Im still amazed/confused by my ability to have less than 100g of PRO and come out ok

[Striation]

Just saying I wouldn't (as in me) go on one what person does/says (you) who's had a history of stupid extreme diets threads that haven't exactly got anywhere

Yeah, my before and after pics show no progress.
Derp!

[Striation]

As someone who's been there, you can get away with lower than optimal protein only for so long. When fattys start training, they can put on muscle and still cut some fat b/c off all that excess.


At some point you're going to need to up you're protein (as I did). Personally, I dropped from about 280-290 to about 190 in a very quick amount of time, and lost alot of muscle due to such a large deficit. I'd never recommend it to anyone, ever

Been lifting and dieting for 12 years, I think I have been past the fat noob status for MANY years.

[Dexter3000]

As someone who's been there, you can get away with lower than optimal protein only for so long. When fattys start training, they can put on muscle and still cut some fat b/c off all that excess.


At some point you're going to need to up you're protein (as I did). Personally, I dropped from about 280-290 to about 190 in a very quick amount of time, and lost alot of muscle due to such a large deficit. I'd never recommend it to anyone, ever

Obviously with a too large deficit, protein intake isn't that relevant anymore as you will lose mass anyway. On a smaller deficit, as OP is doing, you'd probably get away with less protein than many think.

[ErickStevens]

Been lifting and dieting for 12 years, I think I have been past the fat noob status for MANY years.

And yet you're still 175 lbs...

[nads786]

And yet you're still 175 lbs...

There are a billion factors involved with him being 175lbs other than protein..

[Striation]

And yet you're still 175 lbs...

And I was 205 in the past. Check my pics. I've had back injuries that took me out of the game for more than a year. Besides, there are plenty of experienced lifters who have worse stats than me. I am also 5'9". Nice attempt at a jab when you know nothing about me.

[AlwaysTryin]

And I was 205 in the past. Check my pics. I've had back injuries that took me out of the game for more than a year. Besides, there are plenty of experienced lifters who have worse stats than me. I am also 5'9". Nice attempt at a jab when you know nothing about me.

What's 5"9 got to do with it? I've lifted 1/3 the time you have and am
5"10 and dead on 200lbs this morning

This goes back to my previous comment about your extreme diets not getting you anywhere

You try push the extremes such as extremely low protein and previous silly ideas trying to prove something that gets you know where

[nads786]

What's 5"9 got to do with it? I've lifted 1/3 the time you have and am
5"10 and dead on 200lbs this morning

This goes back to my previous comment about your extreme diets not getting you anywhere

You try push the extremes such as extremely low protein and previous silly ideas trying to prove something that gets you know where

Hes gotten results... what are you talking about? And he is not advocating eating his diet, just that protein isn't as important as you think!

You can easily employ his diet with healthy food, but on a macro level he is suggesting protein is not that important whats your problem with him?

On top of that are we really going to compare people to people? Is that really how it works here? Because I can show you guys who are 200+ at my gym who eat crap every day and look great.

[AlwaysTryin]

Hes gotten results... what are you talking about? And he is not advocating eating his diet, just that protein isn't as important as you think!

How does that show protein isn't as important?

Did you read the quote on the previous page?? Just because low protein "can" work, it doesn't make it optimal

As Erick pointed out... 12 years of training... He should be much further progressed...maybe his "diets" are why he isn't



Anyway no need for us to derail the thread further, we can all go about it our own way

[Striation]

What's 5"9 got to do with it? I've lifted 1/3 the time you have and am
5"10 and dead on 200lbs this morning

This goes back to my previous comment about your extreme diets not getting you anywhere

You try push the extremes such as extremely low protein and previous silly ideas trying to prove something that gets you know where

5'9" is shorter than his 6 foot. Take proportions into consideration and I am the equivalent of 6 foot at 190.

Anyways, I got to a solid 205 after about 4 years. http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/ph...r-photo/195731 I wasn't as consistent as I wish I would have been since then and like I said, injuries have set me back. Nothing to do with the amount of protein I was taking in, just normal weight lifter "struggles". Yo-yo dieting and giving up for months at a time.

I remember speaking to a guy who had been lifting for 10 years to my 3-4 back in the day and thinking that I would surpass him quickly. I was naive. We can only get so far naturally. Not saying I am at my natural limit, but check in on me when I have been back at it for at least 2 solid years.

