You probably already know that protein is essential for building muscle, staying healthy, and aging gracefully. But with so much information out there from social media and fitness influencers, knowing how much protein you actually need to see results can be super confusing!  In this episode, I'm diving into the top five mistakes that you might be making when it comes to your protein intake based on what I've seen with my clients. 

Finding the right amount of protein that works best for you can feel tricky, but don't worry! I won't throw fancy studies or complicated formulas at you. Instead, I share practical tips and simple calculations you can start using TODAY to feel your best. I cover the most common pitfalls, like not eating enough protein (which can lead to an energy slump), to overdoing it and potentially packing on unwanted pounds. Whether you're new to the protein game or a seasoned pro, I guarantee you'll learn something new today! 

Want FREE access to my brand new four-week strength training plan, Strength Without Stress? Head over to hollyperkins.com/review where you can upload a screenshot of your review and gain immediate access. This is a limited-time offer before it sells for $197, so be sure to grab it now!

Topics Covered:

• 50-25-25 macronutrient distribution
• Eating too little protein 
• Eating too much protein 
• Simple calculations to understand your protein target
• Spacing out protein between meals
• Blood sugar regulation 
• Protein intake in relation to your goals 
• How much protein do you actually need? 

Resources Mentioned:

• Listen to the first 20 episodes of Holly Perkins Health Podcast HERE
• Apply for The Body Composition Project HERE 
• See the research on ISSN exercise & sports nutrition HERE
• See the research on protein and exercise HERE
• See the research on dietary protein and muscle mass HERE 
• See the research on dietary reference intakes for energy HERE
• See the research on women and protein HERE

Follow Me: 

Find me on Instagram: @hollyperkins

Learn more on my website: hollyperkins.com

Connect with me on Facebook: facebook.com/HollyPerkinsFitness/

Disclaimer: Content and information as part of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast is for general interest, education, and entertainment purposes only. The use of information on this podcast or materials or products linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.

Eating too much protein can lead to weight gain, just like eating too much in general. And eating too little protein can lead to fatigue, muscle loss, hunger, and brittle nails, and no one wants brittle nails. If you struggle with energy and lean on caffeine, sugar, or food in general to get through the day, this episode is for you. If you work out regularly, but feel like your muscles aren't getting tighter or leaner, stay with me. Or if you're just interested in getting your protein right so that you can be healthy. I've got five protein mistakes you might be making. Keep listening, because you're going to learn five mistakes I see women make that keep them from optimizing their nutrition. If you want to feel fabulous protein matters. If you want to protect your health against future issues, protein is critical. And if you just want your muscles to demonstrate your hard work in the gym, let's jump in to five mistakes to avoid so that you can get the most from your diet.

If you're new to my community, welcome. I'm Holly Perkins. I have a degree in exercise physiology and nutrition, and 30 years of experience in practice. And I'm the author of the Women's Health book lift to get lean. I love helping women navigate their tricky physiology, so that you can create a strong and resilient body that keeps up with your demanding life. Earlier this year, I wasn't feeling so great. If you know me, you know that's a common theme around here. If you don't know me, I'm navigating the symptoms related to an autoimmune disorder. I found that nutrition is everything when you're dealing with autoimmune issues. I suspected that I needed to assess my macronutrient distribution and wondered if I was getting enough protein to support my workouts. So as an experiment, I simply started eating more protein throughout the day somewhat arbitrarily. I'm pretty good at estimating about how much protein fat carbohydrates and food in general that I'm getting each day. It certainly wasn't precise, but I went with it in the past that would usually work. So off I went for a few weeks. Now listen, this wasn't a double blind, perfectly designed, university backed research study that I was doing. This was just simply me relying on my historical acute sense of knowing what my body's needs were. And I just wanted to see what would happen.

So after about probably two weeks, I noticed that I was feeling a bit just fluffier than before, and my jeans were feeling a bit tight. I felt better in general. And I had more energy for sure. But it seemed like I was getting more than I needed. And it seemed like I had gained some body fat. So I'm using the word seemed because number one, I really don't weigh myself. And number two, the truth is you never really know where your body fat is, if you're not actually using a proper body composition test, but I know my body. And just by looking in the mirror and how I felt and how I felt in my clothes, it was pretty clear that I had gained some body weight. So I knew that I needed to get more scientific. I sat down with my notebook, and I got to work. Looking back at my food entries, because I log them pretty much every single day, I realized that I had been eating about one gram of protein per pound of my body weight. And this is the important part. One gram of protein per pound of your body weight is generally just too much for most women. And yet it's commonly referenced out there by fitness influencers and the fitness industry in general.

