I Doubled My Protein Intake And My Skin Has Never Looked Better

Vogue

17 hours ago

On Instagram, my feed is no longer obsessed with green juice—now it's shaker bottles and protein powders. In gyms, women swap recipes for protein mug cakes with the same passion once reserved for smoothie bowls. Protein is at its pop-culture peak, and we are hearing about it being blended into coffees, baked into brownies, and dusted over popcorn. It's slipped out of the bodybuilding aisle and into the realm of beauty content, sitting alongside retinoids and LED masks as something you're expected to have an opinion on.
For most of my life, protein felt like someone else's obsession—namely, the men at my local gym. My own beauty upgrades came in glass bottles with droppers, packaged in colors designed to look good on bathroom shelves. Protein was functional, unglamorous, and—in my mind—entirely about muscle mass, limited to my dinner plate. I couldn't tell you how many grams I had in a day, mostly because I never thought about it.
That changed when I noticed what started as dry spell settling as a permanent fixture over my skin despite my elaborate skincare routine. It wasn't dryness, exactly in the traditional sense—no flaking, no itch—but an unsettling loss of bounce. My cheeks looked a little deflated, the glow had dulled, and even my most forgiving foundation seemed to collect in places it hadn't before. I chalked it up to stress, late nights, or maybe the slow inevitability of age, until a nutritionist friend casually asked how much protein I was getting.
The question felt misplaced. But as dermatologist Dr Aditi Sharma explained later, it was the missing link. 'Protein is the raw material your skin needs to make collagen, keratin, and elastin. Without enough of it, the skin loses firmness, wounds heal slower and hair can thin. It's not an instant-glow ingredient, but over time, consistent intake supports resilience and repair.'