Protein. How much is enough?

So you’re thinking about what you eat. The dippy egg and a piece of toast in the morning. The cup of soup or half a sandwich at midday. The bit of meat and potatoes or veg at night. (Maybe you just skip supper in favor of popcorn while you’re watching Jeopardy?)

You’re not alone, but you’re also not alone in experiencing a very common malady called “protein deficit”.

You see, in order to keep your body tomorrow at the same strength it had today, you have to eat a certain amount of protein per day. Turns out that for every 2 pounds of you (your weight), you need to eat 1 gram of protein per day. So, if you weighed 140 lbs, you’d need to eat 70 grams of protein every day, just in order to keep the same strength tomorrow, that you had today. And that’s why you’re getting weaker, because I can almost guarantee you that you’re not getting sufficient protein from your diet if you’re over the age of 55.

It gets even tougher if you actually want to get stronger. Then, you don’t just need the 0.5gram of protein per pound of body weight, (when you just wanted to keep your body the same), but to get stronger, you’ll need 0.75 g of protein per pound of body weight. That same 140 lb person, now needs to eat 105 grams of protein per day in order to re-strengthen their body.

Can it be done? Sure it can.