#32: How to get enough protein each day - practical tips for eating more protein

Resources mentioned in the episode: 

• Self-study programs Learn to Lift at HOME & Learn to Lift at the GYM >
• Buy me a coffee >

About episode #32:
"How do you manage to eat 140g of protein each day?" That's a question that I get asked a lot by clients and followers when I post about my protein goals. 

In this episode, I explain how. It's actually not that hard if you use my method, so I go through it step-by-step. 

Protein is a very important macro - especially for women in perimenopause and menopause. I explain the benefits of protein too. 

You'll get answers to these questions:

✨What are the benefits of eating protein?

✨How much protein should I eat each day?

✨How much protein do I need after a workout?

✨How can I make sure I'm getting enough protein?

Enjoy this short episode!

Transcript

#32: How to get enough protein each day - practical tips for eating more protein

[00:00:00] Welcome to the 40 plus fitness for women podcast. I'm Lynn, your host. And today we're going to be looking at how to actually practically get all that protein in every day that you're supposed to be getting in. Now I have to start by apologizing if the audio quality is not quite what you're used to on this podcast, but my beloved Rode microphone decided to stop cooperating yesterday and I haven't gotten it working.

So today I'm actually recording this using the microphone on my laptop. So considerably worse quality and apologies for that, but I wanted to make sure to get this episode out this week. So, but by next week, hopefully I will have this problem solved. All right, so let's get into the topic. So what is the recommended amount of protein that we should be getting?

So now I'm speaking [00:01:00] to women who are in midlife, who are trying to retain and build muscle. And for us, We should be eating somewhere around 0. 8 to 1 gram and that's per pound body weight. And, and there you should be looking at your ideal body weight. So if you're considerably overweight, think about like, what is your target weight?

And when I talk about ideal body weight, I also don't mean like, so that you could look like a bikini fitness model, but, but some reasonable amount of weight as your goal. And. What you will find is that that can be fairly challenging. Let's first look at the reasons why it would be important for you to really be targeting that amount of protein.

First of all, as you get older, your body actually gets worse at processing and making use of the protein that you eat. So contrary kind of to popular belief that you [00:02:00] don't need so much protein as you get older, You should actually be eating more protein so that you're getting enough protein. I know my mother is awful at this.

I keep trying to tell her that, Hey mom, you have got to keep, you know, eating protein and eating more protein. My father's making himself a steak. She's having a salad with a tiny little bit of meat. She's like, but I had some cheese on my sandwich this morning. Like, no mom, that is not enough. Anyway, so the second reason you want to be eating more protein is to help slow down the rate of your muscle loss as you age.

The third reason is if you're trying to build more muscle, you need the material to build the muscle from. Protein contains amino acids, and those are the building blocks of muscle. So trying to build muscle without enough protein is like trying to build a brick house without bricks. It's just not going to happen.

And you need to be getting that [00:03:00] protein in every day, if at all possible. So the fourth thing is something that's not talked about very much, but I think anecdotally. People do notice this when they start eating more protein is that they don't have these weird cravings or these weird feeling like, Oh, I still need to eat something, but I don't really know what.

And then you start eating a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And no, you're not getting the satisfaction. That kind of feeling goes away. And at least for me, that's gone away completely. I no longer have those kinds of craving feelings. And the fifth reason is that you will feel fuller for longer.

So protein helps you feel more satiated. If you have a meal with the same amount of calories, but more of those calories are from protein, you'll notice that meal will carry you longer than if it was just carbs and fats in there. Okay, so we went through the benefits of having more protein, [00:04:00] but now how do you know how much more you should be eating?

How do you know how much you're eating now? Well, unfortunately the only real way to know is to track and you don't need to track for a long, long time, but track for, you know, a few days, like typical days of what you're eating. So I would pick a week where, you know, you're not on holiday, there's no major parties or whatever, just normal.

regular everyday life and start tracking. So get a kitchen scale. Probably you have one at home if you do any kind of baking and weigh the protein that you're eating. So weigh that chicken breast that you ate, weigh the milk that you put in your coffee, weigh the yogurt that you put, uh, or that you ate today.

Everything that has protein in it, weigh it and write it down on a piece of paper and then enter those numbers into a macro tracker. I like to use fat [00:05:00] secret, but I know that a lot of people use my fitness pal. So those are 2 of the big ones. Then you have to enter those in. And yes, it's a pain in the butt the first time because you know you ate that yogurt, then you've gotta find like danon, 2% strawberry, you know, yogurt, whatever.

And then you input those things and you get a look at how much protein you have actually eaten in a day. And I'm pretty willing to bet you are going to be quite a bit below. What your ideal protein target is, but take a look at that so that you get a realistic idea of what you actually are eating.

Because even if you're eating, you know, you're having an egg in the morning and yogurt, and you're, you're having a proper lunch, some kind of salad with chicken salad or whatever. And then you're having a real meal at dinner and, and this kind of thing, it may feel like, Oh yeah, but I'm eating meat all the [00:06:00] time.

I'm having dairy, you know, I had some nuts, whatever. When you calculate it, you will likely find that it is still below what your target needs to be. Okay. So basically that measurement. That I just discussed is one that's hopefully going to light the fire under your butt to actually get going on trying to get more protein into your life.

