How I Get My Protein Without Boring Chicken!

You know you should be eating more protein, but between the math, the meal prep, and that chicken breast staring at you again, it can start to feel like a full-time job. But here's the thing, getting enough protein doesn't have to be boring, complicated, or bland. Hey, it's JJ Virgin here, nutrition expert, fitness hall of famer, and age-defying muscle maven, here to show you how I actually hit my daily protein goals without doing the dry grilled chicken or the flavorless protein powders. You know, protein is the single most important macronutrient for women over 40 looking to stay lean, protect their metabolism, and age powerfully. But the reality is most of us aren't getting anywhere near enough. You've probably heard the statistics, and I'm going to walk through why you need this— the 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. Reality is most women are getting somewhere in the 40 to 60 grams a day range. Wow. So today I'm going to pull back the curtain on my protein strategy, how much I eat in a day, my go-to sources, things that I actually love and look forward to, and the daily habits that make it super easy to do this and also totally delicious. So let's dive in first as to why protein matters, especially if you're listening to this at 40 or over. Protein is our function macronutrient. It helps prevent muscle loss, it supports your metabolism, it balances blood sugar, and it helps keep you fuller longer, which means better satiety, less cravings, better energy, and easier fat loss. And here's what's important. Protein of the 3 macronutrients has the highest thermic effect. So you use about 25% of the protein in the digestion and assimilation of protein. Contrast that with about 5 to 10% of carbs or pretty much almost nothing of fat. So it's way more thermic and it's way more satiating, but it's also helps with those cravings because You get essential amino acids from protein, and those essential amino acids can help with things like serotonin and dopamine. So it really helps to shut down those cravings. So why, especially in midlife, is this so important? Well, it turns out there's a couple things that go on starting at around age 30 that start to shift things. And you've already heard it, starting at around age 30, we start to lose up to 1% of our muscle mass a year. It's about 3 to 8%. A decade unless we're doing things to preserve it. And if you are trying to lose weight, I hope that you understand that you are not trying to lose weight. You're trying to hold onto or build muscle while losing fat. If you are practicing any caloric restriction, you are really gonna wanna focus on that muscle to help preserve that lean mass. Another thing that happens as we start to age, if you're insulin resistant, if you've got more fat in your muscle, but it especially happens as we age. And it's this phenomenon called anabolic resistance. What it basically means is we can't take the aminos from protein, which is what we're eating the protein for, those essential amino acids. We can't take the, the amino acids from protein and use them to make muscle as well as we used to do when we were younger. The other thing that happens as we age is a hormone called myostatin starts to increase. And then the contrasting hormone follistatin starts to go down. This is a double whammy, cuz when, as myostatin increases, it actually makes it harder for you put on muscle. You're breaking down more muscle and you need the follistatin to make the muscle. Quite often we're just not working out or moving as much as we used to. So that's just hits a double whammy. So you need the protein, but you're not going to build muscle eating protein sitting on the couch either. But one of the things we kind of know as we age is life starts to get in the way. Like you think about your life in your teens and 20s when you thought You thought you, you had so much going on and then all of a sudden you're in your 30s and 40s and you've got kids and parents and jobs and houses and all sorts of stuff going on. And time is at a super premium. One final thing that happens, and that is our digestion can start to go down. Starting at around age 30, we also start to lower our stomach enzymes. And if you're under any kind of stress, that just compounds the problem. So this is where I think Protein Digestive Enzymes can play a huge role, go a long way in helping out. So that's the So that's the first thing that's setting up what the problem really is. Now let's talk about— well, let's talk about what I do in a day. So I'm gonna talk about how much protein I eat in a day. And what I'll tell you is I go for somewhere between 0.7 and 1 gram per pound of my ideal body weight. This is basically the same for men or women. But here's the reality. In a perfect world, we'd be basing that protein on our lean body mass, how much fat-free mass we have. But I don't want to complicate the issue here. And if you go a little over in your protein, it's not an issue. In fact, we know that if all you did was take some of the calories away from carbs and fat and put them over to protein, you'll initially lose some fat because of that thermic effect. So it's kind of hard to sit down and go, "Gosh, I really pigged out on that chicken tonight," but you'll hear people do that on the pasta or the bread or the dessert all the time. So I would rather see you err on the higher side, the 0.71 gram per pound of target body