If you’re struggling with your nutrition, this post  will change the game for you. 

I’m fact, I guarantee that if you put this piece of advice into practice you will:

* Have less physical cravings.

* Stay full for longer

* Make better, more healthy food choices

* Get stronger

* Probably, as a result of eating more healthily, address your energy balance which will send you into a small calorie deficit and help you lose body fat.

Protein is the key to life.

I’m not a betting woman, but I would take any odds on the fact that most, if not all of you, are not eating enough protein.

If you don’t know why you should be eating protein, here’s why:

Protein helps you build muscle – and guess what, when you say you want to be “toned”, what you are actually saying is that you want your muscles to be visible. In order for them to be visible, they have to grow! If you want your muscles to grow,. you have to eat protein!

As I’ve just said above, protein keeps you full a long time which stops you getting hungry and resorting to eating crap when you’re not prepared

GO PRO: Protein is the most vital macro

Protein is the most thermogenic of foods. Every action of every cell in your body requires calories, this includes digesting your food. Protein needs more calories to digest it than any other food so you are actually burning more calories when you eat it. This is why people break out in a sweat when eating a lot of meat.

Protein helps you repair damaged muscles, so if you have strains, pulls, niggling problems, eating more protein could help your body fix the issue.

This week if you do change nothing else in your routine, I want you to make sure that you hit your protein targets.

What should my target be? 

Good question!

The best way to calculate it is to take your weight in KG and multiply it by 1.8 or 2 if you do a lot of strength training. That will give you the amount of protein in grammes that you should be consuming every day.

Example: If you weigh 70g: 70 x 1.8 = 126. Therefore, 126g of protein is the minimum you should be consuming daily.

If you don’t know your weight in kilogrammes, then just Google it  or you can divide your weight in pounds by 2.2 to convert it.

Here’s some ideas of how to get protein in.

Average tub of cottage cheese (300g) 36g
Chicken breast – 28g-30g
Turkey steak – 25kg
Tin of tuna 30g
Two rashers of back bacon 12g
Five Heck chicken sausages (they’re only thin) 32g
Sliced roast ham 100g – 23g
Sliced Roast beef 100g – 24g
Sliced roast turkey 100g – 29g
Sea bass fillet – 24g
Cod fillet – 15g
Fresh salmon fillet – 25g
100g smoked salmon – 24g
King prawns (100g) 23g
Eggs – one egg = 7g

One scoop of Protein Works vanilla velvet 360 protein – 23g (I have no issue with you using protein shakes, especially post-training, to increase your protein intake)

Obviously, there are lots of other sources of protein which I haven’t mentioned here. But I would recommend you download the free app myfitnesspal.com and input your protein every day. Even if you don’t fill in the rest of it, this will give you an idea whether you are eating enough. When you set it up, it will give you a guideline set of macros (fats, proteins and carbs) to follow. Ignore them and just focus on the protein.

Do this for two weeks, as closely as you possibly can and you will feel a difference in hunger levels, cravings levels and strength.

Do this to the letter attend your training sessions, lift the heaviest thing you can there and you 100 per cent will start to see a difference.