How Much Protein Should You Eat: Boosting Your Metabolism and Overall Nutrition

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and in today's episode, I wanna talk about protein and why it's so important to make sure you're getting enough protein in not only in your diet, but in every single meal. So let's get started. So first of all, just to clarify, as humans, there's three main sources of calories. They're called macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. And from my experience as a naturopathic doctor and clinical Nutritionist for over 23 years, and really I've been a nutritionist for longer than that, is that really what I see? The best health for me and my patients is when each meal has a balance of protein, carbs and fat. And the thing I find is that so often people are way more likely to get plenty of carbs. And hopefully now we're even learning to get enough fat in our meals. But still many people are not getting enough protein. So I really want to emphasize the protein today and why it's so important for your health and how to start choosing it and making sure you're getting it with each meal. So just to clarify, I don't tend to talk about snacks. I don't think of eating snacks. I've pretty much just crossed it off the possibility list. Because snacks often mean that it's something we eat that's just carbohydrate, Right. When you think about it, snacks often are chips or popcorn or crackers or even fruit is all just carbohydrates. And so there's not enough protein there. It's not a balance. What I find, and this is after 23 years of being a naturopathic doctor and clinical nutritionist, is that it's when we have a balance that our bodies really need all of these things in balance. And when we can have a balance in each meal of carbs, protein and fat, that we're gonna be feeling much better and doing much better. And I'm gonna explain why here in this, in this video. So I don't tend to think about snacks. I tend to think about it as having a meal with balanced macronutrients, including protein, and eating them at eating this, a small quantity we can digest, absorb and use without overdoing it. And to then eat a meal like that in three to four hour intervals through the day, and it doesn't mean we're, you know, we want to have space in between so we can digest and absorb, and that's what helps reset our hunger. And sick and fullness signals so that we feel hungry, we eat, our bodies have time to digest and absorb and use those nutrients and then we feel hungry again, like three to four hours later. And then what we do is we want to stop eating within. I usually, I suggest three hours before you're going to go to bed. And then of course, you're not going to eat while you're sleeping. So that's your overnight fast or what's called an intermittent fast. And we can, then we start eating again the next day. And that can vary what time you eat your first meal. But you, it's important to give your body consistent signals. Our bodies do best when we, when it can really start to predict and anticipate that you're going to do and a similar timing and intervals each day. It's when we, we start shifting things around or going, you know, fasting too long overnight into the next day or eating too much at once. You know, all of these variations of eating just then cause our body to have to help us out. Right? If we, if we eat more at once now we have more to digest in our body and our metabolism has more macronutrients to metabolize. And sometimes then we're overwhelming our metabolism and we are also likely overwhelming our digestion. And if we can't digest everything we eat, especially the carbs and fibers, it ends up overfeeding our gut bacteria. So then we end up with bloating and gas and burping and bacterial overgrowth or yeast overgrowth, because we're, we're thinking we need to eat more. Especially even I see this a lot where people want to eat more of healthy stuff, more vegetables and more seeds and more nuts, and they put it all in their protein shaker in a big bowl and you eat it all. But your stomach only has so much to be able to digest. And if you have leaky gut especially, you can only absorb so much. And everything else goes to overfeeding the gut bacteria. It's very rare for someone to not have enough gut bacteria. I know that we're always hearing about probiotics and definitely our gut bacteria are so important to our health. But that doesn't mean that we need to flood our digestion with probiotics. We, most people have enough bacteria. The problem is we're overfeeding them by eating too large of meals. So it's, it's about finding just the right amount, right? How do we know is not too little and what's too much? So, so how do you know what's enough protein now here's the thing. Our body uses the protein in so many different ways, right? Our, our protein is broken down into amino acids and there's, you know, a whole bunch of amino acids and there's in particular nine amino acids which are considered essential, meaning we have to get it from food. And you can get those nine essential amino acids