Episode #154: How Much Protein Do You Really Need on a GLP?

If you're taking a GLP-1 medication like Wegovy, Zepbound, or Ozempic, protein becomes non-negotiable. In this video, Dr. Sarah Stombaugh—Obesity Medicine Physician and weight-loss expert—breaks down exactly how much protein you need, why protein protection matters during weight loss, and how to easily hit your goals even when appetite is low.

You’ll learn:
 ✔ Why GLP-1s increase your protein needs
 ✔ The exact grams YOU should aim for
 ✔ How to prevent muscle loss on a GLP
 ✔ Easy protein-rich foods (even if you have nausea)
 ✔ Common signs you’re not getting enough
 ✔ The best way to structure meals for satiety + metabolic health

This video is perfect for anyone on Wegovy, Ozempic, Zepbound, Mounjaro, or other GLP-1 medications—and for anyone who wants to lose weight safely and keep it off.

Ready to get started on your weight loss journey? We’re now enrolling patients for in-person visits in Charlottesville, Virginia and for telemedicine throughout the states of Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. Learn more and get started today at https://www.sarahstombaughmd.com

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:

If you are on your weight loss journey, what you are probably hearing is protein, protein, protein, protein, protein, protein, protein. And there's been so much conversation recently for people, especially taking GLP medications, the Wegovy, Ozempic, Zepbound, Mounjaro, protein, protein. Make sure you get your protein. You do not want to waste away. So what we are going to talk about today is how much protein do you actually need? Because what I find is that some people have goals that are really, really, really high. And actually, they are aiming to get far much more protein than they need. So what we're going to talk about today is how do you know what is the right amount of protein for your body? We're going to go through some calculations. I have my trusty notebook and I did a bunch of calculations for you all. So we will talk about some different ranges. You can go back on your own and do some calculations based on the information that I share because I want you to get the right amount of protein in your weight loss journey. And I don't want you to be stressed about getting too much because you getting too much is unlikely to be a problem. But what often happens is that people are given these goals and then they're like, how could I possibly eat that much protein during a day? 

So let's dive in and start talking about the amount of protein that we need during our weight loss journey. So what's really interesting is that when we're calculating protein needs, it's based on ideal body weight. Now, this is especially, especially important if you're on a weight loss journey because ideal body weight is very different from your current body weight. And we look at ideal body calculators, there's a lot of different formulas out there. I think the most simple thing you can do is actually to use a BMI calculator. Now, BMI is fraught with all sorts of issues. You know, it doesn't tell us the difference between muscle mass and fat mass, for example. But what we know is that it can give us a really good estimation. And that's what we're talking about here. My goal is for you to just have a general idea of day-to-day, what should I be doing? Now, if you are the type of person who wants to weigh every ounce of food that goes in your body, know the exact calorie content of what's going in and what's going out, we may not be the best fit for each other. My goal is to help support you in ways that feel really sustainable so that you can understand with my day-to-day routines, with my favorite food preferences, how do I use those to create my goals, not just now, but for the long term as well. So we are building systems that are sustainable, that do not require you to measure and weigh and track every single gram or every single calorie that goes into your body. 

But I want you to be empowered to know in general what these things look like so that you can build meals around that and then have freedom to sort of plug and play from there. So again, we're coming back to ideal body weight, and this is going to be based on your height, actually. So this is one of the biggest challenges, especially like in the social media space. You know, you'll see someone who is six-foot-tall giving nutrition advice, and that's great. But someone who's living in a five-foot-two tall body is going to need a very different amount of calories, a very different amount of protein compared to someone who is that much taller than them. So when you're taking nutrition advice, for one, you should probably be taking customized nutrition advice from a healthcare professional, like an obesity medicine physician, like a registered dietitian who can sit down and look at you and your body and help calculate what your needs are. But if you're going to follow an influencer, make sure you find someone who has some similarities in their journey, including what their height looks like. A lot of awesome influencers out there, but if someone is eight or 10 inches taller or shorter than you, their goals are going to be incredibly different than your own. 

