Episode #146: Why Are We So Protein-Obsessed?

Protein is everywhere these days — in bars, shakes, cereals, and even pasta. But how did we get here? In this episode, Dr. Sarah Stombaugh explores our collective fascination with protein and what science actually says about it.

You’ll learn why protein is an essential part of a healthy diet — from preserving muscle and boosting metabolism to improving satiety — and how much you really need each day. Dr. Stombaugh breaks down the difference between hype and evidence, explaining how to choose high-quality, balanced sources without falling into the trap of all-or-nothing thinking or “macro perfectionism.”

Whether you’re wondering if you should add more protein to your meals or questioning if you’ve taken it too far, this episode will help you find the middle ground — using protein to nourish your body, support your goals, and create sustainable, long-term health.

Ready to get started on your weight loss journey? I'd love to support you. We're now enrolling patients for in-person visits at our Charlottesville, Virginia office and for telemedicine throughout the states of Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. Visit www.sarahstombaughmd.com to learn more and get started today!

Are you taking a GLP medication? We are thrilled to share we are offering an online course, The GLP Guide, to answer the most common questions people have while taking GLP medications.

To sign up, please visit: www.sarahstombaughmd.com/glp

Transcript

Dr. Sarah Stombaugh:
This is Dr. Sarah Stombaugh, and you are listening to the Conquer Your Weight Podcast.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Conquer Your Weight Podcast, where you will learn to understand your mind and body so you can achieve long-term weight loss. Here's your host, obesity medicine physician and life coach, Dr. Sarah Stombaugh.

Dr. Sarah Stombaugh:
Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Conquer Your Weight Podcast, where we are talking about protein. And you've heard me say it before, you'll hear me say it again. We right now as a society are super protein obsessed. And while I think there's a lot of value in protein, and we'll talk about the role that it plays as part of our episode today. Right now, we have just been going totally protein crazy. And what I think this often creates is misunderstandings about how much protein that we need. I have patients who've been told to get just absurd amounts of protein. Like I am not sure that there is any adult who needs 300 grams of protein per day. Maybe if you were like a world-class power lifter or something, but even then, 300 grams of protein is an obscene amount of protein. And so I have had some patients get really absurd recommendations from uh personal trainers or other, you know, other people in their life giving these recommendations. And today we are going to bust some of the myths. We are going to talk about where this protein obsession came from and why it can be really problematic. And then talk about what are some of the goals. Because are we really benefiting from this protein obsession or has it gone too far? And I'm going to argue that when it comes to our mental health, when it comes to our relationship with food, in some ways this protein obsession really has gone so far. 

So let's take a step back as we think about this rise of the protein craze. And honestly, we just love, we love a good fad. You know, if you look at the diet culture and you look at the different fads that have come up over the years, we've had low fat, we've had low carb, and high protein has been the most recent iteration of this. Certainly the increase in popularity of GLP medications, you know, things like Wegovy and Zepbound or Ozempic, as everybody is always talking about, as we've seen this popularity of weight loss medications coming up, more and more people are talking about the importance of emphasizing protein. And we'll talk about where that's true. But honestly, in a lot of ways, it's just become, it's become the newest fad. I think too, there's roles in which protein, of course, is really important. And I've absolutely encountered people who were eating very, very little protein. And I think one of the fears that we see is that people who are actively losing weight are they putting self themselves at risk for losing muscle mass, for example. That is it's a concern we want to think about. But I think when we hype on it too much, we're actually just emphasizing our obesity bias as a society and putting just new rules on people who are trying to reconnect with their bodies. Now, this protein, again, it's super important, right? It's it plays really important roles in our body in that it builds and repairs tissues, it creates some of our enzymes and hormones. 

