Healthy lifestyle woman running on the sunrise beach

stock

New York Marathon Bridge Fee Dispute

The Washington Post

wb-howtostart-taichi

help-walkingdesk

‘Ego-lifting’ cited as probable factor in exercise-related head injuries

Shot of two young women out for a run together

Contributor

Woman Running on Treadmill 

Labrador dog on a playground

A GIF of a woman moving forward in a straight line on the ice, curling. 

wb-howtostart-curling

spin

Women in high heels 

Your Move women's heart disease

A GIF of a woman boxing, wearing white gloves.

wb-howtostart-boxing

Joint before running

Wall-sit

Active swimmer

HANDOUT IMAGE on 1/15/24

Senior feeling great

A GIF of a man falling while rock climbing. The rope catches him and he bounces, but stays hanging near the wall. 

wb-howtostart share image stop motion

For The Washington Post

An illustrations of five characters exercising. Clockwise from the top left there is a woman balancing on a board, a woman in a squat position, a person in a plank position, a person with oversized arms flexing, and a person running with extended limbs. Around them there are water bottles, a towel, two pull up straps, a dumbbell, and some bushes.

wb fitness january share

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

iStock

Protein is the macronutrient of the moment. On TikTok, videos with the hashtag <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/protein?lang=en" target=_blank>#protein</a> have been viewed more than 9.1 billion times, with influencers swearing the nutrient builds strong, bulging physiques, trims away body fat, and supercharges metabolisms.

The nearly ubiquitous social media message is, whoever we are, we need more protein.

But the hype doesn’t match reality. Most of us are probably getting enough protein, although highly active people may need a little more.

“The devil is in the details,” said Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and an expert on protein, physical activity and health. Here are the five things you really need to know about protein.

1. Active people need more protein than couch potatoes

If you’re sedentary, you officially need about 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, according to the recommended daily allowance set by the government’s Food and Nutrition Board. This translates to somewhere between <a href="https://thrive.kaiserpermanente.org/care-near-you/northern-california/northvalley/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/10/Protein-Food-Contents-JW-07.12.13_tcm28-710093.pdf" target=_blank>45 to 60 grams of daily protein</a> for most people who rarely exercise — or approximately two chicken breasts (about 30 grams of protein each) or a 6-ounce can of tuna (about 40 grams) and a quarter-cup of almonds (about 8 grams).

But this amount is almost<a href="https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/6/376.abstract" target=_blank> certainly too low</a> for many of us. The recommendation “for protein might be enough to keep us alive, but it is too low for physically active people,” said Eric Rawson, a professor of nutrition and exercise at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pa.

For active people, a better recommendation would be “1 to 1.2 grams per kilogram” of body weight each day, Phillips said, or higher, “up to a level of 1.6 grams per kilogram” of body weight daily if you’re physically active. In simple terms, if you weigh 160 pounds, or 72.5 kilograms, then 1 gram per kilogram of your weight is 72.5 grams of daily protein, which you could get by eating, over the course of your day, a 6-ounce steak (about 42 grams), a cup of Greek yogurt (about 17 grams) and a half-cup of tofu (about 20 grams).

Some researchers advocate for more, though, especially for athletes in the middle of heavy training, when their muscles are under constant strain. For them, the “optimal” amount of protein may be as high as 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight every day or approximately a gram of protein for every pound of body weight, said Shawn Arent, the chairman of the department of exercise science at the University of South Carolina and a longtime sports nutrition researcher.

Our muscles can only take in and use so much of this stuff.

“I don’t see data to suggest that our bodies can use protein beyond about 0.4 to 0.5 grams of protein per kilogram” of body weight at a single meal, Phillips said, which, for most of us, would equate to a large chicken breast.

Swallow more protein than that and the excess is stored as fat, used as metabolic fuel or transformed into urea, which is protein stripped of its nitrogen and excreted through the kidneys.

Extra-large portions of protein, in other words, produce expensive pee.

Thankfully, they <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316622109454" target=_blank>won’t damage your kidneys</a>, unless you already have kidney disease. That widespread belief is a myth, Phillips said.

But perhaps the most important thing to know about protein is that you’re probably getting enough.

“Most Americans are eating close to 1.0 to 1.2 grams per kilogram of their body weight” in protein most days, said Nicholas Burd, the director of the Nutrition and Exercise Performance Research Group at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which seems to be close to the nutritional sweet spot for most of us, assuming we’re active but not Olympians.

Still concerned about getting enough protein? Supplements, like shakes and bars “are convenient,” Phillips said. But so is a hard-boiled egg, which contains about 6 grams of protein, or a chicken breast. “I eat a lot of Greek yogurt and chicken,” he said.

There’s little evidence that certain proteins are more nutritious than others, although some people swear by whey powder. Derived from milk, whey is a good source of leucine, an amino acid that helps jump-start muscle building. “But so is Greek-style yogurt,” Phillips said, or salmon, which is packed with leucine.

