You know protein is still having a moment. And for good reason! Protein, along with strength training, supports your muscle-building goals. And, like I always say, if you have a fat-loss goal, you definitely have a muscle-building goal. Protein helps you feel fuller longer. And studies have found that you can “overeat” protein and not gain weight! You can’t say that about the other two macronutrients, fat and carbohydrates. You’re convinced protein is crucial to your health and fitness goals, especially if you’re a women over 40. Let’s make sure you’re not making these three protein mistakes.

First Protein Mistake: You’re not eating enough protein.

If you have a fat-loss goal, years of diet mentality might have you thinking you need to eat LESS to lose weight. But if you’re applying this thinking to protein, you’ll end up sabotaging yourself. Eating less protein will not help you to lose weight faster. In fact, it will do just the opposite. Your target for protein is one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight (or of ideal bodyweight if you have a big weight-loss goal) daily. My suggestion to hit this target is to have three meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and a protein smoothie every day. I have my smoothie post-workout with protein and creatine. But anytime of day works.

Second Protein Mistake: You’re not consistent with protein intake.

The second mistake I see is clients who can’t (or don’t) hit their protein target consistently every day. This is important because we don’t store protein like we do fat and carbs. So even if you overate protein yesterday, that won’t help you if you undereat protein today. One issue you might be having is some days you hit the target and some days you don’t. Either because life got busy or planning/prepping didn’t happen. The key here is to find strategies that work for your lifestyle. I suggest keeping these things on hand: protein shakes, protein bars, canned tuna, packs of salmon, pre-cooked frozen chicken breasts, and tempeh. The other issue with consistency is that some clients incorrectly believe they need more protein on workout days and less on other days. Not true! Protein doesn’t give you energy so it’s not doing anything magical on your workout days. Protein plays a role in satiety (you need this daily) and repair and recovery, which is happening the days following strength training. If you tend to have an extra serving of protein on training days, like a post workout smoothie, I suggest having that same smoothie every day.

Third Protein Mistake: You’re not eating enough protein in each meal.

To understand why this is a problem, you need to understand a little bit about Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS). In order to trigger MPS, you need to eat a full serving of protein (because that gives you the necessary 2-3g of the amino acid leucine). A full serving of animal protein is 30g and a full serving of plant protein is 40g. You could also supplement with leucine if you’re always falling short. I like the analogy that MPS is like a light switch, not a dimmer switch. It’s either turned on (with 2-3g of leucine) or it’s off. We can’t turn it on a little with a “high-protein” snack. And we can’t turn it on harder by eating twice more protein in one meal. MPS can be activated every 3-5 hours. So once you’ve eaten a meal with a full-serving a protein, eating snacks in between meals is just extra calories. It’s also important to know this if you tend to sip your protein smoothie all morning long or if you eat half your lunch at lunchtime and the other half later. These things may intuitively seem healthier, but again you’ll be sabotaging your muscle-building (and fat-loss) goals. If you follow my advice and have a full serving of protein four times daily, you’ll be setting yourself up for success!

Once you’re clear on the reasons why you’re eating protein and you understand a bit about how it works in your body, you’ll see why you want to avoid making these three protein mistakes.

This post contains affiliate links.