The role of protein in building muscle mass, I think, is what everybody is most excited about and talking about all the time. And particularly when we're losing weight, that protein can help to preserve our lean muscle mass or just our, you know, our lean body mass or muscle mass rather during the weight loss journey. And then protein also, you know, when we think about the way food feels in our body, protein is a really good energy source. It feels like great fuel for our body. When we think about the way you feel after eating protein versus fat versus carbohydrates, now obviously we rarely eat any one of these things in a vacuum, but foods or meals that are more protein-rich give us really good satiety. So we feel fullness at the end of a meal, particularly like meat-based proteins or poultry-based proteins, take a little bit more effort for our body to break down. So there's some thermogenesis and that our body has to work a little bit harder to break it down. So there's some, and again, we're talking about nominal amount of calorie burning there, but you know, some additional calorie burning just from simply digesting the food. And so protein plays a really, really important role. And people love, people love having metrics to track, right? Like we love counting calories, we love counting macros. And so this falls into that category. Now, I think one of the biggest challenges is that for one, just because something is high protein does not mean that it's healthy. And I think that this is one of the challenges that we really face right now is that people all the time are being like high protein, high protein, high protein. And with that filter, first and foremost, we may be exclusively choosing foods that are uh really highly processed. Maybe they're not even that great in other ways. Like maybe we're choosing things that have really concentrated saturated fat. Maybe we're choosing a protein bar that has a lot of added sugar, maybe we're choosing really highly processed foods. And, you know, certainly protein bars have a really good role. My patients eat protein bars and I recommend them to people. And while they may be fine for running out the door, over time we want to build a relationship where we can have real foods that are going to also be fiber dense and feel good and feel like that sustained fuel level in our body. And so, not every high protein food is actually that great of a food source for you. 

And so, if we're just looking at the protein content and not really thinking about the rest of it, we may actually be not making the decisions that are most in line with our goals. I think there's also a lot of confusion around, well, how much protein do I actually need? One of the biggest misconceptions that I see come up is we think about grams per kilogram of body weight. And whether you're talking about the minimums, which is about 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, to  maximums, which will be variable, but the recommended range, a lot of times we'll see 1.2 grams per kilogram or 1.6 grams per kilogram for someone who's really active. And we see these different recommendations, but regardless of what that recommendation is, those numbers are based on ideal body weight. 

So, particularly for someone like myself, you know, I'm seeing patients every day who have obesity, people who are living in larger bodies. And trying to tell someone who, for example, weighs 300 pounds that they need to have 300 grams of protein, which that has happened for one of my patients. They were told that by an external person, that's obscene. Like 300 grams of protein, like I said at the very beginning of this episode, is a lot, a lot, a lot of protein. So when we think about ideal body weight, there's a lot of factors that go into it, a lot of different calculations that we can use, but really we're looking at what is your gender and what is your height. And based on those numbers, so based on your bone structure, what is an ideal body weight, kind of rough metric we could use is to plop you, you know, smack dab in the middle of a quote, normal BMI. I'm not going to get into that BMI is totally fraught with other complications. But let's say we calculate, you know, how much would I weigh to have a BMI of 23 or to have a BMI of 24, for example. And based on my height and based on those numbers, what would be, quote, the ideal body weight? Again, this is just a really rough estimate. But from there, you can see that you might be talking about, let's say, for a five foot five tall female, her ideal body weight might be in the range of like 140, 145 pounds. So we can take that, we can convert it to kilograms. Okay, 140 pounds divided by 2.2. That's about 63. And then from there, 63 kilograms, we could calculate some of those different numbers. Like what would it mean to have 0.8 grams per kilogram? That would be about 50 grams of protein, for example. Or what would it look like to have a little bit more? And so you can calculate some of those different numbers. 

And so what's really important here is that we're looking at ideal body weight. And so if you are on a weight loss journey, some of those numbers that say grams per kilogram, when those are numbers coming from fitness influencers, those are not going to be applicable to someone who's in a weight loss journey. So based on the ideal body weight piece here is going to be really, really important. Now there'll also be variations depending on how active you are. And I would recommend to sit down and calculate this with an obesity medicine physician, with a registered dietitian, with someone who is really familiar in the space, especially if you've gotten really variable recommendations or you're feeling confused about those numbers, getting that personal recommendation from someone who understands your own health picture will be really, really important. And so with that though in mind and thinking about what are those numbers, a lot of times I will have people look at what are they doing right now? And so sometimes we hear these, you know, you should be getting 1.6 grams per kilogram, for example. And if right now you are getting 0.5 grams per kilogram, you know, like let's say you're getting a total of 30 grams of protein, of course, across the entire day, that new number becomes totally unsustainable. And this is where I think the protein obsession become can become really problematic in that when we look at diet culture, a lot of times it's just very like all or nothing thinking. Like I have to hit that goal. If I don't hit that goal, I'm a failure. If I don't hit my macros, I'm a failure. If I don't hit my macros, I'm going to lose muscle mass. Oh my gosh, am I going to be one of those people that everybody's been warning about that is going to lose muscle mass. 

