“It’s challenging for me to eat enough protein throughout the day,” shared Nester during his training session. “I’m only one hundred and fifty pounds, and the doctor recommends that I eat about half a gram of protein per pound of body weight.” This would mean that Nester must consume around seventy-five grams of protein throughout the day. A busy work schedule that includes massive amounts of phone calls, emails, computer work, and meetings posed a hindrance for Nester to sit down and eat.
“How much protein do you usually eat in a day?” I asked Nester. “Sometimes around fifty grams or so,” He replied. I was curious of what Nester perceived as fifty grams of protein,“What do you have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?” Nester answered, “I usually do some toast at breakfast. Lunch is a wild card. Sometimes I don’t eat lunch at all. At dinner, sometimes I have to go out to dinner with my colleagues and clients and have something there.”
From my standpoint, Nester was so busy with his work schedule that his goal of practicing optimal dietary decision-making habits was on the back burner. The obligations toward the successful operations of his work schedule unquestionably took priority before making skillful eating decisions to reach his protein goals. If Nester wanted to rectify the issue of not getting enough protein in his daily diet, prioritizing awareness toward ensuring protein is consumed throughout the day regularly would need to happen.
Dietary protein is essential for nurturing the skeletal muscle in the body. In the exercise arena, adequate protein consumption and consistent resistance training go hand in hand. After a session of performing compound resistance training tactics such as squats, push-ups, and pulling movements for three sets of ten repetitions on each movement, the skeletal muscle becomes stressed resulting in microscopic tears within the connective tissue comprising the muscle. The body’s natural reaction is to heal these microscopic tears via muscle resynthesis by adhering protein from the bloodstream onto the damaged site of muscle. This action of protein resynthesis rebuilds the muscle to become larger and stronger during muscular contractions. Therefore, consistently practiced resistance training plus adequate protein consumption produces structurally reinforced lean muscle mass.
After gathering information on what Nester ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I found a gap in his tactics for acquiring sufficient protein. It wasn’t the intimidating number of acquiring seventy-five grams of protein in his diet that was the primary culprit. Nester simply wasn’t eating enough food overall.
A simple solution we offer our personal training clients looking for nutritional guidance, like Nester, who are struggling to acquire adequate protein in their diet, is to ensure they eat enough throughout the day. It’s all too often that we hear that people work themselves to the bone and never get out of their office chairs until the final minutes of their shift conclude. Before they know it, they haven’t eaten anything besides a mixed coffee drink and pastry from Starbucks. When it’s dinner time, anything will suffice to fill the hole of hunger. In this case, the last thing on people’s minds is getting enough protein.
An attainable solution that many people find useful is to ensure that they eat three to five times per day. This could mean breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack (if necessary), and a light dinner. Furthermore, in each of these meals, including a lean protein source about the portion size of what can fit in the palm of the hand is a useful way to include protein in each eating period. The average hand palm size is about two to four inches in surface area. So, including a protein source such as one or two eggs, a slice of chicken breast, or a handful of raw unsalted nuts could suffice as an acceptable source of protein in each meal. In Nester’s case, if he were to eat fifteen grams of protein in each meal throughout five eating periods, he could come very close to meeting seventy-five grams of protein if he simply included about a handful serving size of protein in each meal without even looking at a nutritional label.
Identifying and consuming adequate dietary protein is essential to optimizing fitness adaptations, such as managing weight and building lean muscle mass. If tracking the amount of protein consumed daily is challenging, try to include lean protein in every meal. By practicing this simple tactic of frequently eating protein in every meal, the body will be able to repair damaged muscle and assist in getting the most out of a consistent exercise routine.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
