How Much Protein Is Too Much Protein?

You eat lots of protein, right?

I mean, you hear from everybody that to gain muscle, you need to eat a lot of lean protein.

Even if you aren’t trying to gain muscle, you still hear how important protein is.

And we’ve written about it a ton here, here, and here.

The basic rule I use:  if you are fat, eat at least 1 gram of protein a day per lean body mass (your total weight minus your fat weight).  If you are not fat, then eat about 1 gram per total bodyweight.  And this assumes you are lifting at least 2x a week.

So for the average man, this is at least 180 grams a day.

The more active you are, the more protein you need to eat.  Maybe up in the 200+ grams a day.

But what if all this is wrong?

“Don’t Eat More Than 20 Grams Of Protein At One Sitting!”, They Say

You may have heard of some recent scientific studies that indicate there might be a limit as to how much protein you can actually use, per meal.

Depending on the study, you might hear 20 grams at a time is all your muscles can use.  Some studies get as high as 30 grams but after that, there’s no benefit.

Case closed right?  I mean, science is science and so there’s no point in eating extra protein, right?

No so fast…

See, these studies are talking purely about “muscle protein synthesis” – the ability of your muscles to actually use the protein to build muscle.

Is that the only reason we eat protein?

Why We Eat Protein

We eat protein for a number of reasons:

1. to build muscle
2. increase the thermic effect of food
3. supply 9 essential amino acids (those that your body can’t produce on its own)
4. lowers the glycemic index of food, meaning that it will smooth out potential insulin spikes
5. higher release of natural growth hormones
6. fat loss  vs. weight loss (when trying to “lose weight”, you don’t want to lose muscle, so really you are trying to lose fat – having a high % of calories from protein makes this more likely)

And there are certainly more.  But the point here is that building muscle is only one of the many reasons protein needs to be consumed in sufficient quantities.  And high-performance athletes, or high-volume recreational exercisers, need more overall food and thus more protein.

Time For Some Math (Don’t worry, it’s really easy math)

You know that I recommend you eat 6 meals a day.  There are many reasons for this, but one reason is that it does help to spread out the protein.

If you are a 180 pound lean man, eating 180 grams of protein a day, then this translates to 30 grams per meal.  Easy enough.

But what if you are still only eating 4 meals a day?  Then you are over 40 grams of protein per meal.  Is that a waste?  Not really…

Think Total Calories

Remember that every gram of protein has 4 calories (kcal).  180 grams is thus 720 calories.

Well, if you’re exercising a lot (lifting and doing cardio like I recommend), then you could easily burn over 3000 calories a day.  I’m more like 3500 a day.  Even more if I’m trying to build muscle.

So 720 out of 3500 is only 20% of your daily caloric intake!

There are a million diets out there but you’ll hear weight lifters, strength coaches, body builders, and any athlete etc. say that they shoot for 30% to 50% of their daily calories to come from protein.  Why?

Well, what else are you going to eat?!

Do you want that other 80% of your calories to come from fat?  No. (Even though you do need some fat in your diet.)  So let’s say you are getting 20% of your calories from fats.

That leaves 60% of your calories.  At 3500 calories a day, that means 2100 calories left.

2100 calories a day of carbs?  Not unless you want to get fat.  Yeah, I hear the protein-haters saying you should eat that in veggies.  But do you have any idea how much veggies you have to eat to get 2100 calories?  Not easy at all.

And a lot of you out there trying to build muscle need even more than 3500 calories.

The best book I’ve found about protein nutrition (plus a whole lot more) is Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.  But it’s advanced stuff – over 300 pages of amazing content from the smartest guy I know in the fitness industry and easily the one with the best all-natural bodybuilding physique.  If that sounds too intimidating, an equally great book but from a simpler perspective is Mike Geary’s The Truth About Six Pack Abs (the “truth” is that seeing your abs isn’t really about doing tons of abs exercises).  I highly recommend these resources and I know they offer full money-back if you don’t find them immensely valuable.

Bottom Line

The bottom line here is that you don’t need to limit your protein to 20 to 30 grams at a time unless your overall caloric requirements require it.  Don’t cut off your protein just because it might not all go to building muscle.  That said, it sure makes sense to spread your protein out over 6 meals so that you get all the benefits of eating protein, including maximizing the protein muscle synthesis.

How much protein are you getting?

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Related posts:

1. Keeping the Protein Flow
2. World’s Best Tasting, Fastest, Healthiest Homemade Protein Bars
3. Burn Fat With The Thermic Effect of Food

Tags: protein