How to Eat More Protein (Simple Plan for Women Over 35)

Welcome back to the Body Recomposition Revolution. This is Robin, your host. Today we are going to be breaking down exactly how to eat over 100 grams of protein per day because I know that initial shock feeling when you get that number of 100 plus grams of protein per day, your first thought is how? What's next? What do I do? Today? We are breaking it down because it's really simple. I have recently received a lot of custom macro formulation requests, and I've spent the last month kind of revamping how I deliver that information because I want it to be usable and not just usable.

I want it to act as a really valuable tool in helping women understand how to actually implement these macro formulations they're getting from me or the Internet or an app or what have you. And what spurred me to totally go in depth when I deliver the information back to these women is a conversation I had with my girlfriend at the gym a few months back. And I had done her macros over the summer when I just started doing macro formulations and she got the numbers from me. It was a one page PDF at the time.

Now it's like 7. And she received the numbers and she goes, OK, now what? What's next? And I feel like that feeling of what's next, how do I implement this? What do I do now is so common from everybody when they first receive this macro formula from wherever they received it because it's incredibly daunting. It's like, what the heck are macros and how do I eat 120 grams of protein? OK, so today we are just going to go through how to actually eat 120 grams of protein throughout the day. What's next?

You got your numbers. What do we do now? I want to start with the general rule of thumb, which I know that I have repeated in many episodes, and the general rule of thumb in regards to how much protein a woman should eat if she is driving to drop fat and build or maintain her muscle. That rule is 1g of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So if you're 200 lbs but you want to be 140, you should be eating 140 grams of protein per day. Now if you're an advanced athlete, that number might be higher, maybe closer to 1.5g.

If you are in your menopausal years, that might be a bit lower, maybe .8 grams of protein per pound of ideal body body weight. So today we are just going to do a broad strokes number of 120 grams of protein. Maybe your number is higher or lower, but today, for the sake of example, we're going to start with that 120 grams of protein. What do you do now? How do you eat that much protein in one day? Step one, you're going to download a tracking app. So I love using macros first. I've been using them for years.

I've also done notebooks many many years ago. My fitness pal is 1. My clients use. Also some of my clients use my own personal app. They like it, whatever. Just find one. Go on your App Store and type in macro tracking and it'll pull up some highly known ones or popular ones and I'm sure some of those that I mentioned will be first on the list. So Step 2, go to the settings on whatever app you chose for whatever reason and enter your macros. You should have 3 numbers and that is protein, carbs, and fat.

For this episode, we're focusing on that 120 grams of protein that somehow you need to eat throughout your day. Now just quickly, quickly, a quick little nutrition lesson. What are macros? OK, all food, be it BBQ sauce, French fries, avocados, berries, chicken, every item of food contains calories. Those calories that are in that BBQ sauce, that are in that chicken are comprised of three different macro nutrients and those are protein, carbs, and fats. So the calories that are in a tablespoon of BBQ sauce are comprised of protein, carbs, and fat.

I'm going to tell you this, there's probably not any protein in that BBQ sauce. It's mostly carbs and fats because it's a sugary, fatty item. I just know that from years and years of tracking. It's, it's in my brain, pretty much any food that you show me I can, I can get within 1010 grams of what the macros are in that food. And that could be you too. So know that know that every food item you eat is comprised of calories and those calories are split into macro nutrients. 3 of them protein, carbs, fats and that's actually what I absolutely love about macro tracking.

The one thing that makes it sustainable and not a diet is you can eat whatever you want. I just recently had a woman's formula I was doing and she said the only sugar I eat is honey because I want to stay on my diet and I get that. But with macros you can eat 5 Oreos as long as you log those five Oreos into your macro app so it can subtract 50 grams of carbs because that's what the Oreos are made-up of. Whatever it is, I guess that one, don't call me out on if I'm inaccurate. So you can really have a lot of freedom.

You can have cake on your birthday. You can have cake when it's not your birthday as long as you put it in the app. It is accounting for the macro nutrients that are making up every single item you eat. And I'm going to warn you, if you're counting your macros and you're trying to abide by these regulations that the formula has set for you and you eat a piece of cake, well, you're pretty much going to going to have to go keto the rest of the day, which is proteins and some fats. So know that, and that's what you want to know.

