Protein: What is it Good For?

Unlike war, the answer is not “absolutely nothing.” Edwin Starr need not apply here.

So what is it good for? A lot, actually. 

Proteins act as building blocks, messengers, movers, assistants, and virtually anything else vital that you can think of in your body. For this article, we’re focusing specifically on how proteins matter for your muscles, and the food you eat, but remember that they’re used for far, far more than just that.

To start off, let’s delve into how protein and skeletal muscle are tied together. Literal body building, if you will.

Menopause Cluster Part 4: Protein Needs

Building Up: Muscle Protein Synthesis

Muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is pretty much what it sounds like: your body creating muscle. Simply put, everything in your body is made up of parts. Those parts are in turn made up of smaller parts, and so on. Your body is constantly building up and breaking down different parts of it on different levels, every moment you’re alive. 

First come amino acids (AAs). AAs are common, naturally occurring organic molecules. While there are hundreds of different AAs in nature, only 21 are used by the human body for its needs. The special feature of these molecules is that they can attach to each other like links in a chain. These chains can vary in both their length as well as the order the AAs are put in, leading to nearly endless possibilities. 

As these chains form, they fold on themselves over and over in specific ways based on the chain’s AA order. Once the chain is finished and folded up, it makes a 3D blob of sorts. That final blob is a protein. 

Due to the large number of possible AA combinations in a chain, there are tens of thousands of different possible proteins that a cell can make. Since each protein has different functions in the body, cells will send commands to make specific proteins depending on what’s needed. For our purposes here, we’re focusing on muscle proteins. These proteins connect and work together to form the tissues your muscles are made of.        

In very quick summary, amino acids -> proteins -> muscle tissue. That’s muscle protein synthesis.

Now, to get this whole process going, we need amino acids to work with in the first place. Our bodies can create most of the AAs that we need from pre-existing elements. Unfortunately, “most” is not the same as “all.” 9 of those 21 AAs cannot be synthesized by the human body, so we aren’t completely self-sustaining. For those other amino acids, we must get them from external sources. 

By external sources, I mean “other organisms.” Plants and other animals make their tissues from proteins as well. So, when you eat meat, fruits, vegetables, etc., your body is doing the previous section’s work in reverse: It digests tissues into proteins, then those proteins into amino acids. Their building blocks become our building blocks.

Speaking of eating…

Dietary Benefits

Muscle upkeep aside, protein is a crucial component of a successful diet approach. When compared to carbohydrate and fat, protein tends to be more satiating. This allows you to feel fuller for longer between meals. As you would expect, hunger management plays a massive role in dietary adherence. It’s hard enough to stay on track when battling things like cravings and temptations. If you’re feeling ravenous on top of that, well…self-discipline eventually has its limits. The more difficulty you can remove from the equation, the less painful the overall process tends to be.

Additionally, protein takes the most energy to digest. For your body to use food, it has to process it first. When your body breaks down the bonds in a macronutrient, it releases energy that can be used to power other processes in the body. However, breaking those bonds and converting things to a usable form also takes energy. You can think of it as investing a little energy to get a bunch more back. Nothing is for free, even in biochemistry. 

However, different macronutrients take different amounts of energy to process. Fats don’t break easily but require very little adjustment and are readily packaged in your body’s fat stores for later. Carbohydrates are easily broken down and often used immediately for quick energy but can also temporarily store in another form called glycogen. These features make them both efficient sources of energy for long- and short-term use, respectively.

Protein is different. Breaking apart those amino acid chains takes quite a bit of energy. It also doesn’t return nearly as much energy per gram as something like fat. Additionally, the body doesn’t really have an efficient way to store protein, so it can’t be saved away as a later energy source like fat, either. In a way, it has kind of the worst of both worlds as an energy source compared to fat and carbs: It can’t break down quickly, it doesn’t store well, and it doesn’t provide a ton of energy back.

This sounds bad on paper, but actually makes sense, and is even a blessing in disguise. As we covered, protein’s true value isn’t as an energy source. Instead, we use it for its base components to build structures and messengers in our body. Trying to rely on it as an energy source instead of carbs or fat is like using a hammer as a screwdriver. It can be done, but there are much more efficient options out there.

The blessing shines through when we talk about dieting. If you have a high protein intake, you’re forcing your body to burn more energy to digest your food. This effectively uses the energy inefficiency of protein to your advantage. That in of itself won’t usually be enough to create a calorie deficit, but it’ll go a long way toward it.  

Protein keeps you fuller longer, makes your dietary efforts more effective, and tends to be pretty tasty to boot. If that isn’t enough to make it a VIP here, I’m not sure what is.

Menopause Makes Protein Needs Matter More Than Ever

The unfortunate fact is as we get older, a lot of the mechanisms in our body start to become less efficient. We aren’t machines, and the wear and tear on our systems starts to accumulate. Menopause further complicates things by removing tools the body previously relied on. This affects both the body’s ability to gain muscle and lose fat efficiently. The pathways still work; they’re just much less efficient at what they do.

Take sarcopenia for example. Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle as we age. On its own, it is a significant medical consideration for all of us. However, menopause changes the body in ways that make it particularly vulnerable to sarcopenia. Estrogen has a huge role in several aspects of muscle growth and maintenance. When estrogen levels plummet, it becomes much harder to not only gain new muscle, but to even maintain what is there.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any dietary magic to undo the hormonal effects of menopause. Short of re-introducing estrogen to the body, things just aren’t going to work the same way they used to. What we can do, however, is ensure that the machinery is running as smoothly as it possibly can. A significant part of that is ensuring your body always has what it needs on hand. Time to eat more protein.

