Do you need ‘more’ protein?
- Karolina Manns
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
It pains me to hear all that noise. It’s so deafening that even the long-term whole-food plant-based eaters are having a moment of doubt – should I start eating cottage cheese?
The message about protein intake, especially around perimenopause, is relentless.
Women need to eat ‘more’ protein. But first of all, what is the baseline? More than what? What if they already eat a lot? Many women that I know do not count their macronutrient intake and a lot of these women wouldn’t even know how to. So how much is ‘more’? Do you just eat a tub of cottage cheese on top of your normal food intake and hope for the best?
The recommendation is that women in perimenopause should be eating more than in their reproductive years. But so many other considerations should also be taken into account for example their activity level, menstrual cycle status, age etc.
And probably for many women the statement of eating ‘more’ protein is true because a lot of us eat too little. To be honest, when I was a carnist I ate very little protein because I simply didn’t like the taste of meat (especially seafood). When I had an eating disorder (15 years of struggle) I ate even less.
So, there you go – I should have been eating way more, and I wasn’t even in perimenopause at the time.
But the problem is that we are looking at nutrition from the perspective of reductionism, which focuses on parts rather than the whole.
Because we prefer magic bullets, confusion abounds. And the confusion is so huge that some people eat protein to lose weight and some to gain weight!
We talk about eating more and more protein, like this is some holy grail, but nobody is saying, especially for those weight-concerned women, that any surplus of protein is not going to magically build more muscle but will simply be turned into fat. There is a max level at which point more protein does not mean more muscle, period.
We have this blind spot when it comes to protein which wouldn’t make sense with any other nutrient – for example, you know that green tea is good for you but too much concentrated green tea extract might destroy your liver. But no, the same logic doesn’t seem to apply to our beloved protein. Sigh.
You do NOT need ‘more’ protein, you need the right amount for your age and your activity level. Also, the timing of your intake is important too – for example: we potentially might need a touch more protein during the luteal phase due to the catabolic effects of progesterone (but this is such a detail that unless you are a top-level athlete with your personal nutritionist measuring every single bite you take, I wouldn’t obsess about it.)
There are a lot of other things to take into consideration but these need to be looked at on an individual level. We cannot just talk in absolutes.
Instead, we should be looking at the overall quality of the diet, not the individual components and the exact macronutrient combination.
Because if you only note how much protein you eat but don’t pay attention to anything else, no matter how much protein you consume – you won’t get all the nutrients needed.
I see all these people boasting about their meat consumption but I’m asking: where are the 30 plants per week alongside their meat?
Equally, if you eat a rubbish vegan diet consisting mostly of fries and crisps, as opposed to eating whole-foods – it won’t work. We need to look at the diet as a whole.
Reductionism is, by definition, not how nutrition works.
For example, the myth of ‘complete protein’ in plants.
In 1971 Frances Moore Lappé mistakenly promoted the idea of protein complementarity. She wrote that unlike animal proteins, plant proteins are incomplete and therefore need to be carefully combined at each meal to prevent deficiencies. However, in the later editions of her book (1985) Lappé retracted this statement and regretted that she created a myth. The truth is that you don’t have to combine them together at the same time, as long as you consume them at some point in the day. But by then this myth was so deeply ingrained in society, that even on my PT course in 2020 I was hearing about it. Funny that even a professional institution didn’t bother to fact check this statement.
As Mark Twain says: It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
So, let’s go back to the biology basics: we do not need proteins, we need amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). Therefore, if you eat a varied whole-food plant-based diet, with plenty of veg, fruit, whole-grains, legumes, nuts and seeds (at least 30 plants per week – I eat that amount usually per day) and enough calories, you will get your quota of amino acids.
Also, eating a variety of plants means that you get lots of different kinds of vitamins and minerals without really having to remember which veg gives what benefit. Check this article on how to go around prepping food this way.
We must stop looking at the individual nutrient parts and recognise the benefits of whole foods.
