Protein Explained! Muscle, Strength, Fat Loss + Endurance

welcome back to my channel my friends today we're going to be covering protein science I feel like everyone and their dog knows that protein is important but specifically for us who regularly exercise your classic movers and shakers people with weights to lift people with miles to run people with personal bests to set people with dogs to walk very important what do we need to know so we're going to cover how much protein intake is optimal whether your goals are around muscle building and strength building or fat loss or even endurance performance and what about timing tricks are there any particular times especially around workouts or around sleep where we should really be focusing on taking in that protein then how we should split up that protein throughout the day like is there a distribution that's any more or less effective and then anything else like protein quality advice for vegans or just you know anything else my goal is to keep this simple and actionable so that you guys know which variables are important and which ones aren't and if you like this video please give me a big thumbs up and let's just Dive Right In let's just start off high level like how much protein is actually optimal for us to be going in technically the most accurate way to talk about protein requirements is in terms of grams of protein per kilogram or per pound of fat free mass now fat free mass is your total body weight minus your total body fat and that leaves you with your body's vital cells and tissues so organs bones connective tissues muscles all of those have protein requirements but not everyone knows their body fat percentage and I to be honest don't even think that they need to or should so we're going to keep it much simpler than that and we're just going to talk in terms of grams of protein per kilogram or per pound of body weight so if you just know your rough body weight rough is fine by the way like I'm 168 centimeters tall I weigh about 60 to 65 kilos that's my ballpark and that is more than accurate enough as long as you know you're kind of like ballpark body weight range I can give you tips to kind of fine-tune that recommendation as we go now around the world the official recommended daily allowances for protein are around 0. 8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight we need proteins we specifically need amino acids for a bunch of different things like cell maintenance and repair the production of DNA and enzymes nutrient transport immune response so many other things and that's what these recommended daily allowances are for to help the general population not have deficiencies for those specific roles that are essential to life but believe it or not these government nutrition boards aren't sitting around all talking about the optimal protein intake for you to grow your glutes or the ultimate more protein intake for you to Boulder your shoulders or even for you to run your best five mile time that's not their job and so it's pretty universally agreed by Sports dietetics researchers and dietetics boards that people who exercise regularly require a higher amount of protein intake to maximize performance for us that generally agreed range is more like 1. 2 to 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and in some specific cases it can even be higher than that so for someone like me who's 65 kilos or 145 pounds that can be anywhere between 78 to 130 grams of protein a day and sometimes in some specific cases which we'll talk about later it can even be higher than 130 grams a day now 1. 2 to 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is quite a big range to be honest and we can get much more precise based on mainly two things the first is based on your goals we can get much more precise recommendations for your pro optimal protein intake based on what you're going after and the second is that the more experienced you are the more you're going to want to shoot towards the top end of the ranges that we're about to talk about and I know on my channel I've got a big mix of people we've got beginners all the way through to division one athletes and professional athletes and if you are on that top end you really want to be making sure that you're hitting the top end of the ranges that we're going to be talking about whereas if you're a beginner you're still going to be making a ton of adaptations even at the low end of the ranges that we're going to be talking about okay let's get more precise let's get into our recommended range for muscle and strength building so a systematic review and meta-analysis looking at 1900 subjects in resistance training trials lasting from 6 to 52 weeks found that increasing the protein intake of subjects up to 1. 6 grams of protein per

kilogram of body weight or 0. 72 grams per pound of body weight improve the subject's fat-free Mass beyond that 1. 6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight they didn't find any improvements in fat-free Mass there's got to be a plateau somewhere like a plateau where even if you add more protein you're not going to see any improvements in your results now the 95 confidence interval for where that Plateau is stretches all the way up to 2. 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and some people interpret that and they're like look I'm just going to eat 2. 2 grams and that's fine but it's definitely not everyone so don't feel like you need to be hitting that or feel that pressure 1. 6 was their best estimate in that systematic review the authors concluded that based on limited data we observed no overtly apparent sex-based differences but now get ready for it acknowledge that far less work has been done in women than men don't say it classic now a more recent systematic review looked at how strength was affected and it looked at upper body strength lower body strength 38 of the subjects were female and the authors concluded that 1. 