You know, this is how I think our obesity bias is coming up as a society is that we are putting in this fear to people that, like, oh my gosh, you're going to lose muscle, you're going to lose muscle, you're going to lose muscle. And there are absolutely other things that we can do. Eating protein is one of them, but going crazy on the protein or shaming people because they are not getting, quote, adequate protein is way, way more problematic. So start from where we are. What does your protein intake look like right now? What's way more important than total protein intake is how much protein or how often you're getting protein throughout the day. Getting, let's say, 100 grams of protein at one large meal is going to be less good for your body compared to getting three smaller servings, like 25 grams of protein three separate times per day, or even 20 grams of protein three times per day. Having it distributed throughout the day is much, much more important compared to what the total amount is. And so if you find that you're struggling to get your protein, you might look at, okay, how often am I eating throughout the day? And maybe I increase an eating opportunity, for example. Now again, this will not apply to everybody, depending, you know, where you're at in your weight loss journey, for example. But if you are, you know, especially if you're on a GLP medication or your post-bariatric surgery and you are losing weight and feeling like I'm not super hungry. This is where sometimes stretching out your eating window and trying to pull in another serving of protein may actually make sense. What we don't want to do though is force ourselves to eat food when we are not feeling hungry. Our satiety, our hunger is going to vary somewhat day to day. There's days we're more active, there's days where we're less active. 

And so reconnecting with your body to learn, okay, am I feeling hungry? Am I feeling full? And matching the food then, matching those needs to the way you're feeling is so, so valuable. And when we're just looking externally, whether it is calories or macro counting, like hitting protein goals, for example, we sometimes lose sight of what our body is actually telling us. I think one of the things that's really powerful is that as I have my patients tracking their food, what can be really fun is we pay attention to the way certain foods feel in our body. And when any of us pay attention to that, it can be really powerful to see how differently we feel after eating different types of foods. Like, okay, after I eat a yogurt bowl that has some whole grain oats on it and some seeds and some berries, you know, I feel satiated for four hours afterwards versus the day that I had a muffin, I was feeling really pretty hungry an hour later. Paying attention to, okay, what was the food that was consumed and how did that play out? You know, how did I feel immediately afterwards? How did I feel a few hours afterwards? And one of the fun things is that we'll start to see patterns that foods that have good protein, foods that have good fiber, foods that are higher in unsaturated fats or saturated fats in terms of satiety. Um, but these tend to create that more lasting fullness, that lasting satiety in our body. And we can think about, okay, how does this feel? How is it helping me to meet my goals? And noticing that on days where you're more active, you went to the gym, you did a weight training session, you will likely notice that you're feeling a lot more hungry afterwards, and that that's okay. That's your body saying, Hey, I was just really active. I burned a lot of calories. Hey, can you help me to replace that energy? And eating more at that time will make sense. 

Now, it probably does make sense to eat protein during those times, but it doesn't have to be exclusively protein. This can look like carbohydrates as well. With our protein obsession, I think we've forgotten as a society that carbohydrates also play a really important role in fueling our body and helping to rebuild our muscles. And so carbohydrates will be really important after any sort of exercise session as well. So it's this reconnection piece that a lot of times if we're just focused on hitting a number, hitting a number, hitting a number, we lose that reconnection piece. And so that piece I want to make sure we're also really focused on. Another thing is what is the quality of the protein that you're consuming? I alluded to this a little bit earlier, you know, thinking about, you know, protein shakes and protein bars. And not that there's, again, anything wrong with those, but making sure that we all are also teaching our bodies how to how to eat real food. And as our satiety or as our hunger is returning, we feel like we have appetite for more food. What are we doing to nourish our body and to help to fill that up? And so this is where protein when we think about really concentrated protein sources, people get really obsessed, particularly with meat. So whether that's meat, whether that's poultry, um, fish, of course, to dairy a little bit. We get really, really hyper-focused on those because they really are pretty concentrated protein sources. 

When you look at vegetarian protein sources, they tend to be less concentrated. So you have to get a larger volume of food in order to get that protein. But one of the things I think we're really sleeping on is the amount of protein that can be available in non-meat or non-animal-based products. And so if you're thinking about someone who has a vegetarian or even a vegan diet, it is absolutely possible to get adequate protein in those diets. Now, there are some considerations about a complete protein versus an incomplete protein, meaning that a complete protein will have all of the essential amino acids, where an incomplete protein will be missing some of those. But if regardless of whether you're, you know, an omnivore and eating everything, whether you're vegetarian and not eating animal products or not eating meat products, what is really important is that you still can get all of your complete protein needs. You just may need to supplement with nuts and seeds in addition to whole grains and legumes and that type of thing. But if we start looking at, and like I said, I think we're really sleeping on some of the vegetarian protein sources. And if you are feeling more hungry, choosing a vegetarian protein source, these are really great options because they are really fiber rich, but they also have really pretty good protein. And so if you look at a lot of the whole grains, whether we're talking about oatmeal, whether we're talking about brown rice or even white rice has a tiny bit of protein in it whole wheat, you know, all of those will have some protein. You look at other grains like farro or quinoa, you know, you may be talking about getting five grams or eight grams per serving for like a half cup, not always a huge amount. You think about things like lentils, you think about things like black beans, you know, we might be talking about, you know, eight to twenty grams of protein, depending on the serving size of those type of things. Thinking about tofu or edamame, you know, again, easily 10 grams of protein in a serving there, maybe a little bit more. Even vegetables. 

