Maximim protein per meal?

[tfranc]

This is a joke.

Good one. I feel stupid.

[Dag]

All this "more than X amount of protein at one sitting can't be used" is ridiculous. When you eat protein, it's not like 50 grams (or whatever) of protein is injected directly into your blood stream all at once. You have this thing called digestion and it takes a while.

[Dunk]

This is a joke.

Wait... really? Hypothetically speaking... is there a reason one would eat more protein than that per meal for a recomp? For example: If someone was recommended 220-250g of protein per day, could the 4x per day model be used, or does it need to be 5x per day?

An American being sarcastic and confusing another American with it.

[JimtheConquerer]

I'm still at a loss for what "absorbed" and "stored as energy" means. And I feel dumb for not understanding. Why bother getting up to 220 G protein per day, when 30-40 4x per day will have the same affect. Why not just eat 160g and eat more carbs/fat since the "excess" protein isn't being used as "muscle building protein." I hope I'm not coming off as too dense.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

I'm still at a loss for what "absorbed" and "stored as energy" means. And I feel dumb for not understanding. Why bother getting up to 220 G protein per day, when 30-40 4x per day will have the same affect. Why not just eat 160g and eat more carbs/fat since the "excess" protein isn't being used as "muscle building protein." I hope I'm not coming off as too dense.

Absorbed= taken by mouth and absorbed through the GI tract.

Stored as energy= stored as fat or glycogen.

220g protein per day would net a person somewhere in the range of 30-40g protein per 4x/day from protein sources and cover their trace protein intake too, which comes from carbs and fats.

[Tim K]

220g protein per day would net a person somewhere in the range of 30-40g protein per 4x/day from protein sources and cover their trace protein intake too, which comes from carbs and fats.

So theoretically, if someone was getting 40g of protein 4x a day and it was entirely coming from whey protein powder with no additional dietary protein, they would be just as well off in terms of building muscle as the person getting 220g from real food where it's a mixture of complete proteins and trace proteins from carbs and fat, assuming total calories are equal? (obviously there are other problems with this, but just in terms of MPS)

If so then would it be true that by getting a significant portion of your daily protein (not all of it) from whey would decrease your overall protein requirements? Let's say your target is 220g but if you get 80g from two servings of whey and only come in at 180g total for the day it's just as good?

I'm thinking mainly of situations like you know you're going to go out to eat at a restaurant and have a couple of beers and that makes it tough to hit your target protein without exceeding your daily calories. So you have whey for breakfast, a protein-rich lunch, another dose of whey between then and dinner, and then at dinner you get enough protein to spike MPS one more time but not enough to hit your daily target.

[JT_]

Bah, I guess nobody knows about this protein thing then. I'll just stick to at least 30g per meal for now and experiment on my own.

He was just mad that you called him Jordy. At least you didn't call him Justin though...

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

So theoretically, if someone was getting 40g of protein 4x a day and it was entirely coming from whey protein powder with no additional dietary protein, they would be just as well off in terms of building muscle as the person getting 220g from real food where it's a mixture of complete proteins and trace proteins from carbs and fat, assuming total calories are equal?

There are no way for these two scenarios to exist and have the same amount of calories

If so then would it be true that by getting a significant portion of your daily protein (not all of it) from whey would decrease your overall protein requirements? Let's say your target is 220g but if you get 80g from two servings of whey and only come in at 180g total for the day it's just as good?

I'm not sure what you mean.

I'm thinking mainly of situations like you know you're going to go out to eat at a restaurant and have a couple of beers and that makes it tough to hit your target protein without exceeding your daily calories. So you have whey for breakfast, a protein-rich lunch, another dose of whey between then and dinner, and then at dinner you get enough protein to spike MPS one more time but not enough to hit your daily target.

You're saying saving up calories and then at the final meal have more calories, but at the earlier meals since they have less trace proteins (because they're lower energy) one could just do whey at those times, albeit a lower amount? Sure. You could.

[Tim K]

There are no way for these two scenarios to exist and have the same amount of calories

I mean, what if the whey diet just included eating sugar and butter until the total calories equal? Not something anyone would do in practice obviously...

I'm not sure what you mean.

It sounds like you're saying that the 1g/lb of bodyweight guideline works because in a normal diet there is a mixture of complete proteins which can spike MPS and build muscle on their own and trace proteins which contribute to the process but in themselves are not sufficient to initiate it and bring it to completion. It sounds like if all your protein intake was of the complete variety then you wouldn't really need 1g/lb to get the same effect. As the percentage of total protein that is "complete" increases, the total daily requirement would decrease, to a point. I only mentioned whey specifically because you mention it as the gold standard of complete proteins and it's possible to isolate its intake from the intake of carbs and fat. Is this correct?

[stejor]

There are no way for these two scenarios to exist and have the same amount of calories

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what Tim K is saying, but I think you could have two scenarios like this as an example for someone eating 3200 calories a day:

Four meals a day of 40g whey (160 calories) and 640 calories of carbs and fat with minimal trace protein (maybe they're doing something weird like shots of honey and olive oil).

VS

Four meals a day of mixed foods with each meal consisting of 55g protein (220 calories), 100g carbs (400 calories), 20g fat (180 calories), but with the protein coming from sources that don't have a leucine content as high as that of whey.


Ultimately, the question (as I understand it) is this: Should the goal be to hit a particular protein intake, or should the goal be to hit 4g of leucine every four hours or so? Rules 1 and 2 in "7 Rules to Optimize Protein Intake" seem to suggest the latter, but I'm curious to hear if we're misinterpreting that.