How Much Protein Women Need After 40 (and Why It Matters for Energy, Muscle, and Menopause)

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Transcript

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Let me ask you a question. Have you ever looked at what you ate in a day and thought That seems pretty healthy, so why am I still gaining weight or losing muscle or feeling tired all the time? One common thing I see with women in their forties and fifties is that they simply are not getting enough protein, and the tricky part, a lot of times women think that they are. But after 40 protein becomes an extra important nutrient for protecting your muscle, your metabolism, your bone health, and your energy. And it can even play a role in things like hair thinning, blood sugar stability, and menopause fatigue. Today we're going to talk about how much protein women actually need after 40, why protein distribution across the day matters, how protein supports blood sugar and metabolism, and what 30 grams of protein actually looks like on a plate, because this is where a lot of women get stuck. And by the end of this episode, you might realize that the breakfast you thought was healthy might actually be the reason you're hungry by 10:00 AM. So let's get started. Menopause doesn't have to feel like you are living in someone else's body. Your host, Lynda Enright, has spent the last 25 years helping women to thrive in midlife. Here you'll find science-based practical advice that you can start using today to get real results for your health. Welcome to Joyful Menopause. As women move into perimenopause and menopause, our hormones begin to shift. One of the biggest changes is the gradual decline in estrogen, which you hear me talking about all the time. In these podcast episodes, estrogen actually helps support muscle mass and bone density. So when estrogen declines, we naturally begin to lose muscle faster, and muscle matters a lot more than most people realize. Muscle is your metabolic engine. It helps determine how many calories you burn, how stable your blood sugar is, how strong your bones remain and how energetic you feel. But as we get older, the body can become a little more resistant to building and maintaining muscle. Researchers call this anabolic resistance, which means we actually need more protein, not less to maintain muscle as we age. I worked with a woman recently, I'll call her Joan. Joan was doing a lot of things right. Her typical day looked like this: it was oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch, a light dinner. On the surface it looked healthy. She thought she was doing a great job, but when we added up her protein intake, she was getting only about 40 or 50 grams a day. She was really tired all the time. She was gaining weight around the middle. She was hungry all the time and her hair was thinning. Once we increased her protein and we, I helped her figure out how to distribute it throughout the day, she started seeing things change pretty quickly. Within really just even a few weeks, she started to notice her energy stabilizing. She was having fewer cravings. She was actually feeling stronger during her workouts, which is also something I, I encourage women to pay attention to. And she actually felt satisfied after her meals. And the biggest shift, it, it really wasn't anything that complicated. It was simply getting enough protein and spreading it across the day. Okay, so how much do women actually need after 40? This is where it gets a little confusing because the official protein recommendation, the RDA, says is about 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, but that number was designed to prevent outright deficiency. And then on the other side, I find a lot of women told that they need their full body weight in grams of protein, and that's just too much for most women, and honestly can be very difficult to achieve in your diet. So what research supports best is women and midlife benefit most from about 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. So to figure out your kilograms in body weight, you take your pounds, weight in pounds, divide that by 2.2 and that gives you kilograms. Then multiply that times 1.2 to 1.6, and you'll get a range for how much protein might be good for you. So what does that mean for a lot of women? 80 to about a hundred, 110 grams of protein per day. Again, it's based on your body size, so it depends on what your weight is. And you know, I find most women are, are really struggling to get that much. They're eating far less than that. But the next piece matters a lot, too, and that is how your protein is distributed throughout the day. So a lot of women eat very little protein at breakfast. Maybe they have oatmeal or toast or fruit, or maybe they don't eat breakfast, then they maybe eat a little bit of protein at lunch, and most of their protein comes at dinner. But the body builds muscle best when we can stimulate multiple times during the day. So research suggests that it's best to get maybe 25 to 30 grams of protein per meal, and that can help to stimulate muscle repair. So instead of eating most of your protein at night, it works better to spread it out a little bit. So maybe 25 to 30 grams of breakfast, 25 to 30 at lunch, dinner, maybe 30, maybe even a little bit more depending on how much you need total in your day. So this pattern spreading throughout the day helps to support muscle maintenance and metabolic health. Protein also helps to stabilize blood sugar. So when a meal contains enough protein, digestion slows and glucose enters the bloodstream a little bit more gradually. So this helps to prevent energy crashing, sugar cravings, irritability, brain fog, and these are things a lot of the women I'm seeing are experiencing during these years of perimenopause and menopause. So think about the difference between a bagel for breakfast versus eggs with vegetables. And I encourage you to try out different things and see how your body responds. What do you notice? What do you notice about your energy and how you feel throughout the day? You know, one of these things, the bagel for breakfast might spike your blood sugar, whereas eggs and some vegetables gives just a steady, steady energy, steady energy for hours after. Another really important reason protein matters after 40 is bone health. Um, you know, we think about calcium and vitamin D and most women know that that's important for bones, but a lot of women don't realize that your bone is actually built of a lot of protein. And protein provides that structure, the framework that minerals like calcium can attach to. So when we