Chemistry teacher says excess protein can't be stored as fat

[Vigilante_Inc]

Whomever said that a protein only diet is "lethal" is ridiculous! Protein Sparing Modified Fasting has been around for a while and usually recommended to those whom have extreme amounts of weight to lose in order to return their health.

Lyle McDonald wrote a book on his version of it.

[mhovanes21]

Sorry...I'm not following?

We are being sarcastic by pretending to accept your information as high level scientific evidence on par with a systematic review or meta-analysis, instead of accepting it as the worthless information that it actually is.

Following now?

[PerpetualMotion]

Whomever said that a protein only diet is "lethal" is ridiculous! Protein Sparing Modified Fasting has been around for a while and usually recommended to those whom have extreme amounts of weight to lose in order to return their health.

Lyle McDonald wrote a book on his version of it.

That diet isn't protein only.

[legendvpn]

We are being sarcastic by pretending to accept your information as high level scientific evidence on par with a systematic review or meta-analysis, instead of accepting it as the worthless information that it actually is.

Following now?

Well, that was harsh. Just trying to help.

[mhovanes21]

Just trying to help.

...me too

[legendvpn]

...me too

All right. I'll just delete it. Thanks.

[SumDumGoi]

Would you agree that in order for this process to take place, the body must be in a hypercaloric condition with full glycogen stores while energy requirements would be fully met and amino acid requirement would also be similarly met.

At such a moment an excessive dose of protein containing these certain amino acids would indeed result in limited Lipogenesis.

I nly read to here so perhaps someone already beat me to this but being in a "hypercaloric state" is the reason ANY macronutrient would be converted to fat! The extreme situation you are trying to draw comparisons to is nothing more than Caloric intake exceeding expenditure.

Yes, the pathways exist to store excess protein as fat, and yes if you consume too much protein (just like any other macronutrient) it can be stored as fat. Why is this concept hard to grasp?

[Reloadguy]

I nly read to here so perhaps someone already beat me to this but being in a "hypercaloric state" is the reason ANY macronutrient would be converted to fat! The extreme situation you are trying to draw comparisons to is nothing more than Caloric intake exceeding expenditure.

Yes, the pathways exist to store excess protein as fat, and yes if you consume too much protein (just like any other macronutrient) it can be stored as fat. Why is this concept hard to grasp?

What he's getting at is protein will almost NEVER be converted to fat under most circumstances unlike dietary fat and to a small extent carbs. It would take an absurd amount of protein with practically zero carbs or fat for your body to be forced to do that.

Thus all hypercaloric situations are not equal, of course if your intake exceeds your expenditure you'll gone some fat however small but it just won't be protein that will be converted to fat 99.9% of the time.

[MakeABanana]

This thread, brought to you by

[mhovanes21]

This thread, brought to you by

Wish I had 1,000,000 rep power for you...this is epic lol

[SumDumGoi]

Well, I do't know what to tell you then. He's wrong.

[perpendicularis]

I nly read to here so perhaps someone already beat me to this but being in a "hypercaloric state" is the reason ANY macronutrient would be converted to fat! The extreme situation you are trying to draw comparisons to is nothing more than Caloric intake exceeding expenditure.

Yes, the pathways exist to store excess protein as fat, and yes if you consume too much protein (just like any other macronutrient) it can be stored as fat. Why is this concept hard to grasp?

Well, I do't know what to tell you then. He's wrong.

What they are suggesting is that in a hypercaloric state, the body would rather burn excess protein for energy rather than store it for fat. It will prefer to store dietary fat that would otherwise have been burned for energy if it wasnt in a hypercaloric state.

So if someone takes an extra 100 cals of just protein above maintenance (assuming no new muscle synthesis), the body will burn it for energy & store 100 cals of dietary fat that would otherwise been burned. So an extra meal will alter the fate of macros from previous meals (within a reasonable period of course).

[SumDumGoi]

What they are suggesting is that in a hypercaloric state, the body would rather burn excess protein for energy rather than store it for fat. It will prefer to store dietary fat that would otherwise have been burned for energy if it wasnt in a hypercaloric state.

So if someone takes an extra 100 cals of just protein above maintenance (assuming no new muscle synthesis), the body will burn it for energy & store 100 cals of dietary fat that would otherwise been burned. So an extra meal will alter the fate of macros from previous meals (within a reasonable period of course).