Another thing, everyone acts as if everyone's goal is to be as big as possible. The best body I have seen in person was on a 5'7 -5'8 guy who only weighed 160. Jean Claude Van Damme was said to be 155 in Bloodsport, Stallone was said to have been his biggest in Rambo III at 185. Not all of us want to be OMGWTFBBQ over 200 lbs. Some of us just want to look good. 90-100g works for me at my weight, if I was 200+, I would raise it to 110-120.

[Arabianmuscles]

Been lifting and dieting for 12 years, I think I have been past the fat noob status for MANY years.

EDIT:

Eat a normal diet/train with a proven routine and you will get far. Why make sh!t complicated?

[paulosportz]

i have not read all this but does op note that carbs also contain protein?? is this factored into his total? or is 60g average purely from protein soruces? I still dont believe u can maintain/shred/bulk on 60g of protein, thats unhead of.

You hit that easily without even trying to eat protein foods.

[Swamp Dog]

Brah, no offense but are you serious right now? 12 years of dieting and lifting?

I have been lifting for barely 1 year with an OK lifting and dieting routine, and I've made much better progress. (no hate, just trying to prove a point).

Get rid of the extreme approach to dieting, because it's not doing much for you. Eat a normal diet/train with a proven routine and you will get far, much farther than with your current diet/eating habits.

I'm not one to be giving advice but you could have had an amazing physique by now if you did it right from the start. Don't take this post as an insult but as constructive criticism instead.

Did you see his 2003 pic. He had an amazing physique even at that point.

[Arabianmuscles]

Did you see his 2003 pic. He had an amazing physique even at that point.

No I haven't. I've seen his other pics but not this one. What page is it on?

[LightsOut06]

Everybody's giving Striation sh*t, but scientifically the jury is still out on whether bodybuilder's REALLY need 1g protein per pound of bodyweight. Sure, better safe than sorry, but it's completely possible that we probably could get away with way less protein than supplement companies and muscle mags have been telling us for years.

[Swamp Dog]

No I haven't. I've seen his other pics but not this one. What page is it on?

Click his link, then go forward. He has 4 pics, the last two are from '03. Pretty impressive.

[Arabianmuscles]

Click his link, then go forward. He has 4 pics, the last two are from '03. Pretty impressive.

Just checked his pics.... I assume he took some time off? lol I thought he meant lifting for 12 years straight with no time off. That's what it came off like in his post.

[Swamp Dog]

Everybody's giving Striation sh*t, but scientifically the jury is still out on whether bodybuilder's REALLY need 1g protein per pound of bodyweight. Sure, better safe than sorry, but it's completely possible that we probably could get away with way less protein than supplement companies and muscle mags have been telling us for years.

I am with you. I personally believe that if calories can sustain growth, then you will grow with anything close to a balanced diet. However, I also believe that the superannuated have a greater need for protein than younger guys (or girls).

[ArchangelEST]

Protein intake requirement is definitely something that is pretty far from clear cut at this point. Here is a thread on some of the stuff collected on the topic:

http://forum.nostressnutrition.net/i...opic,17.0.html

I especially love this long post by Eric Helms, that he posted on Facebook some time ago:

Context is hugely important here. Big issue with many studies on protein is that the intervention is not always representative of the type of training the folks being studied regularly do. That's why sometimes an observational study tells us something interesting. For example, Celejowa and Homa in 1970 (had a hell of a time getting full text on this one) looked at sub elite olympic weight lifters during a training camp, following their regular training, guys were eating at roughly maintenance, some slightly above, slightly below, and found that 4 out of 10 were in a negative NBAL eating 2.0-2.2g/kg (or ~1g/lb). And remember, NBAL underestimates protein requirements slightly if anything, and is really telling you more of a functional minimum, not optimal intake.

Then there is Maestu 2010, looking at drug free bodybuilders for 11 weeks before competing where they ate 2.5-2.6g/kg of protein, followed their own training, and for the whole group on average we saw losses of lean that were not statistically significant...although individual effects varied.
Mettler had a pretty good training intervention, so I would say 2.3g/kg tells you something there as well, but worth pointing out, in Celejowa, 2.0-2.2g/kg was seen as a minimum, and in Mettler there were more LBM losses at 2.3g/kg than there were in Maestu at 2.5-2.6g/kg.

