The Smartest Way To Use Protein To Build Muscle (Science Explained)

and I would eat 3 to 400 gram of protein a day up to 1. 5 g of protein per pound of body weight I may even go closer to 1. 3 G right now 1 g of protein per pound of body weight 0.

82 G per pound of body weight 75 G4 G times your body weight 1 g of protein for every one pound of body weight a lot of people will say that it's actually not true protein into take of 1. 2 G kg a day wait wa 1. 2 no I said 1.

6 didn't I okay obviously there's a lot of conflicting information about protein out there so in this video I want to condense all the best science-based information down to give you a final answer on every protein related question you've ever asked first when it comes to General Health the World Health Organization recommends just 0. 8 gr of protein per kilogram of body weight or 0. 36 G per pound so an 80 kilo a roughly 180 lb person would only need about 655 g of protein per day this is pretty hard to miss on a typical Western diet I mean this ground turkey and rice bowl with a glass of milk has 65 g of protein and that would have me covered for the day however this recommendation doesn't consider weight training and many protein experts have called for an increase given the abundance of evidence showing health benefits with higher protein intakes and the Sports Nutrition research is perfectly clear and showing that this amount of protein simply won't be enough to support much less maximize muscle growth for that goal we'll need more now just how much you need depends on if you're bulking cutting or doing a recomp phase and these ranges apply to both men and women if you're bulking your body is wellfed meaning it's much less likely to break down muscle tissue as a fuel source there are plenty of carbs and fats to burn first for this reason you generally need less protein when bulking here the best research recommends 1.

6 to 2. 2 G per kilo or 0. 7 to 1 G per pound per day and here we can see the trusty old 1 G per pound rule holding up pretty well as a high-end figure so if you weigh 180 lb or 80 kilos you'd want something between 125 and 180 gram of protein per day when bulking on the other hand if you're cutting your body's not only getting fewer calories from food you also have less body fat and less glycogen as fuel reserves Therefore your body is much more likely to break down muscle tissue as a source of calories to offset this the best data suggests increasing protein intake while cutting to 1.

8 to 2. 7 G per ow or 0. 8 to 1.