If that is what they are saying then they are both stupid and wrong. First, let us remove the mystique behind the word "hypercaloric state". All a "hypercaloric state is is simply consumption of more calories than you expend. Protein is not your body's preferred source for fuel. At rest you will be burning mostly fat and with exercise you burn mostly carbohydrate. Assuming that these sources are available, which there is no reason why they wouldn't be in this hypercaloric state, your body would metabolize very little protein for energy. The protein that is available in your diet would be broken down into its individual amino acids and then used for other functions such as muscle protein synthesis, making enzymes, etc.

However, you can easily reach a point where you have too much protein compared to what your body needs to perform these functions. Because your body doesn't store excess protein it will either be used for de novo carbohydrate synthesis (gluconeogenesis) or converted and stored as fat. The chemistry teacher may get off on a technicality because the protein itself is not "directly" converted to fat. The first step in metabolizing protein is cleaving off the Nitrogen group, which is then excreted through the urine, and you are left with a carbon skeleton molecule (as someone mentioned on the first page). Technically the carbon skeleton is not "protein" (although it did come from protein) and this is what would be converted to fat.

If the chemistry teacher or anyone else in this thread is under the impression that increasing dietary protein in your diet does not contribute to an increase in body fat they are mistaken.

[ArchangelEST]

If the chemistry teacher or anyone else in this thread is under the impression that increasing dietary protein in your diet does not contribute to an increase in body fat they are mistaken.

True. Increase protein intake, increase calories = positive energy balance = gain weight.

But the chances of protein itself directly contributing to noticeable fat gain is going to be minimal. The pathway exists, but I've yet to see any evidence suggesting it's actually going to happen to any significant degree.

If you have any material on this subject, I'd love to see it.


As I understand, at best only half the amino acids qualify for this conversion anyway. And yet another half of those being more likely to be converted to glucose first...

My basic question was to try to narrow down the specific conditions that have to be met for this protein to fat conversion to occur in any meaningful fashion - and what numbers we would be talking about.



I'm not beyond accepting that Lyle McDonald is completely wrong on this matter, but he usually does his research... So I'd love to hear a good counterpoint discrediting him.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nut...torage-qa.html

"So, as noted above, while the pathway exists for protein to be stored as fat, and folks will continue to claim that ‘excess protein just turns to fat’, it’s really just not going to happen under any sort of real-world situation. Certainly we can dream up odd theoretical situations where it might but those won’t apply to 99.9% of real-world situations."

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nut...oxidation.html

"Since the body doesn’t have anywhere to store the rapidly incoming amino acids, it simply burns off more for energy."

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...e-get-fat.html

"Protein is basically never going to be converted to fat and stored as such"

[mattypoole]

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...e-get-fat.html

"Protein is basically never going to be converted to fat and stored as such"

Thanks, as always with Lyle's articles it's an informative read.


From reading this, my understanding is that eating too much protein won't make you fat in terms of it directly converting to fat.

However, short of being on a diet made exclusively of protein, an excess of calories aided from protein which includes adequate fat (i.e. the minimal your body needs function correctly in a hormonal sense) and some carbs will mean your body will oxidise the proteins and carbs as their energy source, meaning less of the dietary fat will be oxidise and therefore be stored as fat.

Of course this is all in the context of a calorie surplus.

I guess it just proves that in terms of weight loss/gain, it all still comes down to calories vs calories out (assuming people aren't taking a complete dips*** approach and trying to eat a diet exclusively of fat/only one of the macros).

Interesting & makes sense, but at times the little part of my brain exposed to massive amounts of bro science over many years wants to explode, especially when seeing opposing views/theories that both seem to have some credibility in terms of information/rationale.

[SumDumGoi]

True. Increase protein intake, increase calories = positive energy balance = gain weight.

But the chances of protein itself directly contributing to noticeable fat gain is going to be minimal. The pathway exists, but I've yet to see any evidence suggesting it's actually going to happen to any significant degree.

Are you suggesting that if i have a caloric requirement of 2500 kcals/day and if on top of these calories i consumed an additional 250 grams of protein (1000 kcals) that these additional Calories from protein wouldn't be stored as fat?

Ok, i just read Lyle's article. I see what the argument is and although i usually agree with him and respect his knowledge in this case he is wrong. I will try and answer in more detail later, but that article is too simplistic in the way it was presented. For instance, instead of looking at an increase of a single nutrient in the body, what would happen in a more real world diet when you increase all nutrients in proportion to one another?

[mhovanes21]

Are you suggesting that if i have a caloric requirement of 2500 kcals/day and if on top of these calories i consumed an additional 250 grams of protein (1000 kcals) that these additional Calories from protin wouldn't be stored as fat?