5 grams per kilogram of body weight total protein intake with resistance training is required to achieve the optimal effect on muscle strength but no further gains were achieved thereafter looking across these same studies and reviews the international Society of Sports Nutrition concluded that 1. 4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is a good lower limit to set if you're building muscle mass so my advice is that 1. 4 to 1. 6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight or 0. 65 to 0. 75 grams per pound of body weight is a pretty solid rough Target for those looking to maximize building muscle and strength next up we're going to look at our recommended protein intake if our goal is Fat Loss I've already said this before not all weight loss is equal whether it comes from muscle or fat is very crucial and researchers really make a big point of this some researchers even use the term high quality weight loss where subjects have been able to preserve their muscle really well looking across all the studies that are done the systematic reviews the meta-analyzes their strong agreement that in order to preserve muscle mass in a calorie deficit the protein intake requirements are even higher than those for muscle building and this is where protein intake recommendations honestly just they just go see by and so the Academy of nutrition and dietetics dietitians of Canada and American College of sports medicine say that during energy restriction elevated protein intakes as high as 2 grams per kilogram per day or higher when spread over the day may be advantageous in preventing fat-free Mass loss and the international Society of Sports Nutrition says that during a hypoenergetic diet so a calorie deficit an elevated daily intake of protein two to three times the recommended daily allowance can promote greater losses of fat mass and greater overall improvements in body composition now if you'll just take a moment and crack open a sweet bottle of key systematic reviews you'll see that the researchers are really emphasizing using grams of protein per kilogram of fat-free mass and that's because this is where it can be a good idea to get more new nuanced to factor in things like your levels of body fat and your training experience if you're relatively new to working out and you haven't built a lot of muscle just yet maintaining that 1. 4 to 1. 6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is probably just perfect but if you're much more experienced maybe you're a pro athlete in your muscle to Fat ratio is much higher and you can't run the risk of losing performance then that's where you want to really aim high so around that two grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and maybe even higher I think it makes sense not to go wild and YOLO like everyone just go 2. 5 grams because the more energy we allocate to protein the less we're going to be eating of carbs and fats and those two macronutrients are super important for our health I think the reminder here is just that during a fat loss phase that's probably when we want to be the most like Precious about keeping a high protein intake I can't say precious without ever thinking my precious for people focusing on endurance performance whether that's running or cycling swimming long distance dog walking um the spectrum of 1. 2 to 1. 8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight makes sense and it's pretty much just down to your training volume and how

advanced you are Irene McGregor who's a sports performance specialist registered dietitian who's worked with multiple Olympic GB Olympic teams and also has just fueled some of the world's top athletes and also as my friend recommends 1. 2 to 1. 4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight for recreational endurance athletes so if you're a casual Runner or a casual cyclist and your training is anywhere up to one hour at a time that intake makes sense if you're more advanced and you have a higher training load and you're used to training over two hours that's when she recommends an intake of about 1. 6 to 1. 8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and that's backed by papers analyzing Runners over longer distances like 20 kilometers or so and high level endurance athletes so that's what the science seems to recommend as protein intake targets for building muscle and strength losing fat and endurance performance let's talk about protein timing like are there any particular moments that really matter when it comes to getting your pro there's a lot of talk about a window right after working out that people say really matters it really matters right well a systematic review which found a small benefit to consuming protein within an hour of resistance training found that once you controlled for total protein intake that benefit disappeared and instead the international Society of Sports Nutrition summarizes that muscle appears to be sensitized to protein feeding for at least 24 hours after exercise that's why researchers basically conclude that in general despite the common recommendation to consume protein as soon as possible post-exercise evidence-based support for this practice is currently lacking a safe bet that's hopefully a lot easier to make happen is to bring in about 0. 