episode 258: how and why you need to rethink protein

Protein has entered the backlash era.

Suddenly now everyone is hating on protein because it is EVERYWHERE.

Candy, chips, ice cream, water, even Starbucks.

It’s like if every single food doesn’t have protein in it, you’re doing it wrong. 

Not to mention, somehow we’re all supposed to know exactly how many grams we “need” every single day.

In this episode, I’m slowing the whole conversation way down. I’m sharing how my perspective has shifted over the last few years. And a simple way for you to start rethinking it too. 

I’m not telling you to stop caring about protein!  But I am telling you how to stop letting it run your life and make you feel like a failure. 

I’m talking about:

• Why chasing a protein goal is stressing you out more than helping you

• The difference between eating more protein and understanding how protein actually works for you

• A skill-based way to figure out how much you truly need — without tracking, copying, or forcing cottage cheese into everything

If you’re exhausted by protein math, TikTok advice, and feeling like you’re somehow still doing it wrong and never getting enough, this episode will feel like a breath of fresh air.

• transcript

  258

  [00:00:00] Hey friends. Welcome back to the First Diet Diaries episode of 2026. Of course, the very weird thing right now is that I'm recording this on December 22nd in 2025. I always say this, but there's like this weird time warp thing that happens with podcasts as the, as the recorder, right? As a person who does them, um, from when I record them to when they air.

  Knowing that I'm talking about something and you're not gonna hear it for one to two, in this case it's probably gonna be three weeks. Uh, but this is not a time sensitive topic, so it's all good. And, um, I'm not sure when this is gonna air. You may be listening to this January 5th. You may be listening to it January 12th or sometime after.

  We shall see. Uh, this is a topic I actually thought was really good as to kind of kick off 2026, and I'm gonna talk about protein, and I know you might roll your eyes because I know the vibe out there as people are sick of hearing about protein, which. I totally get, and also like, not [00:01:00] pisses me off 'cause like I get it, but it's like I've been talking about protein for so long, since before it was cool and now it's like oversaturated and it's, it's, it's, it's frustrating when that happens.

  'cause then people start to, I think, tune it out and then we start to like swing, the pendulum starts to swing either in the opposite direction or to some other extreme right. Now there's already like this shift in, into fiber fiber's. Super important, right? Is it like the be all, end all only thing you should be thinking about, just like as protein, the be all, end all.

  Like no, like none of it is, um, it's, it's incorporating all of these things in a way that feels doable. Not where you are having to like rework your life around getting 140 grams of protein a day. And I've been wanting to talk about this for a while. Um, I did an in-person workshop, it wasn't like early mid-October, and someone asked, one of her questions was, how much protein do I need to be eating?

  And I wanted to come back, not, not come back. I wanted to talk about this to kick off 2026, 'cause I wanted to give you. A different way of thinking about [00:02:00] this because my stance over the years that I have been coaching has changed and I think in the world we are in and all of the noise around protein and the obsession with cottage cheese and the obsession with protein, ice cream and putting protein in candy and water and literally and chips and like literally every fucking food that you can imagine people are putting protein in, which is ridiculous to be honest.

  Um. We need a different way of thinking about things. Not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of being able to do things for the long run and not just while it's the hot, new, cool thing all over TikTok. Um, and because it's now so buzzy because of GLP ones, um, and I literally, I saw an ad, or I was an ad, it was on, uh, my husband Danny watches CNBC all the time, and I happened to be in his office or he had it on the TV in the family room.

  Uh, on Fast Money or one of the shows, they were doing a segment on Chipotle's new line of like their, their protein menu. And I'm like, Chipotle has always been kind of like a restaurant or a quick service [00:03:00] place that has higher protein options. Like Ben goes there all the time and whenever he goes, he orders double chicken because for him a single spoonful of chicken is not really enough, nor is it for me.

