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Nutrition · The Other 95%
Real protein numbers for food you actually buy, what a portion looks like without a scale, what a runner needs that a lifter does not, and four things I genuinely cook on the days there is no time.
1.6–2.2g
Protein per kg,
if you train
1p
Cheapest protein
per gram in the UK
6–10g
Carbs per kg for
endurance training
0
Scales required
Before Any Of It
Not with a dramatic collapse. With a Tuesday.
There was the one with the shakes. The one where I weighed everything, including the oil in the pan. The one built entirely on chicken and broccoli, which I abandoned somewhere around day nine when I realised I was dreading my own dinner. Each of them worked, briefly, in the way that anything works when you are paying it enormous attention.
And each of them ended in exactly the same place: a week where a child was ill, or a shift ran over, or I simply had nothing left, and the plan required a version of me who had time and calm and a clean kitchen. A diet you cannot run during a bad week is not a diet. It is a holiday from your actual life, and you always come home.
So this page is not a plan in that sense. There is no phase one. It is the small number of things that survived every bad week I have had since — the numbers worth knowing, the portions you can judge with your hands, and four meals I can make while somebody is asking me where their PE kit is.
If you have failed at this before, I would like to say plainly: you did not lack discipline. You were handed a system that assumed a life you do not have. That is a design problem, not a character one.
Section 01
If you only change one thing, change this one. Not because protein is magic, but because it quietly solves three problems at once.
It keeps you full. Of fourteen controlled trials comparing a protein pre-load against other macronutrients, eleven found significantly higher fullness and the other three found no difference. None found protein less filling. Higher-protein meals reliably reduce how much people eat later — which means less white-knuckling at nine in the evening.
It costs energy to digest. Protein has by far the highest thermic effect of any macronutrient: 20 to 30% of its calories are used up processing it, against 5 to 10% for carbohydrate and 0 to 3% for fat. Eat 100 calories of protein and you keep roughly 75.
It protects muscle while you lose fat. This is the one that decides whether a fat-loss phase leaves you strong or simply smaller. It is also why protein goes up rather than down when you are eating less.
The target for anyone training regularly is 1.6 to 2.2g per kilogram of bodyweight per day. For a 65kg woman that is roughly 104 to 143g. The benefit plateaus around 1.6g — past that point, more protein stops adding anything.
Most people badly underestimate how much food a protein target represents. Here is the reality, in portions rather than laboratory measurements.
Protein In Food You Actually Buy
| Food | Realistic portion | Protein |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | 1 medium breast, 150g | 46g |
| Chicken thigh, boneless | 2 thighs, 150g | 38g |
| Tinned tuna, spring water | 1 tin drained, 110g | 28g |
| Salmon fillet | 1 fillet, 130g | 32g |
| Beef mince, 5% fat | 150g raw | 32g |
| Greek yoghurt, 0% | 1 large pot, 170g | 17g |
| Cottage cheese | Half a tub, 150g | 17g |
| Eggs | 2 medium | 13g |
| Whey protein | 1 scoop, 30g | 24g |
| Red lentils, cooked | 1 large serving, 200g | 18g |
| Firm tofu | Half a block, 150g | 20g |
| Baked beans | Half a tin, 200g | 10g |
| Semi-skimmed milk | 1 large glass, 300ml | 10g |
| Cheddar | A matchbox, 30g | 8g |
Portions are what people actually put on a plate, not neat 100g blocks. Values are approximate and vary by brand — check the label if precision matters to you.
Look at the pattern. Two palm-sized portions of meat or fish a day gets most people close on their own. Everything else — the yoghurt, the eggs, the milk in your tea, the beans — is topping up. If your day contains no obvious protein portion at all, no amount of careful snacking rescues it.
Section 02 · The Table Nobody Publishes
Every nutrition site tells you to eat more protein. Almost none of them acknowledge that protein is the most expensive thing in the trolley, or that the gap between the cheapest and most expensive sources is roughly thirtyfold.
