Mikki Williden, PhD, Auckland (2025)

22/10/2025

A recent meta regression from Reffalo, Trexler and Helms (2025) suggests that there’s most bang for buck from protein when it’s at around 1.9g per kg body weight per day for people who resistance train and are in a calorie deficit.

You can go higher - absolutely no study in humans shows any harm, except with super high intakes you may be missing other essential fatty acids or carbohydrate to support training which can impact on performance, sleep or recovery.

Most people say it’s not necessary to go higher than 1.6g per kg body weight to get bang for buck. And that is true for most normal people looking to improve your body composition. IE look a little better.

The thing is, in the real world it is difficult to always nail your macros. Life will intervene despite your best efforts. So aiming higher 🌙 and not getting there ✨ is better than setting a lower ceiling and consistently being a lot lower.

22/10/2025

I’m not saying this to make you feel bad.

But we take our relative health for granted in the here and now.

We’re alright now, which makes it easy to put off the really important things.

So many say they ‘need to strength train’ or they ‘should eat more protein’ but that’s as far as it goes. Weeks pass and still nothing changes.

Yet almost everyone I talk to in my groups and as clients truly want to be strong, fit, capable, healthy, independent into their later decades. I mean who wouldn’t?

It’s not controversial that we lose muscle mass by the decade after our 30s. That sarcopenia is a real threat to our health span. That we need more protein as we age. That falls in our older years is one of the leading causes of early death.

You can’t escape ageing. But you can change the trajectory of it.

Saying you’re going to do it isn’t the same as doing it.

PMID: 31343601
PMID: 35886571

20/10/2025

Not saying this to bum you out.

But it is super common to eat or drink something that you weren’t intending to and then treat it like an accident 🤷🏻‍♀️

The ‘whoops’ or ‘I accidentally did this’ removes your agency and ownership from the act. While it might make you feel better in the moment, this then can set up a pattern of behaviour that is not helpful to you long term.

It’s like leaving your financial future in the hands of the universe and relying on winning the lottery.

Instead, actively tell yourself you decided to drink the wine. 🍷 or eat the chocolate 🍫 or chips 🍟. Own it and feel good about that decision and really enjoy it.

Then move on.

Don’t call it an accident, remove your perception of control and then lament it for days afterwards. This can make you frame it as a failure (that “you’re a failure”) and impact on how you feel about yourself.

It is not worth that kind of emotional response. It is just food, after all.

You ARE in control. This is a good thing. So frame it as such.

19/10/2025

One of the most common question I get in my DMs is, “where do I find the info as to how many calories I need?”

My response is in the picture. But of course macros also matter.

Protein is the non-negotiable one. It’s a structural nutrient, meaning it builds and maintains body tissue. The bare minimum is around 1.2 g per kilogram of body weight (sometimes where people on GLP-1 or GIP medications end up, since they struggle to eat much). Most of the time I’ll recommend 1.6–2.2 g/kg, or more, depending on your goals and training. Protein provides essential amino acids—“essential” meaning your body can’t make them, so they must come from food.

Carbs and fats are energy nutrients. They both play crucial roles: carbs fuel training, support fibre intake, and provide vitamins and phytonutrients; fats deliver energy, help with hormone production, brain health, and absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. There’s a minimum amount of fat you don’t want to go below long term—Dr Eric Trexler estimated around 40 g/day as a sensible floor.

The gold-standard way to work this out is simple but tedious: track everything you eat for at least a week and log your body weight. Properly. Estimating without weighing is like throwing darts blindfolded—occasionally you’ll hit the board, but rarely the bullseye.

The more active you are, the more carbs you can tolerate without negative metabolic effects (though age/genetics still matter). I’ve had lean athletes who were insulin resistant who need to pull carbs back. For others, going too low can dysregulate the nervous system, disrupting sleep + raising perceived stress.

Fat intake often comes down to personal preference once energy needs are set, though some people need to watch saturated fat. Endurance or high-intensity athletes sometimes need to moderate fat to make room for the carbs that power glycolytic training.

There are a lot of moving parts. A calculator is just the starting line—the real work is in tracking, adjusting, and learning your body’s responses. It takes time, but it’s absolutely worth it.

18/10/2025

It’s not true to say you can’t control what happens on the scale. Of course you can, by making decisions around food, exercise and lifestyle that are conducive to reducing body weight and body fat. However, going after a number on the scale, having weekly weight loss targets for the average general population isn’t the best approach.

So many factors impact on the number on the scale

👻Sleep loss
👻Stress
👻Inflammation
👻Training hard
👻Illness
👻Infection
👻Menstrual cycle
👻Sodium/salt
👻Carbohydrate intake
👻Fibre in your gut
👻Food volume

In short, anything that influences water regulation in the body will show up on the scale.

The closer you are to your goal weight the more these can mask your actual fat loss progress.

Having a weekly target weight loss goal that you don’t meet due to some of these factors can cause someone to become frustrated, demotivated and more at risk of throwing in the towel.

Instead, use weekly trends for the scale changes and focus on the habits and behaviours that will, over time, lead to your scale goal. You CAN directly control this. Create goals around these.

14/10/2025

Being hungrier can be a good thing. 👏🏼

Feeling hungrier after breakfast doesn’t mean your meal “didn’t work” — it means your metabolism is waking up, your body is getting what it needs, and your physiology is responding like it should.

I mean you don’t want to be starving after an hour (as you might be if you have toast and marmite) or Special K

However, skipping meals or under-eating can suppress your appetite — and while that might sound helpful for fat loss… it’s not.

