How Much Protein You Really Need to Build Muscle (Not What You Think) | Ep 398
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How much protein do you need to build and maintain muscle?
Do you need to hit the "leucine threshold" for muscle protein synthesis?
Is there an "anabolic window" after strength training?
Does per-meal distribution, timing, and amount matter?
Today we're revisiting the latest evidence on PROTEIN! Whether you're eating 250 grams daily or struggling to hit 100, this evidence-based breakdown will help you dial in your nutrition strategy for maximum muscle gains without overthinking macros or wasting money.
Episode Resources
Ready to hit your protein targets consistently without the guesswork? Join Physique University and get access to the Meal Planning Advisor GPT, a custom AI tool that builds flexible meal plans matching your exact macros, schedule, and food preferences. Use code FREEPLAN for a free custom nutrition plan: https://witsandweights.com/physique
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Timestamps
0:00 - What the research actually shows about protein intake
5:28 - Daily protein targets for muscle building
10:56 - Why more protein doesn't mean more muscle gains
14:40 - Per-meal protein distribution and the leucine threshold
21:06 - The anabolic window myth and when timing actually matters
24:40 - Protein quality - animal vs plant sources for strength training
28:17 - When high protein intake backfires (and steals your gains)
31:42 - Common protein mistakes lifters make (and easy fixes)
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Philip Pape: 0:00
How much protein do you actually need? You've seen everything from the bros saying you need three grams per pound, hundreds of grams of protein, to the minimalists who say just barely over the RDA. Meanwhile, some coach on Instagram is telling you you have to have exactly 30 grams of protein per meal, and anything more than that gets wasted. And my thought after all these years is the devils are in the details, but it's about nuance more than anything. And so today we're gonna go back to the research, the meta-analyses, the data across hundreds of studies to answer the questions that actually matter. How much protein per day, how much protein per meal, and does timing matters? Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna again cut through the noise and conflicting advice on something very important that we all care about, and that is protein intake for muscle building. I think this topic is overcomplicated. You have so many different voices from supplement companies to studies to Instagram social media influencers to science experts to bros, all telling you different things. And I think there's a lot of outdated myths as well about absorption and anabolic windows and all of these. So we're just gonna go back to what the totality of evidence actually shows. We're not gonna cherry pick anything, we're not gonna rely on bro science. We're gonna take decades of what we know from everything and simplify it to the targets you want to know. So let's start with why everyone is still confused about protein. If you've spent any time researching this topic, and many of you have, you listen to podcasts that you hear talk about it all the time. Here's yet another episode from Wits and Weights, you've probably encountered five different recommendations at any one time. And they all claim to be science-based and they all conflict. And that's as simple as it is as to why it's confusing, because you you hear me talk about a range of, say, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound. And I pretty much stick to that even to this day. We'll get into that. But I've seen much higher numbers, 1.2 to 1.4 in some cases, when you hear the you know, protein modified fast community or the rapid fat loss, or the, you know, if you're an athlete, you really need a lot more. I've seen a lot recommended because you're a lot older or you're a woman, so you need a lot more due to inefficiency. I've heard round numbers like, hey, you know, big dudes that are trying to lift, you gotta get at least three or four hundred grams of protein, right? And then on the other end, you have people coming out and saying, you know what, the more we see the research, the more we realize that the threshold is actually much less. And there's some truth to that as well. And then there's somewhere in between where people are arguing that you have to get down to is it about your ideal body weight, your current body weight, your lean body mass? Like, how do we calculate all this? And that's another point of confusion. And then there's the debate about how much do you eat per meal? Can you absorb more than a certain amount of protein at once? You know, 30 grams, 40 grams. You've heard about the 100 gram study where they looked at 100 grams, and that seemed to be fine in terms of muscle protein synthesis, and maybe it's superior. And do you need protein frequently throughout the day, or can you have it just once or twice? So I think a lot of this comes from every time a study comes out, we like moths to a flame, gravitate toward what it says and