How much protein on a cut?

[Andrew11O2]

I currently weigh 168 and I’ve been cutting for 10 weeks now. When I started I was 185 so I was consuming about 190g protein a day. This was because I was told to eat 1g protein/lb of body weight. I’ve also been told that I only need to eat .7g protein/lb of body weight to preserve muscle on a cut. So how much protein should I be consuming on a cut? On a bulk? Maintenance?

[Mrpb]

0.7 gram per lb is always the minimum, during bulking, maintenance and cutting.

During a cut there may be a benefit to consuming more but this doesn't have good evidence behind it.

~1 gram per lb isn't a bad idea. It may help.

[Mrpb]

Yup. 0.7g/lb BW is the minimum for a sedentary person.

No, that's the minimum for resistance training. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28698222

If you workout it's good to have more so 1g/lb BW.

Like I said, no good evidence.

[NoGenetics]

No, that's the minimum for resistance training. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28698222


Like I said, no good evidence.

What's your interpretation of Jose Antonio's work Mrpb?

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/arti...970-015-0100-0

[Mrpb]

What's your interpretation of Jose Antonio's work Mrpb?

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/arti...970-015-0100-0

Both groups gained the same amount of lean body mass, which goes to show that eating more protein doesn't mean more muscle gain.

Going by the body composition measurements (the high protein group lost fat) they must have been eating in deficit. This is the likely reason why they lost fat.

[NoGenetics]

Both groups gained the same amount of lean body mass, which goes to show that eating more protein doesn't mean more muscle gain.

Going by the body composition measurements (the high protein group lost fat) they must have been eating in deficit. This is the likely reason why they lost fat.

I'm well aware on the fact it doesn't promote benefits for hypertrophy, though it's more the effects on body composition that interest me. In particular how it may benefit a physique competitor.

If the high protein group was in a deficit, how do you explain the equal gains in LBM?

I also listened to Jose Antonio speak on a podcast on relation to this, and other high protein intake studies.

His conclusion was along the lines of, due to the greater thermodynamics of protein breakdown and gluconeogenesis, it promoted the greater response in body composition and that for a competitor, this should be considered.

Thanks for you view on the study. Always interesting to see what others think.

[Heisman2]

I'm well aware on the fact it doesn't promote benefits for hypertrophy, though it's more the effects on body composition that interest me. In particular how it may benefit a physique competitor.

If the high protein group was in a deficit, how do you explain the equal gains in LBM?

I also listened to Jose Antonio speak on a podcast on relation to this, and other high protein intake studies.

His conclusion was along the lines of, due to the greater thermodynamics of protein breakdown and gluconeogenesis, it promoted the greater response in body composition and that for a competitor, this should be considered.

Thanks for you view on the study. Always interesting to see what others think.

Look at that abstract again. They claim a significant difference in bodyfat percentage change of -0.7% +/- 2.8 (in normal protein) vs -2.4% +/- 2.9 (in high protein). Then look at figure 4 which shows the individual data points. There is much more individual variability than the between group difference indicates. In the high protein group that did better, one person had a ~3% increase in bodyfat percentage at the high end and one person had a ~9% decrease in bodyfat percentage at the low end. That is an absurdly large difference over an 8 week period. Part of the issue is that BodPod was used to determine body composition. Here's a nice article showing the pitfalls and huge variability that can be seen with it: https://weightology.net/the-pitfalls...art-3-bod-pod/

Point being, while there very well may have been a better outcome with the high protein diet, it's hard for me to get overly excited about the results when the methodology is questionable and the actual results are not overly consistent. 3 of the subjects actually gained 6 kg of fat free mass in 8 weeks. They either put on a ton of water weight prior to the measurement (making the comparison process invalid in my mind) or the measurements were off.

[Mrpb]

@Heisman, I'd take all the individual changes in body composition with a large grain of salt, because Bodpod isn't accurate enough to measure individual changes. When you've got n=31, as in the high protein group it should be quite accurate though. As explained in the article by James Krieger: "The Bod Pod does OK when looking at group averages, with some studies showing error rates of around 2%; however, other studies have indicated average error rates of over 5%. The individual error rate for the Bod Pod can be unacceptably high in some individuals, and the Bod Pod is horrible for tracking change over time".

In particular how it may benefit a physique competitor.

Then IMO you can ignore that study because the studied population in general wasn't very advanced nor lean.

If the high protein group was in a deficit, how do you explain the equal gains in LBM?

Positive muscle protein balance is what drives hypertrophy, not necessarily energy balance.

There's no reason that people at that level at that body fat percentage can't gain muscle in a small deficit. As you probably know, the more advanced and the leaner someone is, the harder it becomes.

His conclusion was along the lines of, due to the greater thermodynamics of protein breakdown and gluconeogenesis, it promoted the greater response in body composition and that for a competitor, this should be considered.

Yeah, Antonio believes the self reported calories, even though countless studies show that self reported calories tend to be very inaccurate. And he dismisses the fact that the high protein group must have been in deficit, otherwise they wouldn't have lost the fat. This has been established in the Bray overfeeding study, where overfeeding on protein did cause fat gain.

This happens a lot by the way: researchers tend to draw spectacular conclusions from their studies, even when the data doesn't warrant it. If ones looks objectively at the data one likely comes to very different conclusions.

In case you haven't read it yet, I recommend this post from Eric Helms that explains the real benefits of high protein intake well.
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/re...dying-protein/

[MikeWrightMPS]

I currently weigh 168 and I’ve been cutting for 10 weeks now. When I started I was 185 so I was consuming about 190g protein a day. This was because I was told to eat 1g protein/lb of body weight. I’ve also been told that I only need to eat .7g protein/lb of body weight to preserve muscle on a cut. So how much protein should I be consuming on a cut? On a bulk? Maintenance?

I think you're going good, just make sure you're not feeling lose...