  So getting high protein at Chipotle is like really pretty easy. And basically they're, they're creating this new menu, basically taking existing food items and reworking them into like new offerings to make it seem like it's new, even though it's not. And they're things you could have always been ordering but probably didn't realize existed, or you didn't think to.

  Put them in these combinations and they're talking about it as a menu for people who are on GLP ones, the people who are on GLP ones. The language around this like blew my mind and I, I wish I had it in front of me. And I'm on a little bit of tangent. A little bit of a tangent, but not really. The people who are on GLP ones are more conscious about portion sizes, about protein, and about eating fewer calories, and I'm like, only people on GLP ones can be conscious of those things.

  Like, and suddenly now. Because you're on a GLP one, you're more conscious of those things. Like that's really not actually [00:04:00] how it is working. Um, for some folks it is, but not for everyone. Um, being on a GLP one does not automatically make you conscious of those things. It like blunts your appetite and makes it easier to eat less.

  So yes, you are thinking about portion sizes differently. Um, I would argue that many people in GLP ones are not thinking at all about protein. Um. Or not about? Not about it in the way that they might need to be, but it was just, I'm a little bit of a tangent, but it was just fascinating to me that now restaurants are jumping on the bandwagon of GLP ones and creating kind of this whole new like market for people, um, when really they're humans just like the rest of us.

  And just because they're on this medication. Doesn't mean that they need, like special foods. They eat the, everyone eats the same foods. Um, they might, people who are on GLP ones may eat things in different portions, but people who are not on GLP ones, um, certain people could also benefit from eating foods in different portions.[00:05:00] 

  Um, I just thought I was like, it was like really caught me off guard and it seemed very like. There was a little bit of like superiority to it, like the messaging, and this is not, this is no shade to people on GLP ones, right? This was like, I think it was actually a Goldman Sachs statement about like their market research around Chipotle.

  Basically saying that people who are in GLP ones are like a little bit more like enlightened around what they need to be eating than like the rest of us PEs. And I'm like, that's fucking obnoxious. Um, anyway, I'm, I, this kind of fits because talking about protein is like such like a hot topic. I feel like it's become this charged thing where people are just like, I'm fucking over it.

  Don't talk to me about this. I don't wanna hear about this. Like, it's running my whole life. Sorry, I had to take a sip of my diet Coke. And I used to come at it from the stance of, oh yeah, you need to eat X number of grams a day. And at one point I used, um, a very specific and very, very simple mathematical formula, and I'm not even gonna share it here because I know you'll go and do the math and that's actually not what I want you to do.[00:06:00] 

  Um, and it would be a pretty large amount of protein. And the idea would be that like, this is where you need to be. Um, and there's like different, you know, different research and things that back that up. And there are still many people out there who will give you number recommendations and I'm not anti and number recommendation.

  But it becomes very arbitrary and telling someone they need to eat x grams of protein based on this little, um, calculation, um, doesn't take into account anything. It's, it's really no different than judging someone based on their BMI. Right? It's taking one piece of, um, quantitative data and using it to make decisions about everything.

  Without taking into account anyone's history, preferences, lifestyles, goals, um, schedules and families and work, and all of the things that make a human, human not just one number in isolation. And so I have really pulled back from that. I can't remember the last time I talked to a client and gave them a recommendation for protein in terms of grams.

  I, [00:07:00] it's been, honestly, it's been years at this point. Um, unless someone specifically asks. And then we'll kind of get into, well, what is the role? Why do you wanna know this? And how are you going to use this information? But what we will do is we will start from where you are at, right? So if your question is, how much protein do I need to be eating?

  I wanna know, well, how much protein are you currently eating? That's where we're starting. We're starting from where you are. 'cause where you wanna go and where you need to be and where you should be and all this, all this stuff, it doesn't really matter. What only matters is where you are right now. How much protein are you currently eating?

