How much protein do you need? Part 1

If you want to know exactly how much protein you should eat per day to build muscle and lose fat, and which types of protein are best, then this could be the article you've been waiting for

Once upon a time, I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Even though I was working out 5 to 6 days a week, my weight wasn't changing...I couldn't get stronger...and I hadn't gained any significant muscle mass in years.

What was an aspiring young exerciser like me to do? Well, I consulted the annals of broscience and found the answer:

"Eat more protein - a freaking ton a day, to be exact."

And so began the great protein gluttony. Every day looked like this:

• I always took two scoops of protein powder for my protein shakes.
• I ate over a pound of meat a day.
• I ate hard-boiled eggs like candy.

I was a good young bodybuilder...with thankfully good, healthy kidneys. Thanks mom. (No, all kidding, high protein diets are not bad for the kidneys).

Well, after a year of eating 400 grams of protein or more every day, I had to face two truths:

• It wasn't working.
• Despite all the protein, I looked about the same as before, weighed about the same as before and trained with more or less the same weights as before.

Nothing had really changed.

To make a long story short - I wised up, dramatically changed my diet and training strategies and eventually escaped the crater of mediocrity. Along the way, I learned a lot of things, one of which is the amount of protein you should eat per day.

To make a long story short:

You don't need to stuff yourself full of protein without rhyme or reason to build muscle or lose fat, but you will need to eat more - or less - protein than you might think

In this article, I'll cover all of this. By the end, you'll know exactly how much protein you need each day based on your goals - and you'll know why.

Let's start with the basics:

What is protein and why is it important?

Protein is a compound made up of smaller molecules known as amino acids. Protein is also the basic building block of your body. The different types of tissues in your body such as muscle, ligaments, tendons, hair, organs and skin are all made of protein - and so are hormones, enzymes and various other vital chemicals.

Your body needs 21 amino acids to produce proteins. It can produce 12 of these itself, but the rest must be supplied by the food you eat. These amino acids are known as essential amino acids and include

Histidine	cysteine
isoleucine	threonine
leucine	tryptophan
lysine	valine
methionine

The primary reason you need to eat protein is to provide your body with adequate amounts of the essential amino acids it needs to build and repair itself.

As you might imagine, regular exercise increases your body's need for protein (1), but adequate protein intake is also important for physically inactive people. If physically inactive people don't eat enough protein as they get older, they lose muscle mass faster (2). And the faster they lose muscle mass, the faster their physical decline will be (3).

However, the quantity of protein, which we will discuss in more detail in a moment, is not the only factor that should be considered. Protein quality also plays a role.

What are the best forms of protein?

"I get plenty of protein - I eat broccoli." This is one of the more whimsical statements I hear on a regular basis. (Even more whimsical is the claim that broccoli contains more protein than steak, gram for gram. THE GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO US!??!)

First of all, broccoli contains about 13 grams of protein per pound, which means that people - and especially physically active people - certainly can't get enough protein by eating broccoli. Second, not all forms of protein are of equal quality. Some are better absorbed by the body than others and the amino acid profiles of different protein sources also differ.

While it is not true that plant proteins are incomplete (which would mean that they lack certain essential amino acids (4), it is true that some plant proteins contain lower amounts of certain amino acids than other proteins.

Animal proteins such as meat, eggs and dairy products, for example, contain large amounts of essential amino acids, which is one of the reasons they are so popular with people who eat a high-protein diet.

Let's come back to broccoli and steak for a minute. Here's what 275 kcal of both (120 grams of steak vs. just over 9 cups of broccoli) will provide in essential amino acids:

Essential Amino Acids	Steak	broccoli
Histidine	0,975	0,48
Isoleucine	1,391	0,643
leucine	2,431	1,05
Lysine	2,583	1,099
Methionine	0,796	0,309
cysteine	0,394	0,228
Threonine	1,221	0,716
Tryptophan	0,201	0,269
valine	1,516	1,018

As you can see, broccoli doesn't even come close to steak. You would have to eat an insane 18 cups of broccoli to get the same amount of essential amino acids found in 120 grams of steak.

This is the main reason why fruits and vegetables are not good primary sources of protein. You would have to eat such large amounts of these foods that this is practically impossible and in some cases these protein sources are too low in essential amino acids.

The bottom line is that you can most easily meet your protein needs through animal protein sources, but with some creative meal planning (like incorporating protein powders), vegetarians and vegans can also incorporate plenty of high-quality protein into their diets.

