How Much Protein Should I Eat? The Protein Leverage Hypothesis
If you’ve done any amount of reading in the health world, you’re aware of how many conflicting opinions there are on any given topic. The question of how much protein we should consume is no exception
Hello, fasters and feasters. Today’s letter is all about the feast. After all, we fast so that we can feast. But it’s important that the feast doesn’t undo all that hard work we did fasting. I hope today’s info will equip you to make your feasts work for you and not against you. Food is a gift that is meant to satisfy and fuel us, not leave us with cravings, guilt, or feeling sluggish. My goal is that you will learn how to fast and feast in a way that gives you health and freedom.
Soon after my main hobby became reading about health, I realized I needed to develop principles to allow me to discern between vastly different opinions coming from what seemed like equally reliable experts.
One principle that has served me well is that I tend to trust theories based on experiential data over untested theories. This is how I navigate the widely different views of how much protein we should consume.
I listened to a podcast recently where the interviewer kept saying that the average person gets plenty of protein. He was basing this statement on a theoretical determination of how much protein the average person needs.
However, a family practice physician in Seattle, Dr. Ted Naiman, has experientially found that his patients gained huge benefits from doubling their protein consumption.
I tend to side with the physician who has his boots on the ground and has seen in real time the effects of his theories. The problem with scientists sitting in a lab and theoretically determining how much protein everyone needs is that this fails to take into account that the human body is incredibly complex.
Meet Dr. Ted Naiman
Although Dr. Naiman received a mainstream medical education which included little training in nutrition, he educated himself after medical school on the importance that diet plays in disease. He had many patients who were overweight and was concerned with how this was negatively affecting their health.
At first, he recommended that all of his overweight patients go on the keto diet. Keto can be distinguished from a basic a low-carb diet in that it emphasizes eating a high amount of dietary fat, often 75% calories from fat, 20% from protein, and 5% from carbs. Not every person who claims to eat keto follows these macros exactly, but that seems to be the general consensus.
Dr. Naiman found that many of his patients lost 10-15 lbs within the first few months on keto but then completely stopped losing weight. This didn’t just happen to a few of his patients, it happened to nearly all of them. Many of them needed to lose 50 or even 100 lbs, so plateauing after losing only 15 lbs was a problem.
Dr. Naiman began doing extensive research on the proper human diet, and he kept running across evidence that showed that if you fed any creature, whether human or lab rat, a diet high in carbs and fat (donuts, cookies, ice cream) you could easily make them fat. He then reasoned that protein was the leverage. If lowering the protein percentage in the diet could make people gain fat, could raising the protein make them lose fat? The research seemed to indicate this was the case.
He began recommending that his patients continue to eat very low carb but replace much of the fat they were consuming with protein. His patients began to see amazing results.
To be clear, Dr. Naiman is not afraid of fat, as many people in the ‘90s were. He does not believe that saturated fat causes heart disease and will clog your arteries. He simply sees value in replacing some dietary fat with protein.
Ted Naiman’s Protein Leverage Hypothesis
After studying the fat-to-protein ratio for many years, he came up with what he terms The Protein Leverage Hypothesis.
The Protein Leverage Hypothesis states that your body needs a certain amount of protein every day to maintain your structural needs and your appetite will signal you to continue eating until you’ve reached that protein threshold.
Protein is the building block that maintains skin, organs, and tissues. Even your bones are 50% protein. It is not primarily used for fuel, although it can be in a pinch.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you need 100 grams of protein per day. Let’s also assume that you already ate 40 grams earlier in the day so your body is still needing 60 grams. If you begin eating pizza, and each slice has 12 grams of protein, your body will signal you to eat 5 pieces of pizza to get to that 60 grams of protein. Only then will you feel full.
However, if you begin your meal by eating a chicken breast (43 g), or a steak (62 g), you may feel full immediately and not be able to take another bite.
Listening to Your Body
One thing I love about Dr. Naiman’s advice is that he encourages you to listen to your own satiety signals rather than having to weigh and measure out protein. Although it is helpful to have a rough idea of how much protein different foods have, no one wants to live their life long term having to measure out portions.
