How important is protein?

 Protein is EXTREMELY important in your diet, whether you are cutting, bulking, or just want to maintain what you have.  Most of your protein is going to come from your shakes, so you want to make sure you have a high quality protein powder.  I know Muscle Milk, Syntha-6, and Myofusion are the ones you hear the most about and see advertised on UFC and whatnot. Not to put down these companies (Cytosport, BSN, and Gaspari Nutrition) because they do make good products, but their general proteins are not very good.  If you are leaning up and trying to cut you need a meal replacement, with the lowest calories, carbs, fats, and sugars.  GNC's Amplified Wheybolic 60, Dymatize Nutrition's Iso-100 and Rivalus' Promasil are the leanest, best protein shakes for you.  In my honest opinion the Dymatize one is the best of the best, 106 calories for 24g of protein and 0 fat 0 sugar and >1g of sugar it is ultra lean.  All of these proteins also contain Hydrolyzed Isolate protein, which quickly digests and absorbs to your muscles, allowing you to utilize them the best way possible.  Other proteins like Optimum 100% Gold Standard Whey is a Whey Protein Concentrate and it digests much slower, and you actually won't be able to fully absorb all of the protein in it.  For those of you bulking, you obviously need as many calories as you can get, the better gainers have 1000+ calories and 50g+ of protein with low fat content (>5g) which is what you want, so you can feed your muscles, make them grow, without putting on fat.  A great piece of advice that I've always followed is 'consume the grams of protein in which you wish to weigh' - So if you want to weigh 185 pounds, consume about 185g of protein per day.  Obviously chicken and steaks will be your best sources of protein from foods.  Tracking the exact stats of everything you eat can be difficult, so I will post about an amazing app that helps me track as easy as possible.