Where Protein Recommendations for Women Come From?

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What are you waiting for? Good night. If you are still confused about the protein conversation, how much, how often, is there any risk, this is for you.

I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone balancing, fitness, and longevity, and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve.

Okay, here we go. Brace yourself, or rather I will brace myself because I know in this one this is a hot topic. And hot, by hot I mean it's like pushing a hot button. There's a lot of emotion that comes around any discussion about protein. So I will say this to you in advance: if this triggers you, why not leave it? Just leave it. Just don't let it trigger you. Go listen to another podcast, do something else, and don't let this bother you. And the biggest key here is twofold. Number 1, this has to be said, this is a disclaimer. Nothing presented here should preclude information from your own personal health practitioner, registered dietitian, health coach, somebody who is actually looking at your current health conditions. That said, the hope is that this gives you reason to question, reason to challenge the information presented to you or your own previous beliefs about nutrition. About energy, energy expenditure, as well as energy intake and the food impact on your health and your performance. The only way to really know whether what you're doing is working for you is to take into account your objective measures combined with subjective. But in this case, I would say objective, meaning those things you and I can't argue about. What is your body weight? What is your percent body fat? And if you will stay to the end, I will give you a plan of action so that you're looking at the right things to know. Not necessarily are you going to, or should you be persuaded by what I present here, which is simply science that is giving you yet one more place where here's an organized position statement for us to look at and what it actually says, and that it is fairly recent. That's also very important to me that you're getting things not from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, but you're getting things that are fairly recent that are also inclusive of things that have been looked at in women, not men. So important. But before you get to the end, keep an open mind, if you will, listening to this. Realize I'm not making it up. I'm not providing a persuasive argument by any means. I will provide you with some ways to use some tools that I have found valuable for me to stay at optimal body composition and/or get back to it through my own roller coaster hitting menopause. That year was the absolute hardest for me. But during times of stress and the bad habits that I can get into that sometimes accompany that stress, I cause my own problem and have to mitigate. Just like you, I'm in the boat rowing. So I want you to realize I will provide a way for you to get some easy benefit with a special coupon just for being a listener. So And with that, one more disclaimer for those of you who, as soon as you hear about high protein diets or what you perceive to be high protein because it's higher than we've ever thought of before, there is no scientific evidence available that suggests a high protein diet alone will cause renal issues. And that is another way to say kidney issues. For those of you that weren't quite sure. Those who have existing renal issues— now sometimes this is unknown, you have it but you don't know it, so that's an important distinction. So for those with existing renal issues, there is a risk as you are already compromised, your system is already compromised. So starting to bump up your protein intake without consent and the knowledge of your practitioner is a bad idea. So in some cases, I have worked with women who are diabetic, pre-diabetic, very insulin resistant, in other words, and their practitioner was okay with increasing their protein intake up to a certain level with the idea that we're going to continue to monitor, we'll do a little more frequent blood testing, and let's see how you respond. Because it's a catch-22. Increasing protein to increase muscle strength and to increase muscle, muscle mass, and therefore positively also impact fat loss can have a huge metabolic health impact on them. And yet, are we causing problems for the kidneys? We have to consider both. And, and knowing that you're going to push on the accelerator with protein and going into that consciously with your practitioner so that you can test more frequently will keep you out of trouble potentially. So it's a conversation that you may want to have with them, or look for someone who's willing to have that conversation with you. This that I'm about to share with you is a position statement from the International Society of Sports Nutrition, referred to as ISSN. So if you are someone who is dietitian, specifically if you're working with athletes and you're working with a sports team, you are well attuned to this. If you are an athletic dietitian or nutritionist yourself, you're, you're focused on this all the time. This though, you may think, what does this have to do with me? If you're a woman who's, say, 58 and you're simply exercising for mitigating menopausal symptoms, which might include weight gain and challenges taking that back off, you may wonder, what does this have to do with I would tend to say that anyone who is exercising intentionally, and many of you are, for, you know, 4 or 5 days a week, you're doing strength training regularly with some intensity and purpose, you're doing high-intensity interval training with intensity and purpose, that is the equivalent in just the 2 of those to 4 to 5 days of conscious effort with an idea of a training protocol, not at random, but you're wanting specific results from it. Now, some of you are making the mistake of exercising with random plans, just saying, well, I'm going to work out today, I'm going to do strength today, but not actually having a