Transcription
[Music] What is, what do you mean by the so-called protein debate? Is it over the like the NP?
So that's what this has been. I mean, you probably haven't been keeping up, but there have been warring factions inside the uh, evidence-based fitness industry. Yeah, I know. Where, you know, so-and-so will say, you only need 0.7 grams of protein per pound, or like 1.6 grams per kilo. And then someone else will say, actually, you see benefits all the way up to like 1.3 grams per pound. Whereas I know you've been fairly consistent for the past, however many centuries. I scale at the lean body mass, like you should. If you're not a [ __ ]. Like that's probably.
Can you explain what that means?
Okay, so first, okay, so I guess we should go back. You're like, what, where do I stand on the so-called protein debate? Well, first, let's define what the protein debate is. And as I wrote years ago, there has been a centuries-long debate over human protein for. I have this really, when I was writing the protein book, which was in, actually, it's published in 2008. I did a video on YouTube and I kept saying 1998, and that's wrong. Uh, I got some book from like Cambridge University, was like the history of protein requirement debates, because of course I did. And like, it's gone from highs of like 400 grams per day to very low. Usually, what it represented was what socioculturally people were eating, and the scientists found a way to justify that. As it stands now, if you were looking at general human protein requirements, and I'm going to use the US numbers because that's what I know. I think they're fairly similar across the world. We, what we used to call the RDA, the Recommended Daily Allowance, it's now called the DRRI, is like the Daily Required Intake, something like that. And for the general public, it is set at 0.8 grams per kilo, which is 36 grams per pound. It's somewhere in that range. For the average person, it's like 55 to 65 grams per day, just as a general recommendation.
Yeah.
Now, there is another separate debate that's been going on for decades. Do athletes need more protein than sedentary individuals? And this is a decades, it goes back to the early 20th century, decades-long argument. And the data says yes. And that's pretty much not arguable, unless your entire guide is the RDA handbook, because registered dietitians, at least the last time I talked to them, refused to accept this. When I was first got out of college, I worked at this wellness center, and the dietitian there said, "There is no data that athletes require more protein than sedentary." Now, as anytime someone uses that phrasing and says, "There is no data," that means they never looked. Without exception. Someone says, "There is no data." That there that fat burners want.
You have any data to support that claim?
That means they never looked. So, I put like photocopies of roughly six papers by some of the luminaries, Peter Lemon, uh, Steve Phelps might have been around, that showed incontrovertibly that athletes need more protein. In her inbox, she never spoke to me again. Because data doesn't, because the way registered dietitians in the US, the RDA handbook, which is invariably 10 years behind, is the alpha and the omega. Anything that's not in there doesn't exist to them. The data is incontrovertible. Now, the question then becomes, how much more? And that's a separate debate. There is also data that exercise may improve nitrogen utilization and may prove that could have conceivably lower it, although that tends to be endurance trained. That's also much older data. At this point in the game, I doubt many would continue to bait to debate whether athletes need more protein than the sedentary. That brings us to the second part of the debate. Well, how much more? Okay, so bodybuilders since the 80s have used one gram per pound body weight. Now, in the modern era, there's a lot of criticism of that value by people that are more pedantic than practical. I'll come back to that in a second. So, when you look at various analyses, and a lot of this comes from what I still consider, and have been saying for years, and of course, turned out to be completely right about, is using the wrong endpoint. So, starting somewhere in the 2000s, I think they started looking at dietary protein in terms of muscle protein synthesis, MPS. And what they started to see was that there was an upper limit of protein intake above which there was no further increase in muscle protein synthesis. I'm being very specific in my language here for reasons we'll see. And when they did the math on that, it worked out to something like 0.25 to 0.4 grams per kilo of body weight, total body weight. Again, I'm being very specific in my language. Well, if you math that out across four meals, you get 1.6, right? Check my math on that. 0.25 to 0.4 grams per kilo times four is 1 to 1.6 grams per kilo, total body weight. Fantastic. Okay. I wrote an article. Okay. Well, go back to my protein book originally, and I addressed this debate in detail.
Link in the description. Mike has no 10 10% off.
