Protein is one of the 3 key macro nutrients, serving as the building blocks of new muscle, bone, skin, etc. Your body also uses it for creating a variety of hormones and enzymes.

During digestion protein breaks down into different kinds of amino acids. They work together to build and repair every type of cell in your body, muscle, bone, skin, hair, blood, etc. There are 2 main types of amino acids.

• non essential amino acids are the amino acids that your body makes on it’s own.
• essential amino acids are the amino acids that you can only get from your diet because your body is incapable of creating them.

There are 3 essential amino acids that are used specifically to build and repair muscle, valine, leucine, and isoleucine, together known as  branch chain amino acids (BCAA).

Additional protein can be broken down and converted into glucose and stored or used for energy. This process is called glycogenesis, which happens when their is an excess amount of protein. The excess protein that doesn’t get converted gets excreted from the bod. 

Unlike carbs and fat, protein can be more concretely calculated according to your body composition. This is because protein is meant to be a building block, not a source of fuel. 

Your protein goal should be between 1-1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of lean mass. This means that if your lean mass 70kg, your protein goal should be at least 70 grams. 1kg is 2.2lbs, so if you’re measuring in pounds, multiply that number by 2.2.

The number you choose within that range should be determined by how often you’re training and how advanced you are. 

To simplify things your protein should make up anywhere from 15-20% of your daily calories.

Split between the 3 macros carbs, fat, and protein, here’s some examples of what that would look like.

• Carbs 65% | Fat 20% | Protein 15%
• Carbs 50% | Fat 30% | Protein 20%

This is what you can expect your macros to look like if you stick to a whole food plantbased diet.

Protein percentage can end up higher than fat if you include a protein smoothie.

1 gram of protein is 4 calories, so if your calorie goal is 2000, 20% would be 100 grams of protein.

There’s protein in every plantbased food you can eat. The only things that can keep you from reaching your protein requirement is under not eating enough, and not having a good balance between the food categories.

Here are the most protein dense foods.

• legumes especially tofu and tempeh
• grains like kamut, quinoa, and seitan
• nuts/seeds especially hemp seeds

Having an abundance of carbs along with protein significantly improves protein absorption and lowers the likelihood of protein getting converted into glucose. This drives greater training performance, recovery, and muscle growth.

A lack of carbs can cause your body to convert more protein into glucose in order to make for a lack in available glucose.

Protein supplements are a convenient way of adding more protein to your diet without adding a few hundred extra calories. This is useful for not going into too much of a calorie surplus. This helps in building and preserving muscle mass especially if you’re frequently engaging in intense resistance training.

In my opinion, the ideal type of protein supplement is one that is unflavored with little to no additives and is sourced from an easily digestible source like peas. The best one that I’ve found is Naked Pea Protein.