progressive plan from what I did last week or what I did 2 days ago to what I'm doing today. That's less progressive than if you actually are planning and all of it is related. The workout I have today sets me up for the recovery that I'll have for the next couple of days and being ready for that next workout. That's progression. That's thoughtfully progressed and planned. And that is really wise for any of us, not just for an athlete preparing for an in-season higher performance than last time. So you too, think of yourself like an athlete. Think of yourself as playing the sport of life. And shall we win? Let's just do this, right? So this provides an objective critical review related to the intake of protein for healthy exercising individuals, but we're also going to skew it toward you. So females, and how do we take this for females over 40? And I want you to hear this like louder if you're over 50 and louder if you're over 60 and so forth if you're over 70. And I know I have someone in our audience and community who is closer to 80 than to 70, and I love it. And I think we're all going to— we're not going to We're not going to put our cell phones down. We're not going to stop exercising. So we're going to have more of that as the decades go by. And do I want you to change what you're doing based on, oh, all of a sudden you're 78, so no, it doesn't apply to you? No. And I saw someone post the other day that, hey, something I learned when I was exercising over 50 is that there is not a special workout for women. You know, I would argue with that because over the decades that I have worked with midlife women, we we have seen that the type and the timing of exercise that you do is very specific to women in menopause. Now, what this woman likely stumbled across and started was strength training that, that also a young woman could do, or that a man could do. And yes, we have the same shoulders, the same hips, the same knees. However, we also have different skeletal issues related to having a lower overall mass. We have less collagen production leading to more or less resilient— more likelihood of injury, less resilience in our tendons, our ligaments, our joints. Things do change, and we do need to look at the type and the timing of the exercise that we do, not just for, say, if you're a woman in reproductive cycling, for the, the week of the month that you're in But looking at the phase that you're in, if you're in perimenopause, you're in right in menopause transition, and that means potentially you're— you've had a solid 5 or 6 months since your last period. You know where you're going. You're at a critical mass point right then. It's sit up and pay attention time. And if you're postmenopause, you can't do anything about what you did in the past, but we know we can mitigate and pay attention and the exercise changes yet again for the rest of our lives. So I want you to pay attention to this. We are looking at the most current available literature, the position of the society, the Society of Sports Nutrition, as it follows here. So an acute exercise stimulus— that means a workout you're doing right now— resistance exercise specifically, and protein ingestion both stimulate muscle protein synthesis. I'm going to say this Again, in a different way, the only possible way to increase your muscle protein synthesis is to increase your protein intake in just a high enough amount of protein and to do an adequate stimulus of resistance training. So I'm going to tell you that your muscle protein synthesis is probably not going up after your reformer session. Is reformer work good? I have one in my bedroom. I'm a trained professional and I can use it. But no, it's beneficial in other ways, but you need some strength training. You need to work to muscular fatigue in order to get the optimal result. The two of those— ingesting protein, adequate protein, and stimulating muscle mass through resistance training— are synergistic when we put them together. Gold. Good things happen. You get the best of the bump. So independently, they're good and together they're even better. So building muscle mass for maintaining muscle mass throughout life, a positive muscle protein balance is required. And we are— imagine there's a fence dividing two pastures, right? I'm from the Midwest. Can you tell? I just gave that away, didn't I? So on one side of the fence, you are in muscle protein breakdown. On the other side of the fence, you're in muscle protein synthesis. You're able to build. The fence is there, but it's so thin you can't actually stand on it even. You're either on one side or the other is what you need to remember. So an overall daily protein balance— remember, this is not me making it up as I go along. This is from the research based on activity and active, consciously active exercising or sport performance. Athletes, and this is males and females right now, so stay tuned for more on the females, a range of 1.4 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. And I will put that into easier to absorb terms in a moment because unless you're from the UK and immediately in your head you can do that, I cannot. Let me tell you what it is. If you want to find your pounds divided by 2.2 equals your kilograms. So you, if you want to do that math right now, you've got your phone handy, go ahead and do it. That is sufficient for most exercise individuals, but it also falls in line with acceptable macronutrient distribution ranges published by the Institute of Medicine for protein. Now notice this doesn't say RDAs, right? Because we all agree Medical professionals agree, clinical registered dietitians agree that those RDAs are too low for anyone to thrive in today's world. There's almost no contest about that. And yet it's confusing to you because it's still out there. And there are a lot of very conservative potentially medical professionals. And I want you to realize this, and I'll say it again, that medical professionals have less than 2 hours of nutrition in all the time they've spent at medical school, which is about 8, 8 years, right, combined with school and residency. 