Choosing Protein - Read This If You Struggle with Midlife Weight Gain or Belly Fat!

What is protein?

Protein is a macronutrient (often shortened to “macro”) along with carbohydrates and fats.  The body derives energy, in different ways and amounts, from each of these macronutrients.

Why is protein so important, especially in midlife women?

We innately lose muscle mass in our lives because of our changing hormones, the loss of estrogen and testosterone.  This makes us more prone to weakness, falls with subsequent fractures, and can even change our lifespan.

With the loss of estrogen, inflammatory markers increase within us.  Our body’s muscle metabolism changes in two ways:

• Muscle is broken down more readily

• Muscle is harder to build

This means our bodies are actively destroying the muscle we have and our bodies are more resistant to building it.  We have to put more effort into just maintaining our muscle mass, never mind building more of it (which we should as discussed here).

Cosmetically, the weight gain and/or belly fat you may be noticing even though you haven’t changed anything is partly due to this changing muscle metabolism.  We actually have increased protein requirements during this life phase.  We often don’t meet them as we reach for carbs and fats and the protein content of our foods has become less dense through time and processing.   

Put all of this together and what do we get?  A picture all too familiar to many women: loss of muscle mass, loss of bone mass, increased weight but the weight is usually central (belly) fat.  That picture puts us at higher risk of heart disease, the number one killer of women.

When should we consume protein?

There’s been some research into the “evenness” of protein consumption, meaning how you spread this throughout the day.  It appears that divvying up your total protein among three meals is best.

How much protein should we consume, and what does that look like?

If you google how much protein you should have in a day, this is going to be too low of a number.  Research has shown that amounts higher than the Recommended Daily Allowance (are actually needed especially as we age.

Higher muscle mass and muscle quality is found with 1.0-1.2 grams per kg of body weight per day.

Since we don’t use the metric system in the U.S., here’s how to figure out that number for yourself.

Take your weight in pounds and divide it by 2.2, that’s your weight in kilograms.  That number times 1.0 or 1.2 is the amount of protein (in grams) you need in a day.  Take that number and split it between your meals and snacks.

Weight in kg =  Weight in pounds / 2.2

You may see this simplified to 30 grams at each meal, with three meals in a day.  If you can do that or even 100 grams in a day, you’re doing great.

That’s nice to know and we even did some math in the process, but what should we eat?  Every person will have individual dietary preferences.  The good news is there’s a source of protein for everyone.  Let’s see what that looks like.

Animal sources

Plant Sources

Quality here is important in addition to quantity.  The nutritional value of food items in general changes depending on how they get to our plate.  For example, salmon can be a good source of vitamin D if they’re wild-caught but much less so if they’re farm-raised.

There are more food items listed in the resource below from Johns Hopkins medicine, if you’re interested.

Resources:

Some of the information contained in this article is the result of my training, medical knowledge, and personal experience without a specific source to be cited.

This is not medical advice.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/-/media/bariatrics/nutrition_protein_content_common_foods.pdf

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9208033/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10952331/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8471109/