A protein intake of 0.8g per kg (0.36g per pound) of body weight is NOT an optimal intake for muscle growth

[boazd]

@monte When I've seen that I honestly thought people were just getting their kg's and lb's mixed up, since 1.6g/kg is roughly equivalent to 0.8g/lb and people get confused.

But yeah good post for clarification.

 

[monte]

@boazd Yeah that's what I first thought, but today I had a discussion with someone on this thread who said 0.8g per pound should be 0.8g per kg so yeah some people really believe it

 

[pena150695]

@monte Fully agree, 0.8 is the normal recommendation for keeping your muscles. Considering Vegans need to transform a bit more amino acids one could even make a case that playing it save is 0.9 - for keeping your weight. To build muscle, you definitivly want to hit more then that.

Could you please give the study you qoute? You give dietary recommandation and a graph with diminishing effect. Would be very curious because i though that above 1.6 there is NO extra shown gain, and not just little.

I also want to underline, that with 1.4g/kg one can also very properly gain muscles, it is just not the optimal level. For some nutrition is easier, for others training. If training is easier for someone, no need to break your nekt if you are at 1.4 and aware that this is not the fast possible way, but still a good and feasable way.

 

[honghot3a]

@pena150695 Well said, Mr. Jekyll.

 

[monte]

@pena150695 I quoted the paper in my post, if you mean directly from the study then I can't give it, for some reason I can't find the meta analysis anymore. After 1.6g per kg you only get a very small advantage and that goes up to 2.2g per kg if I understand it correctly

 

[pena150695]

@monte Yeah i was looking for this meta-study where which you seemed to qoute. Or is your cursive text in the dokument you posted? Could you tell me the page, then i can look for the study myself.

Very interssting, check out digital page 50 which is pdf page 637. That sthe requirement for different people. For some 0.37 is enough, most are between 0.5 and 0.8 and some go up to 1.6

 

[monte]

@pena150695 Yeah 1.4g per kg is also a good intake, but you get a small improvement when you increase it, and yeah I think it's reasonable to assume that vegans can benefit from a slightly higher intake.
Also 0.8g per kg is enough for maintaining muscle, for a sedentary individual, but not for someone who has built a decent amount of muscle

 

[pena150695]

@monte Ok, your source disagrees with you. PDF pages 73-74 deal with protein requirements during exercise, then they summarize:

"Summary. In view of the lack of compelling evidence to the contrary,no additional dietary protein is suggested for healthy adults undertakingresistance or endurance exercise."

We should really look for that meta-study

 

[monte]

@pena150695 Nitrogen balance is an indirect measure of muscle growth, so it's a pretty bad marker. They also talk about one study in which a higher protein intake didn't make a difference. First of all, is this tested on beginners to resistance training? Do they train a lot of muscles or only something like 3? How often did the subjects train? These are all important questions and it's still only one study. In the second study they talk about they compare a pretty high protein intake to a really high protein intake so that study is irrelevant

 

[pena150695]

@monte I do not disagree with anything you say. I also do not attempt to disprove you or anything, and the numbers i remembered are in line with what you said.

I simply looked at the source you give and noticed that this source disagrees with the statements we have made here.

 

[monte]

@pena150695 My first source disagrees with my statement the second source doesn't.
I just used the first source for the intake sedentary people need

 

[pena150695]

@monte ok, maybe i am confused. I see two links. The first is a hughe text document that disagrees with the numbers we gave. The second is a picture of something with diminishing gains.

Or do you refer to the italic text? Because i only consider stuff a source that atleast allows to identify the document and possibly get it.

 

[monte]

@pena150695 Apparently, I'm missing a hyperlink in my text, I thought I put it in the.

Edit: you can now find the paper in which the recommendation is made, they reference this meta-analysis: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/6/376

 

[pena150695]

@monte Ok, i am sorry to be a bit annoying, but what you qouted what they said, but simply and on your own added the 2.2 part. They refer to a figure in this part.

Statistically, what happens is they estimated a point at which the regression breaks. They do this because they first observe a increasing slope and later no increase at all.

The authors do not say that after 1.62 there is any gain, they very explicitly state several times there is advantage until this point, and afterwards it is flat.

The number you have taken is the upper limit of the confidence intervall they calculated which lies between 1.03 to 2.2. So with the same right one could say there is a gain untill 2.2, one could say that there is no gain at all after 1.03. And the 2.2 is basically also the highest they observe. If you look at the plot, i think it is a streach to see an increase after 1.7 or something.

Sorry for being such a stickler... Ofcourse, you do you and me do me, and i would not tell you to eat less if you want to be super duper sure. But personally 2.2 seems like a lot of optimizing is done in this direction...

 

[monte]

@pena150695 That makes sense, but the quote I used comes from a paper in my post, which I had to edit in because apparently it wasn't there, not the link I sent you.
I'm still going to stick to 2.2 because I have an incredibly fast metabolism so that makes me an anomaly, I now consume 3500 calories per day.

 

[pena150695]

@monte Ah cool. Thank you very much, glad we talked about it!

 

[jewelz613]

@monte 220lbs and no issues with 200grams a day. I love protein shakes.

 

[jsp2003]

@monte Why people even want to get away with the minimum possible amount of protein is beyond me. Just aim for a g per lb protein powder tofu and beans aren't that hard to eat.

 

[monte]

@jsp2003 Yes and a bit less is still good

 

[katie4469]

@monte Generally what I see recommended for vegan athletes is 1.3-1.8 g per kg bodyweight. That's what's recommended by the American College of Sport Medicine and other dietetics associations.