give it a lot of importance. And then when the next study comes out, we like to use it to say, oh, look, that thing was wrong. Here's the other thing, and it creates a nice hot take. There's also supplement companies involved here, and you know, who knows what to believe when it comes to that. I'm not the type to say, well, just because it's funded by a company means the research is flawed. But I also am not surprised if if you're trying to sell whey protein that you want people to eat as much whey protein as possible. Now, the good news is we have a lot of information on this. We have meta analyses which pool together hundreds of studies and data across different populations and trading statuses, ages. And that's the other thing is training status, right? Are we talking about people who lift and perform and athletes and those of us who listen to this show want to build muscle, or are we talking about the general sedentary population? And sometimes it actually doesn't matter. Believe it or not, sometimes there is a minimum, no matter what, that you're going to need to, for example, hold on to what little muscle you might have, even if you're not building it. But if you're listening to wits and weights, you care about building and maintaining muscle as effectively as you can. So let's go to the next section, which is the number that everyone wants to know total daily protein. For most people, lifting weights and trying to build or maintain muscle, the research consistently supports a range of about 0.7 to one grams of protein per pound of body weight. That's it. Super simple. Don't get hung up in, you know, is it 0.7 or 0.8? Is it target body weight, ideal body weight, lean mass? Just don't get hung up in that because the 0.701, first of all, it's a big range and your body weight's going to be changing. And secondly, it's it simplifies it so it's practical and is more than enough to get the job done. By the way, in metric, that's 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram. So if you weigh 150 pounds, it gives you a nice wide range of about 105 to 150 grams. If you weigh 175, that's 120 to 175. If you're a 200-pound person, so a lot of you guys out there, my height, who are like 5'9, 5'10, are kind of in that range, you know, 180, 200, 220 in that range. Then you're talking 140 to 200, right? Not 300 grams of protein. Now, some of you have heard that you need way more than that. And somehow, and there's good hot, there's a lot of hot takes today. We're like, well, I'm hearing all this stuff about lower protein ranges, but really, you know, serious lifters and athletes and guys who want to get big just need a ton, a lot more than that, right? You see this with the big jacked influencers, like you need at least 250 grams. You need 300 grams. So can you eat more protein? Sure. Will it hurt you? Probably not. Okay. However, if it starts to displace other important macros and nutrients and foods and makes it harder to be practical, that itself is a huge consideration when we think of adherence and the benefits of fats and carbs as well and other nutrients. Will having that much more protein lead to more muscle growth? No, and that's the point, is like you don't need it. But if you like more protein and that's a great way to eat for you, and you're getting enough of everything else, it's fine. So the protein's kind of an interesting one in that there is a minimum you want to hit on average, but there's not really a maximum, but you also don't need a lot more than a certain amount. And there are plenty of meta-analyses on these that show a plateauing of lean mass gains starting at around that 0.7 grams per pound. Now you're thinking, oh, 0.7, I thought you said 0.721. Well, that's the point. 0.71 starts to get diminishing returns, but still a worthwhile set of returns for most people if you're lifting weights. And then it really starts to drop off at one. Now, there are corner cases like rapid fat loss where you're not eating very much and you're trying to hold as much muscle as possible. There are cases to be made for going above one gram per pound, right? So, in a fat loss phase in general, we know that higher protein preserves muscle mass while in a deficit. So I'm perfectly okay saying, you know what, going up to 1.2 grams per pound might be a worthwhile experiment for you. It's worth trying that. Now, it's going to be hard to do because your fats and carbs are limited by the calories remaining and the carbs really take a hit. So for some people, they actually feel less energetic because of the fewer carbs. And for others, it helps them because of, for example, satiety, and they do see higher lean mass retention. If you're older, over 50, over 40, even, slightly higher protein can probably overcome some of your anabolic resistance. That actually is a thing where your body has a reduced sensitivity to the muscle building signals, and you're giving yourself an extra little advantage because you're just not as efficient. If you're a competitive athlete, you're training at very high volumes. Again, you might benefit from the upper end. These are the tails of the curve, right? When we talk about a normal