Cost Per Gram Of Protein · UK Supermarkets
| Source | Roughly | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Dried lentils, beans, chickpeas | 1–2p | Cheapest by a distance |
| Cottage cheese, own brand | ~3p | Outstanding value |
| Tinned tuna, own brand | ~3p | Excellent |
| Eggs | 3–4p | Excellent |
| Chicken thighs | 3.5–4p | Very good |
| Chicken breast | 5–7p | Good, but you pay for it |
| Whey protein | 4–6p | Competitive, and convenient |
| Tinned beans, branded | up to 10p | You are paying for the tin |
| Protein bars | 15–30p | A confectionery product |
Approximate and dependent on where you shop and what is reduced. The ranking, however, is remarkably stable.
A twelve-pack of eggs for under two pounds delivers around 72g of protein. Bone-in chicken thighs are a fraction of the price of breast and taste considerably better. Dried lentils, bought in a bag and cooked at home, cost a small fraction of the same lentils in a tin.
And at the bottom: protein bars are confectionery with a marketing budget. There is nothing wrong with eating one. There is something wrong with treating one as a protein strategy when it costs ten times what an egg does for the same gram.
A PLAN THAT NEEDS A GOOD WEEK
IS NOT A PLAN.
IT IS A MOOD.
Build for the bad Tuesday. The good days look after themselves.
Section 03
I do both, in the same week, which took me an embarrassingly long time to eat properly for. The two sports fail in opposite directions, and the mistake is bringing one sport's habits to the other.
Running runs on carbohydrate. Endurance guidelines put intake as high as 6 to 10g per kilogram a day for serious training — and during long efforts, 30 to 60g an hour delays fatigue meaningfully. Endurance athletes still need real protein, around 1.8g per kg, but under-fuelling carbohydrate is what ends a long run badly.
Lifting runs on protein and recovery. The recommendation for strength training sits at roughly 1.4 to 2.4g per kg, spread across the day rather than loaded into one meal. Carbohydrate still matters — it fuels the session and refills the muscle — but nothing like the volumes an endurance week demands.
Same Person, Different Training Week
| Running-led week | Lifting-led week | |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | 1.6–1.8g per kg | 1.8–2.2g per kg |
| Carbohydrate | Higher — up to 6–10g per kg | Moderate, around training |
| Timing | Carbs before and during long runs | Protein spread across the day |
| The failure mode | Under-fuelling, hitting the wall | Under-eating protein, losing muscle |
| What suffers first | Energy and endurance | Strength and recovery |
Carbohydrate figures at the top of that range apply to serious endurance training and race preparation, not a three-times-a-week habit.
If you do both, as I do, the practical version is simple: hold protein high all week, and let carbohydrate follow the running. More on long-run days, less on the days you only lift. That is the entire adjustment, and it took me two years to arrive at something that plain.
Section 04
Weighing food works and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I am going to say that almost nobody sustains it, and that a method requiring no equipment and no app beats a precise method you abandon in March.
Portions Without A Scale
| Use this | For | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| Your palm | Meat, fish, eggs, tofu | 20–30g protein |
| Your cupped hand | Rice, pasta, potatoes, oats | 20–30g carbs |
| Your fist | Vegetables and salad | About a cupful |
| Your thumb | Oil, butter, nuts, cheese | 7–12g fat |
Your hands scale with your body, which is why this works across different people without any maths.
The structure for a meal: one to two palms of protein, one to two fists of vegetables, one to two cupped hands of carbohydrate, one to two thumbs of fat. Adjust the carbohydrate up on running days and down on the days you barely move. That is the whole system.
If you want one habit rather than a system: put a palm of protein on the plate first, then build the meal around it. Most people who miss their protein target are not making bad choices — they are assembling meals where protein was never invited.
Section 05
Not recipes in the photographed sense. These are the four things that survive a bad week in my house, and between them they cover breakfast, lunch, dinner and the hour after a run.
170g pot of 0% Greek yoghurt, a handful of frozen berries straight from the freezer, 30g oats, a thumb of peanut butter, and a scoop of whey if you have it. Stir, eat. No cooking, no washing up beyond a bowl, and it holds until lunch in a way that toast never has. On the mornings I run first, I make it the night before and it turns into overnight oats by itself.
