I'm drinking protein shakes till I'm nauseous I am I'm eating meat until I want to throw up. I don't eat meat. And I don't think this is possible as a vegetarian or a vegan, which side note it is, I when, when I was a vegan for over three years, I was still living a bodybuilder life, and I ate a tremendous amount of protein. It's absolutely possible. But for the point of this conversation, if you're used to 40 grams of protein and. 

05:00 

That number tells you we should be aiming for 120 it is not realistic to think that we are going to triple our protein intake overnight and stick with it. That is not how I suggest you start and 99.999% 

05:14 

of the time when women come to me and say, I tried macros, it didn't work. It's because either they did or their coach did this, they used a generic formula. They pumped out what's meant to be goal numbers. They're meant to tell us the direction in which we need to trend not start. And then they say, macros don't work for me. Here's what I suggest you do. Okay? And I want to blanket statement, caveat, whatever word we want to use there before I say this, macros are a lot easier to learn with a coach who's not only doing it for you, but teaching it to you. And that's Rachel the human talking. I tried to learn macros for a year and a half on my own, and I mean, this was a decade ago when I finally got a coach who taught it to me. It clicked seemingly overnight, because I'd been trying for so long, because there's a lot of nuance to this, right? Today we are speaking specifically about protein, but at the end of the day, we know that calories are king for weight loss. The caveat to that? Well, no, not the caveat to that. That doesn't necessarily always mean overeating, right? If you listen to past episodes, if you are under eating for prolonged amount of time, your body's not going to release the 

weight, but we need to take total calories into account, is my point in saying that. So when we're talking about protein, specifically on this episode, we're not talking about carbs, we're not talking about fat, we're not talking about how your macros equal your total calories. So I'm saying that upfront, because in this episode, I am specifically talking about how I suggest you work toward getting more protein into your daily intake. I am not talking about paying attention to total calories, because protein absolutely plays into that. A lot of people are like, well, protein is good for me. I can just eat as much as I want. That is absolutely not true. There's calories in protein, there's calories and carbs, there's calories in fat, and we have to make sure we're in the right caloric range. So blanket statement, if you want to collapse time and learn this as quickly as possible, lock in the skill, get over having to track and just eat intuitively. The fastest way to do that is with a coach that's going to teach it to you. But I digress. Here's what I suggest you do, download any free macro tracking app now you if you listen to that three part series. You already know what I'm going to say. Those apps are going to try to shove goal numbers down your throat. They're going to tell you things like, if you eat this many calories, you lose this much weight, or you should be eating this much protein in a day. Ignore those numbers. They are wrong. Online macro calculators, generic formulas, do not work. The only thing I want you to do for the next five days, do your best sometimes. That's easier said than done, to eat as you normally eat, and just pop your food into an app. Okay, so you wake up, you have two eggs, a bagel and two pieces of bacon, put it into your app at the it does not have to be exact. This isn't about being meticulous. At the end of five days, I want you to go in and look at your weekly averages. Most of these apps have an app, have a setting where you can look at your weekly averages and just get an idea. How much protein do I tend to eat this week? Now that's going to show us what your body and your mind are used to. Okay, now you go and you use that formula I just told you. Take your body weight. We'll stick with point eight for ease of conversation, because that's what most, most people listening are going to use, 

08:21 

let's say that your your week of tracking, showed that you averaged 45 grams of protein. And let's say that when you multiplied your body weight times point eight, it said your goal was 120 grams of protein. Do not capital D, capital N. Do not try to jump to 120 grams of protein. They say 120 120 Okay, what I'm going to suggest you do is meet your body right at 45 grams. Maybe you bump it up to 50 if you're feeling feisty, because the reality is, you didn't eat 45 grams every single day. Probably you probably had days you ate a little more. Days you ate a little less. 45 just came out to be the average. So the first thing we want to do is show your body. This is what it feels like to get 45 grams of protein a day from there, once we feel what it feels like to eat foods and get 45 grams of protein a day with some time, we can bump up to 50 we can bump up to 55 and we can slowly work toward those goal numbers, those numbers that that formula is popping out. That is not where we start. That shows us. The only thing it shows us is the direction in which we want to trend. Most people will not ever get all the way up to that number, and that's okay. It just shows us the direction that we're trending. Okay, meet your body where it is and slowly walk it toward that now, again, there's a bigger conversation to be had here around about calories protein is not a free for all carbs, not a free for all fats, not a free for all but for the purposes of this podcast, we're just talking about upping your protein intake. Now sometimes I tell this to people, and they're like, no Rachel, like I'm a go getter. Like I'm Die Hard. If that thing tells me 120 