Your energy, brain clarity, and mood are all tied to how well-nourished you are. Often the appetite suppression also comes with mid-morning brain fog, feeling flat and sluggish and not really wanting to move - we can get through our workout (because we’re awesome) but then we are way more likely to sit across the morning, reducing overall energy expenditure. NEAT drops a lot.

It can also change your appetite later in the day, making you crave less sweet foods and also just… be less hungry and less likely to overeat. We see this in research but also (importantly) in the real world with people I work with.

Eating a protein-rich breakfast can completely shift how you feel: ✅ More mental clarity ✅ Better energy ✅ Fewer cravings later ✅ A metabolism that’s actually working for you

And no — ‘breakfast’ doesn’t have to be as soon as you get up. And you might find that you can ‘train’ your body to be hungrier earlier too - so much of what we do is habit.

So if you eat and feel hungrier soon after? Don’t panic. If you’re eating a decent amount of protein (min 30g) this is a good thing.

PMID: 26653842
PMID: 24898233
PMID: 20125103
PMID: 25889354

13/10/2025

The most common question I get in my DMs is, “How many calories should I eat to lose weight?”—usually from people who don’t want to track or weigh food (which, fair, but tricky).

Protein is the non-negotiable one. It’s a structural nutrient, meaning it builds and maintains body tissue. The bare minimum is around 1.2 g per kilogram of body weight (sometimes where people on GLP-1 or GIP medications end up, since they struggle to eat much). Most of the time I’ll recommend 1.6–2.2 g/kg, or more, depending on your goals and training. Protein provides essential amino acids—“essential” meaning your body can’t make them, so they must come from food.

Carbs and fats are energy nutrients. They both play crucial roles: carbs fuel training, support fibre intake, and provide vitamins and phytonutrients; fats deliver energy, help with hormone production, brain health, and absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. There’s a minimum amount of fat you don’t want to go below long term—Dr Eric Trexler estimated around 40 g/day as a sensible floor.

How much of each you need depends on several factors. Your energy requirements—maintenance, deficit, or surplus—come first. The gold-standard way to work this out is simple but tedious: track everything you eat for at least a week and log your body weight. Properly. Estimating without weighing is like throwing darts blindfolded—occasionally you’ll hit the board, but rarely the bullseye.

The more active you are, the more carbs you can tolerate without negative metabolic effects (though age/genetics still matter). I’ve had lean athletes who were insulin resistant who need to pull carbs back. For others, going too low can dysregulate the nervous system, disrupting sleep + raising perceived stress.

Fat intake often comes down to personal preference once energy needs are set, though some people need to watch saturated fat. Endurance or high-intensity athletes sometimes need to moderate fat to make room for the carbs that power glycolytic training.

There are a lot of moving parts. A calculator is just the starting line—the real work is in tracking, adjusting, and learning your body’s responses. It takes time, but it’s absolutely worth it.

13/10/2025

Stoked to have Dr Mike T Nelson back on the podcast to expand the discussion of metabolic flexibility to physiological flexibility and how to use this to enhance our stress resilience.

Mike also has a course on exactly this topic. Just opened! So if you want to learn from one of the smartest people 🧠 , follow links in show notes to sign up!

Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/mikkipedia/id1538311674?i=1000730634681

10/10/2025

A diet, by definition, means low energy availability — you’re eating less than you burn. That’s how fat loss happens: your body makes up the difference by pulling from stored energy (ideally, fat).

This only becomes a problem when it’s chronic — when you’re consistently underfed and placing too much stress on the body. That’s when your physiology starts cutting corners: thyroid slows, cortisol rises, reproductive hormones drop, and recovery is impaired, in an effort to save resources.

Optimising for protein, having appropriate carbohydrate load for training, focusing on sleep and stress management, doing strength training and taking an occasional ‘break’ from those deficit calories can protect you from the chronic state of LEA that you’re trying to avoid.

Low energy availability isn’t just about calories — it’s about balance. You can eat less and still support training, hormones, and long-term health.
 The goal is to create a smart deficit — one your body can sustain without breaking down.

09/10/2025

🥚 Happy World Egg Day! 🥳
 Let’s crack into the truth about eggs – once unfairly blamed for raising cholesterol (vilified in 1968) they’ve since been fully redeemed by science 🙌

The cholesterol in eggs (and other foods) does NOT raise the cholesterol levels in around 80% of people. There ARE people who are hyper-responders to cholesterol in food, but predominantly, our liver is responsible for making most of the cholesterol that is circulating (for what it’s worth - this is more important in some than others).

I digress!

By the early 2000s, health authorities worldwide began lifting restrictions. Countries like Australia, NZ and the US all gave eggs the green light 🟢

However I get asked this question almost weekly (and indeed, people report to me that they lower their egg consumption on the basis of cholesterol still)

So, how many can you eat? For most healthy people – daily is totally fine, multiple times per day even.

Eggs are a nutritional powerhouse: 👉 13 essential nutrients 👉 High-quality protein (hello muscle strength 💪) - though, at 6g or so a pop, they aren’t super high in protein (hence why, for high protein MEALS with eggs, I like to add egg whites alongside) 👉 Choline for brain health 👉 Key vitamins for every life stage – from pregnancy to peri & post-menopause

The real question isn’t “how many is too many?” It’s “when will you actually get sick of them?”

It’s a Global Celebration of all things Egg.

Mikki Williden, PhD

22/10/2025

22/10/2025

20/10/2025

19/10/2025

18/10/2025

14/10/2025

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