So height is going to be the most important factor when we determine ideal body weight. There will be some gender differences, but what I will typically have people do is plug some numbers into a BMI calculator. The reason why is you can really estimate just what a general range would look like. So a normal, and there's major air quotes for anyone who's listening to the audio only version of this, but a normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9. So basically 18.5 and 25 is considered a normal BMI. So we can take a number sort of in the middle of that range, like in the 22, 23, 24 range, and use that to calculate what is an ideal body weight based on our height. And from there, we can start to make some of these protein calculations. When your body weight is much higher than those numbers, it's because you have excess fat stores, excess adipose tissue. And that's not a problem. That's what we're here to address. But you want to make sure that you're not overfueling your body or finding that you're fueling your body based on your current size rather than based on your ideal size for your height. So this is one of the challenges that comes up. I have had patients, you know, for example, I have a patient who lives in about a 300-pound body, and they were seeing a trainer who told them to have one gram of protein for every pound of body weight. So for that individual, we're talking about 300 grams of protein. And if you know anything about protein, that is a lot, a lot, a lot of protein. There are very few people, if any people, who were trying to aim for that type of protein goal per day. Like maybe the most elite power lifters in the world are aiming for that amount of protein. But even your average Joe who's going to the gym, that would be far, far too much protein for him. And so that felt really impossible for this patient. They were like, How am I supposed to get that in? Especially because they were on a GLP journey and they're looking at like, how would I possibly get that much food in during a day? So let's dive down. What are the different recommendations? Because if you Google this, you will hear everything from low numbers to high numbers and everything in between. 

So if you look at the recommended dietary allowance, the RDA, and this is set by our federal government, this looks at 0.8 to 1.2 grams per kilogram per day. Now, a lot of people will say, hey, those are just the minimums. And that's true, these are the minimums. And minimums are a really important number for us to know. When we think about people who are particularly active, so someone who is doing a lot of exercise, particularly if they're doing a lot of weight training, we want those numbers to be higher. Sometimes people will talk about 1.6 grams per kilogram. And it's really only in someone who is incredibly active that we're talking about one gram per pound of body weight. Now let's talk about the difference there between a pound and a kilogram. So I'm going to go through some examples here because I think as we dive into very specific numbers, you'll see what I mean. 

So let's talk about an individual who is five foot two. So coming back to that ideal body weight now, we're going to calculate, okay, what is ideal body weight based on BMI? So someone who is five foot two, if they had a BMI of 23, that means I've got my notebook here. So I'm going through these calculations I did for you guys. That means that their weight would be about 125 pounds for that five foot two individual to have a BMI of 23. So if we divide 125 pounds by 2.2, that will convert it to kilograms. So this 5'2 individual, their ideal body weight is 125 pounds, which is the equivalent of 57 kilograms. So now let's plug in some of those different numbers to say, okay, what are the amounts that we're talking about here? So at a minimum, and again, we're talking about minimums, but at a minimum, 0.8 grams per kilogram is going to give you 45 grams of protein per day. So if you think about that, that's pretty doable. You know, you're talking about getting 15 grams of protein three times per day. Anybody should be able to do that. That is the minimum. Now, I will often counsel my patients about what those minimum numbers are, because especially at the very beginning of a GLP journey on days when you're more sedentary, you aiming for those minimum numbers is perfectly acceptable. You can always get more than that, but we want to make sure that every single day we're hitting that minimum. But then on days that we are more active, maybe we're aiming for that 1.2. So 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram, again, we're talking about this five-foot-two individual with an ideal body weight of 125 pounds. That 1.2 grams per kilogram is going to be 68 grams of protein. So if we're talking about, okay, getting that over, let's say three servings per day, you know, 22, 23 grams of protein a couple of times per day. Again, feels very doable. Now, for that individual who's incredibly active, doing a lot of activity, especially doing a lot of weight training, they may be aiming for that 1.6 grams per kilogram, which brings them to 91 grams per of protein per day. So divide that out over three, about 30 grams of protein per meal. So this is for a 5'2 individual. 

Now let's say you're a little bit taller. So for a 5'5 individual, if we look at a BMI of 22 and a half, that brings us to 135. Trying to use some round numbers here. So 135 is your ideal body weight in pounds. We can convert that to kilograms by dividing by 2.2. So that brings you in this range of 61 kilograms. Now we go through these different calculations. What is the minimum? So 0.8 grams per kilogram is 49 grams of protein. So that 5'5 individual weighs 135, or excuse me, their ideal body weight then is about 135 pounds. They should be aiming for about 49 grams of protein per day. Again, this is going to feel pretty doable for most people. We're talking about, you know, 16, 17 grams of protein per meal. 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram for this 5'5 individual is going to be 74 grams of protein per day. So aiming for about 25 grams three times per day. And then someone who's a little bit more active, doing a lot of exercise weight training, aiming for 1.6 grams per kilogram is going to bring them to 98 grams of protein per day. So even for that individual, we're dividing that out throughout the day. And we're talking about, you know, 32, 33 grams of protein three times per day. 