curve in a study, these are the tails, the extreme ends of the curve. And I don't talk in extremes here on this show. I try to give a decent target for most people. And then if you've gotten there consistently as a foundation, well, now you're ready to push into other levels. Don't try to jump all the way. I doubt you're a competitive athlete if you're not already getting enough of the foundational protein, right? And I'll say most people who think that they're under-eating protein, they are able to get where they need to be once they start tracking, tracking accurately. That's really it. And you can track in a number of ways. You can track using a food logging app like Macrofactor or MyFitness Power, whatever. You can also do it just manually. You could do it by quantities and portions. If you are eating, let's say four meals a day, or let's say three meals plus a snack a day, and every single one of those has a decent amount of protein. You know, like a third of the plate is some sort of lean protein, animal product, dairy, like yogurt, cottage cheese. If you're eating plant-based protein, you're gonna need more quantities to get that, right? Like an oatmeal or a quinoa or something like that. Obviously, protein shakes, you know pretty much exactly what you're getting. Then you, then you know where you're at and you know where you need to be. And that's really the first step for many of us, just to have that awareness. Again, even if it's just visual quantities and portions. And I think people eating a lot of protein who just love to eat a ton of meat. I know ranchers who just get unlimited cow, you know, meat, and they're up in 200, 250, and they may not be aware how much they're eating. Same idea. It's like, hey, now we can balance it down and give us some rooms, more room for a little bit of those fats, but especially the carbs. The carbs, I know this episode's about protein, but they all work together. And to me, not having enough carbs can be its own major detriment for a lifter, especially in say fat loss when the calories are tight, but also even when muscle building, if you're jacking that protein up so high, and let's say you're eating 3,000 calories, guys, and yet you're only getting 120 grams of carbs, that's a huge missed opportunity to jack that up to 300 grams of carbs by just dropping some of that unnecessarily high protein. All right. And that's just a fact. I've seen it happen. I've talked to plenty of lifters, really good coaches in the space, and they all agree like you don't need that much protein. So 0.7 to 1 grams per pound still stands as a really great range. All right, next, let's talk about distribu distribution throughout the day, because this has evolved as well. The per meal protein, I think, does matter, and it maybe it matters even more than people think, but not the way that you think it matters. So there are still claims that you can only absorb so much protein at once, you know, and you'll hear numbers like 30 grams. And that's complete nonsense. Your body doesn't waste protein after some arbitrary threshold. If you eat a hundred grams of protein in one meal, your body is still going to use it and still stimulate muscle protein synthesis over a longer period after that meal because you have so much protein. So it doesn't magically disappear. You don't have to worry about that. But spreading protein across multiple meals has lots of other benefits that are worth exploring. Okay, this is where the nuance comes come in and the the details. So we know that every time you eat a protein-rich meal, you do spike muscle protein synthesis, and the signal peaks a few hours after eating and then gradually come back comes back down. So if you eat protein frequently enough throughout the day, you're creating multiple peaks. Whereas if you eat most of your protein in one or two massive meals, you get fewer peaks. But the difference between those two extremes isn't as big as we used to think. That's that's the thing I want to say is that I still believe the evidence tells us there's a slight advantage to having multiple meals from that perspective, spreading throughout the day for muscle protein synthesis, but it is small enough that practical considerations to me are more important, like your digestion, eating balanced meals, those other things. So I I wanted to mention that, yeah, there might be a slight advantage, but also there's things that offset it. There's trade-offs. And I would say if you had to pick a range just for practicality and even distribution, for most people, that's gonna be like 25 to 45 grams of protein. Like you don't want to have just five grams of protein in a meal unless you're you're just saying, look, I'm not even thinking of having protein in this meal. I'm having this meal because of carbs, or it's a post-meal workout without protein, whatever, something like that. But for the most part, if you're going to deliberately have protein, you know, aim to have some substantial amount, 20, 25, 30 grams in there. And then the upper limit doesn't really matter, right? It all depends on your size and your age and how much you're trying to eat a day. Us a petite female