Your Protein Round UP

Getting your protein.  Best sources and how much you need based on your goals.  I will explain the difference between plant protein and animal protein.  When to eat your protein and how it gets used in your body.  

Transcript

Hi everyone. This is the Jolie Life Podcast. I am Julia, the founder of Jolie, your place for the best meals ever that are made to optimize your health. We have a beautiful meal delivery program. Hop on it, look it up. Today we are going to talk about protein, and I have been wanting to talk about this one because my mind is on metabolic health, and two, I've been doing some protein experiments with myself, which I found extraordinarily interesting. And just talking to more people about protein, I find that there is a lack of understanding of protein and how much we need and when we should eat it and all that kind of stuff. And so this is going to be kind of a quick and dirty, more practical information that you can use to apply to your diet as well as to understand the jolly life and how we approach health. 

First off, protein is one of your macronutrients, and there are macronutrients and micronutrients. Some people aren't aware of the difference. The macros are like your carbs, your fat, and your protein. Those are the building blocks that your body uses to do everything that it needs to do. Your micronutrients and micro tells you you need them in. Small quantities are your vitamins, your minerals, your polyphenols, your antioxidants, all those good yummy things that helps our body to become disease resistant helps us not to age and helps our body to function at its optimal level. Protein is one of your macros. There's a lot of talk about protein because it is literally necessary for building, repairing, creating hormones, all that. It's super, super important and it is so important that we tend to focus a lot on protein and there's so much labeling, like 20 grams of protein, or this is high in protein and blah, blah, blah, blah. 

It makes us feel like we're not getting what we need, and so I want to talk about that. In terms of protein, there are two big groups where we get our protein from. We get protein from animal sources. That's your beef, your chicken, your eggs, things of that sort, and those proteins come in amino acid ratios. So proteins are made of amino acids that are similar to what our body demands. There is also equally valid protein and plants. Plants, grain seeds, nuts, there's protein there. The difference between protein and non-animal sources and protein and animal sources is the ratio of the amino acids can be slightly different. So if you are going to have a lot of your protein come from plant sources, it's completely doable. The one awareness you need to have is that you need to vary your diet. You need to eat lots of different kinds of things because by eating lots of different kinds of things, you will cover all of your bases. 

The problem comes when we go to a more plant centered diet that is heavy on processed food or heavy on foods that are less nutrient dense like pastas and rice and quinoa and breads and wheat and grains, that type of thing. When we really go for those things as opposed to the gazillion of fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds that are out there, but if you eat those things, but you also eat the gazillion nuts and seeds and vegetables that are out there, you can cover all your bases. So my little experiment with myself was I had this feeling that I wasn't eating enough protein because I love vegetables, like I completely utterly love vegetables. I'm not really keen on beans, I'm not really keen on grains, and only recently have I been eating more fruit. And so remember what I said about having adequate protein. 

If you're getting mainly protein from plant sources that you need to have a lot of variety. Variety includes that I just can't be eating vegetables. I need to be eating beans and legumes and lentils and rice and quinoa and wheat berries and oats and buckwheat and all those things, but those are typically not the things that I naturally gravitate to. I decided that I was going to very intentionally increase my protein levels and increase my variety of plant source proteins and increase my consumption of animal protein because I will literally not eat it. Also, I had begun to work out a lot and when you work out a lot, particularly strength training, which is what I had started to do five times a week, more or less because I love it, is that your body has higher protein demands. Your body has higher protein demands because you are shredding and building more muscle. 

And over the past five months, I have built a lot more muscle. I did an InBody and I was shocked by how much muscle I had built in those five months. Utterly shocked. I'm like, no wonder my body is craving protein. This is amazing. So I did a little experiment and I'm like, okay, I am going to track all of my macros and make sure that I am getting adequate protein for my weight and my activity level, and that's what I did, and it was amazing. I felt so good. I had so much energy. I slept probably six hours a night. I woke up in the morning and I felt wonderful and it was amazing, but I had to be very intentional and after say, feeling amazing for like a month, I stopped being so intentional. I got busy. I eat Jo life. However, sometimes I skip my meals or my daughter will take my meal or something will happen and I won't get it or I won't eat the whole thing. 