from either animal based protein. And there are a few plant based sources of those nine essential amino acids. So it, this is true, by the way, whether you have an animal based diet, a plant based diet or combo. If you're having some animal and some plant based, yeah, you can, you can do it. So either way, you just need to learn how to choose the protein each time you eat. So where do we get protein? We can get protein from? Uh, we. I was just gonna say I wanted to tell you more about how we use amino acids first. Okay, let me do that. So we use amino acids for building muscle is one of the most, you know, the first ones we think of, right? If we wanna, if we're, especially if we're working out and we wanna build muscle, let alone if you're just not, even if you're working out, you still need to rebuild muscle every day. So we need amino acids, amino acids to keep up with protein production. We also use amino acids in the liver for detoxification. So we need those, we need amino acids for detoxification too. And we need amino acids for making neurotransmitters. So the messengers in our nervous system, if we want to make serotonin, for example, dopamine, adrenaline, all of that requires amino acids. So if we're not getting enough protein and amino acids in our diet, we're going to be making it harder for our body to maintain adequate neurotransmitters and to maintain adequate detoxification, let alone all the other ways that our bodies use amino acids, including for energy production. Right? We use, we can use amino acids for energy. So these are just even some of the main reasons why protein is so important. Okay, so where do we find it and how do we know how much is enough? Okay, so you can get protein from animal sources. So animal sources would be like even, I would say egg is from, is a, is, you know, comes from an animal. Sometimes it's considered vegetarian, depending on what diet you're following. And also anything from milk, cow milk would be, um, also I would say from an animal source. And the thing is, I find that dairy products, anything from cow milk and oftentimes eggs, if a person has leaky gut, they're often, those are often inflammatory foods. So I am often helping people navigate and eat without choosing cow milk products and without choosing eggs. Now some people don't, are not sensitive to eggs and that's fine to choose eggs sometimes, but I don't recommend having eggs every single day. It's just too much of the same protein source. We need to be creating variety including of protein sources. So I encourage you to, to have different protein sources, not the same thing every meal, every day. So.

Yeah, we could talk more about leaky cut if you'd like. But first, what are other protein sources? Okay, so there's poultry like chicken, turkey, there's fish like salmon and other kinds of fish. Of course with fish you're going to try to choose wild fish and, and smaller fish because the larger fish have more mercury in them and you definitely want to don't, you don't want to overload yourself with mercury from large fish with. Even with poultry, I would recommend choosing free range, hormone free. You know, like you want to get healthy sources of animal protein. Same with, even with beef or other kinds of, of animal protein. You want to get grass fed organic beef sources. And these you can, you can easily Google by the way, if you're wondering how much protein is in whatever, just put it in Google. Just say how many, how many grams of protein are in 4 ounces of whatever you're wondering about and it will immediately show up for you. So you can quickly check how many grams of protein are in there or if it's a package, you can look on the package, on the label and see how much is in there. So if it's a chicken, let's say chick grilled chicken, like 3 ounces is 23 grams of protein, 4 ounces, 31 grams of protein. So you get a sense that like the amount, that's the size of your hand, which is like a 4oz, which to me is a nice serving size for a meal, then that's gonna have about 30 grams of protein. So you're getting at least 20. This is my goal for you. And my kind of like standing rule is to get at least 20 grams. Or right about there it could be 18, but at least 18 to 20 grams of protein each meal or each time you eat. You know, so kind of say to yourself, where's the protein every time you go to eat, where's the protein and is it at least 18 grams? Okay? And then at that same time I would want to keep the carbs under 20 grams, no more than 20 grams. Okay? So it's like trying to get the carbs down a little bit and the protein up. Okay. So you get a sense of how, where the grams of protein come from with those animal protein sources. There's also plant based sources of protein like nuts and seeds and legumes or lentils, including soy. Right. Also there's some protein in certain grains, like quinoa is really a seed. Also buckwheat has some protein. And then, but mostly most greens and most vegetables and fruits really have such little protein, it's negligible. So I would say your main plant based sources are going to be from.

