Didi (00:01.102)
Welcome back to another episode of the DCA podcast. Now I wanted to hit record on this because I've been talking to a lot of my one-to-one coaching clients about protein targets recently. Now in terms of nutrition analysis, working with metrics and body scans, I just wanted to give you an insight into what is gold standard for protein targets. Now everybody knows the importance of protein. I'm not here to teach you to suck eggs. What I'm here to do is introduce you to actually how do you as a woman
know how much protein you should be eating. Now what is gold standard is to actually understand how much muscle is currently on your body because that's the requirement, that is what we're working with. Now the generic kind of targets and in terms of just using body weight that is absolutely fine because not everybody has access to body composition scans but actually more more gyms now David Lloyd's etc have in body machines.
Now the beauty of this machine is it actually tells you your fat free mass. Now your fat free mass is the amount of weight on your body without your fat tissue. Now that's great because that is the number that we are going to use our protein target to calculate. That is the number that you're going to use and times it by 1.6 to 2.4 depending on how aggressive in terms of protein you kind of want to be and what your goal is. Now what this does
I'm going to use myself as an example as an avatar here. I'm a very petite individual. I just did a body scan that revealed I had 37, if I'm correct, kgs of fat free mass. 37 kilos of weight on my body that is the number to be used to calculate my protein requirements, not just my total body weight. Because let's face it, your body fat doesn't need the protein.
What does need protein on your body? Your muscle, your organs, your bones, those are the things that need your protein. Your body fat doesn't need it. So let's remove the weight of the body fat sitting on your body and use that as the calculation. That is gold standard, right? So many scans are going to give you that calculation and be able to work that out for you. So using me as a guinea pig, 37 times 1.6 to 2.4 is actually really interesting because if I was to use myself and just be living in this container of
Didi (02:25.152)
I need to eat over a hundred grams of protein, right? Say I'm trying to smash 120, maybe even 150 grams of protein, which many women now with the level of knowledge in the fitness industry really easily can do. Once you learn about it, you understand where protein is in food, you incorporate it into your meals, it becomes more of a habit. I actually see a lot of women really hitting some high targets, but my job as a professional and at my level of coaching is if they have body scans to take a look at that and go,
Babe, do know what? This is your goal. This is the amount of calories that we're trying to get you towards. You're using a lot of calories and a lot of energy on protein. That's great. But really, how much do we actually need? Me, as a petite individual, two grams per kg, which is a really good number for me to try and hit, is 77 grams of protein in a day. Not 100. And sure, if I spent every day hitting 100, there's going to be some benefits to that.
But in the context of my goal, which is always really important, you need to know what the goal is. So if my goal is to stay in a calorie deficit, to maintain the muscle mass that I currently have, and to lose body fat, then that's important information for me to have because if I try to hit 100 or 120 or anything over that, that's more calories coming into my body. And there is no moral judgment of the categories of macros, right?
Protein, fats and carbs, they're all the same, they are neutral. Fats aren't bad, carbs aren't bad, protein isn't the health halo, that's just diet culture and the fitness industry screaming at you to just shove a load of protein down your throat. But I want you to see in the context of me as a petite individual looking at a scan and using that scan to work out the calculation of my protein requirement and that number only being 77 grams in a day, which is actually
very achievable, but you can see how if I took that information and ran so far with it that I tried to eat 150 grams, which would be like four grams per kg of actual like fat free mass, that's an extraordinary amount. And actually at that point, I may start to see issues because that's a lot of protein. That's a lot of digestive discomfort probably for me to try and process.
Didi (04:48.994)
So I may see changes in bowel movements, I may see changes in the rest of my food intake because there's only so much food I can eat. And if all I'm eating is protein, then I'm not going to have enough space for carbs or fats. And I would need enough fiber to get that protein through my digestive tract. So actually, in the context of me looking at my scan, being like, well, I actually probably don't need as much protein as I think I do.
And I think a lot of us as women, especially if you're petite, live in that world. So if you have a scan available to you and you actually don't have a lot of muscle mass, and sure, that's something that we're going to try and improve, but I just want you to take the pressure away from yourself of this narrative of just constantly eat protein, protein, protein, protein. Sure, like that's just a marketing tactic. Every ingredient, everything in a supermarket now has protein on it as a word.
