Protein - What kind and how much should you get?

Starting a 4 Part serious (Protein, Hydration, Carbs, Fats) 

What is Protein? 

Why Is is important? 

How much Should I get? 
- Depends on goals 

Easy and practical ways to get it in! 

Listen and learn more 

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the fitness shite podcast. I'm your host Blake shite. And it's good to be back. I took off last week but I'm very excited because this stuff we're going to go over is, just really important. Macro nutrients and hydration. So we're going to go over this week, protein next week, we'll go over hydration. And then the following two weeks, we'll go over fats and carbohydrates. I'm going to try to break them down as simple as possible, and then we're going to get into why they tend to be a problem, why they tend to be helpful, why they're important and practical ways to implement them into your goals. So there you go. That's the next four weeks, but, let's jump into today's podcast, which is going to be protein. There's probably a lot of reasons that most of us don't get a enough of this. But one of the basic reasons I think that I see most of my clients struggling with it is that most of protein, quality, good protein is something that you have to. It's not convenient to the consumers, not convenient to grab and go carbs and fats are much easier grab and go kind of food. Protein has to be planned. A typically has to be cooked and, uh, you don't want to eat so much beef jerky or. What's in them, a Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, um, that you get sick, right? So you need to plan it. And that's what we're going to talk about. But before we get into that, why is protein even important? Well, I said, number one, aside from trying to get bigger muscles and be a meathead and all protein really is huge for recovery and muscle tissue. It is responsible for those things. So number one, recovery and muscle tissue, any form of training that you want to do, whether it be cardio or resistance training or anything that kind of falls within the scope of those types of exercises requires muscle breaks. So over the long-term, your body will not be able to create an adaptive response to your training. If you're not getting enough protein, that's just plain and simple science right there. So everything's about adaptations. If you're trying to get faster, stronger or leaner. So what that means is that you need to have your body be in a place to be more adaptive. Protein helps with that. This is one reason you might feel like you're working so hard and not seeing any progress, getting stronger or getting leaner or performing better. Right. Kind of breaking into those three different types of goals. But protein is a helpful for all three of those. So if someone comes to me and they say, well, I just want to look better. I say, okay, where's your protein. And we talk about that because that's going to be essential. Someone comes to me in the nutritional consult and they say, well, I want to get stronger. I say, okay, where's your protein at? Because that's one of the things we're going to need to recover from strength training to continue to get stronger. Someone comes to me and says, well, um, I just want to get healthier and say, okay, this is where we're going to move on to the next one. Where's your protein. And the reason that one's important is for number of. So we talked about recovery and muscle tissues. Number one, protein stimulates the release of glycogen is number two. So the release hormone just think releases. So the first one will be an R responsible for recovery. The second one would be an R release hormone or what we call glycogen. Right. And th and so insulin is your storage hormone. Simply put glycogen is your release hormone, right? And it's, it's where the energy stored and then released for. So clearly releasing stored energy and not storing new calories will provide favorable body composition and aesthetics, but it's also going to get those two hormones to operate in a healthy state. Right. We want to have enough protein in our diet that we use insulin well, and we lose, we use glycogen well, so that's where general health has. And then our third point point is going to be protein helps with fat loss, hair repair, skin repair, and regulating hormone levels. And it allows our body to regulate and stay in a state of homeostasis. So there you go. It's kind of the basic science of how I can kind of break it down as simple as possible for, for people to apply that hope of one you over with those three points. There's, there's more points obviously I could do, but I'm not trying to do a long podcast on this. I'm trying to. Simple and practical, which is, which is the point of my podcast, but recommendations that I would move on to is I'll try to break them up into kind of three categories. So how much protein should you get in your diet? Right. That's cool. And all that we just talked about why it's important, how much did you get it in? It depends on your goal. Uh, as all good. Nutrition or fitness coaches will say it's really the best answer is it depends. So if your goal is to lose body fat and you're in a place that says your body is ready for cutting calories, then I would suggest anywhere from 0.8 to one gram per body weight. I think it's a really good, safe place to say for people who are trying to look leaner, lose a little bit of weight, but not lose. So 0.8 to one gram. So what you do is you just look at your weight and put your weight in, multiply it times 0.8, or multiply it times one. Obviously that's going to give you the same number as your weight. Pretty simple math. If you are a performance athlete and you're trying to get personal records and you're trying to get your back squat strong. Or if you're an aesthetic client, who's trying to add muscle mass. So let's say you're in a bulk season that you want to get more lean muscle mass on your body. I would go higher on your protein for most of the research I've read it would be anywhere between one and 1.2 grams. I've seen higher. I don't know that you necessarily need to, some people might depends on your body type, but for general population, most people would do well on one. Two 1.2 grams per bodyweight. And if you're not sure what your goal is, which a lot of us may not then try to figure out in the meantime, um, aim for one gram per body. Weight is kind of a safe bet. That's hard to do, right? Most people do not want to eat that much protein or, or even getting close to it. so if you're an overweight. Right. You're 30 pounds or more overweight. Then I would go with what your desired weight is and then do my 0.8 to one grams. So like for instance, if you're 300 pounds and your desire to be 200 pounds, I would eat 200 grams of