From nuts, seeds, legumes and quinoa. Now you could also get plant based protein powder. In the case of protein powder, they're extracting the protein. So you could get like, let's say a pea protein or even you can get hemp seed protein or flaxseed protein or watermelon seed protein for that matter. And then you're getting a protein source in a powder which if you are following a plant based diet, that could be a really good resource for you because then at least if your meal, you know, doesn't have a lot of protein in it, you can always get a scoop of protein powder and get your, you know, get your 18 to 20 grams. Uh, now the issue with sometimes the tricky thing with like nuts and seeds and legumes is they all, they contain some protein, but they also contain carbs and fat. So what can happen with a plant based diet is we keep trying to get more protein, but it keeps coming with more carbs. And so then the carb numbers keep going up, up, up, just till we can get enough protein. And by the time we get enough protein from the nuts and seeds and legumes, it's too many carbs until we're ending up overfeeding our gut bacteria. And I think that's why so many people I see eating a plant based diet end up with digestive issues. So I encourage you to just watch that and know like, yes, you can have, I too have some plant based meals that are say with a seed butter or nut butter or nuts and seeds and a granola. I do that. But it's not every meal. And I still will make sure that I have some protein, extra protein with it so that I'm getting this balance of protein with the carbs. Okay, so there you go with the protein sources. You know why protein's important, you know where to get it. So how do you calculate how much do you need? And this is A tricky thing. There's a lot of different kind of rules of thumb out there. You can also go on the Internet and find a protein calculator where it's essentially going to look at your height, your weight. So your protein needs to depend on your height and your weight. It also depends on your activity level. So if you are essentially like have the lowest activity level, like if, if you're laying in, if you're in a bed all day, like let's say you're not feeling well and you're in the bed all day, your protein needs are less. Of course if you're ceiling, then you even need some protein just for healing, right? And then if you have some activity, even a little bit of exercise increases your protein needs quite a lot. And then if you have intense exercise or you're doing muscle building, you need even more protein. So this is the thing is there's not one perfect number. You really have to know your body and your activity level and start to fine tune it and play with it until you find, oh, when I eat this much protein, I feel my best. And then there's also other factors to consider, your other health related issues, or if you have kidney related issues, you may need to moderate your protein intake. So this is all to say that I encourage you to start getting to know how much protein you're getting. Use some of these calculators, but then also pay attention to your body to know how you're feeling. So for example, one way to calculate protein is to say that we need 7 grams of protein for every 20 grams of body weight. So let's say I should say 20 pounds of body weight. So say you say we'll use a hundred pounds just to make it easy. So in a hundred pounds, how many? We divide that by five by 20 and you get five, right? So there's five, there's five of the 20s in a hundred. And then you multiply that by seven and it's 35. So that would be for someone who weighs a hundred pounds and is sedentary, no activity, then they would have a requirement of 35 grams. Now even if they have some activity level, even not intense, just even a little bit of exercise, they need twice that much. So between 65 and 70 grams. So just know that like it quickly goes up when you increase your activity and we want to be exercising, it's healthy for us, even a little bit as it goes a long way. So then you realize, oh my gosh, now I need 70 grams of protein. And then, and that's for someone who's a hundred pounds mo most of us are more than that. Right? So then you can calculate another way to get a, a minimum is to say, well, one gram of protein for each kilogram of body weight. You know, so let's say 50 kilograms, that's 50 grams of protein. Again, that's a minimum. If you're exercising very easily, you're going to get into the hundred grams per day of protein. And some people need even more than that if they're doing intense exercise. So just want you to realize like, okay, yeah, it can. We probably need. I'm probably not getting enough protein, right? That's most often that's what people realize when they start to recognize how much our body needs protein. And so then, and to remember that it's, you're not eating it all in one meal. You know, you're not going to eat 50 grams or a hundred grams all at once because it would be too much to digest. You wouldn't be even able to benefit from it. What you want to do is you want to space it evenly through the day. So that's how I started with, since I. It's really important to have, you know, small meals that you can digest and absorb at nice intervals, three to four hour intervals through