Another way to count calories part three – what is protein and how much is one block

Protein is one of three macronutrients that our bodies need daily. Protein is important for your body to keep, repair, and build muscle among other valuable physiological processes. Your body can only process so much protein before starting to create fat. Alternatively, your body will eat muscle when protein is not being supplemented properly. If the body receives the nutrients to keep muscles strong and healthy, we can make small changes to other nutrients to complement our muscles.

The Zone uses protein as a baseline to determine how much food should be eaten per day. This amount is measured in "blocks." Zone blocks are based on your body’s lean muscle mass, which includes bones, organs, and muscle (basically everything in your body except fat). With the Zone method, we can estimate lean body mass and precisely eat the amount of protein to allow muscles to repair everyday wear and tear. Zone also brings activity level into the equation, so athletes who are working their muscles harder and more often are also consuming enough protein to supplement that lifestyle. With this we can aim our nutrition at any body composition goal we have in mind.

In every block of food there is 7 grams of protein. Try looking at some nutrition labels and see how many blocks of protein you are eating per day. There is a new variation of the “Block Prescription Based on Sex and Body Type” chart at the bottom of this post showing how many grams of protein you should be eating daily based on sex and body type. 
 
Small female: 70g protein per day (10 blocks of protein)
Medium female: 77g protein per day (11 blocks of protein)
Large female: 91g protein per day (13 blocks of protein)
Athletic, well muscled female: 98g protein per day (14 blocks of protein)
Small male: 112g protein per day (16 blocks of protein)
Medium male: 119g protein per day (17 blocks of protein)
Large male: 133g protein per day (19 blocks of protein)
X-Large male: 140g protein per day (20 blocks of protein)
Large hard gainer: 147g protein per day (21 blocks of protein)
Athletic, well muscled male: 161g protein per day (25 blocks of protein)

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