2 hours, less than 2 hours. What do you think they learned in that? They learned some very basics, and they probably just look them up and refer back to those basics. So unless this is somebody who came from a nutrition background from a nutritionist or registered dietitian background. They didn't have that. And I will throw this in here because it's also just relevant at the moment. If you're getting exercise advice from your physician, you know, they also may have learned the type and the timing maybe from working with a professional like myself and the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialists, where we've actually vetted and filtered and broken it down to what's true for women in premenopause, perimenopause, menopause transition, and postmenopause. We provided that information and yet a physician really does not know what should, what should that look like for each individual. What should you be doing and why, and what shouldn't you, based on your form or your ability to do this well. So realize, if they've had 2 hours of nutrition, they've had even less of exercise. They didn't receive that because we weren't even talking about lifestyle medicine until very recently, very recently. So important for you to realize, unless your doctor has a background in sports science. Now, we had a lot of pre-med majors when I was teaching kinesiology. Pre-med, pre-PT, a lot of them went through because they wanted to work with athletes. Not all. Many doctors have the biology or something else as their background, but in general You need to know most docs don't have any expertise from the point of giving you advice other than seek a qualified exercise professional. Okay, so what does this look like when we talk about that 1.4 to 2.0 grams? So if we go to the upper level, I'm going to go to the upper level just to give you one number. 2.0 grams per kilogram per day for a woman who's 130 That's 118 grams. Okay, just to give you an idea. So, you know, many times we're hearing hit a minimum of 90 grams or hit a minimum of at least 100 grams a day. Part of the reason you're hearing that advice from experts is because it, it is a huge bump compared to where most women are. Many women fall between 40 and 60 grams of protein a day. And now imagine 118 for a 130-pound-year-old, you're getting half the protein you need. How well is that going to help you build or even maintain your lean muscle mass so you gain-tain strength, or you maintain— gain-tain, I just made up a new word— or you maintain your metabolism? It's not going to help considerably. Now, here's what I notice when I suggest to women during a first week of training, they increase their lean or their protein intake, and that's all they focus on. What happens is they come back and report, I can't believe how much energy I have. And I was so conscious, like starting to read labels is really new for many of us. Maybe not today in 2025 as we're doing this live, but a decade ago and even 5 years ago, this was still something most women weren't doing. They thought they knew where protein was coming from but weren't quite spot on. There is also, according to the position statement, novel evidence that suggests higher protein protein intakes. So above 3.0 grams per kilogram per day may have a positive effect on body composition in resistance-trained individuals. So those of you who are specifically doing strength training, and you're doing it because we want recomp, right? You're hearing this word all the time, recomposition, meaning we want to lose body fat and we want to gain lean muscle mass at the same time. Now, by default, it's just math. If you gain lean muscle mass, you will lose body fat. You will, because it's a percentage. We look at body fat percent. We want to look at skeletal muscle mass not in a percent, but in an absolute. Don't lose any of that real estate. None of it. Square foot is important to you, right? So you don't want to lose that. But what does that look like? So even if I just go to 3, it says greater than 3 grams per kilogram can have a positive effect on body composition, meaning promoting loss of fat mass. That would look like for a 130-pound person, 177 grams of protein. Some of your eyeballs are falling out. I know, I got it. So back to 2.0 was just 118. For some of you that's higher than you've been taking in. 177 for a 100-pound or 130-pound female would be 3.0, and they're suggesting even above that can be beneficial. So recommendations regarding the optimal protein intake per serving for athletes— please think of yourself momentarily as an athlete— to maximize the muscle protein synthesis, and that's on the side of the fence where we're increasing lean muscle mass and boosting it, hanging onto it. They're independent upon, or are dependent upon, age and recent resistance exercise stimuli. General recommendations are 0.25 grams of a high-quality protein per kilogram of body weight, or an absolute dose. This is per meal, okay? This is per meal. I want you to pay attention. It's dependent upon age, and what that mattered why it mattered and what that was. The older we are, the more we need, not the less, the more protein we need. Now, your total caloric intake may need to come down because your activity level has gone down, but ideally we stay high with the protein. That is really important whenever you are trying to lose weight and you're decreasing calories. Creating a hypocaloric diet that is less than you actually need to sustain, your protein intake needs to come up, not stay the same, come up within what makes up the calorie intake that you're having. An absolute dose of between 20 and 40 grams per meal. Guess what? Postmenopausal women, we're in the 40 range. Those of you who are premenopausal, you can look at a steak and your muscle protein synthesis gets better. You're probably— and I would suggest that we see probably 35 grams of protein and higher is more ideal for females, but you could get away with 20 as long as you are having it regularly throughout the day.

Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want, that I don't want, hiding in most protein powders. That's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never ever ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich. Sometimes the protein— and don't forget the fiber— they kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at Flipping50.com today.

Acute protein doses. So your meal at lunch, your breakfast, should strive to contain 700 to 3,000 milligrams of leucine. Of the 9 essential amino acids— that mean your body needs them ingested, you have to take them in in food every day, your body can't create them. So we have 20 essential— 20 amino acids. Our body can create some of them, we already have circulating levels of some high enough, but 9 of them we don't. And if we don't have all 9, our body doesn't have all the parts to this vehicle we need. There are 3 narrowed down, and some of you get this confused, that are branched-chain amino acids. Now, you might need that, but you only need that if you're achieving all the other protein content and essential amino acids through food and/or supplements. But branched-chain amino acids look at only a 3. Now, if you're not getting the other 6, it's not going to help you. So take first things first. Essential amino acids are where you should focus before and above all else. But absolute doses of 700 to 3,000 milligrams of leucine within the proteins that you take in. If you eat animal protein, especially if you eat red meat, so you're eating beef or maybe venison or elk— my preference is those venison elk, bison, wild meats. They're just a little healthier. They can be also a little bit leaner, and they've eaten out of nature. Remember, you're eating what they ate. They're not— even if grass-fed and grass-finished, that's better than not, right? But keep in mind what they ate. That's important. But you're getting adequate leucine in those. If you're not eating that or not eating those regularly, if you get away from that, you're doing fish, meat only, you're getting less of a source of leucine. And if you're doing plant only, you will struggle to get adequate leucine during the course of your day. So ideally we're getting about 5 grams of leucine every day, but 2.5, if you can get 2.5 at a meal, you're doing really well. But anywhere that is an acute dose of between 700 and 3,000, and then looking throughout the day, sometimes we'll have a meal that is higher in it, others lower. We're going to be okay if that's true. But let's say the leucine in pea protein, it's 1.7 grams, so that's 1,700 milligrams, right? So it's falling right within there. And it's also— pea protein is actually well absorbed. It's kind of rivaled with whey protein in terms of absorption, but it's not dairy, so it doesn't affect the gut like whey protein does for many women who don't tolerate dairy well anymore. And if you're having that whey protein, by the way, at times when you're not around a workout, it actually is rapidly absorbed and can spike your blood sugar. So you wanna be cautious of that. If you're doing hydrolyzed beef, so the paleo protein in our store, so the Longevity Pro paleo protein option generally has, and you have to check with your brand, but it generally has 2 to 3 grams. So you're looking at 2,000 to 3,000 milligrams. Right there and falls within. But double-check labels, read them, and look at are there other things you can add to that shake or smoothie if you're taking it in, because we can often bump that up and realize that may just be post-workout. But if you're taking in 2 other meals with high leucine content, you're doing okay. So those protein doses should ideally be evenly distributed, 3 to 4 hours, you know, across the day. Now you might have a bigger break between your lunch and your dinner. If you need a snack and want that you could take one and have something that is higher in protein. Maybe it's a small packet of tuna or it's a beef stick. But I want to point out too that very recently there was a study done pointing out that protein distribution didn't seem to be as important, where the window of refueling after a workout didn't seem to be as important. But that study was done on men. Slightly more recently, there has been a study that looked at postmenopausal women. It was a very small study and it had them for a very short time. So I think long term this would be potentially a little bit more beneficial to see. Can we see long-term outcome, meaning percent body fat, skeletal muscle mass, quality of muscle? What happened then if we did it it over time. But they took two groups of women— small again, please, so realize that we want a bigger study if possible, not always possible the first time a study comes out— but they had one group eat traditionally the way Americans do, which very low in protein at the first two meals and really high consumption of protein, a bigger meal at night. They had another group evenly distributed over three meals throughout the day, and they looked at them. I think it was just a 4-week study. The muscle protein synthesis. It may in fact have been shorter. The muscle protein synthesis, there was no significant difference. So I throw that out there for food for thought. My