Mike has no TAM coupon code still works. It's a very tedious book, but I discuss the entire debate. There are also a couple articles on my website. Just put in "protein requirements for hypertrophy body recomposition" and you'll turn it off where I address this. And I addressed the debate. And one researcher, and I can't remember who it was offhand, I'd have to pull it up, doesn't matter. Kind of made the point. I said, "Look, we are looking at short-term studies in less than highly trained athletes at fairly limited endpoints." And realize I wrote this in 2008, keep this in mind. And he said, "It is conceivable, it is plausible, it is likely that there are, that there may be small advantages of higher protein intakes that accumulate over time." This is always a problem in short-term studies with less than elite athletes. What happens over eight weeks? There may not be enough of a difference to see a statistically significant difference, but over many, many years, this might add up, especially in sports where the difference between first and last is less than 0.1% frequently, certainly less than 1%. But they also pointed out there are other tissues in the body that adapt to training that probably have a protein requirement. And they argued, they basically made the point, and I echoed this, that a higher protein intake may have small advantages, but likely has no disadvantages beyond the possibility of preventing other nutrients from being consumed in sufficient amounts. Right? Like if your protein intake is super high, and that prevents sufficient carbohydrates to fuel training, that is a disadvantage. So, there, but beyond that, they said there may be small advantages over time. And I wrote, even then, fairly, I think my highest value was like 3.3 grams per kilo. It's about a gram and a half per pound.
So, you like the idea of playing it safe, just as an insurance policy, basically?
It's not even that. No, it's more than that. It's more that there are other tissues that probably adapt to training that require protein. Okay, so let's jump. Okay, so then we're in the early 2000s. All this [ __ ] about 1.6 grams per kilo and muscle protein synthesis. It was that that sets the maximum. So, I wrote an article in 2018 that took issue with this and said, "There are problems with this argument." In my opinion, number one, skeletal muscle mass only makes up 40 to 45% on average of total lean body mass. Right? And tangentially, this is why all the dumb shits who are confusing lean body mass loss on diets and with the GLP1s and equating that with muscle mass don't know what they're talking about. Lean body mass includes a ton of non-skeletal muscle tissue, organs, water, glycogen, minerals, bone, connective tissue, all of which that's lean body mass. You can lose seven pounds of lean body mass in two days on a low carb diet from water. Did you lose seven pounds of muscle? Only Milo Wolf would think that because he doesn't understand the difference, as an example. He's not alone. That there are other tissues in the body that require protein, many of which may adapt to training. Now, do we know how much they might eat? No. And I never claim that they do. So, that's number one. Number two, using muscle protein synthesis as a singular endpoint is myopic. What about muscle protein breakdown? Right? Net growth, net protein balance is muscle protein synthesis minus muscle protein breakdown. But to grow, you can either increase muscle protein synthesis, decrease muscle protein breakdown. Well, but you go back even further, right? So, remember we were like, "Ah, protein and carbs after training," and they were like, "Protein, amino acids stimulate muscle protein synthesis, mainly leucine and the branch chains, leucine, leucine and branch chains. Insulin inhibits protein breakdown." But people were like, "Oh, well, the decrease in muscle protein breakdown is only 30%." So, we should just focus on protein synthesis. Like, 30% seems like a lot to me. Like, why wouldn't you want to worry about that? The counterargument being, well, amino acid protein raises insulin, and that, and it may very well be the case. The point of this being that to ignore muscle protein breakdown is missing the point. Now, we might ask, why don't they measure muscle protein breakdown in these studies? And the answer is that it's technically very difficult to do. It's a methodology issue, and I get that. But just because something is hard to measure doesn't mean we get to ignore it, right? That that seems like that you don't just get to pretend it doesn't exist because it's hard to measure. There is likely some impact of dietary protein on protein breakdown. Now, speaking to that, um, there was another researcher. God, I'm gonna need to pull up this article because I've forgotten all the author's names. And they fed a metric ton of protein to these people at one time. Like, se because what what they would do, they would do these studies. They'd be like, "All right, we had them do like three sets of leg extensions and gave them 20 or 40 grams of whey protein." And the 20, the 40 didn't increase muscle protein synthesis more than 20. There go there's no one. And there is on muscle protein synthesis. This singular input.
Was it the Trumalan paper?
No, no, no, no, no. It came out long before that. Hang on.
Yeah, sure.