Can't wait to hear this reply....

[SumDumGoi]

Can't wait to hear this reply....

The argument is going to be that as you increase protein intake the protein will be metabolized and used for fuel. This would then reduce oxidation of body fat and would therefore ultimately result in an increase in body fat. The problem is that even under these situations the body doesn't prefer protein as a fuel source. This is purely a matter of semantics.

Here is a question to illustrate the absurdity of this idea, even if we continue to play this game of semantics. What happens if instead of increasing just protein content, I were to increase both carbohydrate and protein. Because foods/diets contain more than a single macronutrient. Because carbohydrates are more readily broken down and used for fuel the amount of carbohydrate oxidation for fuel would be greater than protein oxidation. What would happen to all that protein then? Your body can't store it so it can't just hang out and wait. What would happen is that the nitrogen would be removed and it would be converted to other things in the body such as fat. Even this situation isn't 100% accurate, but I am simply employing the same logic as the posted article.

[mhovanes21]

People have some notion that their bodies know and care which of the 3 macronutrients is the excess lol. As said above, if you eat extra carbs and protein, your body isn't going to suddenly switch to protein metabolism exclusively until it's all gone. Stop this nonsense.

[rootkit666]

If that is what they are saying then they are both stupid and wrong. First, let us remove the mystique behind the word "hypercaloric state". All a "hypercaloric state is is simply consumption of more calories than you expend. Protein is not your body's preferred source for fuel. At rest you will be burning mostly fat and with exercise you burn mostly carbohydrate. Assuming that these sources are available, which there is no reason why they wouldn't be in this hypercaloric state, your body would metabolize very little protein for energy. The protein that is available in your diet would be broken down into its individual amino acids and then used for other functions such as muscle protein synthesis, making enzymes, etc.

I guess we should ignore all the evidence like this that the more protein you eat, the more is oxidized ROFL

Level of dietary protein impacts whole body protein turnover in trained males at rest, Metabolism Clinical and Experimental 55 (2006) 501– 507

general. utpb. edu/ fac / eldridge_j/kine4364/ protein%20intake pdf

[rand18m]

If that is what they are saying then they are both stupid and wrong. First, let us remove the mystique behind the word "hypercaloric state". All a "hypercaloric state is is simply consumption of more calories than you expend. Protein is not your body's preferred source for fuel. At rest you will be burning mostly fat and with exercise you burn mostly carbohydrate. Assuming that these sources are available, which there is no reason why they wouldn't be in this hypercaloric state, your body would metabolize very little protein for energy. The protein that is available in your diet would be broken down into its individual amino acids and then used for other functions such as muscle protein synthesis, making enzymes, etc.

However, you can easily reach a point where you have too much protein compared to what your body needs to perform these functions. Because your body doesn't store excess protein it will either be used for de novo carbohydrate synthesis (gluconeogenesis) or converted and stored as fat. The chemistry teacher may get off on a technicality because the protein itself is not "directly" converted to fat. The first step in metabolizing protein is cleaving off the Nitrogen group, which is then excreted through the urine, and you are left with a carbon skeleton molecule (as someone mentioned on the first page). Technically the carbon skeleton is not "protein" (although it did come from protein) and this is what would be converted to fat.

If the chemistry teacher or anyone else in this thread is under the impression that increasing dietary protein in your diet does not contribute to an increase in body fat they are mistaken.

Bravo!! Right on! Must we remind everyone that CHO would not be converted directly to fat either! Nothing is!!!!

[SumDumGoi]

I guess we should ignore all the evidence like this that the more protein you eat, the more is oxidized ROFL

Level of dietary protein impacts whole body protein turnover in trained males at rest, Metabolism Clinical and Experimental 55 (2006) 501– 507

general. utpb. edu/ fac / eldridge_j/kine4364/ protein%20intake pdf

First, learn to post a link. What is that **** on the bottom? I am not about to go hunting down mysterious sources. Second, please provide some context to your first citation. Summarize the key points in your own words. From looking at the abstract that article is saying nothing more than athletes require more protein than non-athletes, which is not what this argument is about. Maybe you could supply us with more insight into the quoted citation.

[Kirra]

First, learn to post a link. What is that **** on the bottom? I am not about to go hunting down mysterious sources. Second, please provide some context to your first citation. Summarize the key points in your own words. From looking at the abstract that article is saying nothing more than athletes require more protein than non-athletes, which is not what this argument is about. Maybe you could supply us with more insight into the quoted citation.