But how much more?

Protein Recommendations

The Sky’s the Limit

The simplest answer to “how much” is usually “more.” 

At the lower end, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for protein is set at about 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.8g/kg). For a 150 pound person, that would equate out to eating about 54 grams of protein daily. For most, this is a pretty easy target to clear with a few choice food options. For example, a single 4 ounce chicken breast has 25g of protein alone.

However, RDA requirements are meant to be a broad recommendation to the general public. There are other factors that influence protein needs, and they tend to drive protein needs higher, not lower. Things such as increased activity levels, routine resistance training, and caloric deficits all demand higher protein consumption to support them optimally. If there’s a greater need for muscle protein synthesis, dietary protein needs to increase to compensate.

Now, throw in that menopause makes muscle growth and maintenance more difficult as well. If your body can’t create muscle as efficiently as before, it needs more of its base components to keep up. When stacked with the above factors, it’s crucial to increase protein intake to keep everything going. The more you can devour, the better.

But are there side effects to eating too much protein? In most cases, no. Studies have looked at protein intakes as high as 2g/lb (4.4g/kg) bodyweight per day with no negative effects. The one caveat here is folks with pre-existing kidney disease. Depending on the circumstances, impaired renal function can warrant limiting dietary protein intake. For the majority of us, though, this is a non-issue.

I will also note that your body will never “waste” excess protein. While there is only so much protein that our skeletal muscle needs for its use, the rest of our body needs it as well. Your organs, connective tissues, and other bodily tissues also need protein for maintenance and function. Past that, like the other macronutrients, protein is also an energy source. So even if protein isn’t being used to build things, it can still help provide the energy to do so.   

Practical Recommendations

While saying “eat all the protein” is a good rule of thumb, I’d be remiss if I didn’t provide at least some sort of target to shoot for. Unfortunately, given how many different variables affect protein needs, making a catch all target is easier said than done. Just remember, since we’re assuming menopause plays a factor here, I’ll try to err on the side of caution and potentially overshoot requirements rather than fall short.

First, some baseline numbers. When dieting, a protein intake of about 1-1.4g/lb, or 2.3-31g/kg lean body mass (LBM) appears to be optimal. These values presume regular training or exercise, but I have faith in you that that’s precisely what you’re doing (or will be). These also assume you’re dieting, i.e. in a calorie deficit. If your goals involve caloric maintenance or surplus, your protein requirements will be lower.  

Regardless, we have 1.1-1.4g/lb LBM as a good enough starting point. Thus, if we want to also account for maintenance/gaining (lower protein requirements) and menopause (higher protein requirements), we can reasonably widen the wiggle room a bit more. Let’s keep it simple at about 1-1.5g/lb LBM (2.2-3.3g/kg).

Note how both the initial recommendation and this one scale off lean body mass. This is because your fat stores have very little physiological need for protein compared to the rest of your body. For accuracy, this is great. For number crunching, though, it tends to be less convenient than using bodyweight (BW). LBM calculations require estimating your body composition, BW does not. 

For convenience, I’ll convert this LBM recommendation to BW instead. Anecdotally, most women I’ve worked with tend to fall somewhere between 25 and 40% bodyfat when beginning a diet, so that’ll be the approximate range I’ll scale my suggestions to. Overall, this finally gives us some approximate ranges to shoot for depending on what your goals are (Table 1).

Goal	Protein Target (LBM)	Protein Target (BW)
Fat Loss (Calorie Deficit)	1.4-1.5g/lb (3.1-3.3g/kg)	0.8-1.1g/lb (1.8-2.4g/kg)
Maintenance (Caloric Maintenance)	1.1-1.2g/lb (2.4-2.6g/kg)	0.7-0.9g/lb (1.5-2g/kg)
Muscle Gain (Calorie Surplus)	1-1.1g/lb (2.2-2.4g/kg)	0.6-0.8g/lb (1.3-1.8g/kg)

So, for a 150 pound woman trying to lose fat, she would be aiming for approximately 120-165 grams of protein as a daily target. This is obviously a pretty wide range of values, and shoots pretty high on the upper end. 

However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First, these values are designed to err on the side of too much vs. too little. Since excess protein isn’t wasted, and protein has other dietary benefits, it’s preferable to overshoot one’s needs than to fall short. Additionally, this range is designed to encompass a wide variety of different body compositions. The leaner you are, the higher your protein requirements will be, and vice versa. Finally, remember that the goal is to optimize muscle gain and minimize muscle loss. Your muscles won’t suddenly waste away if you don’t meet these numbers. We’re simply trying to make things run as effectively as they can.

Conclusion

In a way, muscle gain is analogous to fat loss when talking about how it’s affected by menopause. Neither goal is impossible, but it’s undeniable that the process is much more difficult. The body simply becomes much less efficient at what it normally does. Fortunately, with a bit of adjustment, things can proceed along once more at a reasonable pace. 

The saving grace is the fundamentals that we’ve emphasized before still apply. These basics don’t change, even if the system itself does. Here, protein has always been a staple of any body composition goal. An adequate protein intake is the linchpin of the entire process. With menopause, that just becomes more apparent than ever. 

As a wise man once said, “When in doubt, eat more protein.” 

…I’m not sure any wise man actually said that. Nor is that a life changing adage. 

Still, though, keep it in mind. It’ll make things easier for you no matter your goals.