If You Could Only…

You know that question people like to ask, “If you could only give one piece of advice about…[insert here]”.

Well, if I could give one about nutrition, it would be to count your protein.

It doesn’t have to be by grams. It can be pounds per week, it can palmfuls, or any other of unit of measurement (by number of animals?).

Protein is essential to healthy living, whether you are a vegan (count in bushels?) or a carnivore. And, more often then not, when people start counting protein, they start losing fat, gaining muscle, and most people just feel healthier in general.

Why? Because protein makes you feel more full for one, so you are less likely to overeat and because protein is essential for conducting repairs in your body, which not only helps with building muscle, but also just repairing from the daily abuse of life..

So, how much should I eat of this magical component of life?

Science says something between .7 -1 grams per pound. I say just shoot for 1 gram, a little more won’t hurt and it’s better than undershooting.

There are a million ways to implement this in you life.

I always pick the easy button and do all of my macro countings by the week and then just make sure I eat all my food before the weeks up.

So, If I need to eat rough 185g of protein a day that is about 1.5 lbs of ground beef or about 1.75 lbs of chicken thighs, so for the week if I buy/eat 7lbs of chicken and 4.5 lbs of beef, I’m good, but that’s me.

Palm sizes work too. A palm of beef is between 20-30 grams of protein. Just do your math and then try not to look to weird at the store when you are counting palm sizes next to a slab of meat.

If your vegan you can do it by the handful for things like quinoa. But, I do recommend you get down to the gram level when you start because it is a lot harder to hit your goal without animal products.

Regardless of how you want to do it, count your protein.