initial thoughts are I'd really like to see if that were done for, for say a month or 3 months, or over a longitudinal study where we're looking at over the course of 5 years, where it's really pivotal that we might be losing muscle Is there a change in muscle mass when it's evenly distributed versus it's not? And, and my question also would be, is there a difference in energy levels, you know, in those women who are doing, you know, the heavily at meals at night versus evenly distributed? So those would be my questions, but I want to throw that out there and be fair to give you information on both sides. Again, it's not a persuasive argument, supplement, but I think all things that we should be questioning for ourselves. The optimal time period during which protein is likely a matter of individual tolerance, and this is potentially when we're talking about before workout. Not, not all women could take something in before. Many, many discussions with my clients about what to do prior to exercise. So number one, fuel old exercises better for women particularly. We want to make sure that we've broken that fast and you have at least some calories on board to send a muscle to— or send a message, I'm sorry, to the brain that this is not a stressful situation, because the exercise itself is going to be a stressor. If you fasted overnight, you're already in a stressful situation. Your body, when it's awake, wants some food on board. So we're women in midlife, over 40, we punch that ticket, that's already a stressor. So if we're combining stressor of being midlife and hormonal flux that, that brings for us and exercise imposition, meaning we're stressing from that, especially if we're doing high intensities. Now, if you're going for a walk, this may be less likely to be problematic. And then we're not eating, we're increasing our stressors all the way around. And that combined adds to muscle protein breakdown rather than muscle protein stimulus. So having some food along the way, but after, in replacing and replenishing, that's where we want to hit that ideally 40 grams, 35 to 40 grams of protein in a post-meal workout. If you've eaten something more significant prior to working out, you may have a little more wiggle room in the latitude of the timing of that post-meal meal. If you've had very little prior, the proximity of that post-exercise meal to after exercise should be fairly close, should be significantly soon, like right away. That's your job, to get that in. The longer you go without fuel after, the more you are in a breakdown state. Exercise is breakdown. You're breaking down the muscle. You repair it by food and by rest. So While it's possible for you to get everything that you need in food, I find that women in midlife and later, number one, it's hard. It's hard mentally because it's hard to think about that. And we have a greater satiety level from taking in protein than we do any other food stuff outside of fat, but that's not going to give you immediate energy. So It can be hard. So supplementation, and this is where it comes in, several ways that you can do that. You can take essential amino acid pills or powder stirred into a drink. It doesn't taste good. I will forewarn you of that. And you can also use protein powders to help. And I find that for myself, this was a game changer. I started using a protein shake every day when I was in my early 30s. So the year I had my you know, everything changed. I probably skipped breakfast more than I didn't prior to that time, even if I was going to exercise or I had something that was definitely not high in protein but high in carbohydrates instead, along with my caffeine. And, you know, I probably paid for it. So although, you know, you might say, well, you're— you seem to be doing okay, and I could say I am too, but I always look back and think think, how much better could it have been? How much better off could I be now had I done that then? You know, so pass this along to your daughters, granddaughters, if it may be. This is an important change they can make right now. So adequate protein quality and quantity and minimizing caloric intake, just not to get too high. However, That's in the literature, that's in the position statement. But I will tell you that 41 years into working with women, and the majority of my clients were women in midlife and older— I've worked with younger athletes and I've worked with some males, I've worked with many spouses of my clients. However, when I look at women, we're more guilty of undereating than overeating, and I mean chronically undereating. The caloric intake that we've taken in for months and years. If it's too low, we've, we've put a brake on our metabolism and we first have to bring that number back up before we're ever going to see any recomposition support and see energy and not be obsessed. Two things I think a lot of us would love. So rapidly digested proteins, high proportions of essential amino acids, like pea protein. The literature is of course referring to the use of whey protein, but again, many of you don't tolerate it, and/or if you take it in, you're gassy, you're bloated, and/or causes constipation and diarrhea. So we don't introduce it. For those of you who have any autoimmune