One thing Dr. Naiman points out in his book The P:E Diet (stands for The Protein to Energy Ratio Diet) is that it is almost impossible to overeat protein. Your body will tell you when you’re full and you won’t be able to take another bite.
However, when it comes to foods high in carbs and fat, you can’t listen to your body and it will be almost impossible to NOT overeat such foods.
Living It Out Himself
Just as I try to do, Dr. Naiman refused to give advice to others that he wasn’t taking himself. He began to dramatically increase his own protein intake and here were his results:
In the first photo, he is 35. In the second photo he is 50.
Meet Kathy
Kathy had been overweight her entire life, hitting 200 lbs at the age of 13. By her mid-thirties, she had diabetes and was morbidly obese. Then she became one of Dr. Naiman’s patients. She was able to lose some weight following his recommendations to do the high-fat version of the low-carb diet. However, after Kathy’s husband died, she regained all the weight she had initially lost.
In 2019, Kathy went back to Dr. Naiman. She was now in her mid-50s and was afraid it would be even harder to lose the weight than it had been the first time. However, Dr. Naiman was now recommending the high protein approach to his patients.
Kathy says:
I started eating higher protein in the summer of 2019. I lost more weight and I lost it much faster than I did before [on high-fat keto]. I finally achieved my goals of reversing obesity and obtaining a normal A1c below 5! And I could easily enjoy my eating plan, even during vacations and holidays.
Kathy eventually lost 130 lbs following the high protein, low carb approach.
“Combining higher protein with intermittent fasting worked like gangbusters.”
Here’s how Kathy describes her journey:
While I lost weight on the first leg of my low-carb journey, eventually I was eating too much fat and too little nutrition.
For example, I followed recipes that mixed sweeteners, cream cheese, chocolate, and other ingredients to create desserts. I dipped spicy pork rinds into sour cream.
Some people can eat these kinds of tasty treats, but I cannot. I ate too much of these, gained weight, but failed to recognize the problem. I believed the myth that protein “turns to sugar in the body” and causes weight gain. I thought targeting fat was what I was supposed to do. That was my biggest mistake.
When Dr. Naiman brought up higher protein to me, I felt he was all wrong, but I could see he was starting a protein movement in the low carb community and became curious about it.
I looked at his infographics (on Twitter and Instagram) and listened to interviews (Diet Doctor on YouTube is really great) explaining concepts like “protein is a building block” and not something the body utilizes to build fat stores. I learned how beneficial protein is for health and the reduction in appetite. I calculated that I was only eating half the protein he recommends.
Combining higher protein with intermittent fasting worked like gangbusters.
So, I doubled my protein intake. I stopped picking up the Costco-sized butter and half-and-half cream. Combining higher protein with intermittent fasting worked like gangbusters.
You can read more about Kathy’s story here.
Does Protein Get Converted Straight to Glucose?
You’ll notice above that Kathy mentions how she was initially wary of eating too much protein because of the body’s ability to convert protein to glucose. This is correct. The body can, in fact, convert protein to glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. This is what’s behind the standard keto advice to keep protein at a minimum.
But here’s what such advice fails to take into account: your body will only convert protein into glucose when it is under distress. Your body is smart and knows that protein is a valuable building block, so protein is not its first choice of fuel.
When you first start eating a low-carb diet and your cells are not adapted to burning fat for energy and your brain is not adapted to using ketones for fuel, your body may convert some protein to keep your glucose high because it’s used to having it high. But over time, this should drop off. Some people may need to keep protein slightly lower at first to force their bodies to learn to utilize fat for fuel. It all depends on how metabolically unhealthy you are. But this low-protein approach should not be necessary long term.
Another time when your body may convert protein to glucose is when you're stressed. This is because if you need to run for your life at top speed from a predator, glucose is your fuel of choice. When you’re under stress or didn’t get enough sleep, your body raises your glucose quite high. If you’re eating a low carb diet and stressed, your body will temporarily use protein to raise glucose. Stress causes your body not to “think” long term (we need this protein to build bones) but to “think” short term (extra glucose is needed for running.)