Don't be a *******. Just remove the spaces from that link, it's not fukking rocket science.

http://general.utpb.edu/fac/eldridge...n%20intake.pdf

[SumDumGoi]

Don't be a *******. Just remove the spaces from that link, it's not fukking rocket science.

http://general.utpb.edu/fac/eldridge...n%20intake.pdf

Great, now if only he would explain the importance of the study in his own words, because it doesn't seem to have much bearing on the discussion. Also, if soneone can't post a link properly I don't have the motivation to try and fix the link.

[WonderPug]

Also, if soneone can't post a link properly I don't have the motivation to try and fix the link.

FYI: Posters with less than 50 total posts can't directly place links in their posts. As a workaround, the relevant posted inserted spaces into the URL to facilitate posting.

[SumDumGoi]

FYI: Posters with less than 50 total posts can't directly place links in their posts. As a workaround, the relevant posted inserted spaces into the URL to facilitate posting.

Makes sense. I won't complain about this particular instance, although it would be nice if they posted it in a way that didn't involve inserting a bunch of spaces. Remove teh "http://" tag or something. However, providing a link with no context is still inexcusable.

[Kirra]

Makes sense. I won't complain about this particular instance, although it would be nice if they posted it in a way that didn't involve inserting a bunch of spaces. Remove teh "http://" tag or something. However, providing a link with no context is still inexcusable.

Yes. Because removing spaces is hard.

Are you always a ******* or only on the weekends?

[ArchangelEST]

I'm gonna try and babble a little on something I'm not really qualified to babble about.

If any of this is stupid, so be it. Googling by yourself will only take you so far within a given time frame, lol.

Are you suggesting that if i have a caloric requirement of 2500 kcals/day and if on top of these calories i consumed an additional 250 grams of protein (1000 kcals) that these additional Calories from protein wouldn't be stored as fat?

Ok, i just read Lyle's article. I see what the argument is and although i usually agree with him and respect his knowledge in this case he is wrong. I will try and answer in more detail later, but that article is too simplistic in the way it was presented. For instance, instead of looking at an increase of a single nutrient in the body, what would happen in a more real world diet when you increase all nutrients in proportion to one another?

Well... think of it this way:

It's the end of the day. You've reached your 2500kcal maintenance. Now if you do not eat anything else and hit the sack, you'll burn fat and of-course some glucose for energy during sleep.

But what happens if you instead of not eating - you consume that 1000kcal worth of protein?

Fat burn will be mostly negated. Which means the energy has to come from somewhere. Body will most likely ramp up protein oxidation directly and most likely will also increase glucose utilization as-well. During sleep we expend some 500kcal in 8 hours. (http://jp.physoc.org/content/589/1/235.full#ref-25 / http://jp.physoc.org/content/589/1/235/F3.large.jpg)

Considering the very high TEF of protein, we'll most likely burn about 25-30% or 250-300kcal out of those 1000kcal on digestion alone.

So... if we had eaten nothing, we'd burn a considerable amount of fat during the night - on maintenance, pretty much all the fat we stored during the day, will now be burned off in this scenario. Now that we eat all that protein, that's not gonna happen to any significant degree.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1474076

As you can see - protein oxidation increases after a certain level is reached. If your maintenance diet already included considerable protein intake, then it is most likely that protein oxidation will be ramped up very high as very little is needed for muscle maintenance or other needs.

Now - 250g of protein will take hella-long time to digest and absorb. It might still be going by the time you wake up. Which means, unless you consume a ridiculous amount of especially fast absorbing proteins (like hydrolized whey or something), it's very likely that the blood will never be that massively saturated with Amino Acids to warrant the need for significant fat conversion to take place.


Basically I find it very doubtful that any significant amount of protein will be directly converted to fat. And I don't really consider a few grams here or there to be relevant.

The argument is going to be that as you increase protein intake the protein will be metabolized and used for fuel. This would then reduce oxidation of body fat and would therefore ultimately result in an increase in body fat. The problem is that even under these situations the body doesn't prefer protein as a fuel source. This is purely a matter of semantics.

Here is a question to illustrate the absurdity of this idea, even if we continue to play this game of semantics. What happens if instead of increasing just protein content, I were to increase both carbohydrate and protein. Because foods/diets contain more than a single macronutrient. Because carbohydrates are more readily broken down and used for fuel the amount of carbohydrate oxidation for fuel would be greater than protein oxidation. What would happen to all that protein then? Your body can't store it so it can't just hang out and wait. What would happen is that the nitrogen would be removed and it would be converted to other things in the body such as fat. Even this situation isn't 100% accurate, but I am simply employing the same logic as the posted article.