trying to eat 100 grams a day, you know, has a little more flexibility on that versus a man trying to get 200 grams a day, you know. So if you're like a 200-pound lifter, then if you're gonna have three to five meals, you do the math, you're gonna need like 30 to 40 five grams per meal on average. Keeping in mind that your dinner might have 70 grams, which lowers than the averages for the rest of the meals. But if you're only like 150 pounds, then that comes down to say 25 to 30 grams per meal. Now, the minimum is another point of conversation here, that 25 grams. There's still evidence that shows us leucine, leucine is one of the essential amino acids and one of the most important ones that triggers muscle protein synthesis, that you need two and a half to three grams of leucine per meal to maximize the signal. Again, it's a matter of degrees. It's not like a all or nothing. But again, just to be smart and practical about it and then stop thinking about it after that, it getting a minimum of, say, 25 total grams per meal includes roughly that two and a half to three grams of leucine, assuming it's mostly high-quality protein sources that have the leucine. Remember, protein has essential amino acids, but they don't always have all of them. Animal products do. Most plant products don't. They have to be combined, with some exceptions. I think quinoa might have them all. It's definitely not a deal breaker if you have a diverse diet. If you're vegan or vegetarian, it just makes a little harder. You have to be a little more intentional. That's really all it is. We don't want to fear monger on this stuff. So, eggs, dairy, beef, poultry, of course, whey protein is probably the highest quality, which is why I'm not against using whey as a little bit of supplementation in your diet. And they will give you that roughly 10% of the protein as leucine, which means at least 25 grams gets you at least two and a half grams of leucine. Does that make sense? So, again, plant proteins, you'd need more than that to hit the threshold. And so combining plant proteins and eating more high bigger portions of those is gonna work really well. And you just have to watch out for the carbs and fats that come along for the ride. Right? There are protein powders that are vegan, though, like pea and rice blend that will give you a similar advantage as whey. So, in practice, if you're eating, let's say three meals a day, just have protein in every meal. I mean, that's really the solution. I prefer you have just balanced, balanced meals and feedings. I get that you might want to have an afternoon snack with a couple of cups of berries, let's say. Okay, fine. I'm talking about ones that have substantive calories, make them balanced. And so let's say you have to hit 180 grams a day of protein, like I do, that's 60 grams per meal if I'm eating three meals. Now, I tend to eat four, if not five times a day, depending on the phase. So I only need, say, 40 to 50. Now, if I have a really big protein shake that right there, that's 60 grams of protein, all right. Well, that covers a good chunk of the protein right there. So just do the math. Avoid a pattern where you're like 10 grams at breakfast, 10, 20 grams at lunch, and then 130 grams at dinner, because you're also gonna have issues with digestion, practicality, meal planning, whatnot. But if it's a natural part of your pattern and it works for you, what matters is the total protein. Most of all, I just wanted to address the distribution and timing anyway. Now, we're talking of optimization here. There is one thing that I want to mention real quick, give a shout out to our sponsor, Cozy Earth, because when we talk about training, nutrition, protein, everything we do here when it comes to strength training and fat loss and muscle building depends on recovery. And we know that the foundation of recovery is sleep. And I am a huge fan of Cozy Earth's bamboo-derived sheets. I have a set of my own. I'm getting another because it actually annoys me when we have to wash them and I have to go back to the regular sheets. So because I really love these. They're super comfortable, they're temperature regulating, they wick away heat and moisture. I run hot at night. Lots of you guys might do that. Now that it's winter and it's cold, it actually still feels amazingly temperature regulating. 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Just go to wits and weights.com slash cozy earth and use my code wits and weights for 20% off. All right, so let's get back to protein. And we talked about total protein, we talked about distribution. Now let's talk about timing because I see a lot of anxiety from people who are asking me questions about protein. And some of it has to do with like, do I need to have protein right after my workout? When do I have protein, etc.? So the anabolic window, this is something that used to be talked about a lot more. I hear less and less of it. It is a theoretical window, like 15, 30 minutes after training, where you must consume protein or you're gonna lose all your gains. I want to be clear. It's almost nonsense. I'm gonna say it that way. It's an exaggeration, a significant