Why's everyone talking about protein?
More years ago than I care to count, I trained for my Personal Training certificate. On the course were two brothers who I sat near in the classroom parts of the course. Every 90 minutes an alarm would sound on their watches and they’d take out a lunchbox containing precisely measured out portions of chicken breast or boiled eggs. They explained to me that they were on an intense training (and eating) schedule and had to make sure they got enough protein in throughout the day.
I found this baffling, but skip forward more than a decade and this behaviour doesn’t look so strange. OK it’s still quite extreme, but the idea of wanting to get enough protein in (and how much enough is) is a lot more common. You can’t walk down a supermarket aisle now without every other product boasting how much protein it has.
The protein revelation
When I look back at training for marathons in my late 20s, I wish someone had thrust a protein shake in my hand and told me to drink up. In truth, they probably did but I was too focussed on drinking it in those 20 minutes after exercise than considering my protein intake throughout each day.