Muscle Up Your Menu
Here comes protein. Your essential secret weapon to flip the script on ageing.
It’s time for the showdown!
In this edition:
Here’s the truth according to the research and all those immersed in the science of healthy ageing…
If you make just ONE small change to your health in 2025, for the sake of turning ageing upside down, make it this:
Think protein first, every meal, every day.
Discover why this is so critical, plus grab the three free nifty tools you need to get you driving in the right direction. 🚗 🚗
For Road Trippers everywhere, this last week has been all about taking down a stalker. Public enemy number one. The worst kind. The silent type.
If you missed our first instalment, never fear, you’ve arrived at just the right time. Suffice to say, we’ve got this culprit’s measure, and for this Final Showdown, we’re about to make its life even harder with a bit of the old ‘jab, jab, cross’.
Before we let loose, let’s just for a minute, wallow in the badness of this culprit that goes by the name of ‘Sarcopenia’.
Cue the bad guy sting.
Mugshot of a stalker
If you haven't heard of sarcopenia, you're not alone. Even science took a while to catch up. Its first official 'mugshot' wasn't until 2016, when the World Health Organisation classified it as a muscle disease.
WHO’s warning was clear: sarcopenia wages a silent war, slowly but surely making us frail, fragile, feeble, and the other F word as well, if it really gets a hold of us.
The dirty work begins in our 30s and 40s. By 50, it's already stolen 3-8% of our muscle mass. But it’s post menopause when it really shows its teeth, robbing us of another 10-15% of muscle mass every decade—that’s twice what it takes from men our age.
And that's not all. As it steals our muscle mass, it unleashes a cocktail of other woes: fat gain, slowing metabolism and weakening bones.
You can almost hear the ‘Muahahaha’.
The good news…
Despite all this, let’s not despair.
The power is in your hands—literally—as you’ll soon find out.
And we also have a superhero on call—protein. Along with exercise and strength training, protein’s our muscle-building champion. Used at full strength (that's 80-100g daily), protein has the power to send sarcopenia packing.
If hitting 80-100g has you scratching your head, don’t worry. We've got that sorted too, with an easy way to measure it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say we’ve made getting the right dose of protein every day a no-brainer. The three nifty tools are already in your glovebox, ready to go.
So rev up the engine. We're taking the road straight out of Sarcopenia-ville, via the delicious route. Sarcopenia, eat our dust!
Check Out Your Three Protein-Boosting Tools
The Protein Cheat Sheet
Yes, this first tool may be familiar. An earlier version might even be on your fridge door. But this is now THE one—redesigned to work seamlessly with the two other new meal-planning tools we’ll meet in a moment. But first, let’s check how the Protein Cheat Sheet works and introduce a few changes.
Download your Protein Cheat Sheet here:
How to Use the Protein Cheat Sheet
As you can see, as with previous versions, the Protein Cheat Sheet breaks down common protein-rich foods into easy building blocks, with a brilliant twist: the size of your hand just happens to be a perfect guide to the protein needed for your body size. Your palm and thumb in particular are your personal measuring tools.
Here’s an overview of each of the protein building blocks we’ll be playing with:
25-30g protein
Here we have meat, fish, chicken and turkey in a portion to match your palm's size and thickness. For tofu, double the thickness. A small tin of fish and a serving of protein powder also sit here. For the latter, check packaging for 25g scoop size.10g protein
In this category we have half a can across the range of tinned beans and peas like chickpeas and lentils, as well as 1 cup of Greek yoghurt, or 1 cup of quinoa.5g protein
Use your thumb size as a guide to measure portions of seeds, nuts, peanut butter, or cheese. An egg, cup of milk, or ½ cup of edamame also gives you 5g of protein.
The Protein Cheat Sheet is brilliant for quick reference, but using it for meal planning can feel like a puzzle.
Clear some space on that fridge door. Here comes two new tools that make it easy to create protein-optimised meals, and get your protein-based meal planning done in minutes.
Your Easy Protein Meal Planner
This is like your GPS for protein navigation.
And let’s be clear: if you’re really serious about sidelining sarcopenia, protein-first planning like we have here is the ONLY way to go.
While our previous road maps got you started, this tool takes you the full journey, with protein-packed meal ideas all ready to go.
Download your Easy Protein Meal Planner here:
How to use your Easy Protein Meal Planner
This planner divides your day into Breakfast+Brunch, Lunch, and Dinner sections, with flexible combinations and classic pairings. You’ll also notive that we’ve done the calculations for you, too. It couldn’t be easier.
Once you make your choice, it’s just a matter of adding the other delicious extras like vegetables, grains, and of course marinades, dressings and sauces.