You need to know what your food is comprised of. I've said it many times, knowledge is power. The more knowledge you have, the more awareness you have of what you're putting in your body and what it's going to do to you, the more power you have to mold and manipulate it into whatever you want it to be. And in this podcast, we focus on building muscle and dropping fat so we can be strong, so we can be healthy, so we can be fast, so we can be resilient, so we can age backwards, so we can do all the things that body recomposition does for women, for men, for anybody.

Now, here's the stuck point. When you get a number like 120 grams of protein that you need to eat on a daily basis, that is jarring. That's a lot. That's like, whoa, Oh my gosh, I've been tracking and I realize I only eat 60 grams of protein a day. On a good day, how the heck am I going to get 120? That is just a natural response to hearing a big number when you're not used to even paying attention to that number. So know this, that feeling of overwhelm is completely expected. It is normal. So we are going to start by stopping that thought process of whoa, Oh my gosh, how do I do that?

I can't do that and start just breaking it down. So let's take that 120 grams of protein that you need to eat throughout your day and divide it by how many meals you usually eat in your day. And I'm sure it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a million snacks. Well, we're not doing that anymore. We're paying attention to our nutrition. We are being cognizant and aware because we are planning to succeed. And if you don't plan, the plan to fail. So we're going to start at 4 meals in the day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack.

There's our four meals. So 120 / 4 is 30 grams of protein per meal. When you think of it as 30 grams of protein per meal, that is so much more doable and so much less overwhelming than stewing on that 120 because that seems unreachable. That seems like impossible. And I know that feeling so well because when I kind of redid my macros for my current state, I was going to, and I still am eating 180 grams of protein per day. I'm 135 lbs. It's just right now what I'm doing. I won't go into why, but when I thought of 180, Oh my gosh, how, How am I even going to eat that much meat?

That's my initial instinct because I associate protein as meat. Is that the reality of it? No. So let's take your 120 grams of protein. We're dividing it into four meals in your day, and each of those meals has to be 30 grams of protein. What is 30 grams of protein look like? OK, 4 to 5 ounces of grilled chicken breast, 4 to 5 ounces of lean ground Turkey. Those are Turkey meatballs. 4 to 5 ounces of steak, 4 to 5 ounces of lean ground beef. Little burger, no bun. OK. For fish, that's 5 ounces of salmon.

That's 5 to 6 ounces of whitefish. So maybe you go to Costco and get some of those frozen fillets of cod. I actually like those. It sounds disgusting, but they're so good. Or a can of tuna. If you can stomach a can of tuna and do it happily, like many people I know, I don't get it. Hey, one can of tuna is 30 grams of protein. 6 ounces of shrimp, 1 cup of egg whites, and one whole egg equals 30 grams of protein. I eat that every day for one of my breakfasts. Yes, I have two breakfasts, 3 eggs, and 1/2 cup of egg whites.

That equals 30 grams of protein. Protein pancake that I eat every single day on repeat is those egg whites with oats and cottage cheese. My protein pancake, world famous I'll say that is 30 grams of protein, 1.5 cups of Greek yogurt, one and 1/4 cup of cottage cheese. If you're on the go, Hey, just throw in one scoop a little over a scoop of whey protein into your coffee Bum protein shake with caffeine, grab a protein bar. There are so many different combinations you can do to have these doable meals on repeat throughout your day.

So let's get into how we actually apply that information because I know what you're thinking. And it is now what? Just like you were when you got the initial protein number. So what does this look like practically speaking, in terms of how do we apply that type of simple 30303030 throughout your day? Well, ideally it looks like batch cooking. What does batch cooking mean? It means cooking your proteins in large batches. I like to just cook my proteins in large batches because I save my carbs for things that I like and things that come to me throughout the day.

