Protein, you can’t live without it. And, you can’t thrive, recover, build muscle, or lose weight without enough protein. RDA for protein is .8 grams per kilogram of total body weight. Paleo guidelines are a little different, recommending .7 – 1.0 grams of protein per pound of LEAN body mass.
These calculations are confused when you take into account that a body on bed-rest, or recovering from strenuous exercise, surgery, or illness needs more protein in order to adequately repair damaged tissue, and build muscle.
I’ve had clients come to me with the impression that eating any meat at all was bad for them. They were confused, and almost convinced that their body didn’t need protein because the US My Plate guidelines say that a healthy diet should be based on grains. (as do many other “experts”). Animal products offer the most complete, most bio-available, and easiest to assimilate form of protein available. But, because of government guidelines for eating, and the politically correct push to move humans world-wide to a grain-based diet, the people coming to me really believed that it was wrong and bad for them to eat meat.
That’s not the case. The human body needs the protein from meat sources in order to grow, build muscle, maintain itself, and thrive. And THIS comes from a previous long-term vegetarian. I was vegetarian for Spiritual reasons for more than 10 years. I became steadily weaker, and steadily more overweight than I was when I was eating meat. It took a long time for me to realize that not eating meat was part of my health issues. So, I personally understand believing that meat is bad.
But, that’s wrong.
So, how do you know how much meat should you ACTUALLY eat?
Mark Sisson covers this in detail in today’s post at Mark’s Daily Apple.