Here’s a case in point. My normal fasting glucose is between 75 and 80. One morning after I hadn’t slept well, my fasting glucose was surprisingly 102, which is technically diabetic. Since I don’t have that number all the time, I knew not to worry. (And this just goes to show that everyone should rely on an A1c and not just one fasting glucose reading at the doctor.) But the point here is that I had not eaten any extra carbs. But because of the stress of not sleeping well, my liver decided to take the protein it had on hand and convert it into glucose. But this is not something it normally does.
This also happened to me last week when we were in the middle of moving and I took my glucose after eating a cheeseburger with no bun. I had no fries, and no carbs, just a cheeseburger and water. But my 30-minute post-meal glucose went up to 120. Although this isn’t a high number in general, it’s ridiculously high for a low-carb meal. My glucose usually goes up 5 points, starting at 80 and then goes up to 85 after eating a meal like that. But because I was stressed out from moving, my body took that protein I ate and decided to turn some of it into glucose at the signal of my stress hormones.
I hope this illustrates to you why the question of how much protein to eat and what your body does with the protein is so complicated and so widely disputed.
But there is much evidence that even though your body can convert protein into glucose under special circumstances, its normal mode is to use protein for maintaining muscle and tissue. However, we need not argue this endlessly. You can test your own blood sugar 30 minutes after a high-protein meal. If you had close to zero carbs, it shouldn’t rise more than a few points. If it does, this means you have insulin resistance and need to do some fasting to train your body not to be so dependent on glucose. If you’re metabolically healthy, your body will have no reason to convert the protein to glucose and raise your blood sugar.
What I love about Eating a High Protein Diet
As I said above, food is meant to satisfy, not leave you with cravings. The high-protein approach means that you can eat intuitively without worrying about overindulging.
Isn’t it a beautiful thing to know that your body will not allow you to overeat on protein? I double dog dare you to eat 3 chicken breasts. I bet you can’t do it. But three donuts? No prob.
The high protein method is all about giving your body the building blocks it needs to make repairs and build muscle. The small amount of fat in the protein is more than enough to fuel most Americans’ sedentary lifestyles.
One Caveat
If you feel vaguely unsatisfied after eating a high-protein low-carb meal, you likely have reactive hypoglycemia which simply means your body puts out too much insulin in response to food. I wrote an entire post on this that you might want to read if you’re new. It’s entirely reversible, and it’s important to recognize that it does go away.
For more information on eating a high-protein diet, I really recommend The P:E Diet. Although the hardcover is $80 😱 since it’s full of color graphics, I bought the Kindle edition which is only $20, and it’s well worth it.
If you are skeptical of this whole high-protein world, you should examine the research because it’s pretty compelling. Dr. Naiman also has a ton of graphics from his book on Instagram and if you search for his name, you can pull up all his old posts.
Lastly, his YouTube videos are really helpful in explaining how the research points to the benefits of a high-protein diet, and he tells stories about how this helped so many of his patients. It’s very inspirational. After listening to him, I think you’ll likely feel less confused about who to believe when it comes to the low-carb “protein wars.”
Now go eat some yummy protein if you’re in your eating window. If you’re not, take some meat out of the fridge or freezer and begin marinating it for later.
Leslie Taylor
[This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not designed as a substitute for medical advice. Talk to your doctor before beginning any dietary changes, especially if you are on medications for diabetes. Fasting while taking certain medications such as Metformin and especially insulin can lead to dangerously low blood sugars. If your doctor does not support fasting, search for a physician who will support your fasting journey. Fasting is not recommended for those pregnant, breastfeeding, or for children and teens still growing and developing. For those with diabetes, personal fasting coaches are available through TheFastingMethod.com. I receive no compensation or ad revenue for anything in this newsletter including links to books, videos, websites, coaching services, podcasts, or supplements.]
So I've been counting my protein grams and like Mary said below, with OMAD, even though I'm a volume eater, it's still so hard to hit 110-120 grams which I think I need - I lift, I work out a lot every day - and I mean, I get close, sometimes to the mark and often to 90-95 but still. I break with protein always. I eat lean and mean and clean - eggs, chicken, smoked salmon, pork, shrimp, tuna, cottage cheese and G yoghurt full fat etc, we know the drill - and always at home and everything home made. And I add some collagen and protein powder to help along but STILL :)!!!
How can we get in enough protein though of doing more omad fasting or some adf??