Picking the Low Hanging Fruit: Put Protein In Its Place

Continuing our look at picking the low hanging fruit (the simpler, foundational principles) along your health and wellness journey, let’s tackle one – consuming the optimal amount of good protein – that’s fairly straight forward, yet often overlooked when moving away from the standard American diet (SAD) to a more intentional, and healthy, food plan.

So Just How Much Protein Do I Really Need?

For most of us, those of us living fairly normal lives and not training to become championship level body builders or Olympians, and not dealing with some major medical condition, there are several useful rule of thumb methods to ballpark your protein needs.

Please note that I abhor “one size fits all” nutrition plans; the type and amount of food you consume every day should be carefully customized to fit your very own physiology, metabolism, and activity demands, and will of course change over time throughout your life. Run from anyone who tells you they have a magic plan handed down from on high that you must follow.

That said, I most often suggest that people who are reasonably active start with the simple guideline of aiming to consume 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass per day, and adjust from there.

There’s a bit more detail about typical adjustments made to protein intake in this post from a few months back, and critically you’ll probably end up doing some experimentation to see what works best for you.

Protein Quality Matters

Sourcing great proteins for your food plan doesn’t need to be overly complicated, and like most things we eat, for most of us there are a variety of options and choices available.

Several months ago I spent a fair amount of time detailing some general principles in sourcing proteins, looking at game, beef, pork, and lamb here, seafood here, and fowl here.

I encourage folks to make the absolute best selections of your protein choices within budgetary and availability constraints, though it’s possible now to have just about any variety of amazing proteins shipped to your front door with a few clicks or a quick call.

The Thinking About Protein is Evolving, Particularly in the Longevity Arena

As you’re working through your protein plan, I’d encourage you at some point to read some of what Dr. Gundry has written about protein (The Plant Paradox; his new book The Longevity Paradox is just out, though I’ve not picked up a copy as of this morning!).

Guidry (among many) opines that most of us eat far more protein than we need, and probably more than is optimal for our metabolism.

We’ll come back and visit this issue in more detail in another post, my intent is to stir your curiosity a bit and have you keep an eye out for changes in how the best minds are conceptualizing our optimal relationship with proteins.