Protein, athletes and coaches swear by it, couch potatoes don’t know anything about it and ‘some’ doctors think that a lot of it is harmful. Let’s get certain things into perspective before we start. If you train with weights you NEED protein, period. How much you need, depends on not one thing but a combination of a number of factors. With this piece, we’ll give you a rough idea as to how you should be going about you protein consumption
Recommended Daily Allowance
The RDA of protein for an ‘average’ adult, consuming 2000 calories is 0.8 gram per kilo of body weight. So if you are a 70 kilo ‘average’ male, you must consume around 56 grams of protein daily. Now go back and read ‘average’ again. Average here means a male who doesn’t do weight training. You on the other hand, if you are reading this article, it’s safe for us to assume that you do weight training. So for you, the RDA is nothing but garbage. Modestly put, it’s too damn low. Also, RDA is mostly based on couch potatoes who only walk when they need to take a dump. Modestly put, it’s for sedentary people
If You Train, You Need WAY MoreProtein Than What Your RDA Says
Weight training has a beautiful effect on the skeletal muscles. Skeletal muscle is composed of thread-like myofibrils and sarcomeres that form a muscle fibre and act as the basic units of contraction. When you do intense weight training, these threads suffer micro traumas, also called tears. To repair this, our body fuses muscle fibres together to form new muscle protein myofibrils. These repaired myofibrils come back bigger creating muscle growth or hypertrophy. To facilitate this repair, you need to have more protein synthesis than break down. Your body can only synthesise more protein post workout, if you consume ‘more’ protein, in the first place. So, hypertrophy on a RDA of protein is almost impossible
So How Much Do You Really Need
If your workout is mostly turning around on the couch, an RDA is for you. For those who are seriously chasing hypertrophy and strength, up to 1-2.5 grams per kilo of bodyweight, works best. Again, you have to hit it and try. Only then you will know what works best for you
What About The Belief That The Body Can Only Absorb Only 30 grams of Protein Per Sitting
It’s widely believed that when there’s adequate energy in the body in form of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, extra protein or amino acids precisely ‘MAY’ get converted into lipids and eventually get stored as fat for later use. Though the body does have biomechanical pathways to do so, it’s HIGHLY unlikely that your body will ever reach this stage. Also, it’s impossible to ingest huge amounts of protein with every meal. Hence stop worrying about going overboard
Post your comment