I Underestimated Protein & Weightlifting
- Jul 27, 2025
- 6 min read
New research reveals the incredible impact of a healthy muscle mass over a reduced body fat percentage.
I shifted my focus from weight loss to muscle gain through weightlifting and a diet rich in protein. As a result, I am happier and leaner.
Whoever decided that school sports had to involve throwing balls for people to catch must have been delusional about teenage anatomy. Growing boobs, sensitive groins, pimpled faces, metal braces, and pre-contact lens glasses are not the recipe for having a ball. At least, not in my case, anyway. Add a complete lack of hand-eye coordination, and it should come as no surprise that I had three periods a month when I was in school. P.E. came to mean Period Exaltation for me.
Ever since, my relationship with movement has been complicated, and I always assumed the feeling was mutual. As someone who also relishes in the overconsumption of food for an extra dopamine kick (which, apparently, comes from a genetic disposition like those who struggle with alcoholism), my life's journey has been to lose weight since Brandy Melville became big circa 2012. The world might not have ended then, but the loss of childlike insouciance regarding body shape was apocalyptic, indeed.
Entering the world of diet culture was never a rite of passage or an intentional act. I had, like most women with media awareness, been there for most of my life. The difficulty lay in deciphering the information and adapting it to one's individual needs. I tried Keto, intermittent fasting, the elimination diet, veganism (very short-lived, what is life without feta?), and calorie tracking. Combined with a lot of cardio and low-impact exercise, I became what YouTube daily vlogs would now come to call That Girl, only without matching the aesthetic.
This year, when I moved back home to a land with healthcare I had previously taken for granted (<3), I had a lot of checkups to address some health issues I was dealing with. I was diagnosed with lactose intolerance, which is not something you can develop throughout your lifetime. You are born with it, but the threshold of intolerance varies from person to person, which is why I got away with eating some dairy (thank you for your prayers, feta is a safe bet for me). Apparently, an imbalance of my gut flora caused by a stomach virus and two rounds of antibiotics had made the symptoms worse. Now, I am doing acupuncture and reducing inflammatory foods like sugar and gluten to heal my allergies, which tests have found no culprit for.
Amidst this health limbo, where symptoms have not entirely gone away through medical advice, weight loss had to take a step back. Instead, I inhaled volumes of podcasts by Dr. Stacy Sims and Dr. Gabrielle Lyons on women's health. Unfortunately, many diet and health studies have been tested on men due to the hormonal fluctuations of women. Still, the two physicians have specialised in the benefits of muscle mass for women and their hormones. The findings have completely altered my relationship with food and exercise, and I have achieved sustainable results for the first time.
Without further ado, let's get into it. We all know that exercise is great for longevity, but specifically, weightlifting has the most beneficial effect on our bones and joints. This means, we can have longer timespans of healthy lives without the need of a caretaker, not just that we might live longer. In addition, Dr. Gabrielle Lyons also claims that studies suggest a high percentage of healthy muscle mass can reduce inflammation in the body, which in turn, decreases the risk for autoimmune diseases and other conditions. She talked about the potential prevention of alzheimers and dementia, as well as cancer. Furthermore, an increased muscle mass improves symptoms experienced during menopause, and it boosts our metabolisms because muscle requires more energy (calories) to be maintained.
This all sounds amazing, so how do I build more muscle mass, especially if I do have some pesky overweight that would hide any abs to come? This is where body recompositioning comes in handy. It basically means the simultaneous loss of fat and gain of muscle. To achieve this, increasing your protein intake, with protein shakes and creatine supplements highly recommended, and focusing on weightlifting with progressive overload is required. Progressive overload means that you will increase the weights you lift over time, always aiming for near muscle exhaustion with each exercise (i.e. choose a weight that you can repeat eight times, and the last two times you can barely finish the movement).
Additionally, maintaining a slight calorie deficit is crucial for effective fat loss. If the calorie deficit is too big, you will not gain muscle, you might even lose some, and all the strength training will exhaust you. If there is no calorie deficit at all, you will not lose any fat; however, you will gain muscle, and for some people, this is the ideal approach.
Personally, I aim to consume 100g of protein a day (I am 5ft 5 in and weigh 55kg) and I exclusively lift weights four times a week, with only ten minutes of cardio at the end of each session. When I first signed up for my gym, I paid for a body scan and a training plan that revealed my basal metabolic rate, i.e., the amount of calories I burn in a day even if I lie in bed doing nothing, and it has since increased. This means that even though the scale has stagnated for a while, part of it might be a sign of muscle gain now that my metabolism is better, and muscles are heavier than fat.
The effect this change in focus has had on me has been liberating. I know for a fact that I can eat 1500 calories a day without gaining weight, and with my gym sessions and typical work day (don't forget, the brain burns a lot of calories too!), I can eat a bit more, too, without feeling guilty. This has fundamentally changed the way I think about food, healthy lifestyles and dieting. For years, I hung on to the belief that I needed to eat 1200 calories and no more if I ever wanted to see results, and now I know this would be detrimental to muscle gain, which can cause other health consequences later on in life.
More importantly, weightlifting is a type of exercise that can be learned even by those with minimal coordination, and improvement is trackable over time. Ultimately, this has healed my relationship with sports because for the first time, I feel like I can be good at it, and there is no risk of my boobs getting hit by a ball thrown by a teenage boy twice my size (seriously, who is in charge of structuring P.E????).
The most significant difficulty has been increasing my protein intake, as I had to unlearn some myths I previously believed about animal-based protein and protein powder in relation to women's health. The truth is that animal-based protein is more concentrated in protein per 100g than plant-based protein, and it also contains all essential amino acids, whereas plant-based protein doesn't by itself. You would need to combine rice or quinoa with any type of legume, such as rice and beans, to obtain all the essential amino acids your body needs to build proteins. This also means increasing your calorie intake, which is great if that is something you don't have to worry about. For me, I prefer to have both animal-based proteins, including milk whey protein powder, which is safe for lactose-intolerant individuals and has a high absorption rate, as well as plant-based proteins, primarily legumes and soy.
I don't achieve this goal every day, and sometimes I tire of tracking, but for the most part, this newfound love for body data has given me power. Now, I no longer pray for or hope for weight loss and muscle gain. Instead, I know. So, when I went on a week-long holiday where I ate whatever I wanted and didn't work out at all, I didn't come home upset at the scale or myself. In fact, I was happy to have enjoyed myself and knew how to get back on course immediately. For the first time, I feel like I know exactly what I need to do to feel good about my body and my health, without compromising energy and mental well-being.
Also, social media is full of cottage cheese-core right now, so I need somewhere to channel all these recipes into.
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