disease whatsoever, or aches and pains associated with arthritis, dairy is an inflammatory food regardless of the benefits it has with proteins and with, you know, the ability to take in calcium in some choices as well. If it's problematic, we have to weigh the risk-reward ratio and look at, are there other ways we can get this in? And, and when it comes to calcium intake, that's— it's actually very easy to do. I've been doing that since I was 30. My bone density is actually really good. I'm reversing a little bit of osteopenia, yet still left in one location thanks to a Power Plate. But looking at what you can consume via whole foods in your highest quality proteins as your first step. Looking at, do protein powders help you get a meal in? Where myself, I was either cheating, like skipping or skimping on protein at a meal and dashing out the door, you know. First, before, when I was single and just busy as a student or grad student, then married, young child, high school games, juggling the two. And, you know, there was so much going on that often I wasn't getting enough. Protein powder really me, gave me an easy way to get something in. I, I often had— it wasn't even a Go Cup, but I would drink it on the, on the way, and it was at least a way to get it in. So I also have another product that I found very valuable for people who you may be listening who do want to fast or put their body in a fasted state without losing muscle. So it actually supports your body's need to to put in some salts that trigger ketosis so you're into fat burning, but also contains a high level of leucine so that you're not losing muscle mass. And I will put that in days when I'm not doing strength, days when I'm not doing high-intensity interval training, but simply going for a walk if I wanted to stretch a morning fast just a little bit longer. And it will help you to not feel hungry I don't do that a lot because I do think that as women we need to maintain that muscle protein synthesis. I think fasting has its place, but I'm not going till noon, you know, in a fasted state. I will stop eating earlier in the evening, maybe 4 or 5 PM. By the time then I eat at 8 or 9, I've still done a good long fast, and I don't go too much later than that. So realize that varying your protein sources can be beneficial. Just because you're eating animal protein doesn't mean you have to eat your big hunk of steak. If you're really against that, you can eat a smaller portion, but still it can help you reduce the overall calories and the concentration of essential amino acids in a fewer number of calories without carbohydrates, which is beneficial. And you can also balance that out with other plant sources of protein like quinoa, shaking hemp hearts onto your salad, lot of ways that you can get that in. So athletes should focus on whole food sources first. All of us should. But the animal proteins are going to contain the highest amount of essential amino acids. Plants have a few sources of complete protein, like hemp hearts, quinoa mentioned, soy products. You have to know if you tolerate those. I've shared in prior episodes that, you know, even in Okinawa, having worked with a general in the Army, you know, we thought if we're going to have soy products, that would be the best place in the world to have them, right? Clean, non-GMO. But they were causing, or a part of contributing to, hot flashes and night sweats. So looking at, you know, all foods that you may or may not tolerate, and soy notoriously was known for being a goitrogenic, obesogenic, and estrogenic, meaning your body confuses it as estrogen. It causes fat storage and can disrupt thyroid function. Things to look at and consider and unpack if you're somebody who deals with thyroid issues. If you struggle to lose weight and you have been eating considerable soy, there are women out there who eat soy, no problem. You may be one of them. Test for yourself. Endurance athletes should also focus on getting adequate carbohydrates. Great. Now, I would not recommend for any of my listeners at Flipping 50 that you're striving to become an endurance athlete, but every once in a while there are things that come up. There may be— this is your sole junk food and you love a long run, you love long rides, you, like I do, love long hikes and taking people to the Grand Canyon or on, you know, multiple-day-long hikes accumulating a lot of miles over a short period of time. That is what I would call an endurance athlete. Otherwise, keeping yourself out of that moderate zone of intensity and doing activities less than 45 minutes long is probably the most beneficial way to spend your time and your energy to get fit for longevity. But we all probably need to take a better look at our carbohydrate intake. So recent studies came out and looked fat, protein, but there's very little on carbohydrate. So I'm gonna include this just for you. If you look at carbohydrate intake, it's related to something called low energy availability. Many women are thinking of carbohydrates as the Antichrist, like the victim— they are the victim of high carb diets from the low-fat lifestyle that we grew been, but we haven't yet struck a balance. And many women are just not fueling their exercise with carbohydrates, but