You know, we don't think of like broccoli as being a great protein source, but it has two grams of protein in a serving, and that's that's not nothing. And so it adds up if you're thinking about making a bowl, for example, that has whole grains and lentils and beans and other vegetables. And if you are having some animal products, maybe you've got some cheese on it or dressing, for example, and you might easily create a bowl that has 25 or 30 grams of protein, even though it doesn't have any sort of animal-based protein in it. And so keeping that in mind, we don't have to eat meat in order to get adequate protein. I think a lot of times we think protein and we're like, oh, chicken, beef, fish, you know, we think these like very like Greek yogurt, cottage cheese. Everybody's so obsessed with cottage cheese recently. Like we think about those as protein sources, and they are, and they're really dense protein sources. So if you want to get 30, 40 grams of protein, sure, go have a serving of chicken and you'll get that really quickly. But we could also get protein from other foods as well. And so I think when we're solely focused on like what protein has the biggest bang for my book, are we missing out on nuts and seeds and vegetables and whole grains and legumes and all of these other things that, especially when added together, can be really adequate protein sources. And so that's one of the things I feel like nobody's talking about. Like I saw this vegan recently on social media who people were coming after her for having like no protein. And she actually ended up having like 130 grams of protein or something in her day just based on the type of foods that she's eating. And so, not that I'm saying like that's the appropriate amount for her. I don't know what her goals are or what her weight is or anything like that, but you can absolutely get adequate protein without looking solely to animal sources. And so that's a piece that I feel like we're really missing out on because people are so obsessed with protein. 

There's a lot of conversation around carnivore diet, which is certainly beyond the scope of today's conversation. You know, my thought on that is like, hey, if you want to do that, great. But like if that works for you, it's not gonna be the right thing for everybody. But protein absolutely can come from other sources. I think as we're thinking about two, what are your goals in, like, what are your ultimate goals? And my biggest thing is helping to connect patients, help them to reconnect with their bodies. So thinking about, okay, what are the foods that fuel my body? How is my energy level day to day? Do I feel like I have the energy to go to the gym, to go about my day? Am I sleeping well at night? Am I feeling satiated between meals? Paying attention to these types of things over the long term helps us to start develop, you know, what is my day-to-day routine and what are the foods that fit into that? And what I will encourage you is that that can look like a lot of different things and that can also be evolving over time. And it may be some time. I feel like the protein craze is relatively new in the last couple of years. I think we're gonna be stuck on this protein craze for a while. But what I will offer you is that five to 10 years from now, we are going to be on to the next craze. And while protein will always be important, it is not going to be top of mind. And so whatever the next craze is, we're just gonna like go into that craze as well. And so, what is it that your body needs when you feel good day to day, when you feel like you've been well fueled, what is it that creates that for your body? And you can experiment over time. If you're recognizing, oh wow, I really, you know, I don't get more than like 30 or 40 grams of protein throughout the day, what would it feel like to get 50 or 60 grams? How is that feeling? Do I feel like I'm adequately satiating my body? Okay, let me try to nudge that up. How is this feeling? And you might find that you're able to have, you know, couple, three servings of protein adequately throughout the day, partnered as part of the rest of your meal, and really adequately meet your needs. People who are telling you to get these huge amounts of protein are not thinking about you as an individual. They may not be talking about someone who has struggled with metabolic disease, they may not be speaking to you at all. 

So the absolute best thing that you can do is to connect with someone who talks to you, who knows your health history, who can help to provide a personalized plan for you. If you are in Charlottesville, Virginia, or throughout the states of Illinois, Tennessee, or Virginia, I would love to be your physician, help you to reconnect with your body as you go in your health and weight loss journey. Otherwise, you can certainly follow me across social media on my podcast as well. Thank you for joining me all for today's episode. I'll see you all next week. Bye bye.