weight, especially if you are focusing on losing body fat. Notice how I said that, 'cause I wanna focus always on body composition, not weight. It is not what you weigh, it's what that weight's made up of. How do you know your target body weight? Think about what weight would be like if you just went, this would be a dream come true weight for me. This is where I would totally feel my best. And that's really where you wanna look at, like, you know, if you were going to, let's say, go step— I know this is like sparking fear in people's minds and I would never wanna do this, but let's say you were gonna go do some kind of a physique contest on stage in a swimsuit. Uh, what weight would you think you'd need to be there? That's the weight. It's the weight where you're at an ideal body fat, a great body composition. That's the weight to aim for. There's been a lot of talk about when the best time to eat this protein is. So if we're saying 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight, okay, so when should you eat that? What's interesting is there's still this myth that pervades out on the internet that you can only digest whatever it is, X amount. I actually had someone DM me and say, I heard you could only digest 27 grams of protein at a meal. I'm like, really, 27? Turns out, you know, you can digest it all. It's just, where is it gonna go? Is it gonna be stored in your muscles? Is it gonna be used to make hair, skin, and nails? You know, is it gonna be turned over and turned into glucose to be used as fuel? What's the fate of it? What a recent study showed that kind of blew up the whole protein research world, and it was by a really top-notch researcher Dr. Luc van Loon, he showed that you could take 100 grams of protein and it would be utilized. What we know is you can eat a lot at once. However, the research still points to you're better off spreading it throughout the day with an optimal amount, especially what I would call your bumper meals, the first meal of the day when you break your fast and that last meal of the day before, you know, a couple hours before bed. Reason being is when you break your fast, you want to have enough protein to trigger muscle protein synthesis. This is a shout out to Dr. Donald Layman, who really pioneered this work showing that you need enough protein to get enough leucine to trigger muscle protein synthesis. And probably this goes up as we age because of that anabolic resistance. So where they say 30 grams, likely for us it's probably more like 40 grams. And so I go for 40 grams of protein at my breakfast, and I like breakfast. I tried the intermittent fasting thing, eating later. That did not work for me. You got to find what works for you. The most important thing is to get in enough protein overall throughout the day. But I do 40 40 grams at least in breakfast and dinner. That's where I always go. And generally, I do a little bit more than that, especially at dinner. But again, I call those the bumper meals, and I want you to think about really prioritizing those. I do have a little bit of a hack if that isn't something that you're able to do. If you— and this happens to me sometimes when I'm traveling, and I'll tell you, either I'm going to go work out first thing in the morning and I can't eat And some people do great with a fasted workout. I don't tend to feel great. So what I do is I'll put some collagen in my coffee because I really like that collagen before I go work out to really support my connective tissue. And then I will do my chiatine powder with my essential amino acids, my Amino Acid Power powder, and my Electro Replenish powder. I'll take that all to the gym. So that's how I solve it when I'm traveling. Or let's say I go have breakfast when I'm traveling and there really isn't anything but say some scrambled eggs. And you might think, oh, that's high protein, it's eggs. But the reality is an egg has, depending on the size of an egg, 6 to 8 grams of protein. And so when you're eating scrambled eggs, you're not going to get a lot of protein before you overload probably the amount of calories that you want to consume at that meal. And so what I will do with that is I'll have my serving of scrambled eggs and then I'll also have some essential aminos just to make sure I've got what I need on board. So that's a little way that I can kind of cheat it through. Let me talk about some of my favorite protein sources. I will tell you, I have been a vegan, I've been a vegetarian, I've been paleo, so I've done all right. Um, you know, I started studying nutrition literally when I was 12, and I've always been my first guinea pig, and of one. So I've gotten my protein from my veggies and vegan, and I know where I feel best, but I feel best very omnivore, where I'm getting primarily a lot of my protein from animal sources but bumping it up with the plants. So I'm not discounting the plants either, and I'll share where I like to get some that as well. With the animal, let's talk fish first. I love fish because you're also getting the fish oil, and my goal is to get 3 servings of fish in a week. I still take a little extra fish oil. We know it's anabolic, and I measure my omega-3 fatty acid index, but I really love to get in some wild salmon, some sea bass, some halibut. Shout out to Vital Choice. We'll put them in the show notes. That's where I get most of my fish from there. And I'll also do a little bit like sometimes we'll make a cioppino and do some shrimp and