How many grams of protein does it take for you to get optimal results? Results could either mean hypertrophy, or strength, or power, whatever.
If you guys vary your amount, do you see any differences between going .8 grams per pound as opposed to 1 gram per pound?
I think a bare minimum for any hard training individual is a gram per lb of bodyweight. Obviously you’ll find studies and anecdotals attributing progress to numbers of 1.25, or even up to 1.5g per lb.
While some people will tell you 2g/lb, my thinking has always been not that the extra protein really had such a huge impact, but simply that the extra calories did.
Personally, I usually stay with about 1.5g/lb when dieting, and when gaining as well. I prefer to load in my extra cals from fats and carbs.
S
I go with 1.5g per a pound of an estimated LEAN MASS.
No reason to feed the fat.
Agreed that 1g/lb is a good minimum. I had about two weeks where I ran out of protein and was consuming probably around 125g protein a day (on good days…some were probably like 80-100g) and I felt pretty crappy that whole time and my workouts suffered. My bodyweight is ~165lbs.
But hey you can just try it like I did…up the volume in your workouts and consume low protein for two weeks and see how you feel.
Anything less than 1.25-1.5, and I want to chew my arm off. I’ve tried but didn’t feel satiated. Been at 250g/day steady throughout my whole cut and will probably keep it that way.
[quote]jskrabac wrote:
Anything less than 1.25-1.5, and I want to chew my arm off. I’ve tried but didn’t feel satiated. Been at 250g/day steady throughout my whole cut and will probably keep it that way. [/quote]
Well if that’s you in the avatar it’s working haha! Do most people aim for protein first than fill up the rest of their macros with carbs / fats depending on what works for them?
Related:
why do we use the metric system and the imperial system in reference to the amount of protein per body weight. Its lubricous! Either use grams or use pounds, not both together!
tweet
[quote]KcThrows wrote:
[quote]jskrabac wrote:
Anything less than 1.25-1.5, and I want to chew my arm off. I’ve tried but didn’t feel satiated. Been at 250g/day steady throughout my whole cut and will probably keep it that way. [/quote]
Well if that’s you in the avatar it’s working haha! Do most people aim for protein first than fill up the rest of their macros with carbs / fats depending on what works for them? [/quote]
this is highly independent for each person and also depends on where you are whether you are bulking/cutting/maintaining leanness.
Personally I like high carbs. If I were to run my own bulk (which I won’t, I’ll be using a coach this next one) I’d probably slowly reverse diet to bring carbs at 40-45% of my total calories, protein at about 30% and fat at 25-30%.
[quote]theBird wrote:
Related:
why do we use the metric system and the imperial system in reference to the amount of protein per body weight. Its lubricous! Either use grams or use pounds, not both together!
tweet[/quote]
yes I always make sure to take in 0.035274 ounces of protein per pound of bodyweight
[quote]Mutu wrote:
How many grams of protein does it take for you to get optimal results? Results could either mean hypertrophy, or strength, or power, whatever.
If you guys vary your amount, do you see any differences between going .8 grams per pound as opposed to 1 gram per pound? [/quote]
Protein intake is not the limiting factor to gaining strength or mass but rather how quickly the body can assimilate amino acids into new muscle tissue - which is completely dependent on one’s entire lifestyle and not just diet.
The entire human body is only made up of ~20% protein by weight (1kg of lean muscle contains 170g amino acids).
If you actually counted all the amino acids in the human body they make up only .01% of its entire structure.
If you feel good during your entire day: you wake with no issues getting out of bed; you can train with intensity and afterward you feel strong rather than depressed or beat up; you can eat all of your meals with no feelings of discomfort or upset digestion; and you can promptly fall asleep at bedtime then you are probably doing it right - keep it up.
[quote]KcThrows wrote:
[quote]jskrabac wrote:
Anything less than 1.25-1.5, and I want to chew my arm off. I’ve tried but didn’t feel satiated. Been at 250g/day steady throughout my whole cut and will probably keep it that way. [/quote]
Well if that’s you in the avatar it’s working haha! Do most people aim for protein first than fill up the rest of their macros with carbs / fats depending on what works for them? [/quote]
Imo, the beauty of dieting is that it doesn’t matter where your starting point is, as long as it’s not completely retarded. You will converge to where you need to be as you adjust week by week.
Alot of paralysis comes from guys overthinking where to start…and never really starting anywhere, instead of just diving in. Even if you hire a coach with good street cred, they’re NOT going to know exactly where you should start.
For those of you that have experimented with 2 grams per pound or higher: At what point did extra intake no longer matter? Anyone try 2.5x or 3x?