And so that's what prompted Today's episode is to set the record straight on how much protein most women generally need. Now, just for your reference, I currently weigh 130 pounds, I was eating around 2000 calories, and I believe in and teach a 5025 25 macronutrient distribution. This means that 50% of your daily calories are coming from carbohydrates. 25% of your daily calories are coming from protein and 25% of your daily calories are coming from fat. The truth is, while you might be hearing a lot of emphasis on protein these days, it's important to ensure that you're getting the right amount for your body instead of blindly just eating more protein. So let's jump in to five mistakes that you might be making. Mistake number one, eating too little protein. If you're not keeping an eye on your macronutrient distribution, otherwise known as macros, or counting macros, then there's a good chance that you're not getting enough protein each day, especially if you're someone who doesn't naturally crave or desire, the foods that are protein dominant, let's say like animal meat or animal products in general. If right now, as you're listening, if you don't know what your target protein is for the day, then there's a good chance you're probably not getting enough. Wouldn't it be awesome to just know that you're eating right and proactively taking care of your health?

Listen, it feels so good to be confident in your self management, especially when you're getting bombarded every single day with news and headlines and social media posts that really are designed to make you feel uncertain about yourself and about your knowledge about your health. This is why I say you're gonna feel so much better if you know that you're eating right. So that when you're listening to content like this, you're like, Yep, I got it, I'm on top of it, you can take away some of the uncertainty that you feel at times in this world, by getting really strategic about your nutrition, and knowing exactly what you're doing. So it's important to have a target. But it's also important to know what and how much protein are you actually eating, eating too little protein is really just as problematic as eating too much protein, even though the symptoms are going to be different. So mistake number two is eating too much protein. On the flip side, you may have seen a headline or heard an expert saying that most people don't get enough protein. I see this all the time in headlines and social media. And so therefore, maybe you've started eating more protein at each meal. In the fitness industry, there's a lot of emphasis on eating protein to build muscle and eating protein to promote recovery. And while this is all absolutely true, more protein as a generic statement, doesn't mean that you're going to be better or that you're going to lose weight, or that you're going to get lean or build muscle any faster or better. The truth is simply eating more protein doesn't build muscle. It's the eating of the protein. After your strength training program is designed that helps you to build muscle. The real thing that builds muscle is strength training, not the ingestion of protein. But yes, you need protein. But you also don't need more than you need. If you eat more protein than your body actually needs, the surplus gets treated just like any other calories.

So at the end of the day, if you eat more calories than you expend, those calories are generally stored as body fat. Now, don't worry, one day of eating too much protein isn't really a problem, you're not going to gain weight overnight tonight, simply because you ate a huge piece of chicken today. It's what you do day in and day out over time that matters. And yes, if you are eating way more protein than you actually need, you're probably going to gain some body fat. The best way to get your protein right is to take 10 minutes and do some quick calculations. It's not hard. And I'll give you the simplest way, I promise. I always say you don't know where you are, if you don't know where you are, right? In other words, if you don't objectively assess number one, how much protein you need, and number two, how much you're actually eating? Well, then you can't be disappointed by the outcome. So how much do you need? I'm going to tell you my general rule of thumb that works for 80% of people. And yes, if you're one of the 20% of people, you're going to learn a more specific approach in just a minute. So stay with me. If I have limited information about a person, a good place to start is by getting 25% of your daily calories coming from protein. This works for almost every single client that I work with. Again, I would say 80 to 90% of my clients, this works for now, this is as simple as going about your day and eating your normal diet. Then, at the end of the day, log what you ate into a food tracking app to see where you land. If your protein is around 25%, you are good to go. If your protein is way below 25%, it's really as simple as just eating a bit more protein throughout the day. Or if you're like me, and your protein is way above that 25%, all you have to do is cut back on your portion sizes of those protein dominant foods or just remove one or two of the foods that you're eating, that are protein dominant foods that would be meat, or egg whites or protein powder or protein bars, or cottage cheese or other forms of dairy like Greek yogurt.

Mistake number three, neglecting protein at some meals and then loading up at others. A mistake I help my clients fix is the tendency to skip protein at some meals, and then load up later to make up for it. I see this most when a client has certain foods that they like to eat it's specific meals. So for example, they like to eat fruit and vegan yogurt for breakfast. And since that is a pretty low protein meal, they then make up for that low protein by eating a larger portion of let's say like grilled chicken at lunch. Now, this isn't a huge problem. But you'll feel better and get better results. If you're spacing out your protein as evenly as possible throughout the day, between your meals and snacks. Beyond the idea of how much protein you need each day. There's another consideration about protein in general and that is blood sugar regulation. And let me tell you, it is everything. Research shows that stabilized blood glucose otherwise known as blood sugar really is the foundation to optimal health. It's really what you should be going for each day and your eating strategy. And see protein and carbohydrates counterbalance each other in a way that stabilizes blood sugar regulation.