“Whey protein has falsely been put on a pedestal as superior due to aggressive sports marketing campaigns,” Burd said.

Most people, including athletes, can get sufficient protein without needing powdered whey, even if they don’t eat meat.

“Vegetarian and vegan athletes can easily meet protein needs on a plant-based diet,” said Enette Larson-Meyer, the director of the Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism Laboratory at Virginia Tech and co-author of<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Plant-based-Sports-Nutrition-Strategies-Performance/dp/1492568643/ref=pd_bxgy_vft_none_sccl_1/133-5771809-9317847?pd_rd_w=gmXJ6&content-id=amzn1.sym.26a5c67f-1a30-486b-bb90-b523ad38d5a0&pf_rd_p=26a5c67f-1a30-486b-bb90-b523ad38d5a0&pf_rd_r=S8G2ZRR0H0BBMF2M727M&pd_rd_wg=3Qjbj&pd_rd_r=a7896056-13ae-49a0-ba49-8f8570092703&pd_rd_i=1492568643&psc=1" target=_blank> Plant-Based Sports Nutrition</a>.

Plant proteins may not be complete, she said, meaning they don’t contain all the amino acids we need, but “consuming a combination of different plant-based protein sources, such as beans and grain, will provide a balanced protein profile.” If your diet is plant forward, but not fully vegetarian, add an egg or some cheese to improve a mostly vegetarian dish’s “amino-acid profile,” she said.

4. Extra protein probably won’t help you lose weight

Because protein fills you up, it helps you eat less, and your body has to work harder to break it down. As a result, you expend more calories digesting protein compared to carbs or fatty foods.

But the actual amount of that extra calorie burn “is tiny,” Phillips said, and unlikely to have a meaningful effect on body weight.

In effect, despite many social media claims to the contrary, mainlining protein won’t incinerate body fat. To drop pounds, you must consume fewer calories, from any nutrients, than you burn.

But protein does play a role in keeping you healthy during weight loss, Arent said. It helps your body hang onto muscle tissue while you shed fat.

“Muscle is your health currency,” he said. “Don’t lose it!”

5. Protein after a workout and before bed may have benefits

“I’m an advocate of spreading protein throughout the day, especially making sure you consume enough at breakfast,” Burd said.

Protein is the most satiating of macronutrients, he pointed out, taking longer to digest than carbohydrates or fat, its fellow macronutrients, and leaving you feeling fuller. So, having protein at every meal helps control appetite and ensures a steady supply of amino acids for working muscles.

“Protein is a good foundation to each feeding,” Arent said.

Some people advocate eating protein after a workout and right before bed.

Protein after a hard workout, for instance, in conjunction with carbohydrates, might replenish lost fuel stores and speed recovery better than carbohydrates alone, Arent said,<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7400240/" target=_blank> although that idea is controversial</a>. “But the reality is that there is no upside to not having protein after a workout,” Arent said.

Likewise, a small portion of pre-bedtime protein, such as yogurt or a handful of nuts, has been shown<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6415027/#:~:text=Protein%20ingested%20prior%20to%20sleep,not%20change%20resting%20energy%20expenditure." target=_blank> in some studies</a> to amplify muscle building overnight. “Nighttime protein ingestion is an excellent opportunity to increase muscle protein synthesis,” Rawson said, but the process “doesn’t have to be complicated.” If you have dinner at 6 p.m., “add a Greek yogurt at 9 p.m.,” he said.

Do you have a fitness question? Email <a href="mailto:yourmove@washpost.com">YourMove@washpost.com</a> and we may answer your question in a future column.

Sign up for the Well+Being newsletter, your source of expert advice and simple tips to help you live well every day

Nominated for three National Magazine awards

Media Orthopedic Reporting Excellence award from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 2011

National Association of Social Workers Media Award, 2014

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, English Literature and Political Science 

Gretchen Reynolds is the author of the "Your Move" column for The Washington Post. Reynolds is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the science of exercise and health for more than 15 years, first at the New York Times and now at The Post.

Gretchen Reynolds

5 things to know about protein

the-washington-post

Food rich in healthy proteins

You're probably getting enough protein

Food

Fitness

Mind

Body

Life

Well+Being

washpost

prism://prism.query/tag,wb-fitness&limit=20

Well+Being Fitness

Well+Being: Fitness and Exercise

Stories about personal fitness, workout routines and exercise culture from The Washington Post’s Well+Being section.

Well+Being from The Washington Post covers healthy living, including nutrition, fitness, mental health, relationships, chronic illness and disability.

Well+Being Body

Well+Being: Physical Health

Stories about health disparities, disabilities and keeping an active lifestyle from The Washington Post’s Well+Being section.

Advice for your next workout