The perfect amount of protein

It can be overwhelming to try to figure out how much protein we need. That’s why Coach Megan, myself, and the other Rise coaches are here to help! Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the “perfect” amount of protein, because everyone is different. We each have different goals, different foods we like, different activity levels, and different body compositions, which are just a few factors that go into determining how much protein someone needs. For example, if you are trying to actively gain muscle mass or lose weight, your protein needs will be higher than someone who is trying to maintain their weight and muscle mass. Eating enough protein can help you retain your muscle mass while you lose weight, and is also vital for providing the building blocks to help grow and repair your muscles after you work out.

Even though there’s no magic number, we can offer some basic guidelines to help you figure out how much protein you need. Use these different strategies as a rough guideline; try them out for a couple of weeks and see how you feel, then make adjustments as you go along. It’s not a perfect calculation, and you will need to figure out what exactly feels best for you and your body, but it’s a great place to start.

Before we dive in, I want to address one question you might have: How do you know if you are eating enough protein? This will vary from person to person, but here are a couple of things you might notice when you are eating enough food in general, and specifically enough protein:

You feel energized: you don’t feel like you hit a wall in the afternoon and need a nap.
Your InBody body composition scans (we perform these tests at Rise) show that you are maintaining or increasing your muscle mass, even if your overall weight is going down (if that is one of your goals).
You feel satisfied after meals and don’t feel like you need a snack 1-2 hours after you eat.
You don’t get the munchies at night. You have given your body enough fuel throughout the day that it is not giving you signals to snack at night.

It is also possible to go in the other direction and eat too much protein. If you are healthy (your doctor has not expressed concern about your kidney function), then eating too much protein will not have any negative long term effects. However, if you drastically increase your protein intake in a short amount of time, you can experience constipation and some other gastrointestinal symptoms. To offset this, make sure you are drinking plenty of water (aim for half your body weight in ounces) and increase your protein intake gradually over a few weeks so your body can get used to it. I want to mention again that these guidelines are generalized and not specific for your needs, so if you are interested in learning more about your protein intake please reach out to Coach Megan or myself.

I’ll walk through two different methods for getting an estimate for your protein needs. The first one is great to use if you are tracking your food intake or have a good sense of different protein sources and how much protein is in each source. The second method is very useful if you are not tracking your food or if you are just starting to learn how to read nutrition labels and discover what nutrients are in which foods.

Protein intake based on body weight

This is the main way we calculate protein needs for members at Rise. This equation uses your body weight in pounds and multiplies it by a certain amount of protein per pound of body weight. We typically recommend using a range so you can give yourself some leeway to be lighter on protein some days and hit it hard on other days.

The range we like to see members hit is 0.8-1.2 grams of protein per pound of ideal body weight. Ideal body weight can be calculated several different ways, but an easy way to think about it is your goal weight. To show you how to use this recommendation, I’ll walk you through an example.

Let’s say a member weighs 210 lbs, and their goal is to lose 10 lbs. In this situation, their ideal body weight would be 200 lbs because that is their goal weight. To calculate the low end of their protein range, we would complete the equation 0.8 g/lb x 200 lbs = 160 g protein. To calculate the high end of their protein range we would complete the equation 1.2 g/lb x 200 lbs = 240 g protein per day.

We recognize this is a wide range of protein intake, so if you are new to thinking about protein and prioritizing it in your meals and snacks, start at whatever protein intake you are currently at and begin gradually adding in more protein. For example, say the member in the example is currently eating 100 g of protein per day. They could eat 15 additional grams of protein (115 g/day) for 3-4 days and then add another 15 g (130 g/d) and so on, increasing every 3-4 days, until they consistently ate more than 160 g of protein each day.

If you have questions about your specific protein needs or are interested in individualized nutrition recommendations and coaching, please reach out to us and we’ll get you heading in the right direction.

Eating enough protein at meals

If the previous method confuses you or you don’t want to track your food intake, here is a general recommendation that will help you practice including more protein in your diet. Different studies have found that eating 20-48 g of protein within three hours after lifting weights or working out has been shown to provide the most stimulation for muscle growth and rebuilding, so that is what I am going to base these recommendations off of.

At each meal you eat, aim for 30–50 g of protein. If you have a lighter muscle mass or lighter body weight (think weighing less than 150 lbs), aim for 30-40 g of protein, because you do not need as much protein as someone who weighs more (think weighing greater than 150 lbs). If you weigh more, aim for the 50 g marker each meal. The reason I recommend keeping the minimum protein intake at 30 g per meal is because if you are aiming for 30 g and fall a little short, you are still within that 20-48 g range, whereas if you aim for 20 g and fall short, you will not provide adequate stimulation for your muscles to adapt to the workout you completed.

This is a general recommendation and will require you to play around with different amounts of protein to learn what works best for your body. To illustrate this, let’s use the example of someone who weighs 210 lbs and is working towards their goal weight of 200 lbs. If this member ate 50 g of protein per meal for three meals (plus some additional protein with snacks), they would be eating more than 150 g of protein per day. If we revisit the other method to calculate protein intake, it would recommend they eat 160-240 g of protein per day. So without calculating and tracking their protein needs, they could read nutrition labels and use them to mindfully combine different foods to total 50 g of protein for each meal without having to enter and track their food.

Some different examples of ways to combine foods to get 30 g of protein are as follows:

1 c Greek yogurt (20 g) + 1 slice whole grain bread (5 g) + 2 tbsp peanut butter (7 g) = 32 g protein
3 chicken sausage links (12 g) + 2 eggs (12 g) + 1 slice cheddar cheese (5 g) + ½ c oatmeal (5 g) = 34 g protein
113 g of chicken breast/1 chicken breast (36 g) = 36 g protein
1 whole grain tortilla (6 g) + ½ c black beans (6 g) + 2.5 oz Daring plant based chicken (14 g) + 1 slice cheddar cheese (5 g) = 31 g protein
½ c cottage cheese (12 g) + 16 Popcorners (2 g) + 2 oz beef jerky (22 g) = 36 g

There are so many different combinations of foods you can put together to total 30+ grams of protein. If you are trying to hit 50 g of protein per meal, try increasing the serving size of low fat protein sources or adding an additional source with each meal. To start small, you can experiment with reading nutrition labels to see if you can have one meal a day that includes at least 30 grams of protein. After you have done that for a month, try increasing to two meals a day for a month, and then all three. The best part is you get to find protein sources you enjoy eating and find new ways to prepare them!

Try using one of these two techniques to help increase your protein intake. It will take time to figure out the proper amount of protein that works best for your body, and Megan and I are here to help and guide you when you need it. Happy eating!