Protein Myths & Facts

Most of the Fitness Together nutrition program is pretty conventional by modern-day standards. No, we don’t recommend that you build the base of your daily food intake on processed carbs, as the traditional food pyramid does. Then again, no one who’s read any of the research in the last 20 years still believes in the food pyramid.

The one area where we differ slightly from some modern nutrition programs is in respect to protein intake. While I do agree with the “experts”, when they say you don’t “need” any more than 40grams of protein a day, here at Fitness Together, we’re not just trying to keep you alive and disease free, we’re also trying to optimize your health and fitness. So its not that we just want to feed our bodies what they need, we want to find a nutrition plan that helps us achieve and maintain the body we desire, in the fastest time possible, and maintain it with the minimum effort.

There’s really two sides to the protein debate. The first is whether additional protein will help our body composition goals, and the second is whether additional protein is possibly damaging.

First we’ll answer why we ever want to consume more than the USRDA recommendation for protein. Its not like we’re just recommending a little more protein. For most individuals we’re recommending 3 to 4 times the recommended daily allowances. Why?

The answer depends on your goals. The majority of our clients would like to reduce their body fat levels. Notice that I say “reduce body fat”, not “lose weight”. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, all “low carb” type diets will result in a quick 5 to 10 lbs of water loss. This, of course, is not real fat loss, and will only come back as soon as you end the diet. However, there’s another difference between weight loss and fat loss. Most conventional weight loss plans result in between 30% and 50% muscle loss. Since muscle actually burns calories 24 hours a day, and since its the muscle that keeps the fat you do have from jiggling and bouncing, the last thing ANYONE wants to do is lose muscle! And I do mean ANYONE!! This includes the dozens of female clients I’ve had over the years that swear the reason they’re so “thick” in the thighs is because their legs bulk up easily. It only takes a quick body fat measurement to show that this “thickness” is NOT from muscle! Remember, muscle is much denser than fat. You can take off 1 pound of fat, and add a pound of muscle, and you’ll be thinner even though the scale reads the same number.

Studies certainly show that resistance training (weight training) will minimize the amount of muscle you lose, another way to prevent muscle loss while dieting is to increase your protein intake. Unfortunately, there are no real definitive studies on just how much protein is required to prevent or minimize muscle loss, but several studies have been done on very low calorie diets where nitrogen balance (a measure of muscle loss) was measured during the study. Out of the half dozen studies I’ve read, it can be inferred that approximately 150 grams of protein per day is necessary to minimize muscle loss.

Since this would certainly be relative to the size of the person, this is where I arrive at my recommendation of 1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So, your average woman, trying to get down to 130lbs should try to consume around 130 grams per day, and your average man trying to get to 180lbs should consume at least 180 grams of protein per day to try to minimize muscle loss and maximize fat loss.

Do you want more reasons why protein is beneficial while dieting? Consider the satiating effect of protein. A meal that includes protein will make you feel fuller, and remain satisfied for longer than a meal that doesn’t include protein.

Or we can get even more complicated and look at the thermic effect of food. You’ve all heard the saying “a calorie, is a calorie, is a calorie”. While this is certainly true in the laboratory, in the human body, it takes an extra 10% more energy to process and utilize protein for fuel than it takes with carbs or fat. This means that you can eat 10% more calories from protein than you can from carbs or fat. That may not seem like a lot, but if the average adult reduced their calorie levels by 10%, they’d lose 22 pounds over the course of a year!

Now what if you’re trying to put on muscle, not lose fat? Although the scientific evidence is mixed on this issue, most studies on hard training athletes show that they require at least .8 grams per pound of body weight to avoid muscle loss, and this isn’t even for those trying to build more muscle!

Although I’m not normally one to rely on personal observations, in light of the lack of real studies, I’ve never seen anyone put on a significant amount of muscle without consuming AT LEAST 1 gram per pound of body weight. Most bodybuilders or strength athletes consume even more.

Some nutritionists will tell you this is untrue. Since a pound of muscle contains only 454 grams of protein, even a very small increase in protein over the minimum requirement should allow a slow but steady gain of muscle tissue. Unfortunately, this is a case of a little knowledge being dangerous. Anyone with any real knowledge of the physiology of muscle development knows it’s a very inefficient process, with large amounts of protein turnover and nitrogen excretion necessary for the body to actually build muscle.

One note for everyone regardless of their goals. Your body only stores a very small amount of protein outside of muscle tissue, so anytime you go for very long without protein, your body will start to eat into the protein in your muscles, or will stop rebuilding the muscles that you worked so hard on in your last workout. So get some protein in every meal, or your body’s ability to build muscle and the calorie burning effect of recovering from your workouts will both come to a halt.

So what about the dangers of high protein intake? Won’t your kidneys explode if you consume more than the RDA? I’ve even had actual MD’s tell me that high protein intake can cause kidney failure.

The myth that excess protein is bad for you comes from two sources. Weightlifters often have elevated Creatinine and BUN levels, and protein is known to be damaging to individuals with bad kidneys. I could write pages on each of these, but to keep you from falling asleep, I’ll keep it as brief as possible. As usual, if you want more information, or references, please contact me.

Elevated Creatinine and BUN levels CAN be an indicator of kidney damage, and since weightlifters will always have increased levels due to muscle microtrauma repair, and the resulting protein turnover, some doctors mistakenly assume that the high protein levels in these individuals diets are damaging their kidneys. Informed doctors will run more sophisticated tests, and these tests will almost always verify that there is no kidney damage, and that the increased Creatinine and BUN levels are simply a result of the continual muscle rebuilding.

Many people also mistakenly assume that since protein is bad for people with kidney dysfunction, it must also be bad for healthy kidneys. This is really crazy, and is analogous to telling a person that since you shouldn’t try to walk when your leg is broken, you should spend your life in a wheel chair even if your legs are healthy, since obviously walking is bad for your legs. An activity that is bad for a dysfunctional body part is not necessarily damaging to one that is healthy. The simple truth is that many studies ranging back almost a century show that diets of up to 400 grams of protein a day will not damage healthy kidneys.

So there you have it. Add some healthy protein to each and every meal, and you’ll feel fuller, lose more fat, and maintain or increase that metabolically active and firm muscle.