protein, not 300 grams of protein. Um, and I would, I would start there so practical. Those are some recommendations, have practical stories of how this is really important. And if you're listening to this, you should apply this as best you can because I've had at least eight to 10 clients who've done really well. Losing weight. They shown up, they worked out hard. They're down five, seven pounds. They're super excited to get on the embody here in the gym. And. You know, the ironic thing is that they lost weight and they felt good, but on the InBody scan, it actually shows that they lost muscle mass and their body fat has actually gone up because the five pounds they lost, four of it was muscle. And one of it was fat. So their weight went down five, seven pounds, which looks great on a scale. But when they actually get on to see what their lean body mass is, right. They're actually fatter, even though they're skinnier, as far as. Wait goes. So how does this work? The body needs to burn calories to recover and muscle is very, very calorie costly. It requires more calories to keep muscle in your body. Therefore, the body's job is to survive. And what it's going to do is it's going to get rid of that muscle. It's going to become cannibalistic, right where it eats its own muscle up to survive because that muscle is to enter. Costly. This is why like for bodybuilders, as they're getting closer to stage prep, they need to up their, their protein very high or maintain it as high as they've been in their bulk while cutting everything else out, which is not extremely healthy, but that's the way they manipulate their body to not lose muscle mass. Why they're in an extreme. Otherwise, their body would get rid of a lot of the muscle. Now they still lose muscle, but they lose muscle with fat and they, they mitigate the damage of losing too much muscle by adding a lot of protein in their diet. So in a, in a less intense way when I'm saying is if you're a weight loss client and you're trying to cut 15. 10 pounds, right? Make sure that you're eating adequate protein while doing that so that you don't lose good weight. You want to hold on to lean muscle mass for lots of reasons, uh, that we stated earlier, but also for the, for the, the realization that later down the road, it's easier to lose weight. It's easier to feel healthy. It's easier to, um, have longevity. If you have more muscle mass on your body. Right. Obviously not I'm talking bodybuilding style, but I'm talking about like a good amount of lean muscle mass. We don't want to just be skinny, fat to brag at the party that I way blah, blah, blah. Right. That's silly. That's not health that's that's arrogance. Right. Health is understanding what my body needs, supplying that. And trying to understand this and apply it to my body. So, here's the answer to how to. Boy, this eat more protein. It'll make your digestive system burn more calories without you even doing anything but eating it'll keep muscle mass. It will allow you to feel better, right? That's that's key. So here's how you do that plan to have protein at every meal, before you start counting and getting on my fitness pal and making the what's really an advanced it's an advanced health. To count calories. Most people don't have it or can do it well. So just plan to have some sort of protein at every meal that you eat, right? Meats, eggs, cottage, cheese, Greek yogurt, things like this, have it at every one of those things at every meal solution to get other macros to help. Carbs. What are some good carbs that have protein in them? Keenwah beans, lentils, right? If you're a vegan, those are kind of your go tos, I guess you could add soy into, but I'm not a big fan of soy for a whole nother podcast, but. If you're going for, with your fats and you want you to get your fats to help out think about cheese, cashews, nuts, things like that. And then solution three, I would say planned snacks that are high in protein, right? If you're, you know, on the go. Jerky bars with you. So epic jerky bar has about 15 grams of protein, Greek yogurt with some hemp seed has about 20 grams of protein. Uh, there's a whole market of protein shakes for this very reason of what we're talking about. Um, so you can drink one of those with 2025 grams. If you do it with whole milk, like I do, you can add a lot more protein than just that. Um, but those are, those are some really simple, easy ways to just try to get a little bit more. Protein in your diet without having to always eat more chicken. All right. Action steps. Figuring out how much you need to get in your goals. That's number one, have an idea of a number you don't need to count it, but you need to have an idea in your head so you can know if you're heading in the right direction or not. Otherwise you're just kind of aiming carelessly. So. Point a to one, if you're trying to be in a cut grams per body weight, one to 1.2, if you're trying to add muscle or be a performance athlete, so performance be CrossFit. And then if you're overweight and trying to cut weight, either go off of what you would like to be, weight-wise or if you're not that 30 pounds over body weight, try to stay between one gram and 0.8 again. All right. So that's the first part, figure out how much you need to get in action. Step number two, track three days to see where you. With just your protein. So I challenge you to do that track three days. It will be very sobering. You don't have to do it forever. It's not gotta be a habit. It just has to be something that you try for three days and then last one grill or bake protein in bulk. So you can grab and go. For most people that are just starting out. I find that if you're not someone who enjoys cooking on a regular basis, and you're not someone who has good habits of cooking every day, making your food, I would make my protein in bold. Twice a week. So make a Wednesday and a Saturday, right? You do an hour's worth of cooking, some protein, whatever that protein is, make some carbohydrates and fat proteins with that. Um, so cook up some chemo with some chicken, um, cook up some beans with. Things like that and have those be some of your staples so that, you know, you're getting enough. M if you do this, you will see some really great results. You'll feel more energy, you'll be more hormonally regulated, and you'll probably start seeing some, some real gains in whatever your goal is. So hope this is helpful. Uh, next week, we'll talk about hydration, how important it is, especially as summer's coming and what you should be drinking, how much you should be drinking, what you could be depleted of from over-drinking and all that fun stuff. So like, and subscribe, give me a five stars if you haven't rated us yet. And look forward to more time with you in the near future.