Episode #347: Your Protein Source Matters (Animal, Plant, Etc.)

Hey, beautiful people. Welcome to today’s episode, thank you so much for being here. If you have been with me a long time, you will not be surprised at all about me talking about protein and the importance of protein. But if you are newer, and you’re like, Okay, this conversation, maybe in a couple of minutes is going to go a little bit too over your head and a little bit too, like why are we even talking as much about protein, I would encourage you to go back and listen to some episodes that talk about the importance of protein waste your protein in because I really am I don’t think an episode goes by probably that I don’t talk about how important protein is for fat loss and maintenance. And at different phases of our lives to like I am pregnant recording this and protein. This is really interesting. I just had a client coaching call last week and we were chatting about her getting together a game plan for her came up with a game plan for her she’s not currently postpartum, she was like a year postpartum. But when we were talking about what would be the best strategy for her, we’re chatting about if this was prior to the September Fat Loss Challenge starting I have an eight week fat loss challenge that I usually encourage beginners to do. And then I have a monthly workout group, the chasing greatness group. And we’re talking about the difference between the two because she really wanted to do one of them. And she listened to the podcast. So shout out to you if you’re listening. And I said, you know, as much as I do encourage the eight week Fat Loss Challenge for people who are newer to me. I was hesitant with her because she had so much else going on, like so many things that were taking up mental space, and like actual schedule time, whatever, that I said, You know what I do not think learning the balance of macros is the right fit right now. So I was just asking, you know, she was familiar with enough doing like a visual plate, if she could just kind of think about looking at her plate. This is a carb, this is a fat, this is a protein, making sure she balanced out those meals just visually. Now, nobody could do this. I actually did just do an episode not too long ago about the difference between using macros, like tracking your macros actively or eating intuitively. This is something big, like I basically was trying to feel out if she could eat intuitively. Now she could and she mentioned like, why? There was a lot of reasons why she was familiar with nutrition. And different. You know, she had a variety of experience eating different ways. Paleo was, you know, something that she had done before. But she mentioned specifically that her doula encouraged her I hope I’m not putting the words in your mouth as either your doula or midwife about the importance of eating protein during pregnancy and protein, protein protein. And I’ve heard this and other pregnancy podcasts as well. And I love that. So even there in all seasons of life, we can, you know, have heard and and can hear, if you have further research, that protein is super important. Okay. Now interesting, because when I went to deep dive into this, I’ve been listening to different podcasts, and health leaders in this area as well, kind of diving more into the different kinds of proteins and how they affect our bodies. Because this was actually spurred on also by a listener who asked if I could do an episode about making a complete protein if you are trying to eat more plant based. And this kind of spiraled everything. So thank you seriously, a lot of these things come from you and ideas. But in my quest to do research for this episode, in particular, again, I’ve been just like gathering information, listening to things, I wasn’t always jotting notes down or, you know, looking up where they came from, I would just hear some experts talk about it. And like, oh, that’s an interesting study and didn’t write it down, you know. So I was looking for some actual research to share with you ladies. And I do have some websites and things I’m gonna reference. However, I will say that the current vibe out there is a big old push for plant based and a big ol push for, you know, if you’re eating animal protein, you’re probably killing the planet. And you’re probably a terrible verse and all these things. Now, obviously, we all have our own preferences. And that is beautiful. And then something wonderful about the world that If you enjoy eating in a plant based way, or you do it for whatever reasons you want to do it. I’ve shared before we do, we are carnivores around here, we do eat meat, we do eat vegetables, so we’re not like stray carnivores, I’m just joking around. So that is just not the way we tend we do get most of our protein from animal sources. And then we supplement with other things like dairy, like beans and whatnot. And I did do like I said an episode recently about how to try to make a complete protein from plant based sources. But I just want to tell you that that when you even try to look down this rabbit hole yourself, the big push in society right now is against animal protein. And I don’t think that’s just because this is not a political podcast and I I’m not trying to make it one. I’m just saying I don’t think the push is necessarily because those experts or so called experts believe that animal protein is bad for you? Or is there’s been a lot of, you know, there’s been a lot of myths in and things that have been debunked through the years of okay, like, well, red meat definitely causes high cholesterol. Okay, is it red meat? Or is it also all the other things you’re doing like high carb, high fat, a sedentary lifestyle? Like lots of stuff? Or like, is it okay to have red meat in you know, moderation, that kind of stuff. So this is not the point of my podcast. And I’m not going to pontificate on what I think about animal protein versus plant protein, I just want to encourage you to do your own research. Follow the thought leaders and experts that you feel good about to like, give you you know, everybody has some skin in the game, I feel like it has something to be gained from you either being panicked about one or encouraged by one. And I would just encourage you to do your own research, draw your own conclusions and do what’s best for you and your family. I will just say like I how I felt researching this was how I felt when I discovered that there are like, this was back when my mom has had cancer