3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight so for most people that's like 15 to 30 grams of protein either one to two hours before a workout or after a workout muscle protein synthesis is basically where new amino acids are incorporated into muscle tissue if you've had like a solid protein here before you work out like let's say you have breakfast and then you work out like yours truly then your pre-workout protein will cover you because muscle protein synthesis remains elevated for hours after your meals so you're good there's just less of a need for any kind of post-workout protein intake if you haven't had any protein right before your workout it could be a good suggestion to take in like 15 to 25 grams of protein in that one to two hours after your workout if you can just to maximize the muscle protein synthesis right when your body starts to kick off that process of muscle repair recovery and growth now I just want to call out pre-sleep this seems to be a very potentially interesting time to take on some protein for increasing overall levels of muscle protein synthesis Muscle Recovery and overall metabolism now the studies on this are very early so we don't know whether consuming protein at night versus any other time of the day is necessarily better but it's a very legit time to take it like in our muscle and strength building program Rini even recommends that if you're training in the evening then taking in some protein about 15 to 30 minutes before you go to sleep is a great idea so that your body has some protein available overnight right before you just hit lights out you know and lastly for endurance athletes there's very early whisperings that intra workout protein or protein that you take like within a workout during your workout could help with muscle soreness and performance in a study comparing cyclists taking on a carbohydrate versus a carbohydrate plus protein into a workout drink cyclists performed 13 longer at 75 VO2 Peak when receiving a carbohydrate protein gel than when consuming a carbohydrate gel which supported an earlier study showing that cyclists improve their performance even more with the carb plus protein drink some researchers and dietetics organizations are starting to recommend adding about 0. 25 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per hour into your intra-workout carbohydrate drink to help with muscle soreness and performance honestly this is a pretty low risk experiment there's not really any downsides to it so you could give it a go I'm gonna try it I will add it as well to my carb drink

like on that wasn't an insult actually that was more of an instruction actually suck on a carbohydrate plus protein intro workout drink the next thing I want to talk about is protein distribution how are you going to distribute that total protein intake throughout the day this is where I'd really stress don't stress the most important factor is your total protein intake the distribution part is not as important researchers and dietetics associations suggest that to maximize muscle protein synthesis we want to split our total protein intake into pulses of about 0. 3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight so let's say I'm 60 kilos my pulses would contain about 20 grams of protein so the dream scenario is pacing or spreading these feeding episodes approximately three hours apart and that's because researchers noticed that 20 to 40 grams max out the muscle protein synthetic response and that created the impression that anything beyond that was wasted anything beyond that wasn't contributing to muscle growth or repair but I have two butts actually my first part is that this doesn't feel like a complete argument to me mixing out the muscle protein synthetic response isn't strictly the same thing as maxing out the whole body net protein balance there are other variables to consider Beyond muscle protein synthesis like muscle protein breakdown there was a study in 2016 that gave subjects pulses of 70 grams of protein and they found that the 70 gram pulses significantly increased net protein balance more than the pulses that were in theory the perfect pole size because there's just so many mechanisms in the body my second but is that even knowing this I don't do this at all if I was trying to get 1. 5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight that would mean pulsing like 20 gram pulses five times a day that's a lot of thinking about food and I have a lot of other things that I want to be thinking about and I don't food like you've seen me eat I will have waffles with banana berries maple syrup not a protein gram in sight and then I'll have other meals where it's like 50 grams of protein or 60 grams of protein pulsing is a lot of thinking it's a lot of scheduling I personally don't do it if you feel like you can't keep up with it then do your thing if you feel like you want to give it a go do your thing the majority of researchers agree that the total protein intake per day is the most important thing the policing is just detail you know anything else we have to happen anything else because you know just got to cover the bases that's how we do it here at Natasha CN Studios so a little bit of advice for vegans and then in general for everyone when we eat proteins our bodies are really after the essential amino acids not every protein Source has the same amino acid profile digestibility like you might have heard of low quality versus high quality proteins or the diascal in general I wouldn't worry about it that much like if you're vegan keep having your varied meals because that increases the protein quality in plant-based sources and also try and shoot for the top end of your recommended protein intake range for your goal oh and soya protein powders can also be super helpful to you generally I'd say for everyone like I just wouldn't sweat about this stuff too much when I started resistance training I made enough it to bring protein into two of my main meals now it's been so long I don't even think about it but I am 110 not perfect by any means like for sure some days I'm way under my protein intake recommendation I don't even think about pre or post-workout protein like I it's not worth it to me like just as it's a question that I've asked myself like is it worth me sacrificing 5 10 15 of my progress and the answer is yes that's a dialogue I've had with myself worth having with yourselves as well there's no like wrong or right answer really like there isn't and if you want to progress as fast as you can and that's something that really matters to you then this video is here for you the only thing that's important is are you getting what you want out of exercising pick and choose the bits that you want to use and with that I love you and I'll see you very soon and if you enjoyed it please give me a big thumbs up hit the Subscribe button with the little notification Bell to join our Incredible family and I love you bye