exaggeration. Because yes, there is a period after training where your muscles are primed to respond to protein, but it's several hours, sometimes even longer than that, depending on when you ate before training. And total daily protein intake is what still matters absolutely the most, more than the distribution or the timing. But all of these things are part of your experiment. They're part of, hey, if you're not doing this, try it and see if it makes a difference for you. So if you train early in the morning, let's say 6 a.m. and you train fasted, but you eat at seven or eight, that's fine. I mean, you you'll get used to training fasted. For most people, I find they actually do better when they eat before they train, but not everybody. Some people are cool with this. If you train at noon and you eat lunch at one or two, again, that's fine. If you train in the evening and then you eat dinner within a couple hours, it's fine. Like that's it. Don't overthink it. The only scenario where I think post-workout timing becomes really important is that scenario I just mentioned where you train, you train fasted and you haven't had protein in like many, many, many hours. You actually will probably feel better if you have some protein a little bit sooner, but it doesn't have to be 30 minutes. I mean, within an hour or two, I'm just saying don't wait hours and hours and hours and hours because that could give you a suboptimal result in terms of your gym time, which is we're trying to maximize that. I think what matters more than post-workout timing is consistent protein intake throughout the day. Oh, sound familiar. It's the last thing we talked about. And there's research that compares like front loading your protein versus evenly distributing. And again, the even distribution shows slightly better protein synthesis, but it shouldn't override the practicality of it that we've already discussed. So that's really all I have to say is just if you train fasted, eat within a couple hours. If you've eaten protein before your workout, like I most I recommend to a lot of people a banana and a whey protein, you know, whey protein at least half an hour before you work out as a minimum. Because that way you get some fast digesting, easy on your stomach protein and carbs. And the banana is pretty low fiber and it has electrolytes. That's just one thought. Okay. Try that out. Then when you work out, yeah, you've got many hours before you have to eat after that. Most of us are gonna feel great, though, having some protein and carbs within an hour or two, anyway, to kind of refill that glycogen. But it's not like you're gonna immediately train again. So it's cool. It's cool, guys. Okay. All right. Now let's move to where your protein comes from and protein quality, because this is yet another area that is highly fear-mongered on social media. Protein quality. And usually it's people trying to sell you something that is, in their mind, in opinion, higher quality. And this could be a supplement company that says, oh, we have clean ingredients. And I get it. Look, if you if you formulated something that you're really proud of, people find it delicious and it makes their body feel good. And they had trouble with other products that had things like additives, dyes, artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols, blah, blah, blah. And that's a selling point for you. I understand that. This is capitalism, as long as you're not lying, right? As long as you, you know, I get it. But oftentimes they stretch the truth a bit by suggesting that the other product is so far inferior because it doesn't have the same level of quality and therefore it can't help you with building muscle. Look, pretty much protein is protein, and I say it that way in the sense that the same source of protein. Like if two protein bars have whey protein, it's still whey protein, despite all the other ingredients around it, right? They're two different issues we're talking about. And I would say what makes something high quality in this context is just two things. Does it have the complete amino acid profile? So that would be an animal-based protein or a combination of plant-based proteins like pea and rice. And does it have reasonable leucine content, which is solved by what we just said? So they go hand in hand, right? Animal proteins, eggs, dairy, beef, poultry, fish, whey, they check the boxes easily. And plant proteins can totally build muscle, but many individual sources are a little bit lower in one or more of these essential amino acids. But it's a simple solution, just combine them throughout the day. And if you're if you are a vegetarian or vegan, I would hope that you have a thus have a very diverse diet. Now, I've known what I call dessert vegetarians who don't even eat vegetables and eat a lot of like processed foods. I'm not talking to those people. That that's a problem for omnivores and vegans and vegetarians, right? So I'm talking about if you eat whole foods, you have a diverse diet, you have enough foods in there to cover all your bases. For people who don't eat meat or animal products, that's rice and beans, soy and grains, peas and hemp, more