YOUR FITNESS ENGINEER ANSWERS: EPISODE 1 - PROTEIN

After all the scientwhetheric and theoretic explanation I've been given you about PROTEIN, now it's the time to be very practical.

I've been asked several questions in this period and I'll try to reply here the most important:

1. How much protein per day do I genuinely need ?
2. Is an excess of protein poor for me ?

1. FIRST ANSWER: there is not general answer here, unluckyly ! But there are some guidelines we can follow ! So first of all there is a dwhetherference between men and women. I will specwhetherically calculate here the amount only for man because there is a general well-know rule that says that women should reduce the "man proposeed protein intake" of 20 - 30 %. Second, there is a large distinction between people who trains multiple times a week and people that are sedentary. Two others very important factors are:

1. Which sport you are practicing ?
2. Which is your goal ?

The image below represent synthesis of some of these parameter and will be the starting point of our calculation:

Is this image 100% dependable ? No, it isn't. This is just a guideline. There's no holy rule when it comes to protein intake. Every organism reacts dwhetherferently and also the protein intake is strictly on your macro-split, your overall calories intake and on the amount of the other macro nutrient you are feeding your body with. You have to practice with macro nutrients trying to find out what genuinely works for you. Further, remember that is your goal is fat loss and you are in a very restricted carbohydrates regime (under 2 grams per kilo a day) you want probably increase your protein intake of 10-20% because some of them will probably be converted in glucose through glycolysis and gluconeogenesis but I will dedicate a full post to these metabolic process, because they are too important to be explained fastly here; And also whether your overall caloric intake is very low, some protein will be used for energetic purposes, which is a great waste because protein weren't born for supporting energy level.

Final but not least, it's very important that you understand that the proposeed intake of protein you see in this table, regards full usable protein by your body. As you know protein are crazye of amino-acids. Unluckyly, a protein can be fully used by your body only whether it's total, which means it has the same level for all the amino-acids. So whether you eat 200 grams of protein you are going to use only the amount of total protein which can be even 30% less (sometimes 50% less for vegan). This is called "Limiting amino-acids theory" because there is one amino-acids that is limiting the assumption of your protein. This concept is explicit synthesized in this image:

The water is representing the amount of protein you are actually using, and is limited by the lower amino-acid which is the methionine in this case.
The best you can do is try to eat food that combined among them, balance the full amino-acids spectrum.
This stuff is not well-know in the fitness world !
People jut eats protein from the same source so their actual assumption will be much lower of what they are leanking! Most of them don't intellect. They just eat more protein, wasting their money, and creating a lot of metabolic nonsense product ! I will write another specwhetheric post about this topic very soon.

Here I'll tell you what it work for me!

My personal intake is normally an average of 2.8 grams per kg of body weight per day which comes from the final row of the table above, plus 20% because I'm mostly in carbohydrates restriction, plus 20% because I estimated that this is the percentage of protein that my body is not using because the "limiting amino-acids". But I will do some intelligent manipulation here. I calculate my protein amount per week instead per day. So check-out this calculation:

my weight = 77 kg.

my daily intake = 77 * 2.8 = 215 gr

my weekly intake = 154 * 7 = 1505 grams per week.

Now, in some days of the week I'll go taller than my average, but in some other days I'll go lower.
An example would be 240gr for 4 days a week (960 grams). In these days I'm very low in carbohydrates and tall in fat.I will go for 180 gr for 3 days a week (540 grams). In these days I will be taller in carbohydrates and lower in fat. This is intelligent way to manipulate your protein intake because it takes in consideration your hormones response, which is the most anabolic tool you can use naturally !

Now you definitely do not have to be that summarye, also because it is impossible to know the exact amount of protein contained in each food (yes sometimes the label is not summarye as well). What you definitely have to do is to stay in your range.
So for example, whether you're a girl and you weight 60 kg, and you do Resistance-training (gain muscle), the range you want to look for is:

your weight = 60 kg

your daily intake whether you were a man = from (60 * 1.2) to (60*1.8) = from 72 to 108 gr per day

but you're a woman so = from (72- (72*20/100)) to (108-(108*20/100)) = from 57.6 to 86.4

You want to add about 20% to this amount, because the "limiting amino-acid" again!

This bring you back to this range => from 72 to 108 gr per day (Intake of protein for a women that weight 60 kg and does resistance training)

Yes yes, I know, too much math is going on, here. So to be clear, consider only this:

If you are a women of 60 kg and you train in the gym with dumbbells and machines, three time s a week, you want to eat from 72 to 108 a day.

This mechanism I've shown you works genuinely good, at least FOR ME!

2.SECOND ANSWER (QUESTION WAS: Is an excess of protein poor for me) : The answer is: YES IT IS. Several reasons:

1. An excess of protein could lead to an excess of calories. Remember, each gram of protein is equivalent to 4 Kcalories;
2. It seems that an excess of protein can influence the lipogenesis. From the medical dictionary: lipogenesis /lipo·gen·e·sis/ (-jen´ĕ-sis) the formation of fat; the transformation of nonfat food fabrics into body;
3. An excess of protein can alter the PH of your cells (You will see a full blog post on this fragile topic).
4. An excess of protein can overload your kidney and your liver. This is shown to happen only in extreme condition or when in presence of some per-existing pathologies.

STAY PROTEIN !

LUCA !