How much protein do you really need? Getting to the foundation of well-being.

Protein intake is important for health, but we can all slow down on trying to consume massive amounts to avoid losing muscle mass as we age. The recommended amount in the research is 1.6-2.2g/kg/day. Based on your body weight, that looks like:

Other social media influencers who oppose high protein or meat will try to scare you that these diets demineralizes the bones, or create an acidic environment that leads to cancer.  That's a compelling argument! My research has shown that plant based diets can combat the acidity - eating most of your food from real plant sources (this doesn't mean vegetarian) is sufficient to provide your body with high quality vitamins and minerals, and enough fibre to keep your elimination systems working well.   A research study of women who ate a high protein diet (more than 2.2g/kg/day) for 1 year showed "There were no significant changes for any measure of body composition over the course of the year (i.e., body weight, fat mass, lean body mass, percent fat, whole body bone mineral content, whole body T-score, whole body bone mineral density, lumbar bone mineral content, lumbar bone mineral density and lumbar T-score)."   There are multiple other resources that support this, and this is what I choose to follow for my own well-being. 

 Now these are just a few studies, and if we want to search further we can probably find other research to suggest otherwise.  The bottom line is to pay attention to your body, listen and do what's right for you.  There are multiple factors that affect our food choices, intake, digestion, absorption and assimilation of the nutrients from the food we eat.  Just because it goes into the mouth doesn't mean it's getting to the cells.  But these details are getting away from the basis.  Once you are doing the basics, THEN you can start micro managing the details. But is spending your time micromanaging the details of your life really what you want to be doing? 

Don't get me wrong, nutrition is a core component of my lifestyle - I firmly believe that what we eat creates who we are.  While I do still try to maintain my levels of high quality protein for my health, I no longer subscribe to the ideas of exact timing and quantities of foods, and look at a more holistic approach of weekly cycles.  It's so freeing to have this flexibility, and to no longer have the failure mentality when I can't hit the all or nothing rules I once put on myself.  To be honest, my 40s, I noticed my body getting softer, less muscle definition, able to pull skin around my waist and worse my hips and butt, and I no longer loved how I felt in my bathing suit. Was it my diet? My hormones?  My exercise? When I was honest with myself, the answer was YES to all of those, as well as different stressors in my life that I hadn't managed before until I was dealing with aging parents and kids growing from teenagers to adults, changing friendships. In hindsight, the mental energy I wasted on that was probably only further contributing to my stress. My diet was still better than 90% of other people, but even that only took me so far, as it doesn't matter one bit what other people are doing or thinking.  I knew deep down I only needed to compare myself to me, and set my own expectations for my own well being.  I knew my diet and hormones and sleep were not the same as they had been through my 20s and 30s, and my body WAS changing as I entered peri-menopause, and I didn't have as much energy or desire to do intense workouts everyday, and sometimes my body hurt. I could blame all of these things, try harder to track my macros, and push harder through workouts, or I could accept the fact that it was more important to stay up late to watch my kids hockey game, and to get up in the middle of the night to give them a ride home from a party, and to enjoy the carbs when I went to a nice restaurant.  I was doing a great job with all the resources and life circumstances I had at the time, and I stopped beating myself up for not doing what I had told myself was necessary, to be someone or something that didn't really align with my true self.  It's a reality of life and aging that we will change.  If I wasn't growing and changing, that would be more of a travesty, to continue living the same year after year, and to try to hold onto something that no longer was.   As I learned to have more compassion and empathy for myself, as I gave to all my clients, life became easier, and I seemed to find my joy and motivation again. 

In conclusion, understanding the basics of health and #lifestyle medicine is the foundation for well-being. 

1. Schoenfeld BJ, Aragon AA. How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle-building? Implications for daily protein distribution. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2018 Feb 27;15:10. doi: 10.1186/s12970-018-0215-1. PMID: 29497353; PMCID: PMC5828430.

2. Antonio J, Ellerbroek A, Carson C. The Effects of a High-Protein Diet on Bone Mineral Density in Exercise-Trained Women: A 1-Year Investigation. J Funct Morphol Kinesiol. 2018 Dec 5;3(4):62. doi: 10.3390/jfmk3040062. PMID: 33466990; PMCID: PMC7737008.