So really it just needs context to interpret. My personal interpretation, is if you are a casual lifter, not trying to maximize gains, maybe not training with very high intensity or volume, you are eating significantly over maintenance calories and your bodyfat is over 15% or so, then yeah you would probably be fine with 1.5g/kg or so.
But if you are lean gaining, or cutting, and training hard, and you have a bodyfat percentage that is athletic, you might be better off at higher intakes. Just gotta look at your situation. But for so many folks in bodybuilding training, you are training hard, decently lean, and in a small surplus at maintenance or in a small to hefty deficit, I would probably look at 2.0-2.6g/kg as a more appropriate range based on the limited data we have.

Menno,

First off I just want to say much respect for your willingness to talk about this all, I really enjoy discussions like this and I think everyone benefits
Wanted to address a couple things you directed to me.

I'm not sure we can ever eliminate the need for paying attention to context. A study can only tell you something if the researchers measured that variable. For example on the topic of body composition, if stats aren't ran to find correlations between protein and body comp, a study can't tell you this data. Also, a study can be only be inferred to the population it is targeting, and if certain aspects of that population aren't taken into consideration the results will require the appreciation of context. For example, if you just studied protein intake in athletes, with no attention to type of sport, magnitude of calorie surplus/deficit, body composition etc. you might get some data that is being skewed by variables you didn't think to account for.

To illustrate this point, and to address your comment that it is "practically impossible to lose weight and not LBM in resistance trained athletes", check out these two studies done on the same group of subjects by Garthe et al in 2011:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21558571
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21896944

The first study was done on elite athletes from a range of sports, all following a weight loss diet for 4-12 weeks. Protein was set to 1.6g/kg and then a deficit was created, primarily through fat reduction to maintain carbohydrate levels, and they divided the subjects into two groups determined by the target rate of weight loss; .5kg/week and 1kg/week. In the .5kg/week group, we actually see an increase in LBM. However in the 1kg/week group we see maintenance and loss of LBM. As you read further into the results and start looking at subject characteristics, you can actually see that the leaner subjects in the 1kg group lost LBM. In the second study (following up on the same subjects), more data is given and we see a discussion of training volume. For some folks, the level of resistance training they did in their sport was a lot. Others, not much. It was the folks who increased training volume, were higher in bodyfat percentage, and followed a less severe caloric restriction who gained LBM. While it was the experienced lifters, lower in body fat percentage, following a more aggressive caloric deficit that lost LBM. So context really does matter here, because the researchers weren't even examining protein, and they weren't examining body comp, yet the data is there for analysis. So really, we have to look at the broader context any time we evaluate a study, since no one study is going to draw correlations between every variable of interest, and no one study can examine every possible permutation of populations who might be consuming protein under different conditions.

As to experience level and protein intake, I think I was not clear. I don't think more advanced athletes need more protein. I was suggesting that if training is not set up to create a high level of adaptive stimulus you won't need as much protein, since protein turn over would not be as high. That was the intended point I wanted to make in the example I used. Alan brought this up in the roundtable discussion; if you have a study were you put novices and experienced lifters on the same training program, it very well might be enough to create an adaptive stimulus in novices but not nearly enough to do the same in the experienced lifters. So, a difference of protein turnover betwen them might not be indicative that experienced athletes need less protein, it just might be indicative that only a training program that elicits adaptation will require extra building material to support this, which is quite logical when you think about it.

As far as differences in body composition effecting protein metabolism I think that is quite well established, both more globally, and more mechanistically. Besides the two studies I posted above by Garthe et al 2011a, 2011b, some studies of bodybuilders during competition also show greater lean body mass losses as prep continues. Granted you can't just attribute this to body composition as often training volume increases and food intake decreases with shifts in macronutrient composition. But there is also the papers by Forbes and Hall; "Forbes theory", based on weight loss studies, being that the lower your body composition the greater the percentage of LBM loss is incurred during weight loss. The question posed is: can a higher protein intake offset this and how does it scale with body composition? We don't have an answer to the second part of the question, but the sports nutrition community is more and more in agreement about protein needs being increased during a caloric deficit, with a recent review paper by Phillips et al 2011 (probably the most prolific protein researcher) stating that 1.8-2.7g/kg is likely appropriate during a caloric deficit.