a couple times. And there was one time when I was trying to look up like anti cancer diets and like better nutrition choices for people who have cancer cells in their body and all these things. And so many things came up that are very known to be inflammatory, like high sugar, things like yogurt, and this and that, but did not specify like not sugar, blah, blah, blah. And then you look at some of the, you know, companies that are sponsoring Susan Komen, or whatever American Cancer Association stuff. And I’m like, well, that’s why this is on the list. So it’s kind of along those lines is what I’m saying. Now, I probably just opened up a whole can of worms, it’s fine, you can email me your thoughts on this. I, it is a it’s a big discussion, one that I don’t have a ton of time, space and energy for but where I think that we just need to be aware and be informed so we can make our own decisions for our own families. But there’s you know, it’s there’s a lot of marketing and sales and things that go into, you know, what hand is feeding, what Association and all that stuff. But all right. First little source here was WebMD. And webmd.com tells us that animal proteins are complete proteins. Okay, so what that means if something is a complete protein is that it has all the essential amino acids that you need. So you don’t need to try to complete them in any way, you’re good to go. plant proteins are often but not always, incomplete sources of protein also, like how they were to be like, they made it sound like it was they were gonna say complete, but no, most often plant proteins are not complete, you have to kind of work to try to pair different ones to complete them. And then according to webmd.com, says benefits of animal protein, better weight control, lower risk of type two diabetes, lower risk of heart disease, etc. Very interesting that they even put lower risk of heart disease on here, because I do think that’s usually cited in favor of plant based. Now, when I looked@healthline.com, an article there, it essentially said the exact same things. So same benefits, same basic information of I did feel like again, I’m not going to dwell on this whole time, but like it was pulling teeth to get the line that animal protein is complete, and that it actually has positives because so much else just came up encourage you to not eat animal protein. Now, Apollo nutrition.com. Now they have they are a supplement company. So obviously, you’re gonna like take that with a grain of salt. They were talking specifically about whey protein and how whey provides the initial spike in muscle protein synthesis.

So this was really interesting to me. This was what I had heard mentioned on different podcasts that again, I hadn’t heard honestly, previously, my husband I’ve always told for those who are newer, my husband is a trainer also does something else for full time work now, but when we met, we were both trainers. And so for years, we’ve talked about this kind of stuff all the time. And he’s been on the podcast before, and all that jazz but forever. We’ve sold our clients to that whey protein is the best and when you ladies asked me like what kind of protein should I use, what’s the best protein supplement I always say whey isolate is a complete protein and all that jazz. It is an animal protein. So you know for those that handle it well and all that and it’s dairy so, you know for those that tolerate dairy I’ve always said way. And then for those who don’t want dairy or don’t want an animal protein then I suggest plant based as an alternative but always say that whey isolate is you You know preferred, what was really interesting is that like different proteins that I’ve used, or I’ve seen and talking protein powders now have been a mix of whey and casein, or whey in this or whatever. And what I had heard on, I think it was on Dr. Gabriel lions podcast, one of the experts she had on was talking about how every single morning, he has the same shake that he’s had for like years and years and years. And he has whey protein in it, because it is the fastest, not fastest digesting, but the fastest. It provides the quickest spike in muscle protein synthesis. So what muscle protein synthesis is, is it’s just the process of your body creating or maintaining muscle. So there’s also theories on this and research that’s like you can only spike muscle protein synthesis. However many times a day and in whatever windows, this is why a lot of people like bodybuilders and whatnot will eat small meals throughout the day, with 25 to 30 grams of protein, rather than having a huge meal of 100 grams of protein, they’re looking to spike muscle protein synthesis multiple times throughout the day. So all this to say about nutrition.com basically said this, and this is where I was basically looking for validation of like, okay, I’ve heard experts talking about this recently. And I do think there is, it seems like there’s a lot of research that supports this, that way specifically gets that muscle protein synthesis going for you. So very interesting, because that maybe is worth your time in making sure that you have way in the rotation if you can. I know I’ve said before that I think supplements should be to supplement whole food. And also interesting because I don’t know for a fact if like the way that’s in milk, if you’d get the same muscle protein synthesis from having way just in milk, or whey in yogurt, I have not gone down that rabbit hole yet. So that’ll be another interesting angle to pursue. But I found that kind of made me think like, Okay, I’ve always said, if you get enough protein from your diet, you don’t need to supplement with like a protein powder or something like that. But here I was hearing several health experts saying that they just start their day with a shake, because it was the fastest to spike this muscle protein synthesis and get their bodies started in that way. So very interesting. Okay, maybe this is only interesting to me. But either way, a couple more things where you healthline.com did say, as well. 10 evidence based health benefits of whey protein, okay, way. So again, this is typically going to be in, we’re usually talking about a supplement here. That’s whey protein. Whey is a complete high quality protein that contains all the essential amino acids. And in addition, it’s very digestible, absorbed by your gut quickly compared with other types of protein. This is so interesting, because like if you’re having a slower digesting protein, that