Maybe I'm going out to eat and I want to reserve my carbs for some whatever sweet potato fries. Maybe we're going out to dinner and I want to reserve my carbs for dinner. Maybe it's a who knows. I like to just plan my protein out because it's a lot less time consuming, consuming and just tedious than doing every single macro. Now, if you have a specific goal that you want to achieve in terms of I want to drop 10% body fat by whenever, then you have to plan on all three. You just have to it's pretty specific.

You have to know you're in a deficit and the only way you do that is by planning all three. But right now, this is for the reality that you are just trying to maintain or maybe gradually cut fat and build muscle. We are tracking our protein, just our protein. So for me specifically, I reserve two days a week for batch cooking. I do my OR food prep. I kind of use those two terms interchangeably. When I say food prep, I mean I'm batch cooking. I am cooking large portions of meat in in batches, so I reserve two days a week for batch cooking.

I do it on Sundays, usually in the afternoon or in the evening and then on Wednesdays when my fridge starts my fridge of pre made little things to grab starts to dwindle. So Sundays and Wednesdays. That way you're not having things in the fridge all week long that tastes like plastic by the time you eat them. Even if you don't keep in plastic containers, they still somehow just develop a taste. So Sunday, Wednesdays, pick your two days to food prep. If you just want to start with one and say, I'm just going to start with one and see what I can do with that, great.

One step is always better than no steps. And you can always go to two steps and make it more, you know, time consuming or detailed as you progress. But let's just start with one day of prep. For me, the the I love, I love grilling chicken. And we will do that in the spring and in the summer. But for those cold months, which we are in now in Minnesota, it's half your life. I do what's called the low and slow method for chicken. So I take a bunch of chicken breasts. I toss them in my crock pot. I put some water in it just to kind of submerge them.

Doesn't matter how much just enough to mostly submerge the chicken breasts and I toss in my spice of choice. For me, I love spicy, I love Mexican, I love Thai. I love really flavorful foods. So I'll grab one of those type of spices. I don't care what it I don't even sometimes I don't even look at the label. This one looks orange. I'm going to put it in there. It's I don't care. You're not going to taste it that much, but it is going to give you a little something something. So you need some spice.

So your chicken breasts submerged in water in your crock pot with a bunch of spices thrown on top of your choice. Put the lid on that baby, put it on low and let it sit for 8 hours. It's a long time, go to bed. But I know there's that recent show where that guy, there's the house fire with the crockpot. I don't worry about it. I put my stuff in a crockpot either throughout the day, right first thing in the morning or I do it at night before I go to bed. 8 hours later, your house smells phenomenal and you have this incredibly moist shreddable chicken and you have a massive amount of that moist shreddable chicken.

Once I have poured all the water out of that shreddable chicken and I shred that chicken, I put it into a big bowl and now I get to take out my Tupperware of choice for me, Pyrex's Life, and it's glass with a plastic lid. I put all my little glass circular bowls on the counter and I put a food scale on the counter. I take the chicken and I plop it into said bowl and I weigh it and make sure that it is four or five oz, whatever it might be for a normal prep for me, that's 5 ounces of chicken. So, and remember this when you have that food scale, put the empty glass bowl on the food scale before you put your chicken in and hit that.

Is it called tar or TARI? Don't know. Zero it out. Zero it out and then add the chicken because you want it to say zeros across the board. Now, some of you might prefer to use grams and some of you might like me. I prefer to use oz. That's what I've always done. So I go about 5 ounces of chicken. I know that's a solid 30 grams of protein and I will divvy up that shredded chicken across the board in all those little containers. 5 oz, 5 oz, 5 oz. Sometimes I'll use a little dry erase marker and write 5 oz on the lid because it comes off.

Most of the time. I just know that my chicken is parsed out into 5 oz portions. OK, so boom, we got our chicken. And another thing I like to prep out is I will take vegetables like Peppers, mostly just Peppers. I will take Peppers. Oh, and onions on Big Onion Queen. I will at that time cut a bunch of vegetables and just lay them in flat, open glass containers. So I might grab that chicken and a handful of those veggies, toss it all into a pan and saute it for lunch. Or I might grab that chicken and toss it into my Mac and cheese for dinner.

