Protein Mistakes Women Over 40 Make (And How to Fix Them)

Nikkiey: Peanut butter on toast for breakfast or having a handful of almonds as a snack: all of these count toward protein grams, yes, on a tracking app, but none of them are actually delivering the complete amino acid profile that triggers optimal muscle protein synthesis as an outcome. You can be hitting your protein number on paper and in a tracking app and still not get the muscle-building response that you want, because the sources are not complete. So, the fix here.

Hey, hey, hey. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show with your host, Nikkiey Stott. What's going on, my friends? Today I'm going to talk about my favorite macronutrient of all the macronutrients, one of the most important ones, the one that matters more than anything for women over 40. And then I'm going to give you five specific mistakes I see women making with it every single day.

You probably already know we're going to talk about protein. You've heard me talk about it before. You have probably heard it from every corner of the fitness space at this point. Eat more protein. Protein is important. Hit your protein goal. But here's the thing: most women over 40 are still not doing it right. Not because you aren't trying. You are one of the most informed generations of people trying to do their best, in my opinion. It's because nobody has ever specifically told you what you're getting wrong.

So today, we're going to fix that. I'm going to give you what I see as the five mistakes, clear explanations, and exactly what you can start doing differently tomorrow. Okay?

So let's get into the first mistake. This one's the most common one and the one with the biggest consequences. Most women over 40 are eating somewhere between 40 and 70 grams of protein per day. So you're not eating enough protein. We just need to do a full stop on this. Now, a lot of women don't even know how much protein they're eating in a day.

They have absolutely no clue. The first step, I would say, is: okay, track. Pay attention. 40 to 70 grams sounds like a reasonable amount to someone. It's not enough, though. Not even close. This is what happens: your body becomes less efficient at converting the protein that you eat into muscle tissue, which is called anabolic resistance. The muscle-building signal from protein gets blunted in this process. And this becomes more apparent as you continue to get older, which means that you need more protein to get the same muscle-preserving response that you would have gotten 10 years ago eating less.

And this research is so consistent. Women over 40 who are strength training and focused on body composition need somewhere between 1 gram to 1.2, sometimes even 1.3 grams per pound of body weight per day. You've heard me, and you might say, "Well, Nikkiey, I heard you say 0.8 to 1 before." Yeah, that's for the women who are on those medications, doing GLP-1s, just starting off, who need to be able to get more protein into their day and aren't really doing the strength training yet.

But people who are lifting, and also the women who are lifting and going through menopausal symptoms, hormonal symptoms, shifting in that regard, need this support on the back end. Most women that we work with in WarriorBabe discover they're eating half of that, some less. And that gap between what they are eating and what their body actually needs is doing direct damage to their muscle mass, their metabolism, and their ability to change their body composition, no matter how well anything else is dialed in.

So the fix is: how much protein are you even eating in a day? Because I've had conversations. I've done weekly trainings at this point, and I've talked to upwards of 20 women in the last couple of weeks just by doing these weekly trainings every single Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. And it's so funny, because there was one in particular, the one I had last week, who was like, "I'm doing everything right. I'm doing everything right. I'm working out. I'm eating healthy. Yada, yada, yada." And I'm like, how much do we know? Do we actually know how much we're eating on a daily basis?

What does eating healthy look like? And she was just like, "Well, yeah, I don't know." So to me that's like, okay, we're probably just eating that breakfast, that lunch, that dinner. And yeah, you're eating healthy. You're making healthy choices, sure. But are you still giving your body what it needs? The only way you're going to be able to know that is by the data, not by an emotional response of, "Yeah, I'm eating good. Yeah, I'm doing better." What is the data? And the data is downloading MyFitnessPal, tracking your intake for seven days, and seeing realistically where you're at.

And then make it a non-negotiable. If you're at 70 grams of protein, step one would be: let me get to 100. Step two would be: let me get to 120. Step three would be the goal of whatever 1 gram per pound of body weight is for you, or 1.2. That's the goal. So it's working up in those steps. That's mistake number one that I see: not eating enough, and more importantly, not eating enough protein. A full stop has to happen there.

If there's anything you pay attention to, pay attention to your protein intake.

The second mistake that I see is backloading all of your protein at dinner. I see this often, and it's one that most women never realize they're making. You eat light during the day. You have that coffee for breakfast. You have a salad for lunch. You do an avocado toast for breakfast. You have the oatmeal and the fruit. Then you have lunchtime, which is the chicken breast and the salad.