Well, the more "realistic" scenario of CHO+PRO is interesting indeed. In this case, the majority of energy requirements will indeed most likely be covered by CHO. But in this case - you are also talking about a protein dose 50% smaller. Sure, less oxidation is demanded from protein - but there is less protein available anyway.

So the result might be fairly similar. Also, the body has some very limited protein storage capability. (Look up - “labile protein reserve")

Also, it's not like 100% of the protein ingested and absorbed is eligible for fat conversion anyway. Only a few Amino Acids are likely to ever reach the point where they might end up as fat. And half of those are possibly converted to glucose and and used for energy or stored as glycogen and only then into fat if there really is a massive amount of excess energy available and all glycogen stores are full.
So the amount of available Amino Acids for fat conversion is unlikely to ever be that great for significant numbers to appear.


Only those that fall under ketogenic categorization are capable of being converted into fat fairly directly.


***

Now when we take rather unrealistic scenarios, I'm sure we can think up ways how protein to fat will take place in significant amounts. And Lyle did say just that.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nut...torage-qa.html

"So, as noted above, while the pathway exists for protein to be stored as fat, and folks will continue to claim that ‘excess protein just turns to fat’, it’s really just not going to happen under any sort of real-world situation. Certainly we can dream up odd theoretical situations where it might but those won’t apply to 99.9% of real-world situations."


So Yeah, it's semantics kinda.

Excess protein will be stored as fat. However this process isn't as simple as going over your maintenance by a few grams of protein and immediately every gram after that will directly turn to fat.

Like with carbs - one has to be in a serious hypercaloric condition and consume vast amounts of protein in a single setting. Possibly fast absorbing protein at that.

I can't really imagine meeting my maintenance levels from my normal diet - and THEN ADD another 250g of protein. I'd fuking puke. That's like over a 2lb of chicken. Something I can finish in a single setting If I try and am fasted, but not when I'm already full from the rest of the day.
So yeah... if it isn't really applicable in most real life situations, it's mostly an academic discussion we are having here.

[joelash302]

True. Increase protein intake, increase calories = positive energy balance = gain weight.

But the chances of protein itself directly contributing to noticeable fat gain is going to be minimal. The pathway exists, but I've yet to see any evidence suggesting it's actually going to happen to any significant degree.

If you have any material on this subject, I'd love to see it.


As I understand, at best only half the amino acids qualify for this conversion anyway. And yet another half of those being more likely to be converted to glucose first...

My basic question was to try to narrow down the specific conditions that have to be met for this protein to fat conversion to occur in any meaningful fashion - and what numbers we would be talking about.



I'm not beyond accepting that Lyle McDonald is completely wrong on this matter, but he usually does his research... So I'd love to hear a good counterpoint discrediting him.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nut...torage-qa.html

"So, as noted above, while the pathway exists for protein to be stored as fat, and folks will continue to claim that ‘excess protein just turns to fat’, it’s really just not going to happen under any sort of real-world situation. Certainly we can dream up odd theoretical situations where it might but those won’t apply to 99.9% of real-world situations."

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nut...oxidation.html

"Since the body doesn’t have anywhere to store the rapidly incoming amino acids, it simply burns off more for energy."

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...e-get-fat.html

"Protein is basically never going to be converted to fat and stored as such"

Glad this was posted. Should be the end of the thread.

[SumDumGoi]

ArchangelEST,

The problem that with Lyle's article isn't the premise of what he said. Yes, it is true that when you eat a meal, your use of carbohydrate for fuel will be increased and fatty acid oxidation will be decreased. So it is true that you will be sparing fatty acids and using carbohydrates for energy. His statement is also true that you won't convert many of those carbohydrates in that meal into fat because they will be oxidized for energy.

The problem with this statement is his application of it. He seems to be suggesting that under real world situations the process of storing carbohydrate as fat won't happen. What he is not recognizing is that your body will only oxidize the amount of carbohydrate for fuel that it requires to use for energy. In other words, energy production and nutrient oxidation will be evenly matched. In other words if over a specific period of time I am expending 100 Calories and I have consumed 500 Calories, only 100 of the Calories I have consumed will be used for energy and the other 400 Calories will stored as fat (yes, this scenario is very simplistic as rates of digestion are not accounted for, but it gives a general idea regarding energetic balance in the body). The same thing will also happen to protein. Your body uses what it needs and then will store what it cannot use. Since protein can not be stored by the body, it will be stored as fat.