they keep demanding more. And the more fit you get, the more muscle you have, the more energy expenditure you're going to have if you will allow it. But if you don't, you're trying to push the accelerator and you're pushing the brake at the same time, spinning your wheels, burning your engine. And that's probably how you're feeling. Trashed, tired, could take a nap after exercise. If that's true, gradually bumping up both the protein, but now looking at carbohydrates, a little bit of carbohydrate, like 30 grams before anything that is an intense cardiovascular kind of exercise. So looking at high-intensity exercise, going out for your moderate, you know, I love this run, I'm gonna do it, or a longer walk, getting that in. And before something like strength training, probably there is not as great a need for taking in carbohydrate, but a little something can be beneficial to get that fire burning. So what I want you to think about is this, which is going to be somewhat of a shock for you: there is a difference between men's and women's needs. So we can't just look at recommendations for athletes taking in food or you all. Low energy availability, which is a thing, and relative energy deficiency in sport, which is known as RED-S, were really— if you can take yourself back to the '80s and '90s when we were talking about the female athlete triad, it often was females that were either very active, could be us, right, very active and/or in sport, particularly those sports sports that valued aesthetics. So gymnasts, long-distance runners, even cheerleaders, ice skaters, divers, swimmers. What I'm talking about is something where the uniform actually displayed a lot of the body and/or you were expected to go fast and propel your body through space. You know, so much relied on what your body looked like in more for women, but also for men. Men also in certain sports like this also struggled with body image or dysmorphia. But that energy deficiency came to participation in those types of sports, too low of fuel. And the third piece of it was the evidence for female athlete triad was loss of a period in a woman who prior had a regular period.

Period.

So any loss of that threw them into basically being an osteoporotic risk female, like, like they were in menopause. And, you know, so low bone density was happening for 18-, 19-, 20-somethings who were highly competitive and had lost their periods. So what we know is that women have that onset of endocrine dysfunction is at about 30 to 35. We'll just go with 30 calories per kilogram of fat-free mass. And that carbohydrate intake, that lays right there. For men, it's all— it's 15. They only need 15. They can do with fewer carbohydrates. We don't do as well that way. So let's say now we're talking fat-free mass, not total body weight. But if my percent body fat— so for a 130-pound female, let's use that example we've used earlier, let's say your fat-free mass based on a fat percent that might be 23, 24%, and that's, that's a great body composition, but we're just going to use 100 for fat-free mass. So it's everything but your fat. So we're talking in internal organs and your bone and your skeletal muscle mass, and skeletal muscle mass is making up the bulk of that. If we said 30 calories per then we're at, per kilogram, we're at about 340 grams of carbohydrates a day. I want to know if anybody just fell off their chair, because a lot of women are aiming for 50 or 100, maybe 150. And when they get to 150, they feel like this is a lot. It used to be that we were looking at, you know, like 600, like, you know, and because we were eating bagels. Do you remember that? We were eating bagels and we were eating baked potatoes because they were low fat. And, you know, of course, it depended on what you put on them. Like, cream cheese and butter weren't going to do. But there's really a difference here in what do we need. So calories per kilogram, we're looking at 340 carbs, and that's like significantly more than most women are taking in. But we're talking about active women. So if you're fasting or trying to get to keto and you're going really low fat for a long period of time and you're trying to be active and strong, you may be helping things backfire for you and not work. You're trying to cheat the system by playing, I'm going to do a little bit of that, working really hard, and I want to do it this way, and it's potentially not going to work. By, by doing this long term, we're gonna get in trouble. And there is the argument, you'll hear it every day, that we don't need carbohydrate, you know. But women with too little fuel are at risk not for sport performance decline, but endocrine dysfunction. We're no longer— if you're postmenopause, we're no longer having this problem of, oh, we're not having a regular period, so You know, our reproductive system is at risk. We don't have that knowledge anymore, and we're probably not interested in reproduction anymore. But what is at risk is our overall health, our lean muscle mass, our bone density. So my suggestion, plan of action to you is this: take this in. Know that the recommendations are not going down for protein. They're going up as we age. And First of all, know what you're consuming right now.