And then dinner is the first real meal, the protein-heavy one. You have chicken or fish or beef, and you have a good portion of it, a solid macro breakdown. And then you feel good about your protein for the day. That's the typical pattern I see and what I've heard. It's also what I lived 10 years ago, when I was starting my journey too, when I thought I was doing better. But here's the problem: your body can only use so much protein at one meal to trigger muscle protein synthesis.

That's the process of building and repairing muscle tissue. Roughly, the threshold is 30 to 40 grams per meal for most women. Eating 80 or 100 grams of protein at dinner does not produce a proportionally bigger muscle-building response for you. That excess gets used for energy or it's excreted. The muscle-building signal doesn't just poof into existence, like, "This is going to help me with the workout I did today."

You need to be divvying up and spreading your protein across every single meal. Going back to what I said a second ago: there are women eating maybe 120 grams of protein a day. They're eating 10 grams at breakfast, 20 at lunch, 90 at dinner. This is only triggering muscle protein synthesis once a day. A woman eating the same 120 grams spread across four meals at 30 is triggering it four times a day. You get what I'm saying? You tracking with me here? Same total protein intake, but a dramatically different muscle-building outcome.

So this is where I would say spread your protein across every single meal. Breakfast is 30 grams. Lunch is 30 grams. Dinner is 30 grams. A snack in between is 30 grams. And you're aiming for that gram amount at each meal, depending on whatever your overall target is. I talk about this on our weekly trainings, and so many women say, "Well, that seems like so much." And I say, that's because you probably haven't actually seen what that looks like in a day for you. When you see how much it actually is in a day for you, it's really not that much food.

There's an Instagram reel I posted last week where I'm showing you what 11 ounces of protein looks like, which is 100 grams of protein. And it's really not that much food. Just think about divvying up that 100 grams of chicken into four meals throughout the day. It's really not that much food. And this is what I would also lean into: you don't know what you don't know yet. So just show yourself what that actually looks like, and your mind will be expanded in that realm.

So build your day around your protein distribution. You have the protein total. Divvy it up into four meals. Take whatever your protein target is and divide it by four or five meals in a day. That's the easiest way of looking at it: okay, then I need 30 to 35 grams of protein in each meal. This is an absolute game changer. Okay?

Hey, while you're listening, if you're getting value from this episode, take a moment to tap that review button or share this podcast with a friend. It's a small gesture that goes a long way in helping more women find their way to feeling stronger and more confident in their skin.

I appreciate you so much for taking the time to support this show.

The third mistake is quieter than the other ones, but it's costing women results without them ever really knowing why. It's relying on incomplete protein sources. Not all protein is equal. Specifically, not all protein contains all nine essential amino acids that your body needs to trigger a full muscle protein synthesis response. Protein sources that contain all nine are called complete proteins. Sources missing one or more are called incomplete.

I've talked about this before. I think there's an entire podcast on complete and incomplete proteins. But to sum it up really quickly for this third mistake: complete proteins are primarily animal-based, like chicken, beef, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, whey protein, et cetera. They give your body the full set of muscle-building blocks that it needs. Incomplete proteins are primarily plant-based proteins like nuts, beans, nut butters, lentils, oats, and most plant protein powders.

They're valuable foods, but they're missing one or more of the essential amino acids your body needs for the muscle-building response. And there's a world I'm going to talk about in a second where you can make complete protein from plant-based protein sources. But this is where a lot of women run into trouble: peanut butter on toast for breakfast, a handful of almonds as a snack, or focusing primarily on oats and fruit as a morning meal. All of these count toward protein grams.

Yes, on a tracking app. But none of them are actually delivering the complete amino acid profile that triggers optimal muscle protein synthesis as an outcome. You can be hitting your protein number on paper and in a tracking app and still not get the muscle-building response you want, because the sources are not complete. So the fix here: I actually have a few. If you are primarily plant-based, this is where you've got to be more intentional with your intake. You can put two incomplete protein sources together and they will make a complete protein source.

So you could put nuts and oatmeal together and they'll make a complete protein source. You can add two of those together and they will give you a complete protein. And my second fix would be making sure you're anchoring every meal around a complete protein source: eggs, chicken, fish, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, lean beef, whey. Focusing primarily on eating animal sources is going to be more of a positive outcome for you. I'm not saying it can't be a positive outcome for anyone who's plant-based.

It just, again, means you have to be a little more intentional about your nutritional intake on a daily basis. Okay, so that's the third mistake.

The fourth mistake that I see is not accounting for leucine. This is one that not a lot of women talk about. It gets absolutely no airtime in the fitness space. And it's one of the most important amino acids in the entire muscle-building conversation.