  Do you even know? How much protein you're currently eating. I would argue that a lot of you may not. Right, and that's not a judgment or a criticism. It's just a, just a statement of fact. Do you even know how much protein you're eating? Do you even know what pro, what foods have protein in them? What don't?

  Do you know what your efficient sources of protein are and your bonus sources of protein, right? Just for a quick. You know, ten second, uh, primer on that. Um, your efficient sources of protein are foods that are made up primarily of protein, which are gonna be most animal [00:08:00] proteins, uh, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, um, all fish including self shellfish, uh, tofu whey protein, and I might've forgotten a couple.

  Bonus proteins are foods that are made up primarily of carbs and or fats and have a little bit of protein in them. Things like, um, nuts, beans, quinoa, um, nut butters, um, did I say beans, um, cheese. Those are your bonus proteins, right? So, um, you are working towards a place of getting a lot of your protein from efficient sources of protein and then getting bonus protein from your bonus protein foods, which are giving you your carbs and your fats.

  So first off is you wanna start to wrap your brain around that concept, right? If you're work, if you're trying to get X number of hundred, you know, if someone's telling you, oh, you need 120 grams of protein a day, do you even know like where that's coming from or how to do that? If you don't, if you don't know what foods are giving you protein, um, and how much of those foods you're currently eating, trying to get to 120 grams of protein is gonna fucking ruin your life, which is probably why it feels the way it does.

  [00:09:00] This is why people are so stressed out about it, because we're approaching it in the totally wrong way. We're taking a number and we're going after a number without having any skills to understand where protein is coming from. Or equally as importantly, how do I feel when I eat different amounts of protein?

  What do I notice? What's working, what's not working for me? Right? So that really becomes step number two. So step number one is how much protein are you currently eating? And I'm not even so concerned about you knowing that in terms of the number of grams because. If your brain works that way and that, and you don't have a history of disordered eating, um, or if you do and you haven't gone through work to deal with that, um, and you're someone who has no issues with kind of like tracking numbers and having that data, then totally fine.

  But if you're someone who has, you know, history of tracking calories or macros in a disordered way, um, and tends to get obsessive around numbers. You know, knowing how many grams of protein you're eating a day is not necessarily inherently gonna be helpful for you. [00:10:00] There's many other ways to kind of work around that, but either way, you wanna have a sense of how much you're eating, right?

  And you can do that by knowing do I have an efficient source of protein at most meals or not? Or am I getting, or are my foods mostly made up of? Bonus proteins, which means carbs and fats, right? If you've got an efficient protein in each meal, you're getting a decent amount of protein. If you don't have an efficient protein at most meals, you're probably not quite getting enough protein, right?

  That's a pretty easy way to think about it. So, and then you wanna look at, well, how am I feeling, right? And maybe even I wanna back this up a little bit, is, well, why do you want to eat more protein? Do you even know? Why are you just doing it? Because that's what everyone's talking about, right? What about how you're currently eating is not working for you?

  Um, are you, are you constantly hungry? Are you constantly looking for snacks? Are you having a lot of craving cravings? Are you finding yourself, um, finding it hard to feel full after meals or finding yourself kind of unsatisfied? Are you experiencing something where you eat and then an hour later you're looking for food again?

  Right. [00:11:00] Those could all be, those could all be linked back to protein. They could also be linked back to many other things. You could be eating a lot of protein and still be dealing with some of those issues, right? Protein is not like a magic bullet that people think that it is. It is a big piece of the puzzle.

  It's not the only piece. And this is why, um, in within my coaching framework, creating your own way of eating and going through the step-by-step process to do that is hugely important because creating your own way of eating is what allows you to figure out how to bring in or how to, um, work with. All the components of your history, your lifestyle, your preferences, your goals, um, and that brings in the, the food, the nutritional piece, but it also brings in the behavioral piece, right?