could be why you’re not feeling full very fast. Where and this is crazy to me, because I do it, I thought was just a pregnancy thing. I’ve had shakes you know, all throughout my years, randomly, I’ll go seasonal with it or have shakes I don’t. I’ve been making shakes. Again, this pregnancy I didn’t in the first trimester. But I have since then, and I’ve been getting so full. And that is obviously a pregnancy thing too. But it’s pretty early in my second try that I couldn’t even finish shake. And you know, I am using way and sometimes I’ve used plant based or different ones are just collagen in there. But I’ve been exclusively using whey protein and have been too full to even finish a shake and then full for hours after. So very interesting. Whey Protein promotes muscle growth. Okay, muscle mass naturally declines with age, which usually leads to fat gain, and raises the risk of many chronic diseases. So we want to replace the muscle mass that we’re losing. If we want to keep our metabolism healthy and strong. If we want to keep our physique, you know, close as close to what it is as possible. We don’t want to you know, gain a ton of fat as we age and lose a lot of muscle. So whey protein can help with that. Whey Protein is also cited to lower blood pressure. This is again according to healthline.com. So this is due to something called this is I know we’re getting a little more technical here and I had to look these things up bioactive peptides which are called ACE inhibitors, that is what can be attributed to way lowering blood pressure. It’s also very effective in moderating blood sugar, which makes sense because it’s keeping you full, you’re not having it’s not, you know, it’s protein, you’re not having 60 grams of carbs and then crashing so it keeps it nice and stable for you. And then the last tip I’m going to share or is that whey protein can help reduce inflammation. And this was due to, it’s at high doses of whey protein supplements significantly reduced C reactive protein, which is a key marker of inflammation in the body. So that was only five tips, five benefits that I pulled out of that article, that article, again was on health line.com. And I had 10 total, I just don’t want to go through all of them today. But you could see the rest of the article to check out the other benefits specifically of whey protein. And then last one, I want to say on protein in general, because this is probably the thing I get the most pushback on or most debate this and water. I always get emails like well, you’re saying to drink 80 to 100 ounces of water, but my doctor said 40 ounces is fine. Or, you know, I the average American diets were whatever the you know, my food plate, whatever it is, right now, food pyramid, my plate data suggests 50 grams of protein. Okay? We all have, you know, there’s going to be variants here. different viewpoints, conflicting viewpoints for the person who is strength training, and who is trying to lose fat or maintain fat loss and have an athletic physique and athletic approach, okay, which is what a lot of women want, when they say lean and toned, you might want to look like think like female volleyball player, like beach volleyball player and stuff like that’s what you’re probably going for something along those lines. They’re not eating 40 grams of protein a day. So again, this podcast episode was not to just sell you on eating enough protein, I’m going to assume that you can get on board with that. But I happen to look at to this physiopedia.com article. And it talked about how protein ingestion stimulates muscle protein synthesis, there’s that phrase again, and that the overall intake range recommended is 1.4 to two grams of protein per kilogram and bodyweight now, okay, I did the math on that, because I usually hover somewhere around 150. And bodyweight when I am not pregnant, it’s usually 140 to 150 is my range. So I took the even the top end of that, that’s 68 kilograms times to the top of that range of protein, 136 grams of protein, which is probably the most I do usually shoot for. But here’s even the Asterix. So that’s what like, usually people who are encouraging athletes, or trainers who are encouraging high protein diets were usually following somewhere along that scale of 1.4 to two kilograms. I agree with that, I recommend that usually, I usually you hear me say all the time, I just tried to make it simpler for those of us who think in pounds, because I do, I don’t always like to do the conversion. So I usually say, between 100 grams and your ideal body weight in protein and working up to that not just sliding right up to that. But this article actually talked about how that has been the norm. But how new says new evidence proposes that higher protein intakes greater than three kilograms a day may have positive effects on body composition in resistance trained individuals. That is it promotes the loss of fat mass. So saying that even up to three times your body weight in kilograms daily, could be really good for fat loss in composition, all that. So very interesting. Again, most of us just need to wrap our heads around the idea that we even need as much as a as 100 grams. And you know, there’s, again, do what you then think is reasonable for you.

That is what I typically do with anybody, if you’re in a group program with me or one on one, then I’ll look at where you’re already starting. And then gradually encourage you to slide it up. And you are going to be shocked at how much easier it is to maintain your body composition to change your body composition. And to feel full, like that’s the number one thing I hear is like, oh my gosh, I feel so full, but I’m eating more like there’s there’s a reason for that your, your food quality matters, like eating higher protein versus higher carb or higher fat matters. And you’re there was one other thing I was gonna say about that. And your quality of the protein matters like we’re talking about today. So maybe you know just something to think about something to pursue more research on your own. And I hope you found this informative. All right, next episode we are going to talk about how you can save time while either achieving or maintaining a healthy lifestyle because we all do not have time to spend hours a day on meal planning on workout set it out. So we’re talking about how we can save some time. All right, I hope you have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you then.

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