4 Reasons Women Must Prioritize Protein

PSA: Women aren’t eating enough protein!

Most of the time, it’s because we don’t even realize that our daily nutrition choices aren’t satisfying our protein needs. We think that our chicken at dinner and hard boiled egg in the morning is enough, but as a women’s health coach, I’m here to tell you that it isn’t. We want to aim for at least 25-30 grams of protein at breakfast to start the day off on the right foot! 

Some protein-packed breakfast foods include: eggs, lean meats like turkey and/or chicken, or nuts and seeds (I love to make chia pudding), and whole milk dairy products like cottage cheese and greek yogurt if you can tolerate dairy. You can even add a scoop of a high quality collagen or other protein powder into your morning smoothie, coffee, warm lemon water, etc. for an extra boost.

Sometimes, dietary choices or restrictions may make it harder to incorporate, but protein-packed fish and plant-based options are excellent non-animal protein sources. Consider hemp hearts, tuna, salmon, nuts or lentils, for example! Whichever sources you prefer, I recommend most women get about 90-100 grams of protein each day (which is about 30 grams per meal) for maximum health benefits. 

Let me tell you why so that you can understand the importance! Protein is an extremely important part of our nutrition intake, and here are four reasons that prioritizing it will positively affect your health!

1) Hunger Satiation 

Adding enough protein to our meals ensures we feel full and satiated! We want to be eating three nutrient dense meals per day and the right amount of consistent protein allows us to go (ideally 3-4 hours) between meals without feeling hungry or irritable. If you find yourself hungry after an hour or two, one of the first things I have my health coaching clients do is increase their protein and they notice almost immediate results. (Tip: this also crowds out the refined sugars and extra processed carbohydrates that contribute to inflammation, low energy, sluggish metabolism, and more).

And if you’re looking for a simple way to add some more protein-packed goodness to your diet, check out my easy energy balls recipe.

2) ENERGY & METABOLISM

Eating a diet with enough protein can help boost metabolism by switching your body into fat burning mode (thanks to a bodily process called “thermogenesis”) and increases energy levels. It’s amazing how much better you can and will feel once you start adding more protein-rich foods into your diet! 

Specifically for women, protein also helps support our hormones, powering us through the fatigue and fogginess that can accompany our menstrual cycles as well as perimenopause and menopause. Additionally, as protein encourages lean muscle mass, and studies show that as we increase lean muscle mass, hormones naturally begin to balance out. 

If you’re wondering how protein plays a role in helping regulate our hormones, I created a Healthy Hormones Masterclass for Women that dives into it! It’s so important that we fully understand how to balance hormones, what hormonal imbalance can look and feel like, and the impact our choices have on our bodies (like not eating enough protein) — it’s what allows us to make informed decisions to feel our best every day.

When you’re ready to really understand your hormones and the life-changing practices you can start to support them, jump in!

3) Bone Health & Muscle Strength

Protein supports building lean muscle mass and improving bone health, which is so important for women, especially as we age! We want to maintain and support strong bones to protect us from the impacts of bone density loss and declining estrogen levels — we are particularly susceptible to weaker bones and osteoporosis as we age. 

And, our body can’t build or repair muscle if we’re protein deficient. So, support your weight training efforts, your muscle mass and overall strength!

4) Stabilizes Blood Sugar

Protein helps support balanced blood sugar by naturally working with the other food groups / items on your plate. For example, the carbs we eat turn into sugars (glucose), and without protein or fat to help stabilize your blood sugar, it will spike and crash, creating that roller coaster feeling of high energy followed by low where we then want to reach for more sugar to bring energy back up (so that we’d be able to run from that tiger if we had to). Protein takes longer to digest, helping your body slow down the absorption of glucose, providing slow, steady energy.

As a nationally certified women’s health & wellness coach and an award-winning board certified Registered Nurse, it is my honor to support you on your personal health journey! I know that I can get you to where you want to be because I’ve done it for myself and hundreds of other women. You just have to decide it’s time. I’m ready when you are!

And don’t forget to subscribe to Nursing Your Way to Wellness emails. You’ll not only get access to my Ultimate Self Care Starter Kit for free, but you’ll always stay in the loop with all things health & wellness, including my best advice, tips and tricks, recipes, programs, exclusive savings, and more!

References:

https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)66282-3/fulltext

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36235862/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539343/