10:00 

Grams of protein. I'm doing it overnight, and you know my favorite expression? Do you boo boo? I do not suggest it, because there's a lot of factors that go in biologically. Right? Protein dehydrates you. 

Protein constipates you. So if your plan is to go 45 grams to 120 grams, and you think your body's not going to freak out, love and light, my friend, go, be hardcore, but you are going to be feeling like
 crap. I zero out of 10, zero out of 1000 recommend that method. If you're someone who's like, No, I'm hardcore, and I can be intense with this, then maybe you increase faster. Maybe you go 45 grams. Give it a week or two and go to 55 grams. But in no universe do I suggest you make massive leaps like that. Your mind is going to freak out, your body's going to freak out. Okay, so again, number one, if you haven't listened to my three part series on why some people have a bad experience with macros, that's a really good place to start before you do this experiment in increasing protein. And number two, understand that protein is not a weight loss technique. Okay, protein is not a free for all. Protein, of all the macros, is one of the most important, especially as we get to Peri and postmenopausal age, our body needs protein to preserve muscle mass, to keep our bones healthy for a variety of things that are beyond the scope of this podcast, and what we don't want to do is make massive leaps. So if you want a good starting place, you're going to take your body weight, multiply it by either point eight or one, depending on what your lifestyle looks like. Activity wise, that's not where we're going to start. We're going to track our food, ignoring any goal numbers for five days. We're going to look at our averages. We're going to meet our body close to that, and then we're going to baby step it up. That is how I suggest. If you're going to do this on your own, if you're someone who's like, I need to just collapse time and get this done. Like, do this for me. Teach it to me. In that case, go to my website, mindstrongfitness.com, book in first free strategy session, and we could talk about how to collapse time and just teach this to you really, really quickly. You know, you've heard me say this before, but nutrition, you master the skill that's it. Right? For every 100 women that I teach, there's maybe two that are like the control that tracking gives me. I will never let it go, and my answer is, awesome. If you love it, do it. That's not me. That's not 98% of women I work with, for most of us, we want to just stop freaking ruminating about food. We just want to know that we're in the driver's seat so we can stop thinking about it so much. And to do that, we need to, number one, know what your personal body, my personal body, our personal bodies, need in terms of that balance of carbs, fat, protein, which equal your calories. And number two, most importantly, well, equally importantly, we need to put in a training ground so our mind and our body can have those conversations like, Hey, I think I'm a little alone. Protein today. Hey, I think I'm getting up there in calories today. That's what Intuitive Eating is. The only way we can get there is by putting in a training ground where we know without a shadow of a doubt that we're within those ranges, so eventually we can release it and just eat intuitively. So for the purposes today, obviously we are just talking about protein. We're not talking about how carbs or fat fit into that. But this is a really good starting place. If you're just looking at getting some protein in. Don't make massive leaps our bodies and our minds hate it. It's gonna pun totally intended leave a terrible taste in your mouth when it comes to Macros, Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps is the name again, the game. And if you want to collapse time and just learn this really quickly, shoot me a book in for your strategy session on my website. All right, my friends, remember baby steps. This works for everyone. If you are vegan vegetarian, there's absolutely hope. I have a million resources. I can help you with protein ideas, especially as a vegan or vegetarian as a carnivore, too, but that's a little more obvious. But macros work for everyone. We just have to learn how to do it correctly. So.