don't get enough protein, our bones can get weakened over time. So as women through move through menopause and estrogen declines, unfortunately our bone loss accelerates. So getting enough protein, helping build that structure, along with strength training and key nutrients, again, that calcium and vitamin D, helps to support strong and resilient bones. So protein and weight management-protein also plays a major role in satiety. Simply means feeling full and feeling satisfied after eating. Protein triggers the hormones that can help your body to feel full and help you to reduce appetite and protein digests more slowly than carbohydrates, so it just releases, uh, helps you to stay full longer, again, stays in your stomach a little bit longer. So meals that contain enough protein help you feel satisfied, help reduce snacking, help stabilize your energy and make weight management easier. So a lot of women tell me they feel hungry all the time, and when we increase protein, they often can-are really surprised by how much more satisfied they feel after their meals. Another factor that so many women are frustrated by, and I get it, is hair thinning. It's another symptom that women often ask me about, hair thinning during menopause. Hair is made up primarily of keratin, which is protein, and if protein intake is too low, the body prioritizes essential functions, of course, like organs and immune health. Hair growth isn't that important at that point, so it can contribute to slower hair growth, increased shedding of hair and thinner hair. Protein isn't the only factor of course, but it is a really big one and one that I think a lot of women are missing. So let's talk a little bit about the practicality of this. What does 30 grams of protein actually look like? Because, you know, I tell women they need 30 grams of protein in a meal, but you know what, what does that mean? We don't necessarily look at our food in, in matter of grams of protein. So 30 grams of protein for breakfast might look like, um, an omelet with two eggs, two whole eggs and two egg whites. So the egg white is where we get most of the protein from and the eggs. So, you know, the whole egg is great and the, the, it's got a lot of good vitamins and minerals in the egg yolks as well. That's where more of the cholesterol and, and, and the fat is, which isn't a bad thing. But to get just more protein, we don't necessarily need to or want to increase the whole eggs, but getting a little bit more egg whites can help. So, you know, doing a whole, a complete egg white omelet is fine too. Personally, I like to get a little bit of yolk in there, too, so I might do two and two. A little bit of cheese in it, maybe just an ounce of cheese or so, and then a bunch of vegetables. Super nourishing meal helps keep you satisfied, gets you a good amount of protein to start your day. Greek yogurt might be an option. Um, not going to give you as much, maybe adding some protein powder, sometimes people might do that and, and find that to be helpful. Um, collagen, sometimes women might put in their yogurt. Nuts gives you a little bit, it's fat, too. It's, it's a little bit more fat, really good quality fat, but can give you some protein as well. So maybe some yogurt with nuts and berries. Uh, it can be, get, can get you a little bit of good start, just good start to your day of protein. A smoothie, not everybody wants to drink their breakfast, but really easy way to get a lot of good nutrition with berries and greens and some collagen or protein powder using maybe a, a yogurt or keifer. Uh, you can just get a really good boost of protein in a breakfast like that. So lunch I, I find a lot of women are eating meat or beans maybe at lunchtime, but the quantity is just a little smaller than maybe is best to get adequate protein. So we might have to rethink kind of the balance of our meals, so maybe we're not getting quite as much carbs and maybe grains, but getting a little bit more protein and of course, vegetables and fruit. So maybe it's a chicken salad with four to five ounces of chicken or a lentil bowl with vegetables and maybe a yogurt sauce. So you get some, some added protein and calcium, of course, with the yogurt, too. Maybe some salmon on a salad. So meat is going to give us, you know, we get more protein in a serving of meat than we do from beans, legumes, or lentils. But, uh, you know, it doesn't have to be meat. So thinking about other ways that you can do that and, and how you can kind of create some balance and incorporate that. And then of course, the same sort of thing for dinner. Dinner, I find, you know, women tend to maybe bump up the protein a little bit more at that time. So maybe it's, you know, five ounces of, of salmon or chicken or something. Um, with vegetables, again, you know, chicken roasted vegetables, maybe a stir fry. That I, it doesn't tend to be as difficult, but, uh, you know, it's just, again, paying attention every time you eat. Thinking about where is it coming from, what am I getting? A lot of women, particularly breakfast, surprises them that, you know, again, the oatmeal, the toast with peanut butter or a yogurt, you might only be getting 8, 10, 12 grams of protein, so you're just not getting quite enough to, to get a full serving at that time. So meals that feel like they contain protein, you know, sometimes I find that are lower than we might have realized. If you take three things away from today's episode, let them be these: first, after 40 protein becomes more important, not less. Second, aim for roughly 25 to 30 grams of protein at each meal. And third, protein supports far more than muscle-supports, metabolism, bone health, blood sugar, stability, satiety, and even hair growth. If you have been struggling with things like fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, muscle loss, hair thinning, nutrition might be playing a much bigger role than you realize. A lot of the women I work with are surprised by how much their symptoms improve once we address things like protein intake, blood sugar, balance, gut health and inflammation. If you'd like help understanding what's happening in your body and what changes would make the biggest difference, I'd love for you to schedule a discovery call with me and we can talk about your symptoms, your goals, and whether working together through my Joyful Menopause Plan program might be the right next step for you. You can find the link in the show notes. So thanks for being here today. I hope you got some good ideas and some inspiration to start getting more protein into your diet. So hope you have a great rest of your day. I'll see you next time.