Leucine is the specific amino acid most responsible for triggering muscle protein synthesis. Think of it as the key that starts the engine. Your body needs a minimum leucine threshold, roughly two to three grams per meal, to fully activate that muscle-building response. Below that threshold, the signal just gets weak. But above it, it's going to fire properly and produce that muscle protein synthesis outcome. Animal-based proteins are naturally high in leucine.

Whey protein is especially rich in it, which is one of the reasons whey has such a strong muscle-building response compared to other protein sources. Again, favorable. Animal-based proteins are high in this. This is where we need to get a little more intentional again if you are primarily eating plant-based. Plant proteins are significantly lower in leucine, which means that if you're getting most of your protein from plant sources,

even if you're hitting your target protein grams for the day, you may not be reaching the leucine threshold required to fully activate muscle protein synthesis at each meal. For women over 40, where the muscle-building signal is already being blunted by anabolic resistance, like I talked about, this matters even more. You need this signal to fire as cleanly as possible every time you eat protein. So if I could sum this up in one point:

as you get older, your body's ability to use protein as effectively as it did 10 years ago gets smaller, which makes it all the more important to be eating protein and, if you're making these mistakes, to fix them. The fix for this one is prioritizing leucine-rich protein sources: getting in whey, eggs, chicken, beef, fish, especially in your post-workout meal. If you're plant-based, though, this is where I would consider getting essential amino acids as a supplement

and drinking that throughout the day, because it's going to help make sure you're still firing off the leucine amount needed. So adding in a leucine supplement, or blending plant protein sources to increase the leucine content per meal, is really important. This is also why, when I talk about creatine with a lot of women who are plant-based, I say you aren't getting the natural creatine that you get from eating animal sources,

because anything that has a mom and a dad will be a natural creatine source. Plant-based proteins don't have that. Everyone, in my opinion, should be taking creatine, but that's all the more reason to take it, especially if you are plant-based. So that's the fourth one.

So far we've talked about not eating enough protein and putting a full stop to that. The second mistake is backloading all of your protein at dinner.

So make sure you are spreading your protein out through the day with 30 grams of protein per meal. The third mistake is relying on incomplete protein sources, so make sure you're getting complete protein sources and anchoring every meal around them, or blending two incomplete sources together to make a complete one. And the one we just talked about is paying attention to leucine and making sure you're getting enough leucine per meal.

The fifth one surprises a lot of women when I talk about it. It's one of the most common mistakes I see in the training and nutrition space. I get asked all the time, "Well, I just had surgery," or "I have an injury," or "I'm resting on this day. Should I reduce my protein intake?" Your muscles do not rebuild during your workout. They rebuild after. And even if you have an injury or you had surgery, protein helps with repairing wounds.

On rest days, during recovery, during sleep, you're rebuilding after your workout. The training creates the signal. The rebuilding happens in the 24 to 48 hours after. And the rebuilding process requires protein as the raw material to build the muscle. Which means your rest days are actually the days your body needs the most protein to do the work. So reducing your protein on the days you don't train, eating lighter because you weren't active,

is removing the material at the exact moment your body is trying to use it. Most women think of protein as just workout fuel. It's actually recovery fuel. And recovery happens on the days you rest. So the fix here is: your protein target does not change on rest days. You hit that same number every single day of the week. Even if it's post-surgery, even if you're recovering from an injury, you still keep that protein intake on a daily basis.

Training days, rest days, travel days, holidays, recovering from surgery, recovering from an injury: every day.

So, a quick recap of all five. Mistake number one: not eating enough. Focus on getting enough protein in your day, every day. Mistake number two: backloading at dinner. Spread your protein across every single meal. Mistake number three: relying on incomplete protein sources. Anchor every meal around a complete protein source, animal-based, with a full amino acid profile. Mistake number four: ignoring leucine.

Prioritizing leucine-rich sources is your fix. And mistake number five: reducing protein on rest days or when you've had surgery or have an injury. Your muscles are rebuilding on rest days, and protein is helping with wounds and injuries. So keep your protein the same every day of the week. Fix these five things around how you're consuming your protein, and your protein will finally start doing what it's supposed to do. It's going to help protect your muscle better. It's going to support your metabolism. It's going to produce the body composition change you've been working so hard for. I dive even deeper into macronutrients as a key to understanding why you may be stuck,

and ways to help you out of that, in a weekly training on Thursdays at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I'm putting that link in the description below. I highly recommend you go register and be at the next one. All right, I'll see you in the next podcast. Peace out.

Hey, really quick before you go, I have one small favor to ask. If this episode brought you value or sparked something in you, take just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review make all the difference in helping more women discover the tools they need to transform their fitness and their confidence.

It takes less than a minute, but it can change the path of someone else's journey. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate you so much.