When you eat carbohydrates, let's say like a banana, your blood sugar rises, and then insulin is released to bring your blood sugar back down because your blood sugar has to stay within a pretty narrow margin. Now when you eat protein, it causes the hormone glucagon to be released. Glucagon has the opposite effect of insulin as it causes your blood sugar to go up. Therefore, insulin and glucagon counterbalance each other. And eating protein with carbohydrates at meals and snacks helps to regulate blood sugar. This is why it's better overall, to space out your days protein across all meals and snacks. When you space out your protein paired with carbohydrates, of course, your body is better able to keep your blood sugar levels stable. Mistake number four, not calculating your protein needs based on your current activities and health circumstances. If you have calculated your protein target for the day, I'm curious if you have based that number on your current activities and health considerations. It's so easy to hear that you should be eating one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, for example, and apply that to yourself just as a generic statement. Look, I am highly educated. I have a degree in exercise physiology and nutrition from one of the best universities in the world go Penn State and have been in business for 30 years and even I get tired and mentally lazy sometimes. And sometimes I hear something and I just adopt it. It just goes into your brain and you accept it as fact, in this busy day and age that is filled with information overload. It's normal to hear something in passing and automatically apply it to your life without first asking if that information is actually be accurate for your life and situation. health factors like age, illness and injury impact how much protein your body needs.

When it comes to protein, you want to assess the type, frequency and duration of your current activities and health circumstances, your protein needs are different if you exercise moderately, or if you exercise aggressively, it's important to define what moderately and aggressively actually means. Further, you will need more protein if you're in a weight loss phase, or, if your strength training hard each week and you're over the age of 45, you may need less protein if you're in a season of less activity, where most of your time is spent walking the dog or maybe just doing some light stretching. In my experience, I find that a blood types do better with a little less protein, and that old blood types do better with a little more protein, you may hear that athletes should consume 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and think, Oh, well, if that's what my favorite athlete does, then that would work for me too. I'll get those same results. But it doesn't work that way. But similar to what I shared earlier in this episode, it's easy to think that you're doing more than you actually are. Right now, my workouts are a bit gentler and less frequent. And I'm doing very little cardio, and I'm going to weight maintenance phase. I don't need as much protein as I did last year, when I was lifting more aggressively, like three to four times per week, it's very easy to remember what you did in the past that worked, and forget to stop and realize but wait, what I'm doing now is different than what I was doing last year. That's how I got into that mistake earlier this year by eating just way more protein than I actually needed.

Mistake number five, not calculating your protein needs based on your goals. Right now, what's your primary goal in your current phase? Are you in a weight loss phase? Are you in a, you just want to feel better phase? As you think about that? Think also about what's the goal that you had earlier this year? Was that goal different than where you are right now and what your actual goal is? Now listen, you might have two or three different goals. When I asked the client, what are your goals right now often she'll say, I want to feel better. I want to age gracefully. And I want to lose some weight. And all three of those goals are equally important. Absolutely. But you're gonna get better results. If you pick what is the most important goal, what is your primary goal right now that matters more than all the others, and focus all of your programming on just that one goal. And listen, it's easy to think that your goal might be to Oh, lose weight every single time I asked a client, what's her goal? Almost always in 30 years of working with people, she'll say, I want to lose weight. But when I probe further, her primary goal actually is to feel better, or be happier or age more gracefully. And when you look at it through that losing weight really isn't the top number one goal, but maybe it is for you. It's easy to think that your goal is to lose weight, largely because the world is constantly subtly and overtly brainwashing you to think that weight loss is your goal when it may or may not truly be relevant for you. If your goal is to feel good, and have lots of energy, your protein intake should reflect that. And yes, if your goal is to lose weight, your protein intake needs to reflect that. And if your goal is to get ripped and lean, your protein intake is going to be different.

There is never a one size fits all when it comes to protein. If your health is important enough to you to be listening to this episode, it's important enough for you to take 10 minutes this weekend and get smart about your protein intake. More often than not a new client will come to me eating a certain way for someone else's goal. If you are in a weight loss phase and are restricting calories, you may not realize that your body actually needs proportionately more protein during a weight loss phase, your goals should dictate your overarching strategy. And then your actual weekly activities dictate how much protein you want to aim for each day. And remember, it's important to ask yourself, Is your goal to lose weight? Are you trying to lose weight right now? Or are you actually in a weight loss phase? Those are two very different things. clients come to me often saying, I'm trying to lose weight, and therefore I'm eating a certain way. But they're not actually losing weight. Those are two very different situations. If you are actually in a phase where you are actually losing weight, and you know it, you need to be eating more protein. But if you're trying to lose weight, and that hasn't started happening yet, you might not need proportionally more protein just yet.

