Silly question - Do I need to eat more protein?

is your weight stable? Are you feeling generally healthy? Is this diet a radical change for you or is it a new regime? What's your 'normal' dinner consist of?

It all depends on what you are hoping to achieve because protein is generally for reparing muscle and aiding in the construction of new fibres. By the sounds of you're exercise plans you are aiming to improve or maintain your aerobic fitness levels so obviousy plenty of carbohydrates is important particularly starchy carbs. In terms of your protein intake you should aim to slightly increase your adily intake compared to the recomended amount because the muscles are under strain each day. Hope this helps!

Hi,

The World Health Organisation (Who) suggests that the average person consume .8g/kgBW of protein. So take your body weight in kg's and multiply by .8 and you have a baseline.

As rasban said carbs are crucial for energy and protein for repair generally speaking. So how much protein required for muscle repair for a sportspetson?? Much of the literature suggests between 1.2 to 1.7g/kg but anything above this may be excessive. If your doing a really hard period of training that may also include weights you might want to go a bit higher in the range and obviously a bit lower if not as intense.

One consideration is that sitting down and consuming all your protein at once is not advisable as protein is quite hard to digest and it also slows down the digestion of carbs which are required to replemish muscles after training. I advise my clients to spread throughout the day where possible and have a good carb:protein recovery plan in place for immediately after sessions. There is loads of research out supporting milk and other dairy products as an immediate recovery strategy as milk contains carbs, proteins and electrolytes! Not much good if your lactose intolerant though :-(

Hope this helps

Great answer, thanks Joe.