total protein from plant sources to compensate, things like that. It's not a big deal. I would so if you're vegan or vegetarian, in other words, I would go back to my first topic today and shoot more for the higher grams per pound just to cover your bases. And also if you're over 40, when it comes to protein quality, again, is it more important? It's only important from a sense of are you able to absorb enough of what you need? And so I always like pushing it a little bit higher, just a little bit, you know, more on that 1.0 rather than the 0.7. If you want to push to 1.1, 1.2, perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. Okay. This is more optimization, not make or break. If you're in that range, you're good. Okay, the next topic is when does more protein become counterproductive? I alluded to this already, but I had a special topic on this because the idea is, okay, well, if protein is good, more protein is better, and even more is even better. Up to a point that's true. Past that point, you're gonna make your diet just less balanced and you're gonna make it less practical. And maybe it's gonna be more expensive too, because usually it costs more to have more protein in your diet. And so now you're displacing other nutrients, other macros, potentially wasting your money. And we mentioned how muscle protein synthesis plateaus around it starts plateauing at 0.7 grams per pound, and then going beyond one offers minimal additional benefit. So the point of revisiting this topic is simply if you want enough carbs for energy to keep your stress low, to help with your hormones, to help build muscle, to help preserve muscle, if you want enough fat for hormone support, for taste, you know, for having a delicious diet, then that's gonna be the offset to having so much protein in your diet. And I've definitely had clients who are big protein eaters and it was almost, you know, challenging their philosophy of existence to ask them to drop their protein a bit. But if you're listening and you're in that camp, the way I suggest doing it is actually a fairly, how do I put this? A fairly meaningful switch as an experiment. Meaning if you eat 250 grams of protein, drop it by like 40 grams a day, you know, to like 210 or even 200, and give all of that to carbs. Because remember, protein and carbs are the same energy density, whereas fat has higher energy density. So you can basically swap one for the other. So if you drop 50 grams of protein, you can increase 50 grams of carbs. See what that does for your biofeedback, for your hunger, your digestion, your energy and sleep, how you perform in the gym, all of those things and see, because you might be surprised. You might be like, whoa, I was actually missing carbs all this time. And I'm reassured that I don't even need that much protein. So this is my new balance. Pretty cool. So just a quick recap: take your body weight, multiply by 0.7, that's your minimum, and that's in pounds, guys, right? Or 1.6 if you're doing kilograms, and that's your minimum. And then you can kind of go up from there based on preference and balance. And push toward the higher end if you're a little bit older, push toward the higher end if you're definitely into performance and athleticism and lifting. Push a little higher if you're in fat loss. Definitely push higher if you're in a very aggressive fat loss phase. Stop stressing about the window, just eat within a couple hours after working out. Spread throughout the day because it's pretty much pretty practical and you will maximize muscle protein synthesis, but you don't have to have it at every meal. You don't have to spread it out. It just tends to be more practical. Focus on quality, and quality is simply diversity of your foods and enough of it. That's it. Pretty simple. So before we wrap up, I do have a few, I'll say myths or mistakes people make that I wanted to address based on your questions and comments to me over the past few years. So the first one is saving all your protein for dinner. If you're eating low-protein breakfast and lunch and trying to have all this at dinner, I'm not saying it's bad to do that. What I'm saying is you end up getting stressed because this is where I hear somebody say, I haven't hit my protein, but I'm almost at my calories. What do I do? Should I try to hit my protein and go over my calories? Or should I stay here and hit my calories? And I'm like, okay, the problem here isn't the answer to that question. The problem is that you got there in the first place. I don't really care about the answer to that question. I mean, usually I'll say, just hit your calories and be done with the day and take the loss and the next day preload your protein better. That's all. You know, spread it out. That's that's why you do that, because we don't want to try to get 100 grams at dinner. The next thing is that, you know, people dismiss plant proteins or it's really an afterthought. And we're finding more and more potential benefits to just having more plants in your diet in general. So, you know, not just fiber, but you know, polyphenols and compounds, vitamins, nutrients, so many reasons to have plants in your