Oh, it was, uh, Wolf's, Wolf's group. So, they gave either 40 or 70 grams of protein in a single meal as beef patties. And I'm going to come back to that too. And what they found was that whole body protein breakdown was decreased. And they concluded that there is no upper limit of anabolic stimulus. Now, the only industry were like, "But it didn't increase muscle protein synthesis." To which I responded, "Nobody said it did. Stop with the straw man arguments for [ __ ] sake. Seriously, this is ridiculous." And it points out that there is more to the system than just this. Maybe it did change muscle protein breakdown. We don't know because it's hard to measure. There's another issue. Well, there's two more issues. One, these studies typically use very low volume resistance training. It's like three sets of eight leg extensions, one muscle. Do we know that higher volumes don't make don't change that? We don't know. [Music] However, there's also another issue, which is that they always give whey protein by itself to study this. It's great for control, but it's not ecological to the real world because we know now that there's something called the food matrix. And the other nutrients and compounds in food affect how the body utilizes them. And it's not just digestion speed, right? They showed years ago, whole milk gives a different anabolic response than skim milk, even if calories and protein are matched. Whole eggs give a different anabolic stimulus to egg white, even if calories and protein are there. There are other nutri. Whey protein is not capturing this. So, we're drawing these global conclusions based on, in my opinion, a dumb endpoint, using only muscle protein synthesis and ignoring every other tissue in the body, using only whey protein response to low volume training to draw conclusions about a proper possible upper, not only per day limit, but per meal limit. They're like, "Well, if, if only if 40 grams of protein maxes out muscle protein synthesis, it's just per meal." Like, we're right back to the bro science of 30 grams per meal from a scientific. But I wrote this article, and look, none of these are esoteric arguments, right? These are not me making up like deep involved, made-up biochemistry. These are all pretty basic arguments. And someone who maybe will come up here again in a second got real buttered about this. I didn't mention his name. He and I tied it up in my Facebook group till he punked out like they all do. And he got real butt hurt and wrote a rebuttal in Alan Aerodon's interview, which basically was like, "Miles dumb, lol," more or less. He's like, "Well, Wolf's group is looking at the wrong thing, and we have better methodology." I'm like, "You have the best methodology in the world if you're looking at the wrong thing and dumb conclusion." He didn't like my. Okay, fine. Couple years later, a paper came out that looked at protein synthesis, resting protein synthesis in a ton of different tissues in the body. It was a hospital setting. They had like six subjects that were getting like knee surgery, and they'll frequently use these groups to be like, "We're going to measure because we got them. We're going to measure a ton of stuff." And they looked at protein synthesis in skeletal muscle, connective tissue, tendons, ligaments, every tissue in the body. Connective tissue protein synthesis at rest is just as high as in muscle. And work by Bar, using collagen, vitamin C, and jumping, has shown that connective tissue protein synthesis goes up in response to training. So, we're already back to what I was saying in 2008 speculatively. There are other tissues in the body requiring protein that adapt to training that will increase the possibly permeable and per day protein synthesis, which is why NPS or protein requirement, which is why MPS is a stupid endpoint. Now, do I know how much connective tissue takes? Absolutely not. And I'm not saying I do, but it's not zero. Seems like a fairly simple argument, and yet everyone was like, "Loly." Then the Tromblan paper came out in the early 2000s, and this paper was a monster, and I mean that in a good way. Okay, I may think Jordan's a little butt hurt baby, but this was an, this was an amazing paper, and I want to make that real clear. Here's what they did. They wanted to basically examine this issue of, and and their introduction is really funny because they're like, "Well, researchers have suggested that there's an upper per limit on protein. This seems illogical given nature." And they mentioned that snakes eat like 70% 5% of their body weight in protein once a week. I'm like, "Well, that's great, but um, they're not reptiles." I I found is the snake diet guy funding this? It was a very dumb argument. Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that think about it. Do you think that like our evolutionary ancestors were carefully eating 30 grams of protein at every meal? No. They would eat when it was available. We also know that protein can be made into into short-lived gut pro gut gut proteins, splanchnic proteins that are released in between meals. We used to think there's no storehouse for protein. Oh, extra protein just oxidized off. And that's true if you're talking about whey that hits the system very quickly. Whey is not the only protein. So, here's what they did. They took a group of people. Well, first they made radioactive cows. And I kid you not, the methodologies of the paper. It's pretty funny because they wanted to make radiolabeled milk protein. So, they had needed a radioactive cow. He took subjects. They had him do a very basic, I don't remember the workout. It was fairly low volume, probably leg extensions. Then they gave them either 100 grams of radiolabeled casein or 25 grams of radiolabeled casein. And then they tracked them for the next 12 hours, and they measured everything. I don't say that facetiously or with hyperbole. Muscle protein synthesis, whole body protein breakdown, connective tissue synthesis, oxidation. The graphs are just insane. Like, this was one of those studies that like, I said, it was amazing, and I mean that very genuinely. Here's what they found. Number one, giving all that protein at once, it just sustained protein synthesis the entire time. It increased connective tissue protein synthesis, like I'd been saying since, well, 2008 speculatively, and in 2018. It didn't affect, I want to say, whole body protein breakdown, which was unclear why it didn't. They didn't see an increase in oxidation. Why? Because casein is not whey. Casein is very slow digesting protein.