I love that, like it's great, it's more awareness for an important macro, but I really don't want that to affect people's beliefs and thoughts around the other macros because I need fats to produce hormones. Your hormones are made from fats. I need carbohydrates because my brain primarily uses glucose for energy. So what the heck am I going to be doing if all I eat is protein all day? Well, it's really not going to help me.
One, it's probably going to mess with my digestive system, potentially my appetite, because that's going to affect the amount of carbs and fiber that I'm getting with my blood sugar, and that's going to affect my blood sugar response. yeah, so I want to give comfort and compassion to anybody that feels that kind of pressure and pull from the fitness industry to just consume so much protein and just allow you to take the pressure off yourself.
to find out what will won how much protein do you actually need. And the range of that is going to be anywhere from 1.6 to 2.4 grams per kgs. And sure, if you don't have fat-free mass, you can just use your total body weight. But you can take it even a step further and just use fat-free mass, which is going to be a little bit more accurate for you personally. But again, if I was to try and hit two grams per kg of total body weight and not fat-free mass,
Didi (07:10.136)
then I would be like 120 grams of protein. Again, like that's not bad. It's not negative. There are pros and cons to that. That probably wouldn't be affecting me too much. But again, what do I personally as Dee Dee with my metrics, my body composition need? That is the beauty of bespoke coaching. And that is the beauty of having somebody to be able to tailor that to you. So yes, if you go kind of on Google or you're listening to your friends,
or somebody that is a coach and say, just try and hit a hundred grams of protein a day. That's great knowledge to start with. But if you're further along your journey and there's goals involved with that and your level of knowledge and awareness of nutrition and science is coming into play, you might just want to take it that extra notch up. You might want to find an in-body scan. You might want to understand what your protein requirements truly are. So I just really wanted to quickly hit record on this quick podcast to just to give you an insight into fat-free mass.
which is the weight of your body, just minus fat tissue, and to be able to use that information to calculate your protein requirements, not just your total body weight. So I know this is quite high level in terms of like knowledge and science and awareness. Maybe you don't need that information. I just wanted to record this for any coaches or people that are. Either you're working with clients and...
Our belief system, especially as women around protein and our food, it can be tricky and we can have a lot of thoughts. It can be very overwhelming. And if this helps anyone in terms of just being like, okay, maybe I'm okay to sit at 60 or 70 because actually I don't have that much muscle mass on my body. Sure, we're like not gonna under eat, but we're also not gonna overeat. there's a bell-shaped curve here, diminishing returns.
at some point it's going to start negatively impacting you when all you eat is protein and sure science and nutrition and what you might have learned about protein is it actually burns more calories through digestion so you're like great the more I eat the more calories I burn just trying to break that down well no that's not how it works because your body works with homeostasis your body is going to react to that you can't just bypass the fact that you need
Didi (09:29.422)
fibre to move it through your gut. The fact that everything else is required. You need fats, need carbohydrates, your body is highly tuned and intuitive. To go against that, you're going to start to see changes in your mood, your appetite, whatever. So sure, protein is, it does help with appetite control, but not if it's only all what you're eating. That's going to lead to a very restricted mentality.
And if you're trying to hit 150 grams of protein with nowhere near the amount of muscle mass that kind of really requires or needs that amount, then that's gonna lead to problems. So just to give you a bit of a perspective on taking a stock of what is on your plate, what are your habits around food, what are your beliefs and thoughts around food, and do we need to maybe reframe that and where are we at with that? So yeah.
That is your introduction in terms of how to, at a slightly more advanced level, work out protein targets for yourself or your clients using an InBody scan and fat free mass. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at dd at coachbydd.co.uk or at diddlesfrizzle on Instagram. I will see you in the next podcast episode and I hope you found this helpful. I always love to hear any feedback on any of these episodes. Let me know if you have any further questions or if you need any more clarity on how to work out.
protein targets. Okay, lots of love. See you next episode. Bye.