Someone who's a little bit taller, so now we're talking about a 5'8 individual. A BMI of 22.8 in this individual is 150 pounds. I'm using these numbers again because they're really round numbers. So we divide that 150 pounds by 2.2 kilograms will give us 68 kilograms. So for this 5'8 individual, a minimum is 0.8 grams per kilogram, which will be 55 grams of protein per day. So you divide that out. What does it look like to get 55 grams of protein per day? About 18 grams with three separate meals or three separate occasions. Maybe there's someone who's a bit more active, aiming higher. 1.2 grams per kilogram is 82 grams throughout the day for this five-foot-eight individual. So that's going to be about 27. I think I did the math right on that. 27-ish grams of protein separated three times per day. And then if they're more active, doing a lot of weight training, 1.6 grams per kilogram is 109 grams of protein per day. So for this individual, you know, getting 35ish grams of protein. So that feels very doable, right? Now we're talking a little bit higher, we're talking about a six-foot-tall individual for a BMI of 23.7 is 175 pounds. That is 80 kilograms. So if we divide out what this looks like for a six-foot-tall individual on a day that they are more sedentary, 0.8 grams per uh kilogram here, 64 grams of protein per day. So, you know, 21 grams a couple of times per day, 1.2 grams per kilogram is going to be 96 grams of protein per day. So a little over, I guess 32 grams three times per day. And 1.6 grams per kilogram is 128, a little over 40, 42-ish grams of protein uh three times per day. So when we think about some of these different numbers, they probably sound quite a bit more doable. If you have been giving a protein goal that is so much higher than that, it doesn't mean you can't aim for that, but you might question, okay, why have I been given this number? Does this align with my goals? And it very well might. 

These numbers that we're talking about, especially when we're talking about 0.8 grams per kilogram, that's designed as a minimum number. That's designed to help protect your existing muscle structure, but may not be enough to help support building of muscle mass. So particularly if you are more active, you're going to aim for those higher numbers. When we think about calories too, though, we want to think, okay, does this make sense for me to consume this number of grams of protein per day? And so I'm going to go through that a little bit as well, because it very well might. When we look at protein, protein, when it's by itself, so it's not packaged with any meat or carbohydrates or anything like that, if you're looking at, let's say, a pure protein supplement, you're looking at protein having four calories per gram. So if we look at someone who's aiming to get 100 grams of protein per day, for example, we're talking about that contributing to 400 calories. So if you think about your total caloric needs during the day, that probably feels pretty doable. Now, when you are getting that protein beyond just supplements, you're getting it in the form of real food, which generally we're aiming for, those needs are or those calories are going to be higher because you're going to find it packaged with other things. You know, if you have a yogurt, for example, there's going to be maybe a little bit of fat in it, there's going to be some carbohydrate from the milk sugars. And so your calories are going to be higher than just the protein itself. If you're getting the protein in, let's say, the form of meat, there's a small bit of carbohydrate, typically a little bit of fat in that as well. So you're going to have higher calories in that. But it feels pretty doable to say, okay, if I'm eating 100 grams of protein, let's say 400 calories per day, like I probably have the budget for that. I think one of the things that can be really challenging is at the very beginning of your GLP journey, you may not have much of an appetite at all. 

And so this is where those minimum numbers come in. I'm going to review those again for you. So a 5'2 individual, a minimum of 45 grams of protein per day, a 5'5 individual, a minimum of about 49, 50 grams of protein per day, a 5'8 individual, a minimum of 55 grams of protein per day, and a six-foot-tall individual, a minimum of 64 grams of protein per day. So those minimums become incredibly important, especially at the beginning of your GLP journey. So you may find that you don't have much of an appetite at all. You might have some nausea. The idea of eating is just like. And so that's where I want you to really lean into these. And especially leaning into protein supplements may make sense, especially at the very beginning of your journey. So thinking about things like protein drinks. That can be protein chicks, that can be protein waters, that can be things like yogurt. There's a lot of really good yogurt drinks out there, or even just a yogurt or Greek yogurt by itself. That can be things like bone broth. So chicken broth can be an excellent source of protein. Sometimes I will even have people dissolve extra protein into that. So you could dissolve whey protein or collagen into bone broth, especially I tend to like savory things. And so the idea of starting a day with like a sweet shake does not appeal to me. But have a warm cup of bone broth totally appeals to me. But you do you. If you're like, that sounds disgusting, just skip it. You know, this is this is your journey, not mine. But that can be a great way to get something savory, really simple protein sources like eggs, again, yogurt, things like that. Cottage cheese can be really nice when you're feeling like, oh, the idea of like a large volume of food sitting in my stomach does not appeal at all. 