And about a week to two weeks after that, I'm like, oh my gosh, why am I so tired? And I looked at what I had actually been eating and I had looked at what I had not been eating and I was like, oh my gosh. I had gotten completely unintentional about it. Before I would come home from the gym, I would pull out my Jolie, I would eat it, I would go to work, I would eat my lunch. I came home, I ate my dinner, and now I was coming home from working out, getting dressed, leaving, forgetting to grab my Jo lunch, going to work, and around two o'clock being like, oh gee, I'm hungry. I'd missed my meals over here. And obviously at that point in the day, I can't get in enough food, enough protein for what I needed, so I'd stop being intentional. 

A key to wellness, which I know and I share this with you because just because it doesn't mean you always do it is intentionality. Wellness is something that doesn't happen by accident in the society that we live in. Wellness is something that requires some intention, some taking time out, some pausing to take care of yourself, some forethought, some meal planning, some meal getting, it requires intention. And so the first thing about having adequate protein is you need intention. You need intention to sign up for a program like Julie and get everything you need. You need intention to actually eat the food. You need intention to make your grocery list to cover all your bases. You need intention to cook food and to sit down and to enjoy it. So you do need intention with your protein. The other thing that I wanted to bring out with protein because I was having a conversation is that sometimes we think that we need more protein than we do. 

So in the conversation someone had said, we need a hundred grams of protein a day, and that is not really true. When you look at what, and this person was like five two and 119 pounds, that is a lot of protein and not a body builder. That is way too much protein. Excess protein becomes excess calories. And so we don't want excess protein. So how do we calculate how much protein we need? General rule of thumb is 0.8 grams to 1.5 grams. If your bodybuilding, you're working out, you have lots of muscle mass per pound of body weight. And so for me, I estimate that I need around 60 grams a day, my 60 grams a day, how do I get them and how do I space them out? I space them out so that it's front loaded in the beginning part of our day of my day, so it's front loaded in the morning and in the afternoon. 

And why do I front load it in the morning in the afternoon? I front load it that way because I want my body to use the protein that I eat to build structures. I want my body to use the protein that I eat to repair, to build muscle after my workouts, to do all the things that it needs to do. And during our morning and an afternoon, our body can more readily use the amino acids from our proteins to rebuild itself. That is our active time of day. Not that we don't need protein at the end of the day, but my demand for protein is a lot higher post-workout than it is as I'm getting ready to go to bed. And so I front load it because I want the protein to be used as a building block to something. I don't want the protein to be converted to fat or to carbohydrate and use as energy because then it literally didn't matter that I got my 60 grams of protein. 

And if I miss my protein in the morning and afternoon and try to make up for it with my evening meal, what basically is happening is I'm giving my body too much protein at one time. And so it can't use all that protein. So when the body is unable to use it and there's no storage space for protein like there is for fats and carbohydrates, the body then converts that protein into fat and carbohydrate. So I miss out on the benefit that that protein was to give me and building my muscle. Instead that steak I ate just became excess calories. So when you're thinking about, okay, am I getting enough protein? I want you to also think about when am I having it during the day? And as much as you can have your protein in the morning and in the afternoon and taper it by evening, so evening that old saying like eat a king for breakfast, a prince for lunch, and a popper for dinner. 

And I don't really know if that is completely politically correct these days because that seems a little bit bad. We want our dinners to be light and we want our dinners to be light on protein also. So protein is not in the American structure where dinner is our main meal and we have our big steak than our big piece of chicken. It's really better to have that for your lunch and then to have a lighter dinner that will do your body better. So when we eat our protein, after you figured out how much you need 0.8 to 1.5 per pound of body weight, you're on the higher range. If you are a bodybuilder, and when I say a bodybuilder, I mean you're really pumping iron many times a week for quite a period of time in the gym. The only bodybuilder of my kids is my son who works out pumping iron two hours a day almost every day. 

He needs a lot of protein. My son who basically surfs on his iPad all day doesn't need so much protein. So I want you to be honest with yourself in terms of your protein demands. The other aspect of protein is we oftentimes hear protein helps you to lose weight, so eat a lot of protein so that you can lose weight, and that is and isn't true. It is true in the sense that protein stimulates fat burning. There is a hormonal reaction in our gut that produces a stimulant to fat burning when we eat protein. So yes, if you want to lose weight, you should make sure you are having adequate amounts of protein in addition to that protein. While it does cause some of an insulin response, it does not cause an insulin response as exaggerated as say a bagel or a cup of brown rice. 