And the best way to do this is to be fairly systematic and scientific about it. Hey, if you're ready to start weight training, but you don't really know what to do, I wanted to remind you about my self-study courses. called Learn to Lift at Home and Learn to Lift at the Gym. They have everything you need to get started, including a program to follow and videos explaining how to do each exercise.

Check them out on my website www. befitafter40.

com or check the link in the show [00:07:00] notes. So I wanted to give you an example of how this works in practice so that you can do this for yourself. So for me, my target is about 140 grams of protein per day, and I have decided to split that into five meals. So I eat breakfast in the morning when I get up. I have lunch.

Around 11 o'clock, then I have a snack around three o'clock. I have, uh, a protein boost after my, my workout because I work out in the afternoon, early evening, and then I have dinner in the evening and that kind of gets timed depending on when my workout is. So I eat five meals a day. I have five opportunities to eat protein.

So if I've got the 140 grams a day target and I'm eating [00:08:00] five meals, that works out to about 30 grams a meal, give or take, right? Okay. And then I would need to throw in one other fact here. So Dr. Stacy Sims is a exercise physiologist. And a nutrition scientist who's focused primarily on women. And she's really one of the world's leaders in fitness and nutrition for women in middle age.

She's put out a book. She's been on a lot of podcasts. I'm hoping one day I'll have her on my podcast. And she also does trainings. And one of the things that she preaches. is to get in that big protein boost right after your workout. So that's whether you've done a weight training session or a HIIT session or whatever that women in particular need to be getting a high boost of protein right after that workout.

And a high boost means 30 to 40 [00:09:00] grams of protein. And what it does when you eat that 30 to 40 grams of protein is it shifts your body out of the catabolic state where it is breaking down muscle into an anabolic state where it is building muscle. It also moves you from having higher cortisol levels to having lower cortisol levels.

So it takes your body out of that fight flight kind of state. Um, status that it's in when you're doing your training and moves it into the rest recovery mode. And that's important because once you've had your session, you want to start recovering from it. And as many of you have probably realized. That your recovery is not as fast as what it was when you were in your twenties and thirties.

So you want to start getting your body in there a bit faster. So I do this by having about a 45 grams. So I go a little bit over Stacy's [00:10:00] range, but 45 gram protein shake. Right after my training sessions, be that an aerobic or weight training session. And then if I have a rest day, I'll just have that at some point in the afternoon or evening, anytime, basically just to get in that extra protein.

And what that helps me do is makes it easier for me to get my protein dosage in for the day. Because if you start with my 140 grams, that is my daily amount that I'm targeting, and then I've gotten 45 in that protein shake, that means that I only have about 9, 500 grams of protein left that I need to get in those four meals, which are food meals.

And that means that in those four meals in each of them, I need to get about 25 grams of protein. And that's already like a [00:11:00] way easier thing to do. So at breakfast, I'll have two eggs and some Greek yogurt or some school. And then I have milk in my coffee and that already brings me to about 25 grams of protein.

And that's not hard to do. That's. It's perfectly normal, uh, breakfast. So for lunch, I make sure that I'm getting 150 grams of some kind of meat because I'm a meat eater. So I'll have chicken or ground beef or salmon or something like that, 150 grams of it. So that brings me about 30 grams of protein. Then I have that snack at about three o'clock in the afternoon and that is almost always cottage cheese, nonfat with tomatoes.

And then I have like a slice of bread and maybe some butter on it. So that brings me another 30 grams of protein. See, so this is not so difficult. Plus it means that I'm eating so frequently throughout the day that I'm not actually getting [00:12:00] terribly hungry at any point in time. Then I have the protein shake after my workout.

And then finally for dinner, I have the same kind of thing that I have at lunch. So something where I plan to have about 150 grams of meat plus all the vegetables and whatever that go around with it. So that's how I do it. And when you break it down like that, it actually is not that difficult to achieve, but it does require me to plan a little bit of head.

I like to make big batches of certain foods that I don't mind eating over and over again. So I'll make a batch of. Spaghetti and meat sauce. I'll make fajitas. So I'll make the chicken and veggies for that or like, uh, ground chicken bowls and then I'll eat that for a few days. It's hardest to stick to this if You know, it's mealtime and you go to the fridge and you're like, okay, so what do I do now?

You know, and you have to start from scratch. So it [00:13:00] is requiring some planning. So that's all there is to it in a way it's fairly simple, but you do need to do some planning and do some measuring to get it done. So to summarize, you want to aim for 0. 8 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And there we're talking about your ideal body weight.

Two, as we get older, we need to pay more attention to eating protein because our bodies become worse at processing it. So our bodies are not able to utilize all of the protein that we're eating as well as it did when we were younger. Remember to get in a big dose of protein after your workouts, 30 to 40 grams.

And this is specific for women. Men have a longer window of opportunity in getting that protein dose in, but for women in midlife, 30 to 40 grams as soon as possible within 30 minutes of finishing your workout or training session is [00:14:00] ideal. Recommended by Stacy Sims. And finally, to get in enough protein requires some planning.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me in Instagram and, you know, follow me on Instagram. Cause I do have a lot of other content there that I don't necessarily bring here to the podcast. I can be found at be fit after 40 underscore with Lynn, and the link is in the show notes.

And with that, I leave you for this week, happy training. .