What do the black stars (★) mean?
If you sway towards plant-based eating, as I do, the options marked with a black star (★) are your godsend.
These are combinations that, just as with animal proteins, provide a complete protein (with all nine essential amino acids). Why is that important? It’s about the quality of the protein. A full protein is the equivalent of having all your engine parts working together, rather than running on only half your cylinders
A few notes here for clarity:
Lentils and Quinoa ,and Black Beans and Almonds. These are both examples of foods that, when combined in the same meal, provide a full protein with all nine essential amino acids the body needs.
Protein powder and milk. In this case it’s the protein powder that’s the secret. But it’s critical to choose the right one. Look for whey isolate, egg white, or casein as the first ingredient—these naturally contain all nine amino acids. Also check the packaging for a serving size of at least 20g protein per serving—this suggests a high-quality product.
Tofu and Edamame are like the gold standardsof plant-based protein, thanks to soy which packs all essential amino acids into every bite. Choosing quality products is important.When buying tofu, look for organic and non-GMO certification, and ingredients like ‘whole soy’, and either ‘calcium sulfate’ or ‘nigari’ (sometimes listed as "magnesium chloride"). Ingredients you can't pronounce or ones that sound like chemicals are a red flag—they may mean the tofu is heavily processed.
Meal plan like a pro
Add protein-rich snacks throughout the day to meet your 80-100g target.
Feel free to choose combinations from any of the sections. A lunch option could work just as well for dinner. A breakfast or brunch option may work just as well for lunch.
Doing two meals a day? Experts suggest loading up both ends of your day with extra-protein-rich meals. To ensure you hit your target also have protein-rich snacks between meals and consider increasing main meal portions.
To find recipes for any pairing, just pop the key ingredients into your favourite recipe website's search bar.
Protein Mix & Match Guide
Your third and final tool is for the culinary adventurers. This is what iI used myself to create the Protein Meal Planner. It was fun to use! In fact it felt like a bit of a protein playground with hundreds of combinations waiting to be discovered.
Sure, there’s more maths involved than the off-the-shelf Meal Planner options, but by working in blocks here, it’s not too hard to stack your way to your daily target.
Download your Protein Mix & Match Guide here:
How to use the Protein Mix & Match Guide
It couldn’t be more simple. Simply choose items from each protein category to build your meals. The aim, according to the experts, is 30g of protein, three times a day—ideally at every meal.
Have fun with it.
And by all means, if you discover a winning combination of proteins that really work for you in terms of flavour and convenience, make a note of it for next time. The same goes for recipes.
You'll quickly build a personal collection of go-to protein-packed meals that work for you.
But wait, there’s more!
Just to make you feel even better about kicking sarcopenia to the curb with your daily 80-100g protein target, here are just a few of the additional rewards to reap
Protein not only supports our our muscles, it’s also critical for functioning of systems across our body, including our brain, liver and immune system.
Taking down sarcopenia also helps stop that other nasty stalker: osteoporosis, a personal nemesis of mine. With about 30% of postmenopausal women having osteoporosis, and 1 in 2 breaking a bone after 50 because of it, that protein power is doing double duty.
And, as we shared in Part 1, don’t forget… all this, too, can be yours!
Ain’t life with protein so sweet?
A few notes
To build muscle after 50 years old, we need protein PLUS strength training. Neither works as well without the other. Use your new protein regime as motivation to get started.
For maximum muscle building, consume 30g of protein within 2 hours of your workout.
Increase protein gradually to avoid stomach upset while your gut adjusts.
When upping protein intake be sure to increase your water intake as well. Aim for at least 8-10 cups a day. This reduces stress as your kidneys and also supports better protein absorption and digestion.
If a protein-rich food is not on the Cheat Sheet, use your palm as a guide and count it as 25-30g.
Consult your healthcare provider before you make substantial changes to your diet.
Remember: no need for perfect precision—don’t panic if you don’t meet your target on any single day. More than anything it’s about being consistent.
A final word
These tools reduce so much time, fuss and effort, but this process of hitting a protein target can feel foreign at first.
Keep going! You may find, as I did, that it’s not long before something clicks and hitting your daily 80-100g becomes second nature. Suddenly, you know what hitting your protein target looks like, feels like, and tastes like.
When you reach that point be sure to remind yourself: this is not just one of the greatest investments you can make for your health, it’s also a revolution in terms of creating your vibrant future.
Here's to our muscle-packed, stalker-free joyspan!
This is so helpful! What brand of protein powder do you recommend?
Such a useful, information-packed post! Thank you, Brodee.