  And your stress levels and your lifestyle and your schedules and all of those pieces that impact what you're eating. Um, so. Knowing how much protein you're currently eating by, by under having a concept of efficient and bonus proteins and getting a sense of how often you are pulling or eating foods from each of those two categories.[00:12:00] 

  And then notice knowing first again, why do I wanna eat more protein? Is it because I think it's gonna help me lose weight? Is it because my doctor told me to? Is it because I'm seeing it all over TikTok or literally all over every piece of media, social and otherwise? Um. Because that's not really a helpful reason.

  That's not a reason that's going to keep you with it long term because then you're just doing it. 'cause it's a trend. You have to know within you, within your body what's not working or um, what, what, how do I want to be taking care of myself? How, how is this playing a role in me taking in in my health?

  Right? Um, how is this linking back essentially? And you're gonna roll your eyes to my values. Right. How is this linking back to me? Not all the external noise are on protein, but me in my own body and my own life, and then starting to notice, right? What about the way I'm eating is working for me and what about the way that I'm eating is not working for me?

  And again, I met, I rattled off a couple of things around that, [00:13:00] which is, um, you know, am I constantly feeling hungry after meals? Am I constantly eating every 1, 2, 3 hours? Am I thinking about food a lot? Um, do I have a lot of CRA cravings? Um, do I do a lot of emotional eating? Um, am I eating and then, you know, looking for a snack an hour later.

  Um, all things like that. If you are noticing one or two or all of those things, or any, anything on the spectrum. Then something about how you're eating isn't working for you. Yes, it needs to be addressed. Could protein be part of that? Maybe? How are you gonna know? Well, you're gonna try some things. You're gonna experiment and you're gonna see if any of those, um, things that aren't working change for you.

  Right? So this is basically how, you know how much protein you need to be eating. Why do I wanna eat more protein? Just under having a concept of that. Having a sense of how much you're currently eating. And then paying attention. What's working, what's not working? Okay, then you're gonna change something, right?

  Let's say you're gonna choose to eat more protein at breakfast. You're gonna take your current protein source. If you have [00:14:00] an efficient protein source, maybe you're gonna bump it up a little bit. If you don't have an efficient protein source of breakfast, you're going to add one in, and then whatever's not working for you, you're gonna start to pay attention.

  What happens now that I've made this change? One change. You're not gonna go all in on a Monday and start saying, I'm having a chicken breast at every meal, or I'm having a protein shake, or I'm gonna, you know, start eating protein ice cream, or whatever it is. You're gonna make one change so that you can notice the outcome of that change.

  If you start making six changes, you're not gonna know what's what, not to mention. You won't be able to keep up with it. So make your change to breakfast and then do that. For one to two weeks and start to notice whatever the thing or things were that weren't working, are they any different? What do you notice as a result of adding in this extra protein at breakfast?

  Are they different? Are they not different? Are they a little bit different? Are they a lot different? And then this gives you information. If things are different, cool, you're onto something. Continue down that path. Do you wanna make a change now at another meal if they're not different? [00:15:00] Okay, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna try something else.

  This is how you figure it out. You pay attention to what you are experiencing in your own body as you play around with different sources of protein and different amounts of protein. And what will happen over time is you will create, you will figure out how much you need to eat through this iterative process, and you may at some point have a sense of how many grams it is.

  And you may not, one is not right or wrong. Um, if you are someone who strength trains, protein absolutely plays a role in that. If you notice that you are starting to like, plateau off in the gym, maybe you're not eating enough protein, maybe they, maybe that's something that's not working and you wanna start to bump up your protein and notice, oh, do things change for me in the gym?

  And again, like. If you want to assign numbers to things [00:16:00] you can, but for the vast, vast majority of people, that is only one piece of information and you need to have the qualitative piece, meaning what's working, what's not working? How do I feel when I do this? You need to have that alongside the numbers, right?

