By: Chris Gates

Protein is the most important macronutrient in your diet, for a variety of reasons.

It can help you improve your body composition, and generally a high-protein diet is going to help you achieve just about any health or fitness goal.

But why?

Why is protein so important?

• How does it help your body recover?
• Why is it important for weight loss?
• How much protein should you eat?
• What are the best high-protein foods?

You’re in luck, because this article is the comprehensive list of everything you need to know about protein.

I’ll dive into the details and give you the knowledge you need, without getting overly “science-y” or complicated.

And by the end of this article, you’ll have a complete understanding of how to utilize protein in your diet to achieve your goals.

If that sounds good to you, let’s delay no further.

Time to talk about protein!

Learn about some of my AMAZING clients, who have fine-tuned their protein intake to build muscle, burn fat, and see amazing results!

What is Protein?

Simply put, protein is made up of chains of amino acids that your body utilizes to function properly.

From a fitness perspective, protein plays a crucial role in muscle recovery, repair, and growth after a workout.

Protein is delivered to the cells of your muscle fibers through the bloodstream, and it gets to work by stimulating muscle protein synthesis.

You can get protein in your diet in a number of ways, and we’ll dive into those details a little bit later in this article. But primarily, most people get their protein through some type of food source, such as chicken, turkey, beef, fish, etc.

There are other options as well. Many plant-based sources of protein assist with muscle recovery, and supplementation is always an option.

Why is Protein So Important? Muscle Recovery and Growth

If you want to build muscle, you have to eat enough protein.

Plain and simple.

There’s a muscle building process that occurs after you do a challenging strength training workout. But without protein you’ll struggle to see results.

When you lift weights, you create muscle damage that must be repaired. And as you just learned, protein gives your body the ability to repair that damage.

Your body always wants to be as efficient as possible, so after you train, your brain sends a cascade of signals throughout the body to initiate recovery.

For example:

• If you train your biceps really hard, you’ll create some muscle damage and disruption in those muscles.
• After your workout, your body will kick its recovery processes into high gear. The brain essentially says, “that was hard! Let’s adapt to make it easier in the future.”
• Protein, along with other nutrients, gets delivered to your muscles to assist with recovery and muscle growth.

Once your body recovers and builds new muscle tissue, you’ll be in a better and more efficient position to do that same workout again. And then you can go into the gym stronger the next time you lift weights, which will allow you to progressively overload your muscles again.

Repeating this process over and over again is how you can add pounds of muscle to your body over time.

Why is protein so important?

Because without enough protein in your diet, you won’t be able to fully recover and adapt. Your body won’t be able to complete the muscle building process.

And that means you’ll eventually plateau and struggle to see progress.

Why is Protein So Important? Weight Loss Benefits

Protein isn’t just valuable for building muscle.

It plays an incredibly valuable role in weight loss as well.

First off, a high-protein diet will help you retain as much muscle mass as you possibly can while in a calorie deficit.

Because as you know, you need to be in a calorie deficit to lose body fat. And when you’re in a deficit, your body actually utilizes its own tissue for energy, since you’re not consuming as many calories.

And remember how I mentioned that your body wants to be as efficient as it possibly can be?

Well, if you’re doing things the right way…

1. Calorie Deficit
2. Strength Training
3. High-Protein Diet

You’ll actually lose more body fat while retaining as much muscle mass as possible — if you’re eating enough protein.

And the more muscle you have on your body, the higher your metabolism will be. Meaning, you’ll burn more calories at rest.

That right there makes weight loss a lot easier.

But there’s more.

Protein is also the most filling macronutrient, so…

• The more protein you have in your diet, the fuller you’ll feel.
• The fuller you feel, the longer you can be in a calorie deficit.
• And the longer you’re in a deficit, the more progress you can make.

Why is protein so important?

I think you can probably see… Protein makes weight loss easier, too.

So if you’re looking to drop a few pounds, or make a big body transformation, protein needs to be part of your journey.

