Protein

[kirstykay]

Lani,
What do you say to those in the fitness industry who think you need more protein when you're working out a lot? I don't worry too much about trying to get extra protein, but should I? I just wondered what your take on it is? (I'm thinking of even vegan atheletes who promote protein shakes - like Brendan Brasier and some others I've read). Just wondering: how much protein? Or is it even something to worry about?
Thanks!
Kirsty

[Lani Muelrath]

Lani,
What do you say to those in the fitness industry who think you need more protein when you're working out a lot? I don't worry too much about trying to get extra protein, but should I? I just wondered what your take on it is? (I'm thinking of even vegan atheletes who promote protein shakes - like Brendan Brasier and some others I've read). Just wondering: how much protein? Or is it even something to worry about?
Thanks!
Kirsty

Hi Kirsty,

When we're working out, we need more calories than when sedentary. This means our food intake may well increase because we need more calories that will come in the form of carbohydrate, protein, and fat.

This is different from isolating and upping protein out of balance with the other macronutrients, which is what I think you are referring to. Protein supplements have been pushed by the fitness industry based largely on, one, the profitability of the food supplement industry, and two, on the muscle-mongering, if that term makes sense, of the fitness industry. It is often a matter of one trainer repeating what another trainer said and so on.

My friend Brad Pilon, who worked in the supplement industry for years pushing protein powders, eventually left the position when he discovered that the protein he'd been pushing wasn't doing what it promised. He then wrote a book called How Much Protein where he examines the topic.

Here are some of his words:

Does More Protein Equal More Muscle?

If you eat more, you‘ll gain weight, so if you eat more protein, you‘ll gain muscle. This theory seems correct on the surface. If we eat more calories, our fat mass expands – so if we eat more protein, our muscles should get bigger, right?

What’s described above – the relationship between calorie surplus and body weight – is a basic dose-response relationship. If our bodies ingest extra calories, we continuously gain weight until our bodies can no longer support the weight.

Body fat, or adipose tissue, is a storage house. Its function is to store excess energy. Fat can expand with an almost unlimited ability. Some morbidly obese individuals’ fat mass makes up more than 60 percent of their total body weight!

So should we also assume that the same dose-response relationship exists when it comes to protein and our muscle mass? Unfortunately, no. Healthy humans can’t gain ever-increasing amounts of muscle mass by eating increased amounts of protein.

Muscles don’t store protein in the same way that fat stores energy. They don’t expand to hold more proteins when we eat more proteins. In fact, only 20 percent of your muscle weight comes from protein – and only 50 percent of that amount is comprised of actual structural contractile proteins. (The rest is comprised of cellular proteins, such as enzymes, and fluid.) Most of the weight of your skeletal muscles is not from protein!

If a dose-response relationship actually did exist between dietary protein and organs that contain protein in our bodies, then a high protein diet would not only cause our muscles to grow, but it would also cause our heart and most of our other organs to grow with unlimited potential.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your muscles will expand and contract as a result of your calorie or protein intake. Fat tissue will react in that way when it receives extra calories, but muscles will not.

I am interested in health and fitness, and I have good reason to believe that overdosing on protein, regardless of what may be said about upping intake and working out to build muscle (which can raise IGF factors) is not a healthy practice.

Getting too much protein is the concern .

Lani

[kirstykay]

Thanks Lani! That really puts it to rest for me. I appreciate your thorough and easily understandable answer to a complicated issue...and the interesting link. You're the best!!

[Lani Muelrath]

Thanks Lani! That really puts it to rest for me. I appreciate your thorough and easily understandable answer to a complicated issue...and the interesting link. You're the best!!

My pleasyre kirstykay. And it's a good question that comes up often so I am glad you presented it.

Thanks!

Lani