So with all of this being said, you might be wondering, Okay, how much protein do I need? I think I've made the case that the answer is as unique as you are. And I encourage you to do some research, or maybe even better work with a qualified or certified professional, that is really important if you're able to do that. But if you're a DIY type of person, I'm going to give you some direction here in just a minute. One thing to keep in mind is that the suggestion for the general public is less than what we advise for you if you're working out or training hard. It's a sliding scale, as I've demonstrated, but here in the United States, the government's Recommended Dietary Allowance the RDA for protein is currently established at point eight grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Now, I find this so strange, because here in the United States, we don't weigh ourselves in kilograms, we weigh ourselves in pounds. So if you're in the United States, that number that RDA for protein is point three, six grams per pound. But remember, that is for the general public recommendation.

The government has established that as the amount that you need to meet your basic nutritional needs, it's the minimum that you need to stay healthy and avoid malnutrition. But if you're here, you're probably relatively healthy and more active than the majority of people. And therefore, you need more protein than the RDA, the American College of Sports Medicine, my professional organization, and seven different studies that I reviewed personally all suggest somewhere between 1.2 and 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, depending on the factors that I've covered already. And it can be as high as 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram for athletes with high demand on their bodies. But a meta analysis from 49 studies and over 1800, participants showed that while protein does impact body composition and performance to a significant degree, protein intake above 1.6 grams per kilogram shows no more benefit. Therefore, more is not necessarily better. And remember, athletes generally need more because their body is undergoing many hours of physical activity and hard grueling, every single day, they don't eat more protein to become an athlete, they eat more protein because they are an athlete.

So if you want some basic guidance, here we go grab a notebook, I realize this can sound like a lot of science jargon, but I'm going to simplify it for you. Since most of my community is here in the US, I'm going to start with calculations that reflect your body weight in pounds. And then since the rest of the world uses kilograms, I'll give you that calculation as well. Number one, multiply your body weight in pounds by the number point three six to determine the number minimum amount of protein that you need to be eating each day. This is going to keep you basically healthy or multiply your body weight in kilograms by the number point eight. And that is going to tell you how many grams of protein you need to eat each day.

Number two, if you're active, which you should be, especially if you're here in your in my community, I'm going to assume that you are multiply your body weight in pounds by the numbers, point five, five, and point seven, three, this is going to give you a range of protein that you may need each day, or multiply your weight in kilograms by the numbers 1.2 and 1.6. That will give you the number of grams you need to be eating throughout the day. Since this is a range of protein, I suggest that you start at the lower end, which is the point five five of your current body weight in pounds. And then incrementally increase your intake of protein for each of the following factors. Number one, for each decade, over the age of 40, you need incrementally more protein number two, if you train hard each week, and that means you're going into the gym, you are pushing it, you are challenging yourself and you're walking away from a workout feeling it. This is also you if you're dealing with muscle soreness each week from hard workouts. Hard means you're feeling the results of any given workout.

Number three if you train frequently. So let's say you're going in for moderate to hard workouts, but you're training every single day or maybe even two or three times per day. Frequency also means you're going to need incrementally more protein. Number four, if you're injured, if you're coming back from any kind of an injury or illness, you'll need incrementally more protein for repair. Number five, if you're actually in a weight loss phase. So if you're taking actions eating less, you're in a calorie deficit, you're exercising more and you're actually watching yourself losing weight, you will need incrementally and a percentage more protein. And lastly, if you have any other health conditions were increased protein is suggested.

Now listen, I probably should have said this at the top of the show. I am not a medical doctor. Do not take any of my suggestions here today as medical advice. Please consult your trusted health care. Perfect. Professor. Yes.

Please consult your trusted health care provider.

Not Holly Perkins. This is for you if you're generally healthy. And there you have it. These are the five protein mistakes you might be making based on what I see with my clients. I know this may seem like a lot of math, but truly it's not. Just grab a notebook and follow those last few steps. The time investment is so worth the payoff. Your future health depends on your actions today. Give your future self the gift of taking the time now to create the body that you really and truly need to keep up with this life that you love. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I certainly did. If so please let me know. And if you want to learn more about my particular methods, you can download my totally free nutrition guide over at my website, Holly perkins.com with a forward slash macros and a c r o s or you can just click on the link below. And keep an eye on your email inbox next week for something new from me. Take care and have a great day