As Aristotle expressed over two millennia ago: “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
So yes, overall, there are some studies that say that active women in perimenopause onwards should be consuming higher doses of proteins after their training session to get the same anabolic response than they would in their reproductive years.
But again, it’s not that straightforward.
For example, older adults who live a sedentary lifestyle might be less sensitive to amino acids, therefore in the general population which is mostly sedentary there might be an even bigger need for more protein. (Might be as some studies didn’t yield any conclusive results.)
However, in older populations who are highly (resistance) trained – father time doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on the receptivity of protein feeding. When you look at Masters athletes their response to protein (anabolic response / muscle protein synthesis response) is very similar to younger people.
So, what might underlie this anabolic resistance in people in advanced age?
There are two tracks upon which that happens: age-related changes and lifestyle-related changes (sometimes it’s hard to separate the two).
Age-related changes would be compounded by sedentary lifestyle changes manifesting in a decrease in muscle protein synthesis response which is underlined by changes in endothelial function. In other words, along with age, the degradation of endothelial health results in reduced blood flow. Therefore, simply put: older people have a lesser ability to get nutrients (like amino acids) to the right location to trigger the muscle protein synthesis. When the vascular microstructures start to degrade then you have a lower delivery of amino acids to the target tissues, and this would lower the muscle protein synthesis to both protein feeding and resistance training.
Therefore, the amount of protein that someone needs to consume will depend not only on their sex, age and current activity levels but also on their history of training.
Therefore, once again, there are many things that need to be considered before we jump to a conclusion of what’s best for an individual and therefore it is impossible to make sweeping generalisations.
But if we really must talk about the general recommendations, here they are.
The recommended daily allowance (RDA) for protein is about 1 gram per kilogram of body weight.
To illustrate: I weigh 76kg therefore I should eat 76g of protein per day.
For active women aged 20-35, sports scientists suggest aiming for daily protein intake of 1.6-2.2g/kg/day.
For perimenopausal and menopausal women, daily protein needs increase to about 2-2.3g per kg of body weight.
To illustrate, I weigh 76kg therefore I should be eating between 152-174.8g of protein per day.
On a whole food plant-based diet, without even trying, I eat between 120-140g of protein per day.
Again, I’ve learned how to include grains, legumes, nuts and seeds and staples such as tempeh, seitan, tofu, quinoa, edamame beans, Puy lentils on an everyday basis, as staple food. More on this here.
When I tried to eat 170g and above of protein per day, I did not see any improvements in my performance and in fact I was putting on weight. But then again, it’s hard to pinpoint why that was. I suspect my programming was too robust and I was not recovering properly (again, another thing to consider – you see, it’s not that straightforward!). Plus, when you add more protein to your plate it probably means that you need to reduce something else, usually some crucial vegetables.
I’ve heard of a lot of women complaining of gastro intestinal (GI) track issues when suddenly ingesting more protein. Again, there could be a multitude of reasons behind it. My number one suspect is they are including more of the new protein sources suddenly, without gradually introducing them to your diet. No, I don’t think you should suddenly eat 400g of tofu per day if you have never eaten it on a regular basis. You wouldn’t do it with beans, would you?
Another culprit is often these ubiquitous protein powders, they often create GI havoc when ingested blended with fruit. Sometimes it’s the whey in them. Or sometimes you just need to take a bit more time to find the one that works for you.
Personally, if it comes to protein powders, I keep them in my cupboard for more of an emergency top-up when for some reason I hadn’t had a chance to food prep. Otherwise I can easily get 120-140g of protein per day on a home-cooked whole-food plant-based diet. They are also very calorie-dense without adding any other nutritional value, minus the protein of course, therefore, I really try to get my nutrients from whole-foods. But please, don’t let my personal preference dictate whether you choose them or not. As I said, there is a time and a space for everything.
For that reason, I’d think it’s safe to say that instead of obsessing about one macronutrient, look at nutrition from a “wholistic” point of view.
Make sure that you eat ‘enough’ protein which might mean taking stock for a couple of weeks to see where you’re at.
But most importantly, instead of obsessing about one nutrient, eat a variety of whole foods.
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