While all three macro nutrients (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) play an important role in building muscle, protein is the most important. It’s the only macro that can create new muscle tissue.
When you consume protein rich foods, they become broken down into tiny building blocks called amino acids. These tiny building blocks can then be used to repair and/or build new muscle tissue. The best sources come from animal products that are fed their natural diet such as grass fed beef, wild caught fish, free range eggs and chickens. Animal source proteins contain all eight of the essential amino acids (making them complete proteins) that we must get from our diet. Our bodies cannot make these. If you are vegan or vegetarian you can make plant source proteins complete by combining different sources.
PROTEIN NEEDS DEPEND ON THREE THINGS;
BODYWEIGHT, TRAINING INTENSITY AND TOTAL FOOD INTAKE
1. BODYWEIGHT
The more you weigh, the more protein you’re going to need.
2. TRAINING INTENSITY
As you’ll find out, the protein I recommend exceeds many of the protein recommendations set or prescribed by the RDA. This is because most studies on protein intake fail to consider several important variables, one being weight training intensity. The harder you train, the more protein you need. The RDAs guidelines are based on the percentage amounts that are required to prevent disease and illness. Basically, the amounts are what we need to simply survive and not die.
3. TOTAL FOOD INTAKE
It’s not enough just to eat enough protein. As I first mentioned, all macros are important and have their own job when it comes to building muscle. If you fail to eat enough carbohydrates and dietary fat, the protein you eat will be wasted and it will be sent to the liver and converted into fuel. This leaves you with less net protein to build muscle and prevents the protein you eat to do it’s intended job; build and repair muscle. When you eat the perfect amount of carbohydrates and fat that support muscle building and limit fat storage, you won’t “burn up” your protein intake.
HOW MUCH PROTEIN (IN GRAMS) PER DAY
The old bodybuilding rule when it comes to protein is 1-1.5g of protein per pound of lean body weight. Keyword being lean. Lean body mass is basically your body weight minus your body fat percentage. You’re basically taking your body fat percentage minus your bodyweight and whatever that number equates to, will be your protein intake and lean body mass. There are several methods you can take when it comes to determining your body fat percentage from calipers to jumping into a DXA scan.
Personally, I’m not training for a competition and could care less what my body fat percentage is so I just avoid this step all together. My rule for daily protein intake is
.8-1g of quality, compete animal protein per pound of body weight. Divide this number by five- six to get your target gram of protein you need per meal.
NOTE: There’s no need to count the protein found outside of complete sources such as rice, pasta, potatoes and oats. When you’re tracking your daily protein, just count the grams found in animal sources.
Protein is the only macro that directly builds muscle. If you follow an intense weight training program and either miss too many meals or repeatedly fall short on hitting your daily protein quota, you will fail to maintain or build additional muscle. It’s just that simple. When you don’t give your body the protein that it needs while weight training, your body will break down hard earned muscle back into it’s amino acid form to repair the damaged muscles elsewhere. It’s like the “Take from David to pay Bill” expression.
Anytime your body has to break down muscle tissue, it’s considered a catabolic event. When your body has to break down body proteins (muscle) to repair another muscle or provide protein as a back-up fuel, that’s hard earn muscle that was once yours but is now gone. This, more or less, creates a slow down in your metabolic rate and a slow down in metabolic rate leads to an increase in body fat.
While weight training, the order of preferred fuel sources go from carbohydrates, then fats, and then protein. If your body can’t find amino acids found in the blood from eating protein rich foods, the body will look elsewhere and the first place it will go is your muscles.
You must eat enough protein to satisfy the amount of muscle you carry and ensure that your hard earned muscle is not burned as fuel. No matter what your goal is, looking good is a combination of a low level of body fat and having some decent amount of lean muscle. If you weight train and follow a low protein diet, you lose muscle and get fatter. PERIOD.
If you would like to dig deeper about the topic of protein, I have a very educational article by Precision Nutrition I like to send to clients and friends. You can check it out here.