  So. Generally speaking, like a four ounce of lower fat efficient protein, like an animal protein, like any type of, like leaner meat is gonna be around 30, 25 to 30 grams of protein, right? A serving of Greek yogurt. You know, I'm gonna say like mid fat, meaning like, you know, not full fat, I guess, you know, sort of low fat, maybe four, five grams of fat per serving is gonna be around 16, 17 grams of protein a serving.

  Now I know this and I, there's many reasons why I know that, um, both personal and professional. Most people don't wanna carry that knowledge around in their brains, right? And that's fine, and you don't have to, because if you start to pay attention to how much you are eating of an [00:17:00] efficient protein and how you feel afterwards, you will start to know if this is enough or not enough.

  You will start to know if it impacts some of these behaviors and. In order to do that, you do need to put some structure to it, right? Um, the freebie that I have, food Mindset Makeover will help you do this, will help you start to put together the pieces because you journal your food for five to seven days and you're not journaling what you eat.

  You're also journaling all this qualitative stuff along with it. So how you feel so you can start to start to connect some dots. So yes, like. I'm not suggesting that you just kind of like do this by memory or kind of like do it ad hoc, like, oh yeah, I'm gonna like try this one thing and like sort of see how it goes.

  Like, yes, you are trying this one thing and seeing how it goes, but keeping track of it in some way is gonna be hugely helpful. Whether you do that through, you know, the, the food mindset makeover that I created, or you do it just in the notes section of your phone, or you create your own tracker somewhere in, in Google Sheets or you use an app.

  There's a million apps out there. There's many ways to do it, but you do wanna have a [00:18:00] way to look back on what you've eaten and how you felt so you can start to see some patterns. Um, you're just like collecting your own data, your own qualitative data on yourself. The reality is that this applies to everything related to food, but I am talking specific to protein.

  Because if you follow all and you follow all these people online that are telling you you need x grams, and they're showing you, this is what I eat in a day to hit 120 grams of protein, you watch what they're eating and if you just try to copy that, it's not gonna work. It may work for a short period of time.

  You may pick up like maybe one or two. Meal ideas or snacks or things that, um, that you're like, oh, I like this. But copycatting meal for meal day for day, what someone is doing to try and hit their grams of protein is not a long-term solution. It is not going to work. Um, because you don't know, first of all, you don't even know if that's real, but you know nothing about their life, their history, their preferences, their goals, their body, their health issues.

  You know, nothing. But you do know that about you, and when we are [00:19:00] so busy following and copying someone else just to try and hit a number, we lose all touch with what we are experiencing in our own bodies. And what you are feeling and experiencing in your own body is your greatest and most valuable source of information.

  There is no piece of information. There is no piece of research. There is no doctor, there is no coach, nutritionist, trainer, anyone out there who can give you more helpful information than what you can feel in your own body. And learning to pay attention to that in a structured way, and doing it bit by bit, changing one thing and knowing what you're paying attention to specifically is the single greatest skill that will transform your health, your wellness, your body.

  That's it. And so. This, this whole thing, this whole protein madness around, I have to eat 130 grams, 140 grams, 130, or whatever it is a day. And people going like hog wild to put [00:20:00] cottage cheese into anything. And everything is not like a year from now, two years from now, let's even go farther off five, 10 years from now, that's not gonna be a thing.

  And so if you haven't learned. How much you need for your body and how different amounts and different food sources impact you. You're gonna be screwed. You're gonna be back at square one, jumping on the next fad. And so I'm trying to prevent you, I'm trying to save you all that time, energy, and attention to have you help you figure it out.

  Now, and I, I wanted to talk through this because we're starting a new year, and so if you are someone who. Is into the new year thing. Awesome. Great. Lean into it and if you're someone who wants to make some changes, I wanted to offer up a one way to do that that's very different than everything else that you're hearing out there and probably than what you tried in the past, unless you've been listening to me for a long time.

  And I'll tell you, you can probably go back into my podcast and certainly into my content and find recommendations for grams of protein, a thousand percent. But any good coach will change [00:21:00] and evolve how they coach over time as they learn, as they work with more people, as they, um, do more research and learn from more research that's out there.

