Fuel
Nadia Hassan works out what you actually need, in grams, from your bodyweight and what you are asking your body to do. Then she shows you what that looks like as food, and checks every supplement claim you were about to believe.
She brings The Dose's nutrition rigor to the gym floor. Performance fuel, recovery eating, and every label checked against the research before it gets near anyone.
Split across the day
What that looks like as food
Protein per typical serving, so you can see how quickly the number adds up. Nothing here is exotic and nothing here is a powder.
| Food | Serving | Protein |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | 150 g cooked | 46 g |
| Greek yogurt | 200 g | 20 g |
| Eggs | 2 large | 13 g |
| Tinned tuna | 1 tin, drained | 25 g |
| Lentils, cooked | 1 cup | 18 g |
| Firm tofu | 150 g | 17 g |
| Cottage cheese | 150 g | 17 g |
| Milk or soy milk | 1 cup | 8 g |
| Whey or plant protein | 1 scoop | 24 g |
Nadia's four rules of fueling
- Total daily protein is the thing. Timing is the decoration. Hitting your daily number reliably matters far more than which hour you eat it in. Once the total is right, spreading it across the day gives you a small extra benefit. Getting the total wrong cannot be fixed by timing.
- You cannot supplement your way out of not eating. The powders on the shelf are convenient food, not a shortcut. If your daily protein comes from real meals, you may not need a scoop at all, and Nadia will happily tell you that even though it is bad for business.
- Carbohydrate is not the enemy of anything. It is the fuel for hard training and it is what refills the tank afterward. Cutting it makes sessions feel worse and rarely changes the outcome once calories and protein are matched.
- Eat enough to train, not just enough to look like you train. Chronic under-eating shows up as stalled progress, poor sleep, injuries, disrupted menstrual cycles, and bone loss. That is Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, it affects men and women, and it is far more common than overtraining.
Nadia Hassan
Cross-posts The Dose's nutrition rigor to the gym floor. Every supplement label checked before it gets near anyone.
- Zara Cole — runs the smoothie bar and sends every blend past Nadia before it goes on the board. Zara says so first, which Nadia appreciates.
- Wyatt E. Cooper — ongoing argument about whether a drink can be a meal. Nadia is winning. His bar is here.
- Dr. Sana Qureshi — fuel and recovery are the same conversation, so they tend to arrive together. Her Sleep Lab is the other half of this page.
- Dr. Henry Chen, RPh — anything that interacts with a medication goes to the pharmacist, not to her.
- Coach Dom Castellanos — will remind you the food matters less than showing up Thursday. He is not entirely wrong.
- Eli Adler — every verdict on this page is in the Stoplight with its source.
How the staff verify (so you don't have to take our word for it)
Sports nutrition is the most heavily marketed corner of fitness, and the gap between what a label implies and what a trial shows is where most of the money is made. Nadia carries PubMed, USDA FoodData Central and NIH ODS, and she uses them on the boring claims as well as the exciting ones.
Green means the evidence backs it. Amber means it depends, and here is on what. Red means a popular claim that is wrong.
Educational, not medical advice, and not personalised nutrition counselling. The targets here are population-level starting points from published guidance, not a prescription, and they do not account for your medical history, medications, or circumstances. Dietary supplements are not reviewed by the FDA for safety or effectiveness before they are sold. If you have kidney or liver disease, diabetes, an eating disorder or a history of one, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are feeding a child, talk to your clinician or a registered dietitian before changing your intake. If you are struggling with food or your body, that deserves real support: in the US the National Eating Disorders Association helpline is 1-800-931-2237.