the day. And you combine the protein with some healthy carbs based on your blood sugar levels and insulin function and some healthy fats. Oftentimes the healthy proteins come with some healthy fat right with it. So it's like easy. And then you might want to add a little bit more healthy fat to the meal. So that's how I think about creating a meal and how to balance our macros and how to make sure you're getting enough protein. Really essentially what I learned and what I taught myself from way back, even before I started naturopathic medical school, just as a nutritionist, I realized I, every time I eat I need to be thinking, where's the protein? And I trained my daughter this way too when she was younger. Every time she would eat she would know, oh, I would say, where's the protein? Or what do you want to have for protein? And so she really starts to learn this from a young age. And I encourage you to do that with your children too. Because when we do that, we're, we're much more likely to make sure that each time we eat we'll get protein. And what happens is when we have adequate protein with a meal, it really helps balance our blood sugar levels. If we just have a meal with carbs, then our Blood sugar's going up and down and we, and it spikes way faster. But if you put protein with your meal, first of all, you're less likely to eat as much carbs. And when, when you are digesting the carbs, it slows the rise so the blood sugar doesn't go up as fast. And it just helps smooth out all of your metabolism by having the protein there. Also, protein helps to prevent reflux. So if you're experiencing any amount of reflux or gerd, when you have protein in your meal, it signals to the esophageal sphincter to close and so you're much less likely to have reflux happening. So those are a couple more reasons why it's so important to have protein with your meals. You plus you're gonna feel more satiated and, and satisfied by your meal. If your meal is just carbs, then it's like just temporary blood sugar high, right? But if you have protein in there, then you actually and healthy fats. Now your brain is getting the signals that you ate and you're resetting your hunger and fullness signals, which is way better for your leptin levels and longevity overall. So there's so many important reasons to just learn this trick, which is every time you eat, ask yourself, where's the protein? If there's no protein or not enough protein, add some. Even if it's, you go to the fridge and grab a little bite of sliced, you know, leftover grilled chicken or a couple bites of leftover wild salmon. You know, that's why I always, when I cook, I leave, I make sure I have some leftover my fridge so that I always have some leftover grilled chicken or salmon or, or have some sliced free range turkey, you know, or, or you know, even if it's nut butter or a nut bar, I like to have lots of options for protein. In fact, if you, anytime you catch me, if I'm got a bag or in my car, you're gonna find you can, you could say, Dr. Donnie, what protein do you have with me? Because I will always have protein with me because I used to have such terrible blood sugar fluctuations. And I learned that when my blood sugar is low, it works way better to have a small amount of protein to get my blood sugar stabilized than sugar. We often think, oh, my blood sugar's low, I need some sugar. And that actually just perpetuates the whole blood sugar roller coaster. So try this instead if you tend to find, oh my gosh, I'm getting hangry. My blood Sugar's dipping. Instead of going straight for something carbon sugary, go for protein first. Protein first. And you will find you feel so much better. So there you go. Thanks for joining me. I hope that helps. I'd love to hear from you. And for those of you who might be interested in learning more about how to eat in the way that I'm describing and really supporting you to decrease the inflammatory foods and and detox your body and get everything back in sync again, then I definitely encourage you to check out my detox program. It's a 14 day detox program that includes two protein shakes per day with 18 grams of protein and two meals per day with a meal plan that I created based on making sure you get at least 20 grams of protein each meal. And in the 14 day detox, I teach you how to eat, how to eat mindfully, how to detox gently but effectively without feeling worse. This can all be done without pushing too hard and stressing yourself out. And that's the key really. Ultimately our goal needs to be how to help our bodies to get it back into balance and how to get back in sync. And if we push things too far, which is so tempting, then we end up overdoing it and setting ourselves back. So my goal in the 14D detox program is to really help you learn to listen to your body signals, learn to create a routine of eating and self care to that you can then maintain going forward. So really it's, it's a program to help you transition your health and your and your life and to help you become resilient to stress and whatever's coming your way. So if you want to check it out, I'll put a link down below. Thanks for joining me. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode of How Humans Heal. Take care.

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