Track.

So whether you use an app or you just do it in rough pencil and pen on paper and you track based on labels and looking things up, drive yourself crazy and do it for a day. It's well worth the investment of your time and your energy. Your total calories, the total protein, total carbohydrate, total fat. Do it on average without without changing it. Just do what you typically do and allow yourself to assess the information, you know, and be curious about it, not judgmental about it. You can use an app like Macros First is the one I use. You can use something like Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, whatever it is that you want to. You're not trying to plug in, "Here's what I want," or shooting for. You just— you put something in there that's off the wall. All you're looking to track what's true. That's it right now. So you can't give yourself a target unless you know what I'm doing right now. Then pay attention to what you have before and after your high-intensity workouts, both strength and your intervals. Are you eating prior to them? What are you eating? Are you eating after them? And what are you eating? And if you're unsure, is that protein or carbs, you can plug that in and find out. Step 3 is assess what's going on for you. How well right now do you love your results? And if you don't love them, let's change that. So something about the habits that you've had have gotten you here. If you want to change your results, we're going to have to change the habits. Most likely that will come back to what it is you're eating, when you're eating it, it, how you're exercising, and potentially when you're, you're exercising as well. So number 4, if based on a woman at your age with your activity level, what is your caloric need? You determine based on what was typical for you. Are you under eating? Are you eating right to maintain? And if you were under eating, Has that been going on for a while? Because the fifth step will be based on your answers from that question. You can go to calories— caloriecalculator.net to plug in female, here's my age, here's my height, here's my weight, here's my activity level. Read their descriptions. Don't go by where you would categorize yourself because their descriptions are a little bit off. But then look at— here's to maintain weight, here's what you would have been. If you are significantly under that and yet you have not been losing weight, the challenge is you've slowed that metabolism and we need to pick it back up before you can make any changes in fat loss and lean muscle gains. So number 5 is determine your first steps based on that interpretation. For some, it's going to be eating more and focus on gaining lean muscle mass before that metabolism will kick in and allow for fat loss. And I know if I say gain lean muscle mass and you're not going to lose weight, I've just told you you're going to gain weight. Some of you just said, "Oh, I'm out," and stopped listening. Others of you are like, "Well, that's not what I want." I get it. But I promise you, if you gain lean muscle mass at 50, 55, 60, 65, you're not going to gain bulk. You simply We can't. If we wanted to bulk you up, we would struggle to do it. But in the process, we would likely increase your lean muscle mass and decrease your body fat percent. So you can do this yourself. I've laid out the steps. They'll be in the show notes. Just in summary, the recommendations for protein actually are this: it's 1 to 1.1 grams of protein per pound of lean body weight. It's the easiest way to remember it. If you remember 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, boom, you have a target. However, don't try to aim for that tomorrow. Find out first what's been your average and gradually bump that up. Evenly distribute meals of at least 30 grams of protein, but 40 is a better number if you're a woman postmenopausal. Puzzle. Track your results. So if you haven't been benchmarking what's my weight, what's my skeletal muscle mass, what's my body composition—that's your percent body fat—start doing that now before you make changes so that you can see what changes impact you optimally. If you have questions—and I would be willing to guess that you might—please share them with us. We can be found found on the Facebook group Flipping 50 Insiders. That's Flipping 5-0 Insiders. And for those of you who would like a little support for being a podcast listener, we have a 15% discount on, on a protein product, and we'll put that into the show notes so you can use the fat burn boost, we call it, and help yourself be in a little more fat burning state or a keto state for a little bit longer while ingesting adequate leucine. So won't be losing muscle mass. You can take advantage of our Multi Collagen, which is a great way to add to any smoothie, or add this to your coffee so you're boosting your protein intake by a little bit. And for those of you who can't ingest a heavy something to eat before exercise, even that is a boost to calorie intake that breaks that fast and can benefit you. I look forward to hearing from you no matter what your question is if you're seeking fitness, strength, lean muscle mass, fat loss, and you're a woman over 40, the conversation on protein intake is still an important one and a part of the equation that we all need to look at. I hope this has been helpful.

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