Oftentimes when I read about complementing diet with exercise, I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t really thought very deeply about it. I always thought that if I ate mostly whole, home cooked foods, mostly plants with some meat and fish here and there that I’d be fine. But I realize with lean muscle building/fat loss/body recomposition goals that unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. Even when you think you do the right things like eat mostly whole foods, that doesn’tmean anything when it comes to making sure you have the right nutrients to fuel your body with the level of activity you are doing. So while I always exercised relatively rigorously, I also wondered why I was able to get definition pretty easily in my back or legs, but pretty much zero definition in my arms. And I have a feeling it’s because of an imbalance of nutrients (plus… genetics).

As I am reading more about women’s health, I finally started thinking more about leucine. Leucine is an amino acid that your body cannot produce on its own that must be obtained from diet. It acts as a primary “trigger” for muscle protein synthesis, which makes it imperative for muscle repair, growth, and the regulation of blood sugar levels. Overnight your body is fasting, so when you wake up, it’s crucial to have a breakfast high in leucine to give your muscles a signal to start building and repairing tissue. And given I am now in my 40s and will be facing declining estrogen levels, this can accelerate muscle loss, which makes leucine even more important to protect against muscle breakdown. Maintaining muscle becomes even more critical in my 40s to prevent insulin resistance and unwanted weight gain. I wonder why I never really read about this before or was told about leucine before. But that’s why we’re all always learning and evolving!

So now I am consciously eating a breakfast high in protein / leucine (2.5-3 grams) each morning, within one hour of working out. It’s a bit of a struggle since I usually skip breakfast, but I really need to be consistent about increasing protein and making sure I get enough leucine (the easiest places to find this are in whey protein powder, cottage cheese, yogurt, soybeans, beans, and meat products). Breakfast is a pretty simple meal to prepare in advance, so I hope all these efforts I am doing will actually yield some visible results in the next couple months!