Whatever it is, I know that I have 30 grams of chicken ready to toss into literally whatever I want, whenever I want it. A lot of times I go to the grocery store and I get those big artisan wraps of of lettuce. You know, the ones that look like big leaves that are long and narrow. I don't know what they're called. I will take that chicken and wrap it into one of those big lettuce wraps, throw some onions on top, some vegetables on top, some cilantro on top and pour some of that toom or Noom. I don't remember what it's called.

Toom Noom garlic sauce. Oh my gosh. Or I will put like a spicy sauce on top there. You have a really low carb, vegetable ridden, protein packed go to. Sometimes when I was teaching, you should have seen my lunch bag. I would have a full blown head of lettuce with multiple packs of chicken and a variety of cheeses and sauces and veggies. And I would just set up a breakfast or a lunch bar on my desk. It was great. Another thing I will prep ahead of time, and this isn't a protein, but I'll do that with rice too.

I'll kind of divvy out little quarter cups of rice, but we're sticking to protein as I said. So for my breakfast that's primarily egg whites or eggs or cottage cheese and you don't really need to prep those. You just get a bunch of egg whites liquid form from Costco or Sam's Club. That's the most cost efficient way to do it and you have those ready to pour whenever you need them. Today was in a pinch and I needed a 30 gram protein meal after I worked out and I wasn't really planned for it. So I grabbed my liquid egg whites and I poured, I think it was a cup and a half and I had 30 grams of protein.

I stuck a little cheese stick in there, wrapped her up and had an egg and cheese burrito. Was great. It was fantastic. And those quick little meals, those will start coming to you more quickly the more you practice tracking what you're eating and being mindful of what type of macros are in everything you eat. Now, as I said, I prep on Sundays, and if I'm not doing chicken, I will do steak. And if I'm really on, this happens in the summer and spring when we're grilling a ton, we'll throw a bunch of chicken breasts and steaks on the grill.

And when they're cooked, grilled to perfection, I will cut all of them up and I'll have maybe chicken for lunch and I'll have that steak at dinner. Now, again, sometimes I primarily just do my proteins because I like to save the carb portion for family and friends so that I'm not always, my family eats pretty much the same as me, but I like to be part of that table time with them. So I will make various dishes at night. It might be soups and I will just toss my chicken into my soup, mix it up. I might make a lasagna and I will honestly toss my chicken or steak inside my lasagna, you know, cut it all up on my plate.

My kids see that and they do the same thing. They will they will request chicken in things because they just are used to it and they like it. So having those chicken and steaks just prepped as your protein source and tossing them into literally any side you have done, I want to go through because I know how beneficial this will be. I want to go through just a sample meal plan and I'll go through a couple sample meal plans of your standard 120 gram protein day. And this is kind of what my diet was looking like before I drastically bumped my protein up.

But this is a real a real meal plan of mine that I didn't write down, but I just had in my brain from when I was doing A100120130 grams of protein. So breakfast, this is a 30 gram protein breakfast is my protein pancake bowl. This is this is my go to. I talk about my famous protein pancake all the time. Sometimes I put it in a bowl. It's just half cup of oats, half cup of egg whites and half cup of cottage cheese. Mix in your cinnamon, your vanilla, top it with some butter or syrup or berries. Boom, you got a 30 protein 30 grams of protein breakfast, then my lunch.

I might go to Chipotle. I love Chipotle. I go to Chipotle all the time and I order the same thing all the time. Double chicken, burrito bowl, fajita veggies, lettuce, pico, spicy salsa, light rice. Or you can skip the rice if you want. But there's nothing wrong with rice people. There's nothing wrong with rice. Keep getting women asking me if they need to never buy rice again. No, it's a carb just like your Oreos. You're good, just count it. The macros for that double chicken Chipotle bowl, 35 to 40 grams of protein.

They're going to tell you it's more than that. It's not. I've weighed the chicken. They are always skimping on my chicken. A snack, my favorite snack, Greek yogurt bowl. So 1 cup of Faye yogurt. You can throw a little bit of whey protein powder in there for some, just some flavor, some sweetness, and also a little added protein. A handful of berries with honey bump, 30 grams of protein, maybe even more, especially considering whatever kind of way. So the yogurt bowl is a fantastic meal placement or a snack dinner.

