One simple rule that keeps things on track regardless of where you are, what country you’re in, or how unpredictable life gets. Protein first.

Italy and the Mystery of the Missing Protein

I’ve just got back from a trip to Italy with my wife. Stunning country. Incredible food. And if you didn’t know better, you’d be forgiven for thinking Italians are somehow allergic to protein. Ninety percent of what lands on the table is bread, pasta, pizza, more bread, a bit more pasta. Beautiful, all of it. But not exactly built around the macronutrient that matters most.

I travel a lot. And one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that when you’re away from your routine, the easiest thing to let slip is protein. Carbs are everywhere. Fat is everywhere. But getting a decent hit of protein in, particularly in countries where the cuisine is carb-heavy, takes a bit of thought.

What I found in Italy, and what I’d recommend to anyone navigating a similar situation, is bresaola. If you haven’t come across it, it’s a cured, air-dried beef, lean, high in protein, and about as far from the fatty, processed end of the deli counter as you can get. Prosciutto and salami are everywhere too but neither comes close, prosciutto is mostly fat and salami even more so. Bresaola is the one worth seeking out. It’s everywhere in Italy once you know what you’re looking for, it travels well, it doesn’t need refrigerating once packaged, and it does the job when the menu isn’t giving you many options. You work with what you’ve got. The rule stays the same wherever you are: get the protein in first, and let everything else fall around it.

Why Protein First

Here’s the simple version of the hack, and it really is simple: whatever you’re eating, eat the protein first. Before the bread. Before the pasta. Before whatever else is on the plate. Get the protein in first.

The reason this works is satiety. Protein keeps you fuller for longer, and crucially, it doesn’t spike your insulin the way carbohydrates do. When you eat carbs, particularly refined ones, your blood sugar rises, insulin follows, and shortly after you want more. Carbs make you want more carbs. Anyone who’s ever sat down meaning to have one slice of bread and eaten half the loaf knows exactly what I mean.

Protein doesn’t do that. Eat enough of it and your body sends a fairly clear signal that it’s done. You’re less likely to reach for the crap. You’re less likely to overeat. And over time, that compounds into something meaningful, not through willpower, but through biology working in your favour rather than against you.

Nobody ever got fat eating protein. That’s not me being glib, it’s just true. It’s the one macronutrient where overeating is genuinely difficult, and where the consequences of eating more are, for most people, a net positive.

A Word on Macros and Micros

If you’re not familiar with the terms, a quick breakdown. Macronutrients, or macros, are the three main fuel sources your body runs on: protein, carbohydrates and fat. Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals your body needs in smaller amounts to function properly. Both matter, but when people talk about body composition and energy, they’re usually talking about macros.

Protein and carbohydrates both contain four calories per gram. Fat contains nine. That’s worth knowing, because there’s a trap a lot of people fall into, particularly those who gravitate toward clean eating, where they assume that natural, single-ingredient high-fat foods are free calories. They’re not. A hundred grams of peanut butter contains more calories than a large bar of Dairy Milk. Yes, the peanut butter is nutritionally better. But if you’re eating too much of it, you will put on weight. Calories do matter. Anyone telling you otherwise, in my experience, is wrong.

The flip side of that is the fad diet crowd, the twelve-week plans built around low-calorie diet foods that have been stripped of most of their nutritional value. These might shift weight in the short term, but they’re not sustainable and they’re not feeding your body what it needs. Don’t try to starve yourself. It doesn’t work, and it makes you miserable.

As with most things, there’s a balance.

The Carb Question

I’m not anti-carb. Far from it. Carbohydrates are one of the greatest tools available for performance, and nearly every high-level athlete, past and present, uses them for exactly that reason. I think of carbs like aviation fuel: too much and you’re too heavy to perform well, not enough and you might not reach your destination.

The issue isn’t carbs themselves. It’s carbs relative to what you’re actually doing. If you’re running marathons, training twice a day, or doing anything that demands serious output, you’ll likely need a lot of them and you can afford to be relaxed about where they come from. If you’re sitting at a desk for eight hours, the maths is very different.

I hear the keto argument regularly. And while it’s true that the body can run on fat as a fuel source, in my personal experience, having been training for over twenty years and spending a lot of time around people who train seriously, I’ve yet to meet someone on a strict ketogenic diet who carries a decent amount of muscle mass and performs at a high level. They might be out there. I just haven’t met one.

For me, carbs and fat are goal-dependent. They go up or down depending on what I’m training for, how active I’m being, what my body needs at that point. But protein stays constant. That’s the one that doesn’t move. My fat and carb intake are flexible. My protein intake is not.

This Isn’t Just for Men

I want to make this point clearly because it gets missed a lot: protein is not a bodybuilding thing. It’s not a gym thing. It’s not a man thing.

Women are, as a rule, significantly underrating protein. And the reason is a misconception that’s been around for years, the idea that protein equals muscle, and muscle equals bulk. That’s not how it works. You don’t build muscle by eating protein. You build muscle by training. Protein is about repair. It’s what your body uses to rebuild and recover from the demands you put on it, whether those demands are lifting weights, running, chasing kids around, or just living a physically active life.

Beyond that, protein keeps you fuller. It supports skin, hair and nail health. It helps maintain muscle mass as you age, which matters enormously, particularly for women post-menopause when muscle loss accelerates. The case for prioritising protein applies just as strongly to women as it does to men, arguably more so.

Habits, Not Diets

I hate the word diet. What we’re actually talking about is habits, and habits are what produce long-term results. Not twelve-week plans. Not cutting out entire food groups. Not following some influencer’s meal prep routine. Habits.

I aim for roughly eighty percent clean, twenty percent relaxed. I’m a dad, a husband, a friend. I’m not a robot who can’t sit down to a meal and enjoy it. When I go away I eat what I want, when I want, but I get the protein in first. That’s the rule that travels with me regardless of the destination.

And when it comes to the smaller decisions, the ones that actually add up over time, it’s about making wiser choices rather than perfect ones. Skip the dessert, or if skipping it would make the person you’re with uncomfortable because they want one, order a coffee instead. If you do want something sweet, the two-hundred calorie scoop of ice cream beats the seven-hundred calorie cheesecake. You can still enjoy life. You just make slightly better calls within it.

The hack is protein first. It’s not complicated. It doesn’t require a meal plan, a food scale, or anything to be off limits. It just requires that one thing to be the priority, and everything else tends to fall into place around it.

I’m not a nutritionist and I don’t have the qualifications to advise you on your diet. What I am is someone who has been training seriously for over twenty years, who sits at around twelve to thirteen percent body fat year round at forty years old, and who has figured out through a lot of trial and error what works. These are my findings and my experiences. Do your own research, consult a professional if you need to, and take what’s useful.