2 G per pound this time we can see that the classic 1 G per pound rule sits in the middle of the range if you're already very lean and training very hard you'll want to air toward the upper end and if you have more body fat and are training more recreationally the lower end will be plenty thirdly when on a recm phase you're trying to build muscle and lose fat at the same time while setting your calories around maintenance intake so I think most people can simply use the same protein figures as when bulking because at maintenance you're also at a low risk of muscle loss as long as your training is on point however there may be some advantages to going a bit higher on a recm phase especially if you're in a slight deficit or more advanced in the past I've used this sliding model as a guide for recomp because it uses lean body mass instead of total body weight making it more individualized especially for those who hold more body fat however the extra step of subtracting your body fat did confuse some people so these days I've come up with a simpler solution via researcher Eric Helms if you're overweight or obese you can simply aim for 1 g of protein per cimeter in height so if you're 6t or 183 cm tall you'd want around 183 g of protein this works shockingly well especially if you're at a higher body fat the answer to the question how much protein can you absorb in a single meal is all of it your body can absorb an enormous amount of protein in a single meal more than you could even comfortably eat but absorption simply refers to the passage of nutrients from the small intestine into the bloodstream just because protein is being absor absorbed doesn't mean it's being used to build muscle so the real question is how much protein can you use in a single meal and this is where there's some controversy the earliest research suggested that 20 to 25 gram of protein in a single meal was all you needed to max out the anabolic response and going above that didn't do anything extra for muscle growth however I'm skeptical of this figure first on the anecdotal side there's a huge intermittent fasting Community who seem to be getting plenty jacked from just eating one or two meals per day with upwards of 50 to 100 100 g of protein per meal does seem unlikely to me given their muscularity that most of that protein is going to waste for these folks second more recent research has challenged the idea of a 20 to 25 G upper limit this 2016 study showed higher muscle protein synthesis with 40 gam of whey versus 20 G of whey after a full body workout in this 2016 study showed greater muscle protein synthesis from a meal of beef containing 70 g of protein versus 35 g of protein so the amount of protein we can use per meal isn't clear as of now but it's likely higher than we used to think and regardless I think that your protein intake per meal is clearly much less important than your protein intake per day now despite this most experts do still suggest that spreading your protein out across 3 to five meals is likely best from both a digestion standpoint and for keeping muscle protein synthesis High throughout the day still if you were to eat two meals or six meals instead you will still build muscle as long as you're hitting your daily protein Target I just suspect it might not be quite as optimal protein quality is partly based on the amount of the amino acid Lucine Lucine is very important because it is the so-called trigger for stimulating mtor which then triggers new muscle growth so let's take a look at how much of different protein sources you need to eat to hit 3 G of Lucine which is a decent ballpark figure for maximizing the anabolic response to a meal so in the table here you can see that whey protein comes out on top in just 29 G of whey protein you'll be getting 3 G of Lucine and for just 145 calories you can also get 3 G of Lucine and 40 g of protein from chicken breast and that would only cost you about 200 calories moving down the list here you can see that you'd need to eat over 2,000 calories worth of whole wheat bread to hit 3 gr of Lucine so it would take this much bread to give you the same anabolic punch as this scoop of whey protein powder and as a general Trend animal sources of protein are higher in Lucine than their plant-based counterparts especially per calorie however this issue nearly goes away once we introduce vegan protein powders like soy pea brown rice isolates which also offer 3 G of Lucine for less than 200 calories but Lucine isn't the only factor that matters for protein quality because even though Lucine will always spark the new muscle growth you still need the other eight essential amino acids or EAS to actually build the new muscle for eaas we use something called the diaa score where the higher the number the more eaas that are in that protein Source once again you can see that Dairy and animal proteins come out on top but a very important caveat is that these tables all refer to proteins being eaten in isolation in the real world people combine various different foods and are almost guaranteed to get enough Lucine and Enough eaas by simply getting enough total daily protein so this isn't something I personally nitpick over and it's why I think protein quality is actually much less important than many people realize it's also why Lucine BCAA and EA supplementation usually isn't necessary as long as total daily protein is sufficient however vegan lifters should be a bit more strategic by either airing toward the higher end of protein ranges and or supplementing a highquality high leucine protein supplement such as so-called vegan whey which combines PE and brown rice protein to give it a similar amino acid profile to wey protein many people still believe that if you don't eat protein within 30 minutes after training your entire session was wasted but this idea was debunked years ago in reality as long as your pre-workout and post-workout meals are within roughly 4 to 6 hours of each other you'll be maximizing the anabolic response to training a possible exception to this would be if you train fasted in which case you should try to consume some protein as soon as you can after your workout perhaps a more important but less discussed timing variable is consuming protein before bed the study from my friend yoran trolin and his colleague Luke vanloon described pressle protein as an important protein feeding opportunity they suggest consuming roughly 40 gram of protein before an overnight fast to improve overnight muscle protein synthesis this is personally what I aim for granted to other longitudinal studies that directly tested consuming a slow digesting casine protein either before bed or in the morning found no significant difference after 8 to 10 weeks however both of these studies had subjects consuming a very high protein intake overall in the range of 2 G per kilo or about 1 gam per pound once again highlighting that as long as total daily protein intake is sufficient these specific timing factors are much less important there are also no legitimate safety concerns around a high protein diet in healthy individuals according to this gigantic position stand from the international Society of Sports Nutrition there is quote no controlled scientific evidence indicating that increased Le intakes of protein pose any health risks in healthy exercising individuals and the amount of protein recommended in this video has been shown over decades to not only be safe but actually have health benefits even going way above the recommendations here as high as 4. 4 G per kilo or 2 G per pound has consistently reported no harmful effects so by far the most important factor is total daily protein intake if you're looking to optimize further you can pay attention to how you distribute your protein throughout the day with 3 to 5 meals most likely being the anabolic Sweet Spot these two factors alone will yield more than 90% of your potential results however protein quality can be worth keeping in mind and protein timing may have some benefit from an optimization standpoint especially if you train fasted or if you have a really long overnight fast and before we go I want to quickly shout out my Ultimate Guide to body recomposition this is a 267 page book that covers everything on nutrition from muscle gain fat loss and specific strategies for how to do both at the same time it includes sample meal plans and tons of examples for both male and female lifters when it comes to setting up your Macros cardio supplementation sleep and plenty more so if you're looking to take your nutrition to the next level you can check it out at Jeff ner.