How much protein should women eat?

Hello, everyone. So my goal with this video today is to shed some light on a macronutrient called protein. So there are three main macronutrients carbs, fats, and protein. Being a female, and being someone who necessarily doesn’t want to bulk up, I want to speak to the ladies that are listening to this that are also a little bit maybe confused on protein confused as to how much they should incorporate into their diet. And I want to help you with a little bit more understanding. So for me, protein has changed my life. And what I mean by that is, is in my 20s, I did not eat protein heavy, so I was always a little bit more carbohydrate based, everything I ate, the plate was going to be a little bit more carb heavy. And those carbs could be coming from vegetables too, because I do love vegetables. But that meant if my plate was very much filled with vegetables, and healthy fats and carbohydrates, the smallest thing I was getting was protein. And that is where I was doing it wrong. Now, why is that wrong in my eyes. After decades of research, and me really diving into this macronutrient of protein, protein is an essential building block for our body. And so within protein, there are all these amino acids, amino acids are what help us rebuild tissue help us regrow hairs, vitally important for hair, skin, and nails. And the biggest thing to me is, it’s vital for our muscles, not necessarily for me to bulk up my muscles, but for muscle repair. And so that means if I’ve been active, if I’ve been running around with my children, if I’ve been going on hikes or walking, or whatever muscles are being used, the muscles are being depleted, and the muscles need the strength and those amino acids to go back in and help repair them. So protein changed my life because it gave me more energy. So I think if we all look at, what do we really want out of our life, if we could have more energy, steady, abundant energy all day long, even despite the fact I have a two and a four year old, and I may not always get great sleep, because they could wake up. Even despite the fact that you can have stress during parenthood that, you know, is unavoidable. The one thing I can always go back to is focusing on protein in my diet, and I am guaranteed to get more energy. So when I speak about protein, I want you to understand what protein is. So most of you are going to know that protein comes from, you know, chicken and beef and fish. So meat sources, a lot of eggs, a lot of people don’t know that there are protein options outside of those. Now, why am I speaking about other protein options? I think in order to really get protein at every single meal, you have to use some of these powdered protein options. Now I’m a big fan of real food, and I always will be. But what I like about these is this is coming from real food, it’s just made into a powder. So on a scale of bio availability, meaning how well can your body break this down and utilize it, and how easy is it for the body to do that, because if you think about something that’s hard to break down, that’s actually going to take more energy from our body to break it down. So we want to, we want to give ourselves the easiest thing to break down, and then let that food be our energy source. So I wake up every morning and I drink this, I’m literally obsessed with this protein. On a scale of bioavailability, as I was saying how easy something is to break down. Whey Protein Isolate is the easiest protein to break down and use in our body after that, and I actually have a little chart here. After that is going to be whey concentrate. After that is egg protein, then we go down to cow’s milk, then we go down to fish, and then we go to beef, and then we go to chicken. So surprisingly enough and where I kind of want to bust a little myth here is that plant based proteins are actually at the bottom of the list. Okay, the word plant has a positive ring and a positive effect to it. So plants we know are coming from the earth plants can have antioxidants, plants can have fiber, they’re also a lot harder to break down. So someone that has a compromised gut, someone who has some digestive issues already, and someone who may be a little bit more sensitive to chemicals within plants, and I’ll get into that in a later video. Some of those things can actually cause us fatigue and the breaking down of plants can actually be a little harder to get the energy from and I am one of those. So I’m not cold, hard saying to never use away. I mean to never use a plant protein. But I am saying if you’ve experienced a little bit less energy from your plant proteins, if you still are experiencing fatigue after drinking it, you’re not really feeling satisfied. I would encourage you to try a whey protein. When you think of whey protein, you’re also probably going to think of lactose or you’re going to think of oh I have dairy allergy. Whey Protein is 99.9% lactose free. So I’m also going to say, unless you have a severe allergy, of course, avoid this if you have a severe dairy allergy. But if you only have like mild little symptoms with dairy, this being 99%, lactose free should be very agreeable to your system. And if anything, it should actually be very positive for your system. So I wake up every morning and I do a scoop of this, I actually do it in just warm or lukewarm water, which sounds so gross and strange. But for some reason it It mixes easy, it’s delicious, I have to be very efficient with my time in the morning. So that is my morning thing. I also will add this into the kids pancakes, there’s a vanilla flavor that we have, I will make protein nut butter balls, I’ve put it in the waffle mix before I’ve put it into smoothies are so many ways you can get this into your diet that isn’t just adding water to it. But for me, that’s my way I can ensure it every single day into my diet. Now the other thing is, is this has become very popular. So if you still try this, and maybe you still have a little bit of tummy rumbles or you feel that something digestive wise was not perfect with this. And that’s only going to be a very few few amount of people. This has become very, very popular. And I think it’s for a very good reason. Looking back into history, our ancestors ate a lot of beef head to tail on that cow. So we don’t do that, really, in our society. Now, liver has become more popular spleen, heart, kidneys, organs are definitely becoming more popular. But this protein is going to actually be four ounces of grass fed beef per serving in a powder form. That may sound a little odd to you. But beef is very, very agreeable to most people. And so this is kind of following that carnivore ancestral trend that is going on. But like I said, there is a lot of research backing, people that have digestive dysfunctions doing very, very well with this beef protein. So same way, as I said to us that you can mix it with water, you my husband mixes it actually with his cold brew coffee every morning. And what’s amazing is the four ounces is going to yield 20 grams of protein. So great amount of protein there. Now when we go back to the protein topic, I like to say for a general rule, if you are a decently active person, you want one gram of protein per pound of body weight, okay? Now, if you’re very sedentary, maybe go down to three quarters of a gram for every pound of body weight. But I you know, chasing the kids and working and being decently active, I like to do a pound, or one gram per pound of body weight. So that means for me, I’m looking at around 130 grams of protein a day. So that is a lot. And the only way I can do that is to be very, very conscious, every meal trying to get around 30 grams of protein, and then my two snacks a day looking at around 20 grams of protein. Absolutely a game changer for my energy. I think we all want more energy. We all want more ability to have stamina, clear thinking ability to push through and not have that slump in the afternoon to not have that full tired feeling after meals. To me there’s nothing worse than that. So I’m just not willing to eat those foods that are going to cause that because I want to show up at all avenues of my life for all 14 hours that I’m awake during the day. And I that’s that’s my hope and my wish and so that’s my wish for you. So, again, if you’re a female and you’re thinking I don’t love protein, think of these options and let’s see what we can do to help transform your energy for 2024.