How much protein can your body absorb?

Back when I was working on my PhD in Broscience, I not only ate 300 to 400 grams of protein a day, but I also ate eight to ten times a day. That meant eating protein about every two hours and if I missed one of those meals, I would get really hungry and sore.

Great times...

The main reason I did this was because I had read in a book that the body can only absorb about 40 grams of protein per meal. Any protein over this amount would simply be excreted and therefore not be available for muscle building.

Therefore, I had to plan my protein intake carefully if I didn't want to waste valuable protein and miss out on valuable gains. You've probably heard this too. Depending on who you listen to, this limit may be higher or lower, but there is a limit.

But is there really? Does it really make sense to believe that the body processes an NFL linebackers protein in exactly the same way as the body of a 48 kilo jockey?

And if protein absorption were actually capped at a relatively low amount, how would our hunter-gatherer ancestors have survived the times when they had to alternate between binge eating and fasting?

Let's look for some answers and start with what actually happens when you eat protein.

What happens when you eat protein?

Acid and enzymes in your stomach break the protein down into its component parts - peptides and amino acids. Some forms of protein, such as whey protein, are broken down more quickly, while others, such as eggs, are digested more slowly (5).

The amino acids enter the small intestine, which contains special cells that transport these amino acids into the blood. There is only a certain amount of these transporters lining the intestine, which limits the amount of amino acids (and other nutrients) that can be transported into the blood per hour.

The rate of protein absorption is therefore limited by the following factors:

• How much protein is broken down into amino acids.
• How quickly the amino acids are transported into the small intestine and into the blood.

Let's look at some concrete figures.

According to one study, the human body can absorb about the following per hour (6):

• 8 to 10 grams of whey protein
• 6.1 grams of casein protein
• 3.9 grams of soy protein
• 2.8 grams of cooked egg protein

These numbers don't apply exactly to every person in every circumstance, but they clearly show that some forms of protein are absorbed faster than others. How do we get from here to the misconception that the body can only absorb a certain amount of protein per meal?

We grab studies that have looked at how protein affects the rate of protein synthesis and draw completely wrong conclusions...

Here's how it works:

The truth about protein absorption

Protein intake and protein synthesis

Studies have found that 20 to 40 grams of protein maximally stimulates protein synthesis (7). This means that 20 to 40 grams of protein per meal is as anabolic as it gets and that increasing protein intake above these levels will have little to no additional effect on muscle/tissue repair and growth.

This limit of protein synthesis is then simply declared to be the limit for absorption. If eating more protein does not further increase the rate of protein synthesis, then this legend must mean that the body cannot process more protein, right?

Wrong!

How much the protein synthesis rate increases is only one dimension of what happens to the protein you eat. How long the rate of protein synthesis remains elevated is just as important, if not more so.

For example, research shows that 30 grams of whey protein increases protein synthesis rates more than 30 grams of casein protein (8). However, due to the rapid absorption of whey protein, the protein synthesis rate also falls back to the initial value more quickly (9).

(Whey protein causes a shorter but stronger increase in protein synthesis, while casein causes a smaller but longer increase in protein synthesis. In addition, casein inhibits protein breakdown for longer (9).

The same thing happens when you increase the amount of protein you eat during a meal. Eat 60 grams of protein and the effects are amplified, but not fundamentally modified (10).

The other fallacy that is sometimes cited as a limiting factor in protein absorption is the belief that all the food you eat passes through the small intestine within 2 to 3 hours

If this were true, it would follow that your body could only absorb a certain amount of protein before the rest leaves the small intestine and is excreted in the stool. This is also not true.

Protein, carbohydrates and fat do not move through the digestive tract at the same speed, nor do they leave the individual sections in the order in which they reached them.

When your stomach senses the presence of protein, a hormone is released that slows gastric emptying (11). This hormone slows down the contractions of the intestines and gives your body the time it needs to absorb most of the protein (or rather amino acids).

The net effect of this is that carbohydrates and fat can be processed and absorbed relatively quickly and your body can take its time with its protein.

In the second part of this article, we'll look at a few more studies that definitively disprove the myth that your body can only absorb a certain amount of protein per meal, before I discuss the ideal protein intake for muscle building and fat loss. I will then answer the question of which protein sources are best for supporting weight loss.

Source: https://legionathletics.com/how-much-protein-do-i-need/

By Mike Matthews