Protein: What’s All the Fuss about?

As we reach our 40s and beyond, there seems to be a lot of chat about protein. But, what is all the fuss about and is it actually that important?

Protein is the most satiating nutrient – leaving us feeling more full and satisfied with our nutrition.

While we may think we’re “eating protein,” most of us are not including it as consistently as we need to be, or in the amounts we need to support ourselves. As a result, we’re always having cravings, we’re not seeing much change in our body composition, we’re definitely not building muscle despite all those workouts, and we’re often overthinking how complicated it needs to be to feed ourselves.

Too often we focus more on low carb, low fat, sugar free, fasting, calorie counting, keto, or some other weight loss-focused dietary strategy. While these dietary strategies may have worked for you at different times to shift stubborn weight, we believe that weight loss alone is the wrong focus for long-term health.

When we replace “weight loss” as a goal with “healthier body composition”, it helps us shift our focus to prioritizing lean muscle for our healthy ageing and longevity. When we think more about “how can I eat to support my body and muscle tissue” as opposed to “how do I eat less” or “how can I cut more from my plate”, our nutrition becomes a little less stressful.

Let’s talk about what we’re getting from the protein in our meals. The protein that we eat breaks down into amino acids. The amino acids are used for numerous processes, including hormone and enzyme function, brain function, our immune system health, and of course muscle protein synthesis and repair.

The type of protein source will determine what amino acids are present in the food you’re eating. Most animal derived protein contains all the essential amino acids (the ones your body can’t make on its own and must get from food), while most plant protein contains many of the essential aminos, but not all – meaning you would need to eat a variety of them to cover all bases.

So focus on complete protein (like meat, fish, dairy, tofu, seeds, nuts, legumes etc) as often as you can, and don’t hesitate to lean on high quality supplements to cover your bases (hint, hint like SSH protein powder). If you’re eating less animal source protein, look into what amino acids are in the plant based foods you’re consuming to ensure you’re getting your needs met.

.  Your body needs amino acids not only for muscle synthesis and repair, but also to support your brain, enzyme and hormone function. When your dietary intake of protein is inadequate, your body will go to your muscle tissue, break it down (catabolize it) and that’s how it’s going to get those aminos it needs to do its jobs. Your body is clever like that ;-). The down side is that when this happens, we lose muscle mass (when our goal is to maintain/ gain muscle, right?).

While fat and carbohydrates are stored in fat cells and the liver (to be called upon when we’re not eating for energy), the amino acids get stored in the muscle tissue.

What far too many women end up with, is a deficit of available amino acids from their daily dietary intake because they’re not prioritizing protein in their diet. The body just keeps breaking down muscle to get the aminos it needs for all its other tasks. Muscle protein breakdown and muscle protein synthesis are normal processes that occur all day long. But if you’re always in a depleted state when it comes to your amino acids (dietary protein), you’ll always be in a deficit and breaking down more muscle, than you’re building. In this case, it doesn’t matter how many workouts you do, you simply can’t build muscle, without sufficient nutrient building blocks.

You see, a workout in itself creates muscle breakdown (as we’re putting the body under stress and load). If, on top of that, we don’t have the right building blocks for growth and repair, we’re setting ourselves up for injury, depleting our immune response, weight gain and definitely not seeing better results.

When women don’t see the results in their body that they want, instinctively, many women start “eating less and exercising more”. In our 40s+, this response can cause cortisol to rise, promoting stress and body fat storage, plus more muscle breakdown. At this stage, our focus needs to be on working DIFFERENT, not HARDER when it comes to our nutrition and exercise.

Most women only eat around 65g of protein everyday, when we should be trying to consistently get at least 100g+ protein, each day. Aiming for 30-40g protein in each meal will make it simple to reach the daily goal, uplevelling your health and supporting your best efforts with your training.

If you want to kick off your day in the best way possible, stack your breakfast with 30-40g breakfast. This will not only help to reduce cravings, balance your blood sugar levels, help you feel more satiated but it will also help to support your muscle synthesis and recovery. For our FREE download SSH 7 Days of Breakfast, click HERE.

Any questions? Please reach out via email (hello@soulsisterhealth) or DM us on IG @soulsisterhealth – we love chatting with you all!

Anna & Em xo