diet, you might as well bias that toward protein-containing plants. And so it behooves you to learn a little bit about which foods contain more protein than other foods. Like oats and quinoa come to mind as having more, you know, various uh grains, uh pasta products, cereal grains, are crazy high in protein as well, right? Like just bread. People are surprised how much protein is in bread if you have a sandwich. Obviously, you get the carbs along for the ride. People are like, well, that's processed foods. Look, it's a matter of degrees, okay? We talked about the anabolic window, so I'm not gonna hammer that home again. We talked about thinking more is always better. Okay, the next one I have is you know, ignoring overall calories, right? It's not just about protein. Yes, I think if you're not paying attention to anything right now and you start adding in protein to every meal because you're under-eating, that's a great first step. Then I would add protein in every meal as well. I mean, uh fiber in every meal. So once you got protein and fiber added to each meal, take this additive approach. You start to get in these really good foods for you on your plate. It starts to displace other things. But then at that point, you still might be overconsuming. Now, maybe you're underconsuming too, different issue. The point is there is an aspect of energy intake that has to be, you have to pay attention to. The good thing about protein is it's the most filling macro. It also burns the most calories being digested. So a lot of people when they add protein in, especially when they double or triple because they were far under consuming, they find that their hunger signals regulate better and they eat less, they eat fewer calories after all, even though they're eating more calories from protein, if that makes sense. So, just all together, if you start your day with protein. Your breakfast in a meaningful amount. That's where a lot of people don't even have that. That's your action for today is look at your breakfast. If you don't have at least 25 grams of protein, how can you change that? And that's kind of the momentum builder or the catalyst to get you going. So the last thing I'm going to close with here is really about meal planning in general, because hitting your protein targets consistently is about structuring day to day what you should eat. And that's all it is. So I have something called the Meal Planning Advisor GPT. It's a chat GPT, GPT that I created and I've trained it. It's inside Physique University. So anybody who's in there gets access to it. If you're not in Physique University, what are you waiting for? Join us, witsandwaits.com/slash physique. Use my special code for podcast listeners. It's FreePlan. And you can get the custom the free custom nutrition plan as well. But once you're in there, this is one of the many tools we give you. And what I love about this tool is I've trained it with our philosophy of flexible eating, with lots of stuff from my brain and from what the science has taught me that's super flexible and practical. So it's essentially a conversational way to say, okay, where do I start? I know I need to get more protein. Here are my macros, or here's what I'm trying to do, here's what I like and don't like, and it will prompt you for things like that. And here's your meal plan. Like here's what you here's a potential meal plan. And then you tell it what you like to eat, how much time you have, what your goals are, and it generates that for you, whether it's a single meal, the a daily meal plan, the weekly meal plan. It could give you a grocery list, all that fun stuff. This is one of the aspects of AI that I really love because it's information. I think information should be free. Now I'm telling you to join a paid program to get access to this. This is a GPT that I spent time and effort training, and I want to give that value to our clients and members. That's one of the reasons they join us. Obviously, you can go to AI and do this stuff yourself, but the Meal Planning Advisor GPT curates it all for you ahead of time. It's trained ahead of time, so it'll give you what I'll call the right answer instead of you having to chase down and play around with it. And of course, in physique university, you get all the tools, support, training templates, community support needed, and courses to help you lose fat and build muscle and get to your goal in a much more efficient way. Go to wittowace.com slash physique. Use my code FREEPLAN to get that custom nutrition plan. And I hope that answered all your questions about the big things in protein. If I didn't add answer a question you have about protein, it's probably because it doesn't matter. And I don't mean that to be a jerk. I mean that to take it off your mind, take it off your chest, and not even not even worry about it. But if you do have questions, you know how to reach me. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember that your body is capable of incredible things, but it needs the right fuel, the right type of fuel, the right stimulus over time. One of those is protein. This is Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