How Much Protein Should You Eat?

At this point, the value of protein should be pretty clear.

But how much of it should you eat?

Is there a magic number you should hit?

The ideal protein intake is going to be different for each and every person, but I’ve found one baseline recommendation that works for virtually everyone.

• Calculate your height in centimeters.
• Whatever that number is, try to eat that many grams of protein a day.
• For example: If you’re 180 cm tall, you should eat 180 grams of protein each day.

I love this method, because it bases your protein intake off of your height, and not other factors that are more variable or error prone.

Many people will say to eat 1 gram of protein per pound of your bodyweight. But that can be pretty ineffective if you’re obese and weigh 300 pounds.

Eating 300 grams of protein would be overkill and really hard to accomplish.

For most people, your height in centimeters is a really effective protein target to give your body everything it wants and needs from a recovery standpoint.

How to Eat More Protein

There’s a good chance that you’re just not eating very much protein.

People seem to be on one end of the spectrum or the other — you either eat a ton of it, or almost none. And there’s not a lot of in between.

And if we’re being honest, there’s probably considerably more people eating very little protein on a daily basis, than people who eat a ton.

So if your current protein intake is very low, here’s what you should do…

• First and foremost, set up your protein target based on your height.
• After that, spend a couple of weeks tracking your diet to see how much protein you typically eat on a daily basis.
• Once you get a feel for what your daily average is, try and increase that by 10 grams per day.
• And once you’re able to easily eat that much protein, you can increase your daily goal by 10 more grams.

And you can repeat that process over and over for as long as it takes for you to get to your top-end protein target.

Try to slowly and incrementally increase your protein over time. Don’t try to do it all at once, because you could really make your diet unsustainable and potentially cause some gastrointestinal issues.

Protein Timing… Does It Matter?

You need to eat enough protein, but does it matter when you eat it?

The answer is partly yes, and partly no.

For starters, let’s address the most important factor at play: your daily protein intake.

If you’re hitting your daily protein goal every day, you’re doing just about everything you need to do in order to make progress. Setting up an optimal protein timing strategy could get you that extra 5-10 percent of the results you want.

But in general, if you’re eating enough protein across each day consistently, you’ll make incredible progress and your body will recover efficiently.

If you want to take things a step further, you can try to space your protein out evenly across your meals throughout the day. This is a slightly more effective approach than say, eating very little protein at breakfast and lunch, and then eating the vast majority of your protein at dinner.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s say your daily protein goal is 150 grams.

You could space those 150 grams out evenly across each day by doing the following:

• Breakfast: 40 grams
• Snack No. 1: 15 grams
• Lunch: 40 grams
• Snack No. 2: 15 grams
• Dinner: 40 grams

By structuring your diet this way, you’re getting a consistent dose of protein. And that means your body will always have what it needs to recover floating around in your bloodstream.

This is an advanced strategy, and it’s not practical for everyone. But it can make a positive impact.

What About the “Anabolic Window?”

You may have heard that you need to slam a protein shake right after lifting weights in order to build muscle.

Well, the good news is that’s not necessarily true. And you don’t have to tote a jug of whey protein around with you everywhere you go.

But that’s not to say your post-workout routine is meaningless. It just involves a bit more nuance.

In general, if you’re spacing your protein out relatively evenly throughout the day, you probably don’t need to worry too much about cramming ~50 grams of protein into your face while leaving the gym.

Your body is getting everything it needs.

But if you’re not spacing out your protein that way, there are some scenarios that might make your post-workout shake a bit more of a necessity.

• If you finish a workout, and it’s been ~4 hours or more since you last ate protein, then yes. I’d recommend eating protein somewhat quickly after training.
• If it’s been 2-3 hours since you last ate protein, you might not need to race to your protein shaker. But try to get a high-protein meal in your system within an hour or so of lifting.
• And lastly, if you had a high-protein meal 1 hour before lifting, you probably have a lot of those amino acids still floating around your bloodstream. You can relax, and just make that next meal a high-protein meal whenever it occurs.