[quote]theBird wrote:
Related:
why do we use the metric system and the imperial system in reference to the amount of protein per body weight. Its lubricous! Either use grams or use pounds, not both together!
tweet
[/quote]
Scales with pounds; food labels with grams of nutrients; people who stand on scales and eat labelled food.
[quote]Mutu wrote:
For those of you that have experimented with 2 grams per pound or higher: At what point did extra intake no longer matter? Anyone try 2.5x or 3x?
[/quote]
lol even 2g per pound is kinda crazy. Think about it if you weigh 200lbs that is 400g of protein.
[quote]paulieserafini wrote:
[quote]Mutu wrote:
For those of you that have experimented with 2 grams per pound or higher: At what point did extra intake no longer matter? Anyone try 2.5x or 3x?
[/quote]
lol even 2g per pound is kinda crazy. Think about it if you weigh 200lbs that is 400g of protein.[/quote]
Yeah, that can be tough on your kidneys. Your muscles can only grow so much at a time, so throwing that much extra protein at them will be kind of useless. It would be better to get those extra calories from carbs or fat (preferably carbs).
Assuming the human body is no more than 20% amino acids by weight a person weighing 100K would only be 20K amino acids.
How much of these amino acids is it reasonable to assume we would need to replace each day? less than 1%? For a 100k individual that would be 200g of amino acids which would translate to about 1k of body weight after water and mineral content is removed with it.
How much can we reasonably expect to add to new protein synthesis each day with each additional unit of amino acid we add to our diet? Could we reasonable expect to add 1% per day? Not likely.
A scholarly publication on the rate of protein synthesis by muscle fiber type
http://jp.physoc.org/content/563/1/203.full.pdf
I eat much less than 200g of protein per day (often less than 100g/day) and am about 100k (probably closer to 89 kg fat free) and am still gaining lean mass.
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
I think a bare minimum for any hard training individual is a gram per lb of bodyweight. Obviously you’ll find studies and anecdotals attributing progress to numbers of 1.25, or even up to 1.5g per lb.
While some people will tell you 2g/lb, my thinking has always been not that the extra protein really had such a huge impact, but simply that the extra calories did.
Personally, I usually stay with about 1.5g/lb when dieting, and when gaining as well. I prefer to load in my extra cals from fats and carbs.
S[/quote]
I agree exactly with what Stu said. Often times I go under 1grm per lb because of hectic schedule etc., but after a couple days of that I also want to chew my arm off lol.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Assuming the human body is no more than 20% amino acids by weight a person weighing 100K would only be 20K amino acids.
How much of these amino acids is it reasonable to assume we would need to replace each day? less than 1%? For a 100k individual that would be 200g of amino acids which would translate to about 1k of body weight after water and mineral content is removed with it.
How much can we reasonably expect to add to new protein synthesis each day with each additional unit of amino acid we add to our diet? Could we reasonable expect to add 1% per day? Not likely.
A scholarly publication on the rate of protein synthesis by muscle fiber type
http://jp.physoc.org/content/563/1/203.full.pdf
I eat much less than 200g of protein per day (often less than 100g/day) and am about 100k (probably closer to 89 kg fat free) and am still gaining lean mass.[/quote]
that’s good if you are gaining lean mass but it does not mean it is necessarily optimal.
Layne Norton with a PhD is protein Metabolism reccommends 20-40g of protein 4-5 times a day to maximize protein synthesis.
I remember he also said once that 40g didn’t offer a huge benefit over 20g in a single dose but still did say it did improve protein synthesis some and I know most of us who want to be as big as we possibly can do care to have an extra even just a 1-5% edge.
Now I’m not reccomending insane amounts of protein but to me a diet of 200-250g of protein isn’t harmful and doesn’t promote fat gain. So in my opinion there is no real reason to reccomend 100g vs 200g
[quote]paulieserafini wrote:
Layne Norton with a PhD is protein Metabolism reccommends 20-40g of protein 4-5 times a day to maximize protein synthesis.
I remember he also said once that 40g didn’t offer a huge benefit over 20g in a single dose but still did say it did improve protein synthesis some and I know most of us who want to be as big as we possibly can do care to have an extra even just a 1-5% edge.
[/quote]
Put another way, Layne is recommending between 80 and 200 grams of protein a day. This range is so wide it’s useless. I’m not knocking Layne, it’s just indicative of the amount of confusion that surrounds something as straightforward as optimal protein intake.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I eat much less than 200g of protein per day (often less than 100g/day) and am about 100k (probably closer to 89 kg fat free) and am still gaining lean mass.[/quote]
Last thread you said you eat low carbs, now your kinda low protein too. So is your major calorie source fat then?