How to Hit Your Protein Goal in 5 Easy Steps

Protein is arguably the most important macronutrient to pay attention to. When it comes to your fitness goals you know you need to pay attention to what you eat. And you’ve probably heard somewhere – whether from a nutrition coach, a personal trainer, or a fitness magazine – that you should be eating protein…lots of it. If you haven’t figured out quite how to hit your protein goal yet, this article is for you!

I’m a personal trainer and nutrition coach. When my client’s come to me (shoot, when anyone who knows what I do comes to me), asking for help reaching their fitness goals I ask them: how much protein are you eating? It doesn’t matter whether your goal is weight loss, muscle growth, strength gains, sports performance, or stamina. If your goal relates to improving your fitness and health, and you’re moving more to reach those goals, protein is key.

First up, really quickly let’s cover how much protein (and yes, it’s a lot) you should be eating and why it’s so important.

Why is protein so important to your health and fitness goals?

Imagine going through the effort of working out/lifting weights with the goal of building lean muscle to get stronger, look better and boost your metabolism, and not giving your body the ingredients it needs to do just that…

Protein plays a few major roles in the support of your fitness goals:

1. Recovery and repair. Protein is required to build muscle. Your body will not/can not build muscle without the amino acids that make up protein molecules. Imagine going through the effort of working out/lifting weights with the goal of building lean muscle to get stronger, look better and boost your metabolism, and not giving your body the ingredients it needs to do just that!
   
2. Hunger/appetite control. For anyone eating at a caloric deficit (this is you if you are eating to lose fat/weight), part of your day to day experience is probably going to be a bit of hunger. Protein is satiating. It fills you up, takes longer to digest and is satisfying to eat. The more protein that you eat, the less hungry you will be and ultimately, the less food you will crave/consume. The result? Easier calorie control.

How much protein do you need?

The first step of learning how to hit your protein goal is knowing what your protein goal is in the first place! The optimum amount of protein for you is going to be body, goal and activity level dependent. But with that said, if your goal is to improve your body composition, and you are working out with a program that is designed to help you reach that goal, you need to be eating around 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.

Maybe that sounds like a lot to you. It sounds like a lot for most people. If you jump from eating very little protein to 1 gram per pound of body weight you might feel so full that you can’t hit that goal at first. Instead of feeling like you’re force feeding yourself protein, see what your starting point is. Your starting point is what you regularly and easily consume now (see Step 1: track your meals). Add 20-30 grams to that number as your goal. Once you feel that you can hit that +20-30 grams regularly *by following the guidelines below*, add another 20-30 grams, and another, until you reach 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.

How to Hit Your Protein Goal in 5 Easy Steps (plus bonus tips to turn strategy into real life action)

If you want to hit your protein goal but you are having a hard time figuring out how (in real life rather than on paper), follow the steps below and I promise that you will get there.

Step 1: track your meals today.

Starting today – right now, in fact – track what you eat and drink. Use a free food logging app or website that breaks down your macronutrients for you. Keep what you track as accurate and detailed as possible. Make sure that you input every meal, snack and beverage for the most accurate numbers.

A couple of tips for accuracy:

• If you know the brand of the food you are eating, use it.
• When possible, weigh your food so that you get used to grams and ounces as forms of measurement.
• Does your app have a bar code scanner? Use it! It’ll make logging more accurate and much quicker.

Step 2: copy and paste today’s meals into tomorrows diary.

Here is where you start to plan ahead.

Meal trackers like MyFitnessPal give you the ability to copy a previous days meals. Take everything that you entered today and copy it into tomorrow’s meal journal before tomorrow happens.

*I say it like that – before tomorrow happens – because this is a strategy that you can use over multiple days. In fact, it’s a good idea to do this multiple days until you get comfortable with portion sizes and what a full day of protein looks and feels like.

Step 3: increase protein servings until you hit your goal.

Going through each meal at a time, find your high protein foods and increase the serving size until your macronutrient goal is met. If you are having a hard time find those high protein foods or meeting that protein goal in your meal tracker, that probably means you aren’t eating enough of them. See below for a list of options to add to your diet.

Step 4: decrease the serving size of carbohydrates and fats until you reach your macro goal.

Once you’ve increased your protein portions enough that they meet your macronutrient needs, you need to dial back the other foods so that you are meeting your caloric needs. *Overall calories and protein intake are the most important factors here. Whether you have set carb and fat macro goals is up to you but the ratio of these two macros is far less important than calories and protein.

Tips:

• Decrease in small amounts from each meal so that you don’t feel deprived in any particular meal and so that you maintain a balance.
• Keep most of your carbs in the meals around your workout.
• Make sure that at least 20-25% of your calories are from fat. That is the minimum daily percentage recommended by The Institute of Medicine and the American Heart Association for general health.

Step 5: gather your supplies.

Now that you know what an ideal protein kind of day looks like specifically in your world, with the foods that you like to eat, make sure that you have ingredients on hand and a plan in place!

That means sketch out your day of meals so that you aren’t guessing tomorrow. Go to the grocery store to make sure you are fully stocked. Make your breakfast the night before. Pack a lunch. Pre-portion your snacks.

Don’t leave your fitness goals up to chance now that you know exactly what you need to do!

Bonus tips and resources

Here are some bonus resources and tips to answer your lingering questions (if you have more questions, you might be the right fit for Nutrition Coaching…let’s chat!).

Put these steps on repeat.

This is not a one-and-done kind of strategy (unless you’re truly okay eating the same thing every single day). Keep tracking “normal” eating days, copying them into tomorrow’s meal plan, increasing protein and leveling out your calories by adjusting carbs and fats. This takes time. It takes patience. But it works so stick with it.

Think of this as a skill. Like any skill – be it multiplication or driving a car – it’s foreign and uncomfortable the first time you do it. It’ll get easier, I promise. Eventually you will get a good feel for portion sizes and you won’t have to be so stringent.

What to do if you just can’t get those protein portions to hit your goal numbers.

If you try to increase your protein portions and are having a hard time hitting your numbers, you probably aren’t including enough lean protein foods in your meals. Use this list to bulk up your protein numbers easily:

Choose higher protein carbs and fats foods

A lot of my clients fill up before they can reach their protein goals with purely high protein foods. If this is the case for you, I highly recommend starting to swap in higher protein carbohydrates and fats for your current choices. For example…

Higher Protein Carbohydrate Options:

• Beans
• Quinoa
• Lentils
• Legumes

Higher Protein Fat Options:

• Nuts and seeds
• Nut and seed butters
• Cheese

If you follow these steps, and you allow yourself time to adjust, plan ahead and adapt, I promise you that this new skill will start to feel like the new norm. That said, if you do if yourself wanting some extra support please reach out! This is what I (love to) do and I work with women all over the country, helping them to build a healthy lifestyle and find real life nutrition strategies that feel sustainable and get real results!