Post-workout protein is very person- and situation-specific. So pay attention to how your day and your workout unfolds, and read and react accordingly.

What Protein Sources Should You Eat?

All of this information is great, but you have to put it into practice somehow.

Right?

And that means you need to eat protein.

For the vast majority of people, I’d recommend that you get most of your daily protein from actual food. And if most of your protein coming from food is from animal protein, then you’re in a great spot.

Animal protein — such as meat, eggs, or milk — tends to be the most effective protein source for most people, since those are complete sources of protein.

Not all protein sources are created equal, and that’s an important piece of information to know.

• Some protein sources are complete, which means they provide your body with ALL of the essential amino acids it needs.
• Others are incomplete, which means they provide only SOME of the essential amino acids.

The more complete sources you eat, the easier your diet gets because you don’t have to worry about supplementing or identifying very specific foods that get you everything you need.

And if you need some ideas, here are a few articles that will help you build your diet:

• The best high-protein foods to always have at home
• How to eat high protein on a budget
• The best high-protein foods to lose weight

What Should You Do If You Eat A Plant-Based Diet?

If you are unable to eat animal protein, you’re not doomed.

A vegan or plant-based diet can still be very effective at achieving a wide variety of health and fitness goals.

And in fact, research suggests you can probably achieve the same results for muscle recovery and growth with a vegan diet, as compared to a more traditional diet that includes animal protein.

Yes, you may need to be a bit more picky with the foods you choose to eat.

And yes, supplementation may be required.

But a plant-based diet isn’t this huge barrier that some people make it out to be.

If you eat a vegan or plant-based diet, you can read my article on the best vegan protein sources for muscle gain to generate some ideas.

Supplementation

Supplements aren’t required to make progress.

They’re supplementary (that’s why they’re called “supplements”).

And I want to go back to the topic of the “anabolic window” for a second, because that whole concept really messed up people’s understanding of protein.

Way back in the early 2000’s there were a few studies (organized by supplement companies) that showed people who had a protein shake after lifting weights gained more muscle than people who didn’t.

And the supplement companies ran with that information and made it seem like their protein shake was mandatory if you wanted to recover and build muscle.

Fast forward 20 or so years, and now we know that’s not true. And the reason people in those studies gained more muscle is because taking a protein shake led them to eat more protein each day, as compared to the people who didn’t.

But this idea that supplements and/or protein shakes are required has persisted from that era, and it’s just not true.

• Will a protein shake help you recover? Probably.
• Is it necessary? Probably not.
• Are protein shakes convenient? Absolutely.
• What should you do? It depends.

So here’s my guidance for you…

If you can easily hit your protein target without any supplements, there’s probably no need for you to cram them into your daily routine. Having supplements on hand for a just-in-case scenario is worthwhile, but you don’t have to overthink it beyond that.

If you struggle to hit your daily protein target, then supplements might be a good addition to your daily routine. You still want to try and get the majority of your protein from food, but if a 20-30 gram shake helps you get all of the protein you need, that’s great!

And lastly, if you eat a plant-based/vegan diet, there’s probably some supplementation you’ll be forced to consider. A vegan protein powder or getting some daily BCAAs might be necessary so you get all of the essential amino acids in your diet.

I Hope This Helps!

And that does it!

Why is protein so important?

I think we covered everything you need to know. And I hope you found this article helpful.

I’ll say this… There are a lot of details and nuance involved with protein, and figuring out how to manage your diet. Sometimes, hiring a coach can be the easiest, most effective, and most efficient way to set up your diet and make progress.

If you’re interested in coaching, I’d love to help! I work with people all over the world to build muscle, burn fat, and chase their health and fitness goals.

I help take the guesswork away for my clients so that they can just show up, put in the work, and have confidence that what they’re doing is working.

If you’d like to learn more, head over to my coaching page.

Thanks for reading!

~ Chris