  Normal, right? If a, a doctor's practicing medicine the same way they were 30 years ago, it's like not really a great doctor. Um, some things, yes, but there's always new information and new ways of working and new research that comes out, and we need to be taking that into account. And my expertise as a coach has grown tremendously with.

  More and more women that I've worked with over time. Um, my own lived experience, what I have learned from doing my own continuing education and working with and learning from other coaches and reading research and the behavior change piece to this is tantamount to the protein piece of this. Meaning the amount of protein you eat is not more important.

  Then how you are making that happen. Because how you are making that happen is what's gonna deter, determine your longevity for that. And so if you're only able to eat [00:22:00] 120 grams of protein because you're shoving cottage cheese into everything and you're copying someone's meal plan, or you're co, you're asking chat GPT for a high protein per menopausal woman who can't lose belly fat.

  As soon as you aren't following that, or as soon as you aren't doing that, or as soon as that's not the latest trend, you're gonna have no idea what to do and you're gonna be so upset and frustrated that you are back at square one again. So going into 2026, maybe there's a consideration to think about this with a slightly different perspective of paying attention, much more to what is working for you.

  Grounding yourself to start and how much protein am I currently eating and what about that is and is not working. So that I even know, how do I know? Okay, great. Well, you're eating 120 grams of protein a day. Now what's different? What do you notice? What's happening? Is anything happening? Are lots of things happening?

  Is nothing happening? Do you even know? Um, these are all the questions [00:23:00] that are missing. There's a gaping hole out there in the way this is being talked about, and I am trying to fill it in. So that's really what I wanted to talk about today. Um. Reach out to me. If you need help with this. This is what we do in coaching.

  Is this still recording? Yeah, sorry. This is what we do in coaching. Um, every single client that I have worked with, we have worked through this. In some iteration, right? Everyone kind of comes in a different place. So it's a little, a little bit different per person, but figuring out not just protein, veggies and carbs and fats and sweets and, and, and alcohol and everything, all of it is creating your own way of eating.

  And protein is one part of that because if you're focused so much on protein to the exclusion of other foods, or you're become so obsessed with protein that now you're afraid to eat ice cream that doesn't have protein in it, right? This is, this is a problem, right? We've gotta [00:24:00] think about, yeah, protein matters.

  It matters a lot, but you have got to incorporate it in your life in a way that works with your life, that it's not at the exclusion of other foods, that it's working with you and for you, not against you. And there's a lot of behavior change skills that need to go along with that in order to happen. You cannot follow something, you cannot copy something in order to make this happen.

  It will not work. It's no different than any diet you've ever done. Even if you go in there and ask Chat GPT and tell them all about you and it creates something. And I'm gonna do a whole podcast about that 'cause I did it. I had gone into chat GPT and I've asked it for these things in a very personal way.

  And there are things that we can use chat, GGPT for that are super helpful. Um. But using it as your personal coach to help you tell you what to eat is not one of them. And I will talk about why that is. Um, and it's not because I'm a coach for a living, because I'm all for using AI in ways that like are actually helpful.

  So the big takeaway from this is that I want you to [00:25:00] have the support and the skills to figure out what works for you. How much protein do you need to eat, and how do you know when it's working and it's not working, and having a little bit of a, a methodology. And I'm actually gonna link an Instagram post I did a couple of months ago that gives you a little bit of a step-by-step process for this that I think will be kind of a helpful, um, add-on to this, this.

  Episode, which has now gotten way longer than I planned for it to be, um, to give you a little bit of a step-by-step process that reflects exactly what I've talked about here. So you're like, okay, well how do I go about doing that? Well, I'm going to, I'm gonna link that at that post. Bookmark it, save it, do it.

  DM me. I'm here for you. I'm here for help. Um, thanks for listening. I'll be back next week.