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(Fausto @ Apr. 11 2006,06:46)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">From an interview to Dr. Berardi
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Wannabebig: Great, you hate my question - how about this one. How much protein should a bodybuilder/athlete consume to maximize muscle and strength gains?
John B: Now that's better! I usually recommend that protein intake be in the neighborhood of 3-4g/kg. If this recommendation seems excessive and you think that you should stop this interview right now, hang on one second.
Again, I'm not crazy. Basically the reason someone might think this intake is excessive is because they have a narrow view of how protein fits into one's dietary strategy.
They're looking at protein in the same narrow way that people used to look at vitamin C; essential at a specific dose but conferring no additional benefits with a higher intake.
With vitamin C, we all know it's important to consume enough of it (at least 10mg/day) to prevent scurvy. However, it's also commonly known there are a host of health benefits associated with much higher doses (200mg/day or more) including a reduced risk of cancer, increased HDL cholesterol, reduced risk of coronary artery disease, and a reduced duration of cold episodes and severity of symptoms.
Like vitamin C, instead of thinking of protein as a macronutrient that provides no benefit beyond preventing protein deficiency, we need to recognize the benefits of eating protein (at any dose).
Increased Thermic Effect of Feeding - While all macronutrients require metabolic processing for digestion, absorption, and storage or oxidation, the thermic effect of protein is roughly double that of carbohydrates and fat.
Therefore, eating protein is actually thermogenic and can lead to a higher metabolic rate. This means greater fat loss when dieting and less fat gain during overfeeding.
Increased Glucagon - Protein consumption increases plasma concentrations of the hormone glucagon.
Glucagon is responsible for antagonizing the effects of insulin in adipose tissue, leading to greater fat mobilization.
In addition, glucagon also decreases the amounts and activities of the enzymes responsible for making and storing fat in adipose and liver cells. Again, this leads to greater fat loss during dieting and less fat gain during overfeeding.
Increased IGF-1 - Protein and amino-acid supplementation has been shown to increase the IGF-1 response to both exercise and feeding.
Since IGF-1 is an anabolic hormone that's related to muscle growth, another advantage associated with consuming more protein is more muscle growth when overfeeding and/or muscle sparing when dieting.
Reduction in Cardiovascular Risk - Several studies have shown that increasing the percentage of protein in the diet (from 11% to 23%) while decreasing the percentage of carbohydrate (from 63% to 48%) lowers LDL cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations with concomitant increases in HDL cholesterol concentrations.
Improved Weight-Loss Profile - New research by Layman and colleagues has demonstrated that reducing the carbohydrate ratio from 3.5 - 1 to 1.4 - 1 increases body fat loss, spares muscle mass, reduces triglyceride concentrations, improves satiety, and improves blood glucose management (Layman et al 2003 - If you're at all interested in protein intake, you've gotta go read the January and February issues of the Journal of Nutrition. Layman has three interesting articles in the two journals).
Increased Protein Turnover - All tissues of the body, including muscle, go through a regular program of turnover.
Since the balance between protein breakdown and protein synthesis governs muscle protein turnover, you need to increase your protein turnover rates in order to best improve your muscle quality.
A high protein diet does just this. By increasing both protein synthesis and protein breakdown, a high protein diet helps you get rid of the old muscle more quickly and build up new, more functional muscle to take its place.
Increased Nitrogen Status - Earlier I indicated that a positive nitrogen status means that more protein is entering the body than is leaving the body.
High protein diets cause a strong positive protein status and when this increased protein availability is coupled with an exercise program that increases the body's anabolic efficiency, the growth process may be accelerated. Increased Provision of
Auxiliary Nutrients - Although the benefits mentioned above have related specifically to protein and amino acids, it's important to recognize that we don't just eat protein and amino acids - we eat food.
Therefore, high protein diets often provide auxiliary nutrients that could enhance performance and/or muscle growth.
These nutrients include creatine, branched chain amino acids, conjugated linoleic acids, and/or additional nutrients that are important but remain to be discovered.
This illustrates the need to get most of your protein from food, rather than supplements alone. Looking over this list of benefits, isn't it clear that getting lots of protein would be advantageous to anyone's training goals?
Since a high protein diet can lead to a better health profile, an increased metabolism, improved body composition, and an improved training response, why would anyone ever try to limit their protein intake to the bare minimum necessary to stave off malnutrition?</div></div>
hmmm this is what it says in the faq..
Seems like they contradict eachother ?
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Actually, most guys take in too much protein. It isn't that too much protein will hurt them - assuming they are healthy to begin with - but too much protein can actually inhibit gains. I know, it sounds totally contradictory to what you read everywhere, but it is true. Let me explain.
The ability of the body to grow is effected by the ratio of protein to carbs. It is an inverted U shaped curve - or bell curve - where the top or highest point of the curve is a ratio of 12-15% protein to carbs (diet consisting of ~15% protein). At one peak you have all carbs, at the other you have all protein. It has to do with thermogenesis and hormones.
So, if a skinny guy wants to gain weight, he needs to plan a diet where he gets 15% of his calories from protein.
Now this may seem contradictory to the general rule of 1 gram per pound bodyweight. I'm not saying that a guy can't gain weight with more than 15% calories from protein, I'm only saying that weight gain is greatest at 15%. He will be ok with an intake of 0.75 grams/pound FFM to gain muscle. In fact, everybody should use FFM instead of bodyweight to plan protein intake, but sometimes it's just too hard to figure it out, so most people use bodyweight.
For a guy who isn't all that skinny, or even a little fat, he should increase his protien intake to 20-25%. This will increase thermogenesis and prevent some fat gain as calories increase above maintenance.
The problem with protein cycling is that it is hard ot get ahead of your body when it comes to managing protein. The body adapts fairly quickly to changes in protien intake. If you eat more during the day, your body will get rid of more during the night. That changes according to intake on a daily basis.
Longer term, your body will adjust to a drop in protein intake over the course of 12-14 days. In other words, you will go into a negative nitrogen balance on day one, and it takes about 12-14 days for your body to be able to reeduce protein breakdown to the point of reaching balance again.
Some may argue about the different turnover rates of muscle protein and splanchnic proteins. This should have led to real success from protein cycling, yet it hasn't.
If you do decide to cycle your protein, I would not drop your intake below 15% (or ~1g/kg bodyweight) while maintaining total calories. Then keep protein intake at this lowered level for at least 2 weeks.
Your diet can effect Test and IGFBPs. IGFBPs dictate how much IGF-1 is actually available for your body. Too much protein relative will lower insulin, and thus available IGF-1 and free test levels. Too little fat will also lower test levels. Keeping fat at 30% of total calories is optimum for testosterone.</div>
