Your Daily Protein Goal & Why You Want One
Jul 01, 2024If you struggle with any of the following, then this Nutrition Letter is for you:
- fatigue, anxiety, mood swings, depression
- infertility, miscarriages, stillbirths
- explainable & unexplainable weight gain
- insomnia
- auto-immune conditions
- trouble building strength, mobility, and muscle
and the list really keeps going on and on.
Why?
Because it's one of those foundational secrets of health that most people ignore or vilify.
Let me introduce you to protein and why it's such a source of rejuvenation & health.
What is protein?
If you were a house, then the following parts of you are mostly made of protein:
- foundation
- adhesions (i.e. the glue, like bricks & mortar)
- walls, roof, & chimney
- floors & windows
- furniture & tables
So you are mostly protein? Yes! And not only does it hold you together, but it also composes our internal appliances, performing active functional roles, including
- ALL the systems: the entire HVAC, electric, water, sewage
- ALL the fancy kitchen & home entertainment appliances
- ALL your furniture
And there's more: consider DNA.
DNA contains the blueprint for life, including all the instructions on how to run every specialized cell & system in your body (reproductive cells & the reproductive system; immune cells & the immune system, etc). The part of DNA that writes out instructions to all our cells are genes. Guess what these instructions are made of?
It's not pencil + paper = blueprint.
It's amino acid + amino acid = protein.
Genes are segments of your DNA. Genes produce a sequence of amino acids that then fold up into a protein. That unique protein created is a mini-blueprint: the instruction for your life to continue successfully to infinity and beyond.
Now you understand how essential protein is to your existence & continued existence.
So now is the right time to tell you that most people don't eat enough protein.
Finding Your Current vs Optimal Daily Protein Intake Goal
If you are like most of my clients, you want optimal health & vitality to realize your dreams. This necessitates a well-operating
- immune system
- digestive system
- reproductive system
- endocrine system
- musculoskeletal system
etc
Now that you know that all these systems rely on protein-derived building blocks & instruction manuals to function, you want to know if you are eating enough protein.
Yes! What's my daily optimal protein goal?
Essential vs. Non-Essential Amino Acids & Why You Care to Know the Difference
If protein is a word, then amino acids are the individual letters in that word.
In the entire protein alphabet, there are 20 amino acid "letters".
Most of these amino acids can be internally produced by our bodies and are thus called "non-essential amino acids".
In contrast, there are 9 "essential amino acids". These must be obtained from our diet because our bodies cannot internally produce them.
The word "essential" is misleading to many of my clients because it leads them to think that they only need to focus on obtaining those special 9 amino acids and then their body will take care of the rest with no problem.
No - you want to eat all of the protein alphabet in your diet. Just because your body can make some internally, doesn't mean it will make enough.
Just maybe enough to keep you alive.
But you're not here to just survive - you want to learn how to thrive. We functional medicine & nutrition practitioners, operate under the assumption that all humans can thrive until the day of or a few days before their passing. Life is not a slow inevitable chronic falling apart.
So let's eat enough protein, shall we? Your body will only just barely make enough "essential proteins" because it is a lean evolutionary work of art.
The thing about evolution is that it doesn't actually necessarily lead an organism to what's most optimal or even best. It often means "just good enough for most situations".
Vitamin C is a great example. Most animals can internally make their own Vit C supply. But apes (including humans), most bats, and some rodents can't.
The evolutionary reason might be as simple as each of these animals finding a consistent food source high enough in vitamin C to make that internal production line useless. So like any good minimalist of today, our species (via evolutionary selection pressures) eventually threw out this time & space-consuming process and enjoyed their newfound freedom of one less thing to maintain.
In functional healthcare, we understand evolution to mean "the most efficient system" wins, and we work to improve on that consciously.
And now you know some pieces of that evolution, from bricks to DNA instruction to essential vs non-essential amino acids.
The important part to remember is not to get caught up in "Which letter of the protein alphabet is most important?", but rather to see the larger picture and know that eating the whole alphabet is the best way forward.
The Simplest Way to Eat the Whole Protein Alphabet
Four words: eat whole animal foods ("bone-in" cooking) whenever possible. The "white" muscle meat is not enough. Eat the "dark" meat too. Find responsibly made raw whole milk, yogurt, and kefir. Cook a leg of lamb with the bone-in, a whole chicken in the oven, or enjoy a fish broth as well as the fish flesh & skin. Animal meat/bone broth is also full of the whole amino acid spectrum.
I'll write another time about why plant-based protein sources are not good options & must be prepared extremely carefully to even make them safe for human consumption.
For now, take it from years of client experience: not one of my clients has recovered to 100% while sourcing their protein from plants. Not one.
They always had to relinquish their plant proteins, because it was harming them more than helping. And those clients always thanked me for eventually convincing them, but more on that another time.
Ideally, my clients get all their protein from high quality meat sources (100% grass-fed, grass-finished, & organic or GMO-free-feed ruminant animal meat), but here are my easy-in start-here options: high quality Whey Protein Isolate, Collagen, or Colostrum.
Client Example
In that same free resource, I talk about one of my clients Sarah. Because of her intense work and life schedule, I started Sarah on a minimum of 2 scoops per day of the Whey Protein Isolate, spread between breakfast and lunch.
Within a few days, her energy picked up, satiation skyrocketed, those days in the gym felt easier to recover from, and life just seemed to make "sense" again. Two weeks later, her moods stabilized significantly.
If you struggled with anything like Sarah did (moody, tired, and random weight fluctuations), I highly suggest you start with a high-quality Whey Protein Isolate Powder.
Ideally, spread each scoop between at least two meals. When you start piling on too much protein per meal, you could have negative blood sugar effects. I usually start seeing that with clients above the 50-60 grams range, but then again, there are outliers like Sarah, who did not feel any of those negative effects.
That's why you want to fine-tune what your ideal protein intake is per meal, ideally with the help of a trained professional like yours truly. High-quality protein is a powerful tool in my toolbox of functional nutrition to help my clients realize their health dreams.
I can help you too, like I did Sarah.
She took my 6-month health foundation & fat release program and got what she came for; higher energy, good mood, and the know-how to tweak her program along the way until she's all the way to her favorite size 6 jeans.
The first thing she did was sign up for a free consultation call with me, here.
We met, she told me her story, she found out about the structure of my program & how exactly it could help her. She signed up and her results inspired today's Nutrition Letter.
It was that simple.
Have a wonderful week my friend!
P.S.
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