We are grabbing one of my frozen salmon fillets from the fridge. I get a whole box of them from Costco. They are great. I'm also going to throw some potatoes into the oven and for a side. I love my roasted Brussels sprouts. But as I said, whatever your family is going to eat, just grab your protein and eat with them. Eat with them unless it's super fatty and you're trying again to be in a deficit. But beyond that, you can eat with your family. Just add some protein to whatever you guys are eating as a family.

It really doesn't need to be a big deal unless you make it 1. Now when I get ladies who order those custom macro formulations from me, page 5 of that document is what I call a macro skeleton. And I basically take the numbers that I give you. Your number of protein in grams, your number of carbs in grams and your number of fat in grams and I will place it throughout their day in a skeleton type form. So you can do that yourself. If you are focusing on getting 120 grams of protein, that's exactly what we just did.

We divided it by 4 meals. Now some people are really specific and they need to eat with certain at certain times and they have medications that need to be taken with certain foods. I work that all out for you in that formulation process, but you can do that yourself as well. Just take your total and divide it by however many meals you can commit to for the day. And the reason that you need to distribute your protein throughout the day, that especially for women after age 35, that is building better muscles because it is promoting protein synthesis, which is building muscle.

You don't want to jam 100 grams of protein for breakfast. Have I done it? Yes. Afterwards it's not good. The rest of it just not good. So you want to have your protein pretty evenly distributed throughout your day. It used to not matter as much before for age 35 it definitely matters after because hormones are different. Everything about our bodies is different from age 35 and on. And again, the beauty about counting your macros is it is not this all or nothing mindset. It is not keto, it is not South Beach.

It's repeatable. The biggest meal hack tip I can give you is eat on repeat, batch cook, prepare and eat on repeat. I can't even tell you how many days I've had my protein pancake in a row. 1000. I just I eat on repeat. It's easy, it's mindless, and it's yummy because you find your favorite yummy staples. And if you are a fan of going, I mean, who isn't a fan of going out to eat? If you find yourself at the mercy of Jimmy John's or Chick-fil-A, there are options for that too. Chick-fil-A you can get a, you know, with their grilled Nuggets and a side salad or Jimmy John's has an unwitch, which is no bread and double meat.

They're fantastic. They are bread is not something you have to eat it with people saying like well what about my Jimmy John? OK, don't eat the bread. What about when I go out to eat and grab a burger? OK, don't eat the bread or do and just count it towards your macros. But you might be surprised how far that bread goes in terms of how many carbs allotted for the day. So again, it does not need to be overcomplicated. You're not reinventing the wheel, but you are taking some time to prepare yourself.

Or as I always say, prepare to fail because if you're not having those grab and grow, grab and go protein sources on hand, you can bet yourself you're going to run out of options. You're going to be over and the carbs and the fats and that's just it's, and it's going to be a lot more expensive. One of the biggest benefits of batch cooking, prepping all your food in advance is that it's much more cost effective and less time consuming. Because ultimately you're not going to be racing around, running to the grocery store, running to Jimmy John's, running wherever you're going to go and trying to meet your macros because you have it all laid out ahead of time.

So I hope that is helpful for you ladies in terms of really understanding and grappling with how to eat 120 grams of protein in a day. And again, there's those quick easy proteins sources like bars and powders. Those are those are OK too in moderation. So if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. My Instagram is RAC Fitness under score. So RAC Fitness under score. I post a lot of reels of what I eat during the day. And that is the question I get asked most often is what do you eat?

What kinds of things do you eat? Let me tell you, I love food and I have a lengthy list of things that I love to eat on repeat. So on my Instagram, I'm often posting what I ate for breakfast, what I ate for lunch, what I ate when I went out to eat. That's a fun game for me is to find what will fit in my macros while at a restaurant. If you do want help getting your macros formulated, you can always e-mail me. It's RAC recomposition. So RAC [email protected]. Thanks for tuning in, ladies, and you'll hear from me next week.

How to Eat More Protein (Simple Plan for Women Over 35)

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