Last November, I broke my foot. I was at a coffee shop after a morning surf in San Diego where I live. My rubber flip flops twisted awkwardly as I stepped down some stairs, and I found myself face down on the pavement, a ribbon of pain running up my left foot.
Suddenly, I was immobilized and anticipating months on the couch. I had been surfing three or four mornings a week, paddling into the waves at sunrise at my local break, and going for regular runs. Now, I couldn’t even walk. I work from home, and my job is sedentary. It involves sitting in front of a computer, reading, thinking, and typing. Some days I didn’t even leave the house. When my foot finally healed months later, I was weak and easily worn out. I had somehow gained 10 pounds while sitting on my butt. To get back to my old self, I needed to do something the experts call “body recomposition,” replacing fat with muscle. Resistance training helps. To fuel that resistance training you need to eat protein. But how much?
When I started looking for answers to this question, I stumbled into America’s latest maxxing craze: “protein-maxxing,” a viral social media trend that involves making protein the priority at every meal and in every snack. It sounded like the kind of thing only a muscle-bound gym bro or manosphere meathead could love. But I quickly realized it had spread far beyond the confines of gym and fitness optimization culture. High-protein labels are plastered onto every other food package at the supermarket: You can buy not just high-protein snack bars, but high-protein pancake mix, high-protein ice cream, high-protein snack chips and high-protein pastries. Social media is awash with influencers aggressively hawking protein supplements: Even He-Man is doing it.
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The protein-maxxing hype is fueled in part by the federal government’s new controversial dietary guidelines for 2025 to 2030, which claim most American adults are getting way too little protein, and advise they consume 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.* That’s 50 percent to 100 percent higher than the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight to prevent deficiency, set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (The new MAHA guidelines also prioritize whole food animal proteins, including red meat, despite decades of research linking red meat to numerous severe health problems.)
I had assumed my diet was nearly impossible to improve upon. I eat almost exclusively whole foods, nothing fried or processed, mostly fruit and vegetables, plenty of nuts and beans, a little cheese. Aside from the occasional pepperoni, I eat no red meat, and when I do eat meat, it’s grilled seafood. “Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants,” as Michael Pollan put it. But I decided to run the numbers on my protein intake and realized that somehow, I had become a protein-minimalist. My immaculate food regimen was giving me on average only about half of the National Academies’ recommended dietary allowance. It seemed I might actually be deficient.
I still didn’t know where to draw the line between too little and too much. The National Academies of Science sets upper limits for many nutrients, but it’s never done so for protein. Some studies suggest that over the long term more than 2 grams per kilogram of body weight can lead to problems with digestion, as well as heart and kidney disease, particularly after a heart attack. But one large-scale study showed that high protein diets have no effect on the kidneys of women with normal kidney function. Still others say that it’s red meat, not other lean sources of protein, that actually causes problems. Instead of setting a cap, the National Academies established a range, advising that healthy adults get 10 percent to 35 percent of daily calories from protein.
But that didn’t clear up exactly how much I needed for my healing body. I turned to the American Medical Association, which recently hosted an AMA on the subject of protein-maxxing. They cited Thomas Holland, an internist and a physician scientist investigating the impact of lifestyle modifications on chronic diseases of aging at Rush University System for Health, who pointed out that if you aren’t resistance training, and your body isn’t using it, you might end up converting excess protein to fat. That sounded counter-productive, but because I was planning to lift weights regularly, it didn’t really seem to apply to me. On the Cleveland Clinic website, I read that for body recomposition, someone weighing 165 lbs might aim for 110 to 150 grams daily of protein from lean meat, fish, eggs, and Greek yogurt. That works out to about 1.5 to 2 grams per kilogram of body weight. Without consuming massive amounts of calories, or sprinkling protein powder into everything I ate, I didn’t see how I could possibly get that much protein into my diet.
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Still, the same range of numbers kept cropping up. Over at factcheck.org, Stuart Phillips, a professor who studies the effects of nutrition and exercise on skeletal muscle at McMaster University in Canada, reported that protein intakes of 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram a day are ideal for a wide swath of people in varying states of health, including “older adults, people engaged in regular resistance or endurance training, individuals recovering from illness or injury, and those intentionally losing weight.” I fell into several of these categories. I bought a giant tub of pea protein powder (watch out for lead) and prepared to max.
Over the past 3 weeks, I’ve radically changed my diet and my workout routine. I have a protein shake for breakfast each morning, with greek yogurt and an NSF certified protein powder. I’m eating eggs again, and adding slabs of grilled chicken breast and fish to my plates of vegetables. After getting some tips from a trainer, I’m hitting a gym near my house three times a week, sweating through Romanian split squats and Bulgarian deadlifts. I’m in a kind of fitness fugue. It’s hard to know if the surge of energy I feel is related to the protein I’m devouring, or something else, but it’s a welcome change.
In a couple of weeks, I will see a nutritionist, who may tell me I’ve gone overboard. And I won’t maintain this high-protein diet forever. But for now, there is something deeply satisfying about counting the grams I’m eating at each meal and watching the numbers creep up on the weights I’m able to lift each week. It gives me a sense of progress—and the illusion of control over my wayward flesh.
*For reference, 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight translates to between 74 and 98 grams of protein for a 135-lbs person and between 98 and 131 grams of protein for a 180-lbs person. A 3-ounce serving of chicken breast has 26 grams of protein; a 3-ounce serving of cooked salmon has 19 grams; a serving of Greek yogurt has about 17. For the average healthy adult, the USDA provides a nutrient calculator.
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Lead image: Yulia Furman / Adobe Stock