langostino and things like that. The other thing I Love our grass-fed, grass-finished meats. Love. Like, I love New York steaks. I love bone-in New York steaks. And we also get these great grass-fed, grass-finished beef tenderloin tips that we'll make stir-fries with. So lots of grass-fed, grass-finished red meat and lamb. And I always try to get the leanest sources possible of any of that stuff. We will also do pastured pork, pastured chicken, and I really like pastured chicken thighs. Shout out to pastured chicken thighs in the air fryer. With Pluck seasoning. It is like the greatest thing ever, honestly. So delicious. So those are some of my favorites. What we do is we make those for dinner and then we make extra so we have it for lunch the next day. So it's super easy to do this. The other things that I will do are pastured egg and egg white combos. So I'll do 2 eggs and then another 6 egg whites, and I just buy the boxes of the cage-free egg whites and I'll do 6. It's basically, I think, 6 tablespoons of that. And I will also do Greek-style yogurt. I do the nonfat plain, and I do low-fat cottage cheese, organic. So I will do those two. I found a really good clean Greek yogurt called Knorr, I think it is. So find some great ones. If you can find the, you know, the clean dairy, awesome. But I try to eat a little bit of fermented food now that I can eat dairy again. For a while there, I was intolerant to it, healed my gut. Then I will also use my protein powders, and I have a pea-based one and a a paleo-based one, a bone broth-based one, and I've actually made them so that their amino acids mimic that of whey protein. So if you're having issues with whey protein, you can't do it, I put these protein powders together to do that. If you can't do dairy, then I got you covered. So I like to use protein powders for all sorts of different things, desserts, etc., and I might stir them into a yogurt or just do a smoothie on its own. So those are all of my options now. The pea-based protein powder obviously is a great plant-based option. I like to do a mix of animal-based protein plus plant-based protein. My very favorite plant-based protein of all are lentils. I love them. I think they're amazing. Plus you're getting all that great fiber, so they're feeding your microbiome. So lentils and legumes, fantastic. Um, if you are doing solely this, make sure that you are also complementing that with some wild rice or some quinoa so you get the right balance of amino acids. The challenge with plant-based is the amino acid balances are not the same as animal-based. Animal-based amino acid balances were made to rebuild animals. Plants were made to rebuild plants. We are not plants, but we can put them together to get there. And so you can put your lentils or legumes with some wild rice and some quinoa, and you can throw some hemp seeds or flax seeds or chia and be set. As far as soy goes, I'm really reevaluating soy. You know, in the Virgin Diet, I pulled out the top most likely food intolerance foods, and really it was gluten creates the problem. So does fructose quite often a lot of these artificial sweeteners. But then dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts. Here's the issue. Soy in our world here in the US, soy, gluten, and corn, very genetically modified, glyphosate use. So if you can find organic soy fermented and you don't have a thyroid issue, I think soy can be something you can rotate into your diet. Fermented, organic, right? Plant-based options. Again, I love to do an omnivore diet where I use plants to amplify my protein. And to get that fiber in as well. And so think about it, like this was actually my lunch today was a cauliflower pilaf I made with mushrooms, lentils, cauliflower, and then I had some of that chicken thigh with the Pluck seasoning. So you can make some amazing things and kind of pull it all together as a great omnivore plan. Of course, convenience-wise, I love me some protein powders. And I also use collagen. I mentioned I use it before I go to the gym, but don't think of collagen, even though it's protein and it's the most abundant protein in the body, it's not a complete protein. And so don't think of that as your protein source, 'cause it's— think of that as your source for collagen in your body. And so I love to use it, especially before going to the gym. I do about 10 grams. I think it's a really good, something really good for our joints, for our connective tissue, for our hair, skin, and nails. But I don't think of it as like, oh, I'm getting my protein in here. Another thing I do for convenience, I love the clean beef sticks. And I, my favorite ones are the Primal Valley Beef Sticks. We'll put a link to those. And protein bars. So I've always carried protein bars. Now we're in the process of reformulating them. This is one of the most challenging things to do well, I will tell you, with the sweeteners and what's in them, and then selling them fast enough so they don't get moldy. There's a whole, whole thing. It's a whole thing. So stay tuned if we bring some back again. Right now I'm kind of searching, back on the hunt to find a good clean protein a bar that uses allulose or monk fruit as a sweetener, not artificial sweeteners, and that isn't creating a whole big problemo. Haven't really seen one. And again, the easy hack if you're stuck at all, and what I've been also adding in just a little bit before bed, are some essential amino acids. So I created an Amino Acid