Choosing those small supplements or those small volume type things, liquids are going to go down quite a bit easier. And then paying attention to, as you go throughout your GLP journey, you'll notice that some of your hunger returns. And this is a good thing. You don't want to just have no hunger. The goal is to have a suppressed overhunger so that you're not having intense cravings, you're not having urges, you feel like you're able to eat in line with your goals. So you want to have some hunger. You just want it to feel like a very manageable thing. And as you start to feel this return to normalcy, that's where I want you to step less towards the supplements and more in the direction of real food. Thinking about foods that are going to have more volume, foods that are going to help provide more lasting satiety because they have that volume alongside of it. You may be looking to at more plant-based sources of protein. Plant-based sources of protein tend to also be really high in fiber. You know, we're thinking about beans and whole grains and nuts and seeds, um, soy products, for example. These are going to be typically a larger volume. So especially at the beginning of your journey, you may be like, oh, I can't, you know, the idea of eating like a big bowl of grains may feel like just simply too much food in your body. And that's totally okay. But as you progress in your journey, recognizing that you may be able to choose some of those whole food-based sources will be, will really be the goal. So starting to lean less towards supplements, but more towards whole food choices. Now, certainly one of the great things about protein shakes and protein bars is they are such good grab and go type options. So having one, you know, tucked into your purse, having one in the car. You know, I'm recording this in winter time. And so if you're listening to this in winter, you know, keep some protein shakes in your car is a great idea. Definitely don't do that during the summer months because you don't want, you know, microplastics and it'll just taste like a bad idea. You know, you'll taste a protein shake that sat in the car and got hot, like you'll taste the plastic in that, and that just seems like a bad idea and tastes terrible. But have these things set aside. You know, have a protein bar, have a meat stick, have some, there's some really nice like edamame and = crunchy chickpea snacks that have been pre-prepared. I love things like tuna packets or chicken packets that are really nice for travel. Some of these really shelf-stable options you can toss into your purse, toss into your, you know, travel bag, keep at the office, keep at home, have them stashed away in different places too. So you feel like, hey, I have things that are going to be in line with my goals. 

And when we think about choosing some of these things, choosing them in a way that really helps create that lasting satiety. You know, one of the best things about protein is that people are often like, well, I love the way it makes me feel when I eat protein. You know, I eat something, it sticks with me, I feel like I'm full for hours thereafter. And that's exactly the goal. You know, that's exactly why when you're thinking about the minimums, those are important and I want to make sure you're hitting those. But it may be okay to eat more than that as well. Certainly if you're active. But even as you're just looking at what are my different nutrition sources, a lot of people will find that when they eat protein and when they eat fiber, and especially when they eat those two things together, they really find that they have this lasting satiety that feels good in their body. Like their body feels like it has a really good energy source. They feel well fueled. They don't feel that like up and down blood sugar that can happen and that like crashy feeling when you've had just like a carbohydrate on an empty stomach. And so really leaning into that, especially as you evolve in your journey as well. But I really want you to take heart with these numbers. If you need help with calculations, you know, drop a comment. I'd be so happy to help walk through some of that with you or make an appointment with me. 

You know, if you are in Charlottesville, Virginia, I would love to see you in person or if you're in the surrounding area. I also see patients by telemedicine in Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. And I would so, I would be so happy to support you in your weight loss journey. Now, if you are someone who is not in one of those states and you're like, oh shit. Shoot, I like how can I get support during my weight loss journey? I want to offer to you the GLP guide. This is our online video program designed for people who are starting GLP medications and looking for a little bit of additional support. We have an online video program that's going to walk you through all sorts of different things, including how much protein do I need. We have lots of recommendations for how to get that protein, lots of recommendations for other parts of your GLP journey as well. As of right now, the GLP guide is only $97 for a full year of access. And it is going to give you the answers to all of the most frequently asked questions. And the best part is if you are reviewing that video guide and you're like, Dr. Stombaugh, shoot, you told me the answers to my questions would be here. And the answer to the question I have is not in here. Just shoot us an email, info@SarahStombaughMD.com, and I will get a video recorded just for you. I'll pop it up in the GLP guide as soon as I can. Usually we're able to do that within a couple of days. And then it'll be available for you as well as for everybody else who has access to that GLP guide. So if you have questions, that is a great resource for you. Go ahead and check that out at www.SarahStombaughMD.com. You can find that on the online courses page. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. If you are on my podcast, go ahead and see my YouTube channel as well, especially as we're going through new things. A lot of, you'll see I do a lot of hand talking and I'm excited to talk also, share some visual diagrams and all of that as we go. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you all next week.