How Hitting Your Metrics Could Be Hurting Your Performance

To build muscle, the recommended guide by the American college of Sports Medicine is between 1.2 – 1.7 grams of protein per body weight, or 0.5 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight for you Americans.

It is an easy to follow macro rule that should have no issues at all and makes a lot of sense. Hit this target of protein and all good things will follow. The problem is the devil is in the details and not all protein is created equal.

Quality vs Quantity

If you are starting your journey to eating better then more protein is going to be a positive decision. Less crap and more whole foods will lead to better health outcomes.

The challenge is when you get the basics sorted out (the macro), to improve you have to aim to be having better quality protein (the micro).

Surely all protein is the same right? Obviously not, or why would I be writing this.

We say protein but what is really meant is the essential amino acids that we require to build up our body. Different proteins have different amino acids combinations and in different levels. Also, there is the small factor of how we digest the protein.

Because of this, Protein Quality was introduced to determine how good each protein is for us. Needless to say, the paper is very nerdy and gets into a lot of detail but what they are getting at is that not all proteins are the same.

There are 8 essential amino acids and every protein has different amounts of them. So you could be eating a lot of Lysine but not be getting anywhere enough Valine, however you appear to be hitting your protein intake.

Nutrition and Strategy

Like a good diet, if your strategy is terrible then you don’t have to worry about the micro just yet. You need to be looking at the macro.

A strategy with your diet could be less processed food, more whole foods. Less surgery drinks, more water etc.

With your team it is saying we are going to do more of this and less of that. Choosing what not to do is a powerful tool for improvement.

Getting Good Metrics

Once you have the team pointed in the right direction you can start to figure out how to measure good performance.

The trouble with this is that you get more of what you measure. If the idea is to eat more protein you can chart your protein intake and think you are doing an awesome job.

But, the quality of that protein could be very low and because of that you aren’t recovering well and feel sluggish. If you think the metric is a complete and honest way to maintain performance then you will be confused on why you don’t feel good.

You Care About What You Measure

Every KPI or metric, at its heart, is meant to be a good indicator of performance. However, you can be fooled.

If you care about hitting a time frame you might be able to do that, so you hit your metric, great job. The problem arises with how much additional work is required to fix issues and problems from incomplete requirements for the project.

Nothing is fully good or fully bad but its the dance in the grey area that sheds light on true performance.

Set up metrics for your team, it is great to have goals and performance measurement, just know that the macro isn’t the end of the story, but the beginning of how you approach the micro of where you help guide your teams effort.