So in that way, protein is also very fat burning, friendly because you're not putting yourself in a fat storage mode. So protein, when you're trying to lose weight does two things that are helpful. First, it stimulates your body to burn fat, and secondly, it doesn't make your body want to store energy. So it short circuits the fat storage mechanism, shall we say. So protein has two advantages. It helps you to burn more fat and it helps you to not store fat. So those are two things that we want when we are trying to lose weight. The other aspect of protein is do I have it before my workout? Do I have it after my workout? I remember when I first started doing CrossFit, and that was almost 10 years ago. The prevailing wisdom at that time was you work out, you have your protein smoothie and there's two hours, and if you don't have your protein smoothie and those two hours, you've wasted your time that we now know is not exactly true. 

The window of time in which that protein can be used to rebuild our muscles is longer than we thought it was. That being said, if you're working out with the intention of building muscle, and I really hope that you are, it is important that you consume your protein in a reasonable amount of time after your workout so that you are doing the injury and you're giving your body the building blocks, the supplies to accomplish your goal, which is to build more muscle. I find personally that when I follow my workout with protein, and that could be a smoothie, that could be some scrambled eggs. That could be I will eat meat for breakfast. That could be that. It could be yogurt. There are lots of sources of protein. I find when I do do that, my recovery between workouts is a lot faster, and B, my body puts on muscle and I feel energized when I don't do that. 

When I described prior to the podcast, I work out and I feel exhausted afterwards and why? It's because I'm not giving my body what it needs. And so it's kind of scrounging around looking for what it needs looking for, how do I do this repair here? I don't have any materials, and that scrounging around makes me really, really lethargic. So when you're doing your strength training, do plan, do try to have some protein afterwards. So that is my, I feel like it a rambling talk on protein, but I'm going to summarize. So the takeaways takeaway number one, be intentional about what you're eating, whether you're getting your protein from plant sources or animal sources. You must be intentional and plan for, accommodate for having the food, the protein that you need. If you're getting your protein from plant sources, you need to be committed to a varied diet so that you have all of your amino acids covered that you need. 

There's such thing as a limiting amino acid. So if that amino acid is not present, no more structures can be made. So you want to make sure you have a varied diet if it's plant-based in order to have all your amino acids. The other takeaway that I want you to have is eat your protein in the first part of your day, so the majority of your protein comes before dinner. That way your body has an opportunity to use it to build the muscles and to build the structures that the activity of living requires. And you're doing more of that type of activity during the day at night, your body is repairing, but it's also doing lots of detoxification and lots of immune work, and there's less of a need for protein at night. The other thing I want you to remember is having your protein post-workout is important. 

The window is not a strict two hours. It's a bit longer. They say anywhere from four to five hours, your body will still be using that protein, but make sure that you're intentional about having that protein. And if you're looking to lose weight, protein is your friend. Protein is your friend. And my favorite way of eating and my favorite weight loss half is to really focus on lots of vegetables, clean proteins and healthy fats, lots of vegetables, clean animal proteins and healthy fats. Eating that way basically will help you to lose weight, and it will help you to keep it off forever and you will feel fabulous. And the other thing I would like for you to remember is to actually go and calculate how much protein you need because you might be overestimating how much you need. And the second thing is to begin tracking how much you need. 

So for our clients, we track it for them. You can track your own protein needs by using apps like MyFitnessPal or other apps that are similar to it and actually see how much protein we're having. And the great thing about those apps is it allows you to see when you're eating a lot of plants, how much protein you actually get from plants. Because one of my life missions is to really change the perception that meat, animal protein is the only source of protein, is the only valid source of protein. Plants are a source of protein, and they are a hundred percent valid, and they are a hundred percent good for you. So you don't have to adopt a vegan diet. But to remember that plants have lots of protein and combined with that plant protein is a lot of other stuff that it's going to make your body feel fabulous. 

So tracking your protein, tracking everything you're eating in an app like MyFitnessPal will help you to see that. So that is the roundup on protein. I want you all to go out, look at your diets, get your app to track your stuff and see, okay, am I eating protein? When am I eating it? And am I eating enough and do I need to change how I receive my protein? Do I need to change why all of those things and go out and build some muscle? I tell you, it's the best thing ever, and it's super good. The older you are, the more important that is.