The Importance of Protein and Regrowing My Hair

Have you ever found yourself completely confused by nutrition advice, especially since there is so much conflicting information floating out there?

I found myself in that exact situation, and it led to some pretty disastrous consequences for me. When I first restarted my health journey six years ago, I was pretty clueless beyond figuring out that processed carbs and sugar weren’t great for me, and weightlifting was way more effective than endless hours of cardio.

I had also read that eating protein was beneficial but that the only way to lose weight was to have a calorie deficit. With that limited amount of information in my toolbelt, I charged forward on my new health journey.

• What’s a “complete” protein versus an “incomplete” protein?
• Won’t eating fat make me gain weight?
• What’s the difference between protein coming from plants and the protein that comes from eating animals?

Have you ever asked yourselves any of these questions?

I can 100% tell you that I never asked myself any of these questions when I restarted my road to health. Literally, not once. I had no doubt in my mind that eating fat was bad for me and would keep me from meeting my health goals. That was the information that every doctor I had ever seen had told me – “Don’t eat fat, especially saturated fat. It’s not healthy for you.”

Also, I honestly had never thought about how the protein that was available in spinach, broccoli, and beans of all kinds wasn’t the same as the protein found in animal sources. All I ever heard from doctors or read about in news articles was that those were the proteins that I should eat over beef or pork because they were high in protein and low in dangerous saturated fat.

So, that’s what I did.

Lack of information can be dangerous. However, having an abundance of the wrong information can be even worse.

The problem with forging ahead with incomplete information, or in my case, completely wrong information, is that it can lead to both frustrations and often disastrous consequences.

In my case, both things happened. I truly believed that what I read in popular media articles, information from my doctors, and what I saw on the news about how “easy” it was to lose weight – it’s just calories in, calories out, exercise more and eat less, get your protein more from plants and beans, eat carbs just focus on the healthy ones like oatmeal, beans, leafy greens, and sweet potatoes – was correct and if I just followed that advice, I would lose the weight.

The problem was that advice was flawed and grossly inaccurate.

It doesn’t take into account the impact of hormones on weight loss and how what we put into our bodies has a huge impact on those hormones. Also, that advice also left out the critically important details around nutrient bioavailability, especially when it came to how our bodies process protein and the kinds of protein it really needed.

When it comes to food and its impact on nutrition, especially protein, it truly is all about quality.

The body requires something called “essential amino acids.” These essential amino acids are what proteins are broken down into once they are consumed.

They are called essential because of the 20 amino acids that your body uses to rebuild tissue and run all its systems, 9 of them cannot be created in the body, they have to come from the protein that you eat. Every, single day.

Remember earlier when I said I never once asked myself any questions about the kinds of protein that existed or what the differences were between plant and animal proteins? 

This is where that lack of understanding, that lack of complete information, came back around and bit me hard.

I was lifting weights three times a week and trying to walk/jog for 30 minutes to an hour 5 times a week, all while eating a restricted-calorie diet of between 1200-1400 calories a day. The belief that it was all about eating less and moving more was so ingrained in me that I never even questioned that it was maybe not the only or even ideal way to lose weight.

I was hungry all the time, but the weight was dropping off at an astonishing pace, so I really thought, wow, this is working great! In reality, it was really not working out great, especially when it came down to nourishing and actually healing my body.

The kind of protein matters and so does the quantity. in this case, more truly is better.

I was consuming somewhere between 70-90 grams of protein every day, mostly from beans/legumes, complex carbs like quinoa, and very lean animal protein like chicken breast.

What I didn’t know though at that time was that the majority of that protein that I was getting wasn’t the right kind of protein in the right quantity. What I didn’t know back then was that almost all plant-based proteins fell into the category of “incomplete” proteins.

What that means is that they do not contain, on their own, all of the essential amino acids your body needs to function and repair itself daily. In order to actually be getting the protein that you need on a daily basis, you have to get the majority of your protein, or ideally all, from “complete” proteins. Those are proteins from animal sources that have all of the essential amino acids that you need in the right quantities to provide what your body requires to function optimally.

The RDA for protein is .8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight. So for a woman who weighs 150 pounds, that comes out to roughly 68 kilograms which would make her RDA 54 grams of protein.

The thing about RDAs is that they are based on the “average” man or woman and what they don’t really make clear is that recommendation is actually the minimum required amount and that amount actually increases dramatically the more active you are and the older that you get. They also don’t make it clear at all that all 54 grams of that protein really need to be complete protein sources.

What I was doing was a recipe for nutritional disaster – My hair was falling out and I thought I was dying.

So, when you combine eating only 1200-1400 calories, nowhere near enough complete proteins, and working out anywhere from 1-2 hours each day you get dramatic weight loss with some pretty terrible consequences. I was hungry all the time, I would get light-headed almost constantly whether I was working out or just going through my day, and then, all of the sudden, I started losing all my hair.

Literal handfuls of hair fell out every day. I had no idea what was going on, I thought I was eating healthy (I really wasn’t) and I was exercising, I should have been at the peak of health, but I wasn’t. Like any other normal person, I decided to look on the internet about my symptoms and that freaked me out so bad that I thought I might be dying. I saw a doctor and took multiple blood tests to determine what was happening — scared the entire time because I had no idea what was happening.

Finally, my doctor told me that the issues that I was experiencing were a result of not enough protein and calories. Specifically, my hair was falling out because my body wasn’t getting the protein that it needed to do everything it needed to, so it chose not to grow hair in order to continue to repair and maintain my body and organs. Luckily for me, God made our bodies to be both extremely intelligent as well as resilient.

I bounced back, but it took months for my hair to regrow.

I tell you this story hoping that my mistakes will help keep these things from happening to you. 

After I went through all of this is when I desperately started to research the impact of food, nutrition, and bioavailability of nutrients on overall health. I’m still learning even today, but at 43 years old, I’m proud to say that I’m the healthiest and strongest I’ve been, physically, mentally, and spiritually, in my entire adult life.

I owe all of that to God and His strength for humbling me and opening me to new things, even when those things fly in the face of “conventional” guidance.

Here are some quick, simple tips for you to start the process of ensuring you are getting the protein that you need every day to heal and nourish your body:

• Prioritize protein first. When you are looking at your plate, make sure that you are putting your meal together around the protein.
  
• Try to consume between .8 to 1.5 grams per pound of lean bodyweight that you have. Keep in mind the older that you are, especially after the age of 40, your protein needs increase because your body gets less efficient at synthesizing the protein that you do eat. Also, as you age, your body starts to lose lean muscle mass at an accelerated rate so getting the right amount of protein to even just maintain the lean muscle mass you have is critically important.
  
• Ensure that the proteins that you are eating are mostly complete protein sources. These primarily come from animal foods – beef, pork, sheep, fish, chicken, eggs – they contain all of the essential amino acids your body needs in the correct amounts to function properly.
  
• There are really no bad sources of animal protein. All animal proteins, especially minimally processed, whole-food animal proteins, contain a wealth of bioavailable nutrients that you can’t get readily from plant foods.
  
• Try to eat a minimum of 30 grams of protein each meal. That comes out to between 4-6 ounces of animal protein per meal. Again, as you get older, your body’s ability to synthesize protein from the available amino acids in your body decreases so this becomes important as increased lean muscle mass has been tied in numerous studies to increased longevity.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Psalm 139:14 states, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

God made our bodies to be beautifully complex and resilient. As long as we are feeding it the right things, in this case, plenty of complete proteins, our bodies will continue to do amazing things for us throughout life. Eating sufficient complete animal proteins from whole food sources is the single best way for your body to get the nutrients it needs to heal and thrive every day.