More mechanistically, check out Elia et al 1999, it showed that during periods of fasting, protein losses and the percent of energy derived from protein are two to threefold less in obese subjects than in lean subjects. The results also show that urinary nitrogen excretion is twofold less in obese subjects, and lean subjects contribute twice as much protein to glucose production compared to their obese counterparts. Furthermore, in the first few days of starvation, leucine oxidation increases in lean individuals but not in obese individuals.
So clearly there is a difference caused by body composition, how much is certainly up for debate.

As to your comment about statistics. I really don't think we have crappy journals in the fitness industry per say, but we do have low impact journals. That being said, impact factor is not a measure of quality but rather a measure of importance. I think it's a given that a niche science like exercise science would have much lower impact factors than something like environmental science or biology. But that is not a reflection of quality but rather impact. In fact sports medicine, only has an impact factor of 5.2, but it is the highest impact factor among all the fitness industry related journals (and happens to be extremely high quality as well). Oddly enough, sports statistician Will Hopkins, who is currently pioneering magnitude based stats in the field of sports science (for the reasons I stated before) is a reviewer for Sports Medicine. I think this is interesting based on your evaluation of the statistical approach as low quality, not something tha meshes with Sports Med being the best journal in the field.
I think this approach is particularly appropriate for practioners, since a study with this statistical analysis tells them something they can use. "Statistically significant" doesn't tell a strength and conditioning coach how useful an intervention is nor the chances of it being harmful or beneficial to his athletes. The approach to stats I am talking about does.
Also, I don't know if the characterization is accurate that magnitude based inferences are only trotted out when traditional stats don't show an effect as a post hoc analysis. Here is an exmaple of study published purely (and from the start) using this form of statistical analysis:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20397095

And that is one among many. In fact there are a good number of studies that don't even use p values and go right to establishing a magnitude based effect, giving chances that it could be beneficial, trivial or harmful and provide that based on confidence intervals. In fact, I am guessing from your critique that you didn't actually read the link I provided to sportscience.org? Because I felt a little straw manned by your response, so I assume that was just because you weren't 100% clear on what I was referring to. So please do check out the link, it can only broaden your perspective.

Also I'm not sure if it was mentioned here, but the limitations of NBAL really should be made clear. In Wahlberg et all 1988 (where they compared 1.6 to 1.0 g/kg protein in lean bbers), even though the 1.6g/kg group lost LBM, Nitrogen Balance was positive. Also, in Pikosky 2010, they took folks, put them on 1.8g/kg and had them get into a deficit purely from activity, cardio, and they achieved positive nitrogen balance, but lost LBM as well. So if we are inferring information from NBAL and trying to make distinctions between 1.8 and 2.2, I really don't think the measure utilized is sensitive enough, nor does it target skeletal muscle, or tell you anything about optimal intake, rather it provides a functional minimum to avoid losses in total body protein (nitrogen). And I don't think functional minimum to prevent LBM loss=optimal ntake for adaptation.

[rand18m]

Everybody's giving Striation sh*t, but scientifically the jury is still out on whether bodybuilder's REALLY need 1g protein per pound of bodyweight. Sure, better safe than sorry, but it's completely possible that we probably could get away with way less protein than supplement companies and muscle mags have been telling us for years.

Exactly! And not everyone is interested in what may be optimal, and unless someone is engaging in some competitive endeavor, then I doubt most people consistently micro manage over optimality! Not without eventually going crazy!

[Striation]

No I haven't. I've seen his other pics but not this one. What page is it on?

Yeah, and I believe I looked great after one year(my old 170lb. pics), trust me, progress slows tremendously.

[Striation]

Just checked his pics.... I assume he took some time off? lol I thought he meant lifting for 12 years straight with no time off. That's what it came off like in his post.

Off and on man, does every older guy look great at your gym? They have also picked up a weight off and on for many years, the only reason I mentioned twelve years because that is how long ago I started and I have picked up a lot of knowledge in those years. It was in response to the guy who pretty much called my progress newb gains.

[Dexter3000]

150g of protein a day keeps the doctor away.

lol protein..