Power powder. I will use that if I'm doing a fasted workout. I'll use that traveling if my breakfast is wimpy. I'll use that at night if I've like skipped dinner or I had dinner way early just so that I can not get myself catabolic. So let's talk about easy ways to boost protein without feeling like you're just kind of gnawing on chicken all day long. Some things that actually will work here. First of all, you've heard me say it, eat protein first. I say that for a reason. I like to tell people to eat protein first because then I know that you ate it. Because quite often people will like sit down, snarf down their bread, their salad, you know, the pasta, and then they go, "I'm full." I'm like, "Eat your protein first, then that won't happen." Double up your breakfast protein. So this I do quite a lot is like add in some bone broth protein into your Greek-style yogurt, 'cause you're gonna get the collagen, you'll get those amino acids, you'll get the yogurt, you'll get the fermented. Amazing. Add in that egg, those egg whites to your scramble. That's another good one. By the way, if you're an oatmeal person, you can add in protein powder to oatmeal. You can also do a savory oatmeal and add in like ground meat, ground chicken, right? Amazing. And make sure that you're batch cooking. Make this easy for yourself. If you're gonna take the time to make chicken thighs, make a bunch of chicken thighs. If you're making steak, make extra steak. Do it super easy. Quite often we'll make grass-fed ground beef patties. We'll make a bunch for a couple days in a row, or we'll even make them and freeze some so we have them for later. If you are snacking, and I'm kind of changing my mind on snacking, I used to be like the adamant do not snack. But sometimes, you know, we ate breakfast at like 8 and lunch at 12, and we're not having dinner till 6, and you're like, I'm kind of dying here at 4. So if you're gonna have a little snack, make it a protein-rich snack. Even a little mini protein shake could be a great one here, right? You know, because usually these snacks, the reason I don't like them is they're just carb bombs. No one should be doing a carb bomb. And then make sure you're using the tools. I can't tell you how many people are like, oh no, I'm getting enough protein. I go, what'd you have for breakfast? They go, oatmeal and an egg. I'm like, you got like 8 grams grams, 10 grams of protein if you're lucky. Use your Cronometer app and use a food scale. Weigh and measure. You don't have to do it forever, but do it to make— to get you started so you really can make sure you're doing what you need to do, right? Super important. I'm going to walk you through like a typical day for me. So typical day for me, I might do— and I like to do either— if I'm doing one of my smoothies, I like to mix my two protein powders together, my Plant and my Bone Broth protein, because I like the texture that they do. Sometimes I'll bump even— if I'm doing Bone Broth, I'm getting some of collagen from that. But if I'm doing all plant, I'll add in the collagen to it, and then I'll add in a little bit of nut butter or chia seeds or flax seeds. And I do an extra scoop so I get everything that I need there. And then of course, when I go to the gym, my essential amino acids are in my water bottle. That's probably overkill, let's be honest, but I'd rather have a little overkill than underkill. Lunch— one of my favorite lunches is to do— I love arugula with a little olive oil and red wine vinegar or lemon. Salmon, wild salmon, and some lentils. And again, there you go with the plant protein and the animal protein and adding some digestive enzymes. I don't take digestive enzymes with shakes. You don't need it. But if you're doing animal protein, I think it's super duper helpful. If I'm going to do a snack, a snack in a typical day for me would be like either one. I still have some of my leftover protein bars or a little Greek yogurt with some chia berries. I do a lot of berries. So that would be where that fit in. Typical dinner for me, grass-fed, grass-finished New York steak. And then I'll do some like roasted Brussels and I'll do some sautéed mushrooms and onions. I tend to do a lot of vegetables at night, not a lot of carbs. I do those more around during the day at lunch, especially after the gym when I hit some berries. And again, some protein digestive enzymes for the win. All right, let's do a couple takeaways to make sure you really got this message dialed in. Protein. It is the most important macronutrient for aging strong. And you know, if you're doing protein from plants and animals, you're gonna also get some healthy fats, and you're gonna get some fiber and some phytonutrients. You'll get it all. So make sure you're eating protein first and focus on the top quality sources. Remember, you are what you eat and you are what you eat ate. This really doesn't have to be hard. You just have to pay attention to it. You have to focus on it, right? To make it easy, I have my Eat Protein First 7-Day Challenge, and the link will be in the description so you can grab that. And what I'd love to hear from you is like, what's your go-to protein meal? What's your fave? Because maybe I can like learn something over from you too. Make sure you subscribe. Always love any comments. And especially if you got a friend who's like still hitting the avocado toast for breakfast or the muffin, do them a favor and share this with them. All right. Thanks so much.