Protein Intake

L

Lance

New Member
Bryan suggests eating 1g/lb of protein, 25% calories from fats, and the rest from carbs. Lyle also suggests this for the majority, but says some rare people actually do benefit from higher amounts of proteins.

I'm wondering if there is any reason not to take more than 1g/lb of protein, considering you could possibly be giving yourself more muscle building potential.
 
This really interested me. It is from the Diet and Nutrition FAQ

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]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.
Click to expand...

also

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]There is some interesting research on protein coming out that indicates that when you add carbs to your protein, more of it gets "trapped" (incorporated into gut proteins and/or oxidized in the gut and liver) in the gut. This is because of the anabolic effect of insulin on enterocytes. Insulin isn't really anabolic in skeletal muscle but it helps nonetheless.

Anyway, my point is this, Take your protein without (or with less) carbs immediately after you workout. This will allow more amino acids to skirt past your enterocytes and liver and make it into the blood stream where they are taken up by skeletal muscle. Then take your carbs one hour later, which still allows you to take advantage of the metabolic "window" post workout.
Click to expand...
 
Hmmm ...

I wonder about protein alot. Some say to take alot, some, like Bryan, say 1g/lb is plenty. You know how we bodybuilders are, allways looking to optomize (spelling?) and get the best results.

I guess i have two questions quite simply. While natural, is Bryan's recommendations perfect? (Lol, sounds overboard, but maybe i should have said optimla instead)

And the second would be, while on AAS (b/c i may do a 2 weeker during my next HST cycle) what is the optimal amount.

Thanks,
Lance
 
From what I have seen Bryan's plan is optimal, it compares to just about everything else I've read, quite well BTW, and easier to compute.

As far as AAS, I really wouldn't know. I think in that same FAQ, it is mentioned that Steroid use does the effect of being able to parition food better so more calories can be ingested with less additive fat. But off the top of my head I don't remember exactly, you probably should read it before taking my word for it.
 
I knew I had seen this somewhere. It was in THinkmuscle #24 Q&A
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Still, from the research we have, you get (all things being equal) about 3 pounds (1.5 kg) of fat free mass for every 100 mg of testosterone per week up to at least 600 mg/week over the course of about 16 weeks of use. And like I said, the dose response showed no signs of attenuation, it was linear through 600 mg/week. And this is without any exercise or mass gaining diet! So clearly, drug dosages make a big difference.

As far as drug type and combinations go, it is well known that the testosterone esters elicit the greatest increases in circulating GH and IGF-1 levels, where as steroids that don’t aromatize do not have any GH or IGF-1 boosting effect and thus are inferior mass building drugs. The proper use of GH, ephedrine, and Cytomel can also allow higher caloric intakes without concomitant fat gain.
Click to expand...
 
Supposedly, an individual can't utilize much more than 0.8-1.0gP/lb-BW. I don't know how true this or or whatever, but supposedly 15-20% total cals from protein is ideal. That does end up being 0.8-1.0gP/lb.

Bryan and Lyle tell us how the excess protein burns calories that could've gone towards growth. Maybe this is why we see people who consume tons of calories make gains slowly, whereas you have people who diet more or less half-assed, but don't overdo the protein and still make results.

I say this based on what I have seen. I know a bunch of people in my HS (yes, we're still young, but some of these kids are on their way, rather, big, and certainly not making newbie gains) who don't take dieting to extremes. Now, I'm sure they would make better gains if the calories were a bit higher, but with their diets they don't seem to be getting tons of protein, yet they grow. Optimal or not, I can't say because I'm not dissecting them.

Still, you have people who eat extreme amounts and make gains that look like they should be on someone else. Moderation is definitely key with things, so maybe the whole idea of limiting protein intake is correct. Hey, I can deal with a few more cups of pasta.
 
Whenever i experiment with a very high protein intake, the results are phenomenal. I say experiment b/c it allways lasts a week at the most ... it's hard to stay on those diets. Just dang hard. You get MAD cravings for terrible carbs after a while.

Anyways ... these are usually lower carb, not low carb, but the extra protein substitutes for the carbs. 2g/lb is as high as i've gone.

Results: I allways drop bodyfat, harden up, get more ripped, see muscle separation that i havn't before and those little muscles (brachaii for one) that you don't allways see, and seem to also thicken up definately. Pretty much at bodybuildingworld.com they swear by a high protein, lower carb, med fat diet, 50%/20%/30% actually, at a higher calorie level for lean gaining. Allways works when i try it, and their clients and people on their message board (MANY MANY competitors) SWEAR by their nutritional wisdom. They go more by their clients progress, rather than studies, and follow alot of old school mentalities. Rheo Blair, Arnold, the ironagers, actually, with some new age such as proper EFA's.
 
just more anecdotes. I don't know what you'd expect him to say.

I could just as easily say "when I eat potato chips, my 10 rep max in bench press gets doubled" and we could ask for Bryan's opinion on it.

Now, I'm not mocking Lance's assertion at all, in fact, I believe him. But there's really no way of evaluating it. Too many factors. There's not much anyone can really say.
 
I came to a realization the other day...

I was cooking up a rather large batch of chicken on my foreman grill (which I cannot endorse enough. Buy one, especially one of the big ones).

All in all, 2-3 pounds of chicken. This was a pile of chicken the size of one of my pecs.

I was looking at this enormous pile of chicken, and thinking about how, over the next four days, I would eat all of it. And then I was thinking about how that would only comprise 1/3 of my total protein intake.

And then I pondered, "what if I converted all this chicken muscle to human muscle in myself? I would be huge!" But then I remembered, however, about how increased protein intake just leads to increased protein turnover to maintain homeostasis.

That chicken incident reinforced intuitively what I already knew academically:

The vast majority of protein we intake does not build muscle. The VAST majority! Otherwise to gain 1 pound of muscle a week I would eat 1 pound of chicken a week. Instead I eat it in a day, and a whole lot of other things.

The body usually isn't hurting for protein, especially the way we eat. So what keeps that protein from becoming muscle is the anabolic environment in our body.

Something needs to tell the cells to grab protein and use it for more muscle. Here are a few things that do that:
-Working out
-Large calorie surplus
-Exogenous hormones

So if you're already working out and already eating a lot, piling on more protein won't help you much beyond that it's extra calories.

However everybody downplays how much of a role anabolic hormones can play in growth. Most boys put on 10, 20, 30 pounds of muscle during puberty, largely from sitting around and overeating. And most steroid doses far exceed the pubescent hormonal cascade.

So I would certainly recommend steroid users to up intake. Everybody else, remember the chicken incident -- the vast majority of that pile I just finished eating I'll soon be excreting.
 
With my way of bodybuilding i basically jump from research backed diets and then instinctive based diets.

Research backed, just read up on Bryan or Lyle's studies and practices.

Instinctive, well, trust in yourself. Try new things without asking why. Dave Draper allways followed this and the man looks great at his age. (52 or 62, i can't remember, old, lol). He has allways realized through the practice that increased protein intake just does things. The old diets of meat, milk, and eggs just seemed to add muscle and minimize fat. He says himself, don't ask how it works, it just does.

So i jump between the two. Test new theories, old ones, and my own. I'm just giving an example of something i tried. I still havn't had the chance to try it for a 'long' period, like a whole HST cycle, which i would love to do! Basically because i havn't fined tuned it yet to where i can stick with it. It takes alot of preparing time, money, etc. for all that meat.

Really does.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top