I just started the Bridge v2 and I’m making a valiant effort to track my macros and at least get my protein. But It’s a tough, tough road. At age 50, female,and with about 30% bf, weighing in at 165lbs at a height of 5’ 6", I’m guessing my protein should be around 160g/day and my calories around 1700 (for a mild deficit). This is really difficult for me. It’s not that the calories go over, it’s that the protein and the calories are both under and I still end up sleepless from getting overheated at night from eating too much protein too close to bedtime.
The way I’ve been operating is 3 scoops of whey in a cocoa-powder smoothie for breakfast, then a serving or two of meat at (or for) lunch, and then dinner where I try to eat at least 2 servings of meat again. (A serving for me is around 4 or 5 ouces.) Looking back at the logs in my macro tracker, I consistently manage between 100 and 140g of protein a day. Do you think that’s enough? Is there something I’m missing? Some strategy I could be using to improve those numbers? Thank you for any advice you can offer. -Jess
Thanks for this and I hope you’re well. Yea I think 140-160g protein/day would be reasonable. I’d do it like this:
-2 scoops whey for breakfast (40-50g protein)
-6 oz lean protein lunch (40g protein)
-6 oz lean protein dinner (40g protein)
That’s 120g without any trace proteins from carb and fat sources, which probably gets you to 140g. A serving of greek yogurt between breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner would get you to 160 without blowing your fat.
I think the body temp and sleeplessness are unrelated to protein, though sure, some folks who eat prior to bed can have a difficult time falling asleep. This isn’t terribly reliable, however. It wouldn’t be at the top of my differential for you here.
Hi Doc, thanks for the response and I hope you’re well too. I have a follow up question about the refractory period. Today I had 7oz of pastrami (trimmed of visible fat) and about 3 ounces of kale/brown rice/seaweed/edmame bean salad for lunch at 1:45 with the idea of eating the Greek yogurt at 5 and dinner at 8. The thing is, it’s 4:30 and every time I burp I can taste pastrami so I’m pretty sure my refractory period is longer than 3 hrs. Maybe my digestion is slower than average or something about that meal (the fat content?) slowed down the transit.
This is definitely not the first time I felt like I still have food in my belly 3 hours after a meal, which is one of the main reason why getting 4 meals into a day is challenging. Should I try to get the total protein into 3 meals so I can spread them out farther?
Best we can tell is that the refractory period/muscle-full period has no connection to burps or fat content in meal and it is unlikely that your digestion is any slower than normal.