Exercise Phis class

TOday in exercise phisiology, my teacher said that an athletes diet should consist of 55-75% carbs. and 12 % protien
He also said that if your protien intake is over 1.5g per kilo of body weight your doing extreme damage to your kidneys.
he also said athletes and bodybuilders do not need a higher protien intake…whats up with this??

Typical.

No surprise…not only “typical”…but typically misinformed…


The problem is that mis-information gets quoted, RE-quoted, and quoted again…then it ends up as “truth” or “common knowledge”, ESPECIALLY in the areas of nutrition and resistance training.

This guy is an asshole. Just remember that your job is to get a good grade, not to educate (antagonize) yet another ignoramus.

Nicely said, V!


Yep…get the grade, then come back to this site for the REAL scoop!!!

Actually, check out the credentials of your professor. If he’s a PhD, he might have more information than we do. Everyone here will be on the 1g/lb bandwagon, so all we’ve got are opinions. On the other hand, he might be wrong. Instead of dismissing him, ask why. Why is it bad, please explain? Why such heavy carbs, please explain? What about too much insulin? How many calories should a person eat if they’re to have that many cals? Etc. The guy might know something. Remember, JMB is a PhD candidate. Bryan Haycock has his Masters (I think). The guy might know something you can use.

he is also the head strength and conditioning coach. And this is division 1 athletics, i was going to have a talk with him after class, but i had to get to the gym. I will be sure to raise some questions regaurding very succesful lo-carb high protien apporach and some personal expeirience.

“Typical” is right, but the wierd part is that endurance athletes need more protein in their diets than strength athletes.

you could privately ask for some studies to back up the claim on kidney damage in healthy individuals as a result of high protein intake.

Another reason college is a rip off. Just think you paid to get bad information. OUCH!

Welcome to University Education and the field of Exercise Science.

Knowing what YOU'RE talking about will help you greatly in these courses. If you don't have the energy to debate every time your prof. spews out some misinformation (which I don't know anyone who does), then just chime in with a question every once in a while just to piss him off. For example, when he made the comment about anything over 1.5g/kg of protein does extreme damage to kidneys, I would have raised my hand and said "Can you show me some documentation printed in a peer reviewed journal making the assertion that a high protein intake causes kidney damage?"

The likely response will be either:

1. A dumbfounded look, OR (if he's one of those confident, know it all types...)

2. Sure, can you email me about this and I'll be happy to provide you with some documentation.

After that, he'll either do one of two things:

1. Never get back to you (because there is none)

2. Send you some bogus study in which the participants already had some type of pre-existing kidney or liver problems, or the testing parameter used does not even neccesary correlate to excess renal stress (such as excess nitrogen in the urine, etc.)

Should the first happen, you have two options:

1. Reinquire on the subject, in which he will continue to BS with you and never get back to you.

2. Just forget about it, tell all your classmates how he doesn't support his claims, and then get the answers right on the test.

Should the second happen, hopefully you will be educated enough to see through the BS. Then I'd bring it up in class.

I've gone through this process many times; it generally leads to the apathizing (is that a word?) of an individual. You generally don't win; it's the guy with the PhD and your classmates who think he's God vs. you. Enjoy your education (or miseducation)!

Oh yea, if you really want to get an "education," read everything you can from respectable authors in the field. Definitely keep reading this site. Don't get too discouraged though, you'll need that degree someday to get a job.

Old habits are hard to kill. This will continue to be the norm until MAJOR studies get published showing otherwise and someone has the balls to publish it in a textbook.

As someone who has been through a university ex phys program, you just need to get used to marking the answer you heard in class whether it is right or wrong in your mind.

With that said, although there are many problems with most universities, especially in ex phys and nutrition, the underlying physiology and biology that you learn is very valid and very valuable.

Instead of calling the guy an asshole and just getting the grade, why not try to make a difference? This “educator” will continue spreading his information to everyone else he encounters until he has been shown proof of a better way. Find information you can present to him showing why he is wrong. Read articles, get references, cite studies - you know, just like the big boys that write the articles here at T-Mag do. And if you are worried about your grade, of course you’ll just follow along with his teachings until the end of the class. THAT’s when you give the information to him in hopes that he doesn’t continue spreading bad/old/uninformed information!

Just nod your head and say ok.

Do your research, print it out, and leave it for the professor anonymously, along with his notes from the class, and leave it on his desk, his superior, the dept. chair and for others. make sure you get it to as many people as possible and then act as if you received it anonymously too and ask for his coment.

Assimilate the info and spit it back out on the test. Then, do your best to forget it. Once the prof has turned in grades and you will never have to deal with him (or his colleagues) again, email him to let him know that he should pull his head out of his ass. The exercise Physiologist (spelled phYs) at my school is the same way, so I can sympathize. Personally, I’ve found that one of the best ways to turn things around on them is to use all projects as opportunities to question the norm. Do a paper on keto diets or why soy sucks. If he gives you a bad grade to prove a point, go to the department chair.

You don’t go to Michigan State University, do you?

I agree with VMAN. I was in the Exercise and Sport Science program at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro a few years ago and went through the same ordeal. You spend all this money to go to class just so you can come back to your apartment (or dorm) and learn the truth. It’s disgusting, I know. I also know that it’s not just about the diet mythology, but training as well. I got fed up with it. I made the decision to go into ultrasound. No regrets yet!

im doing a double degree in NZ
human nutrition and exercise perscription…im really happy with both departments as far as what they tell us. seems to be close to what ive learnt here on t-mag…just that they require scientific studies to show trends etc before they teach it and are a little behind “gym knowledge”

your professer is obviously a ignorant fool, 30min using medline or pubmed would come up with many studies stating he was wrong.

perhaps you go to a cheap charlie university where they cant afford lecturers who can be bothered keeping up with research?

Ryan, all the above suggestions have merit (even if they sometimes contradict one another!). Just remember one thing: When you get out in the “real world”, your employer is going to want you to have that piece of paper that says you stuck it out for four years at a university. He’s not going to trust that you actually know anything. Believe me. So stick it out and get the grade, then do whatever you think is right about the false info.


And to the guy who talked about educational qualifications (i.e. PhDs and the like), I’d just like to say that whether someone has an advanced degree is more or less irrelevant to how much they know. Sad, but true. During one of my linguistics classes I had a professor claim that there were about 185 million native English speakers in the world. Never mind that the population of the US alone at that time was about 250 million…)


I would say that virtually all of us Forumites out here (without the advanced degrees) have tried both the high-carb/low-fat/low protein and low-carb/higher-fat/high-protein alternatives, and the overwhelming consensus is that the latter works better - at least for bodybuilding. I don’t care what kind of studies or research or anything else is quoted, I know what works in the real world, and no one, PhD or otherwise, is going to confuse me on that point.