How Many Protein Shakes Do You Need a Day?

Protein shakes have become incredibly normalized in the last decade, thanks in no small part to social media's limitless supply of fitness influencers slamming back shakes like water on camera and dropping discount codes to the various brands they represent, but it wasn't so long ago that they were looked upon with suspicion, especially by mothers of teenage boys.

Are the "fitluencers" right to drink protein shakes as often as they do, or were the moms of the past right to cast suspicion on these protein-packed powders? Unsurprisingly, the answer is kind of complicated.

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Assuming you're buying your protein powders from a reputable brand, one known for using accurate dosing and sourcing quality ingredients, protein powders are not bad for you. In fact, they're an incredibly quick and cost-effective way to get a high dose of protein into your body, which makes them invaluable for athletes, weight lifters and even the average Joe just looking to live a healthier life. But that doesn't mean there's no upper limit on how often they should be consumed, or that you get a pass from us to start substituting shakes for actual meals. 

Read on to learn some of the important pros and cons of protein shakes, as well as how often you should be downing them to reach your health and fitness goals. 

The Pros & Cons of Drinking Protein Shakes

As much as we may love protein shakes, and do believe they provide valuable support to a healthy diet, it's still worth noting that they're not for everyone. Here are some of the pros and cons of adding a protein powder to your supplement stack.

Pro: Convenience

By far the best upside to protein powders is convenience. You can easily bring 25 grams of protein with you to the gym or on a road trip or work commute, mix it with water, and drink it down whenever you feel like you need the extra protein. In other words, putting a single scoop of protein powder in a shaker is the equivalent of walking around with a small chicken breast in your pocket, without the need to cook or reheat it, or bring cutlery.

If you're trying to optimize your pre- and post-workout nutrition, protein powders just make things much, much easier.

Con: Lack of Nutrients

There's a stereotype of weight lifters as meatheads focused only on making gains, and protein shakes can feed into that image. Why? Because they really are just pure protein, or protein with a few simple carbs added for better taste. If you're "all about the macros," you're actually actively jeopardizing your health, as micronutrients (minerals and vitamins, primarily) are extremely important for your health and hormone functioning.

You can mitigate this con by treating a protein shake as what it was designed to be (a supplement to a healthy diet), rather than as something it definitely isn't (an adequate meal replacement). To return to the above comparison between a scoop of protein powder and a chicken breast: yes, they both represent 25 grams of protein, but they don't both contain equal amounts of nutrients, nor will they leave you feeling equally full.

Pro: Cheap Protein Source

This has always been a benefit of protein shakes, since they have just about the cheapest price per gram of protein of any food you can buy, but it's especially true today, when the cost of meat and even eggs has shot up. Eating a high-protein diet can put a serious dent in your grocery budget, so buying a cannister of protein powder a month is a cost-effective way to up your protein intake.

This is especially true if you shop for protein powder the way you should be shopping for groceries: by searching out coupons, sales and weekly deals. A little savvy shopping goes a long way — trust us.

Con: Stomach Troubles

Unfortunately, many people experience persistent digestive trouble from drinking protein shakes. Luckily, there are steps you can take to mitigate this (use one scoop instead of two, buy whey isolate instead of conventional whey, try a variety of protein powders to find which ones your stomach tolerates best, or start eating your protein powders in recipes rather than drinking it in shakes), but for many people, and not just the lactose intolerant, the high dose of protein coupled with negligible amounts of fats and carbs can cause bloating, cramping and unpleasant gas. 

How Many Protein Shakes Should You Drink Per Day?

Calculating Your Protein Needs

Before anything else, you need to know how many grams of protein per day your body needs to help you reach your goals. For most people who lift weights, the usual formula is to aim for one gram of protein per pound of lean body weight, or about 0.75 times your body weight in pounds.

This should only be thought of as a guideline, though. If you have specific goals (building muscle, dropping body fat, or training for an endurance race), you may even require more protein than this, whereas if you're relatively sedentary and don't do resistance training, you can get away with less.

Once you have a rough idea of your protein needs, you can start to portion your protein sources between real foods and supplements.

Balancing Protein Sources

Theoretically, you could ingest 100% of your daily protein from shakes. In fact, every year, high school and college athletes new to the lifting game and even newer to cooking attempt something like this experiment. It's a bad idea. A really bad idea. Protein sources in nature tend to be rich in micronutrients (meats like beef, chicken and fish and protein-rich vegetarian sources like nuts and whole grains), which are essential to your physical wellbeing. Everything from hair and nail growth to sexual function to immune system support depends on micronutrients, so foregoing these to drink a bunch of shakes is a terrible deal, and one that will sabotage your long-term goals.

We advise you get no more than 25% of your daily protein intake from protein powders. That means that, if you're aiming for 200 grams of protein per day, you should drink 50 grams in protein shakes, which generally amounts to about two scoops with most brands. That also leaves you 150 grams of protein to consume from whole-food sources, which should make it much easier for you to reach your daily nutrient requirements. 

Of course, if you're an experienced lifter, or if you have outlier training goals, you can deviate from these guidelines a little. But if you're a young man just starting out on your fitness journey, treat protein shakes like the supplements they were intended to be, and make more of your gains in the kitchen. 

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