With the popularity of high-protein diets, you might be tempted to believe you can't overeat protein. But the truth is that consuming excessive protein can actually be quite detrimental to your health. Eating more protein than your body needs can interfere with your health and fitness goals in a number of ways, including weight gain, extra body fat, stress on your kidneys, dehydration and more.

Of course, your body needs protein, but there is an upper limit to how much protein your body can actually use. If you eat more protein than your body requires, it will convert the extra calories into sugar, then fat. Increased blood sugar levels can feed pathogenic bacteria and yeast, such as Candida, and fuel cancer growth. Too much protein can also cause your body to remove more nitrogen waste products from your blood, which puts stress on your kidneys and can result in chronic dehydration.

Additionally, excessive protein can have a stimulating effect on an important biochemical pathway called the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). This pathway has an important and significant role in many cancers. When you reduce protein to just what your body needs, mTOR remains inhibited, which helps minimize your chances of cancer growth.

To determine whether or not you're getting too much protein, calculate your body's requirement based on your lean body mass and write down everything you eat for a few days. Then, calculate the amount of daily protein you've consumed from all sources, and adjust accordingly.

Here’s how to calculate your protein requirements:

You likely need about one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. For most people, this amounts to 40 to 70 grams of protein a day. Rarely does a person need more protein than this — the exception would be those who are aggressively exercising (or competing) and pregnant women, who should have about 25% more. To estimate your protein requirements, first determine your lean body mass, then subtract your percent body fat from 100.

For example, if you have 20% body fat, then you have 80% lean body mass. Multiply that percentage (in this case, 0.8) by your current weight to get your lean body mass in pounds or kilos. So, in the above example, if you weighed 160 pounds, 0.8 multiplied by 160 equals 128 pounds of lean body mass. Using the "one-half gram of protein" rule, you would need about 64 grams of protein per day.

Are you eating too much?