Bone-in chicken thighs, new potatoes halved, whatever vegetables are going soft in the drawer, olive oil, salt, paprika, a lemon cut in half. Oven at 200°C for 40 minutes. One tray, one wash-up, and it feeds four for the price of a takeaway coffee each. The thighs are cheaper than breast, harder to overcook, and the children eat them without negotiation.
A tin of tuna, half a tin of butter beans rinsed, a handful of cherry tomatoes, olive oil, lemon, black pepper. Five minutes, no heat, made entirely from cupboard. This is the meal that exists specifically for the days the plan has already fallen over — and having one of these is worth more than any amount of meal prep you will not do.
Two eggs scrambled with a spoon of cottage cheese stirred through at the end — it sounds odd and it makes them extraordinarily creamy — on thick toast, with whatever else is around. Carbohydrate for the run you just did, protein for the legs, and it takes about six minutes including the toast.
Section 06 · Five Things Worth Knowing
This is the whole reason this page exists and the supplements page links to it. Every product on that page is the last five per cent. Protein powder is a convenience food that closes a gap, creatine is a fuel top-up, vitamin D corrects a genuine UK winter deficit. None of them substitute for a plate with protein on it, and anyone selling you one is selling you permission not to sort the plate.
Muscle is around 18% denser than fat, so replacing one with the other at the same bodyweight makes you physically smaller while the number refuses to move. This is why so many people quit at week six, convinced nothing is happening, when their clothes are already fitting differently. Photographs in the same light eight weeks apart tell you more than daily weighing ever will.
It is a different physiological state with a name — relative energy deficiency in sport. When energy availability drops too low, the body starts shutting down functions it considers optional: periods become irregular or stop, bone density falls, recovery collapses, mood flattens. If your periods change or you are constantly cold and exhausted, that is not discipline working. Take it to a GP.
Harder exercise genuinely does increase appetite in some people, and it is not a failure of willpower when a session leaves you ravenous. The answer is to plan for it — have the protein-heavy thing ready before you go out — rather than to train less usefully or to treat your own hunger as an enemy.
Every message aimed at women about food is about restriction, and almost none is about adequacy. But under-fuelled training does not produce a leaner body — it produces a tired one that adapts badly and gets injured. For most active women I know, the honest fix has been eating more protein and more food overall, not less.
The Bottom Line
Put a palm of protein on the plate first and build the meal round it. Aim for somewhere between 1.6 and 2.2g per kilogram across the day. Let carbohydrate follow your running — more on long days, less on the days you barely move. Judge portions with your hands and keep the scales in the cupboard.
Buy protein where it is cheap, because it is the most expensive thing in the trolley and the gap between the best and worst value is enormous. Eggs, thighs, tinned fish, cottage cheese, dried lentils. The cheapest protein in the country is not a compromise — it is just protein.
And keep two or three meals that require nothing of you. Not because they are optimal, but because the week will go wrong and the plan needs somewhere to land. Consistency in food is not built on your best days. It is built on whether the system still functions on your worst one.
Sources & Research
Jäger R et al. (2017). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise. JISSN, 14(20). PMC5477153.
Kerksick CM et al. (2018). ISSN exercise and sports nutrition review update: research and recommendations — carbohydrate intake for endurance athletes.
Kato H et al. (2016). Protein requirements are elevated in endurance athletes after exercise as determined by the indicator amino acid oxidation method. PMC4913918.
Morton RW et al. (2018). A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(6).
Halton TL & Hu FB (2004). The effects of high protein diets on thermogenesis, satiety and weight loss: a critical review. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 23(5).
Precision Nutrition. Hand-size portion guide — calorie control without weighing or counting.
Mountjoy M et al. IOC consensus statement on relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S).
NimbleFins (UK). Comparing the cost of protein sources — UK supermarket cost per gram of protein analysis.
This page is educational and is not medical or dietary advice. Protein and calorie figures are approximate and vary by brand and preparation. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, managing a health condition such as kidney disease or diabetes, taking prescription medication, or have any history of disordered eating, please speak to your GP or a registered dietitian before changing how you eat.
AND ONLY THEN, THE LAST FIVE PER CENT.
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