A Nutritionist Told Me I Wasn’t Eating Enough Protein: The Story Behind Badonka Fuel

A few years ago, I crossed the finish line at the Irving Marathon, tired in the specific way you only get after 26.2 miles, and struck up a conversation with a friend of mine who happens to be a nutritionist. Naturally, I started picking her brain mostly about protein, since that’s the question every runner eventually asks.

Her answer was blunt: I wasn’t eating enough of it. Not even close, given how physically active I was.

That evening, I downloaded a nutrition tracking app. My only goal was simple, hit my protein number. But the app didn’t just track protein. It tracked all of my macros, and it gave me a total calorie count for the day. And that’s when things got interesting.

The Wake-Up Call I Didn’t Expect

I thought I had a decent sense of what I was eating. I didn’t. Watching my actual calorie total for the first time was eye-opening in a way that a protein target alone never would have been. I started noticing exactly where my calories were going and a lot of them were being “wasted” on food that wasn’t doing anything for my health.

The biggest culprit was something I hadn’t even thought of as eating: snacking at my desk at work, mostly out of habit, sometimes just to stay alert through a slow afternoon. It wasn’t hunger. It was routine. Once I could see it logged in black and white, I started making smarter choices, almost without trying.

Building a Habit I Actually Kept

The app subtracted calories burned from workouts, which gave me a reason to stay consistent and I wanted to see that number move every single day. Around the same time, I started wearing a Garmin and tracking my steps too. It changed how I moved through ordinary life. Instead of sitting at an airport gate waiting for a flight, I’d walk the entire terminal, seeing how many steps I could rack up before boarding.

Weeks turned into months, and the changes were subtle at first, then obvious. My belt size changed. I started seeing actual definition in my abs. I noticed more vascularity. For the first time in a long time, I felt genuinely comfortable without a shirt on in public. None of it happened overnight. It happened because I’d found a habit I could actually sustain.

Part of sustaining it was giving myself permission to not be perfect. I follow the 80/20 rule: if I’m eating well 80% of the time, the other 20% isn’t a big deal. That’s dinner out with friends, a party, pizza on a Friday night. I don’t go off the rails, but I also don’t stress over it. That balance is a big part of why the habit stuck for years instead of fizzling out after a few months like most attempts at “eating better” do.

Then the App Disappeared

One day, it just stopped working. No warning, no replacement, nothing.

I hadn’t realized how much that one tool had shaped my health until it was gone. I went looking for alternatives, and quickly ran into the same wall a lot of people hit: free apps came with barely any real functionality, and even the paid options didn’t have what I actually wanted or needed with some missing workout tracking, others missing food groups or barcode scanning, none of them built quite right.

As a personal trainer, I’d recommended that original app to clients for years. When it disappeared, I didn’t just need a replacement for myself but I needed one for the people I train too. So I decided to build it myself.

Badonka Fuel

I set out to include every single feature I considered pivotal to my own transformation: protein and full macro tracking, calorie totals, workout logging that subtracts calories burned, barcode scanning, food groups for repeat meals, and the small daily nudges that keep a habit alive instead of quietly fading out.

I also wanted RR Health + Fitness to give people more than just a product. So Badonka Fuel comes free with any RR H+F purchase including the Jacked Ass Belt, Badonka Bands, or RR H+F Resistance Bands and it’s free for every member of the Jacked Ass Club, my community on Facebook.

If you’re where I was standing at that marathon finish line, missing the tool that turns motivation into an actual habit, then Badonka Fuel is built for exactly that moment.

Grab any RR H+F product or join the Jacked Ass Club to get Badonka Fuel for free!