How Much Protein Should I Be Consuming? | The Female Athlete

 

How Much Protein Should I Be Consuming? | The Female Athlete

 

Female And Protein

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 Protein:

Protein is one of three macronutrients, it can be eaten via meat, eggs and other food choices. It can also be supplemented by Whey or Casein Protein powder. Protein is for helping improve recovery, increase lean muscle tissue, help decrease body fat and to transport vital nutrients to all organs.

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Myth Busting

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“You can only consume a maximum of 30g Protein at once”.  A falsity that has plagued nutrition plans for a long period of time. There are many reasons as to why this is wrong, however, this is in regards to digestion.

When we consume up to 50g of protein there is a digestion rate of 91-95% therefore proving our gut can handle a lot more than just 30g. Furthermore, the break down of protein is essential amino acids, and these are needed for many different functions in the body. Two particular compounds sodium and chloride are used to transport the amino acids to the rest of the body.

The small intestines will hold 95% amino acids (break down of protein) for a prolonged period of time until the body needs them for utilisation. The other 5% will be passed through the colon to be broken down into bacteria.

Due to the small intestine being a vital organ, it will consume around 50% of the amino acid for gut function and will then allow rest of the amino acids to pass through to other functions. With amino acids being a fundamental necessity for muscular growth, it is advised to supplement with MyAmino Complex to ensure more than just half of the amino acids consumed via dietary protein sources reaches the muscle cell tissues.

Finally, 30g of protein, will only release 15g of protein to muscle tissue to allow growth of the cell. Therefore, supplementation is key to make consumption of amino acids ample for both body composition and health.
 

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I build my nutrition plans to adapt to a clients lifestyles, whether they train daily and have an active job or they don’t get a lot of exercise and have a very sedentary lifestyle. For those that get regular exercise protein can be consumed with up to 1.2g per lb of bodyweight. For example, Person A may be 63kg (138.6lbs) who trains 4-5 times per week that can consume 167g of protein per day. Whereas, Person B may be around 70kg (154lbs) that only exercises around 2 times per week. I would advise 0.9-1g of protein per lb of bodyweight to then give this specific person 139g protein, using only 0.9g protein/lb/bodyweight.

Weight	Active	Non Active
55kg	108.9g	145.2g
60kg	158g	118.8g
65kg	171.6g	128.7g

As you can see by the table above, ladies should be consuming enough protein on a day to day basis to compliment their lifestyles and enable them to improve recovery when training at any level of intensity. There should not be a set figure as to how much you should be eating as it is down to the individual and how their training levels and somatotypes.