I think they use milk protein. So it's like 20% whey, 80% casein.
Sure. But the point of this was that using a solid pro, whole food protein that digests slowly, they didn't see an increase because they didn't see a big amino like with whey, which is just not ecological to the real world. It was milk, right?
But there was no per meal limit because they even pointed out most of the studies looking at per meal protein synthesis tested for like four hours. What happened? So they tested for straight 12. Like I said, amazing paper. Even at the 12-hour mark, amino acids were still being released into the bloodstream because when you go look at actual protein digestion rates, which were in my protein book, mind you, whey is one of the fastest at like 10 grams per hour. Casein is something like six. So if you were to eat like, even at 10, if you were to eat 100 grams of whey protein, it'll take 10 hours to digest. And that's what they showed. They show not only there is no per meal upper limit for protein intake, it just digests for longer and it supports protein synthesis the entire time. And there are other tissues, just like I'd been saying the whole time. Now, they concluded that there is no upper limit to pro. Now, I, upper limit to protein intake to support. Now, I don't agree with that because they only tested 100. Maybe at 200 something changes. At some point. Maybe like that's me being a pedantic twit. It doesn't change the fact that what they found supported everything I've been saying for the past 14 years. Setting an upper limit based on either a calculation, well, 0.4 grams per kilo per meal is the max. Multiply times four, and that's whether you get it to there. Work. Yes, in some of the meta-analyses, they show that, oh, there's no improvement in muscle gain with higher protein intakes, or there's no increase in protein synthesis. Yeah, there's other tissues to consider. That's what I, I've been saying this all along. So, that's number one. And there was, there was a meta-analysis, depending on how you do the meta-regression, depending on how you par statistics, that showed that yeah, as protein intake continued, decline, there were not linear increases, but there were small additional benefits up to presumably some upper limit. Now, there are a couple counterarguments before I come back to the lean body mass thing, which is that number one, most athletes already eat in excess of that to begin with. One of the counterarguments is like, "Look, most athletes already eat more protein than that in the first place." So, we're quibbling about nothing. Now, that's not universally true, but there is some truth to that. Um, another counterargument is like, "Yes, we're talking about the ultimate elite athlete looking to maximize every percentage point. Does this apply to the general public? No, probably not." But we also know that increasing dietary protein helps control appetite and the protein leverage hypothesis. There's all these other potent. We also, it's become very evident that older individuals need more protein due to anabolic resistance. There's also no debate that when you're dieting, you need more protein. Period. That's not even, we've known that for decades. So, there are other conditions where even if you accept like 0.8 is the DRRI, it's being suggested older individuals may need 1.5 grams per kilo to overcome anabolic resistance. We know you need that much on very like on my RFL, Mike has no tan rapid fat loss handbook available on my website. We know that that's required on very low calories to offset, and then it goes up from there with training and lean and as body fat comes down.
And conversely, I know you've argued that if you're taking anabolic androgenic steroids, you may need less protein.
I don't know that.
You utilize it better. I know that that is. Okay. That is not my area. But I, and we should have asked Johnny this because I think we didn't when we talked to him. I've asked people that were.
I don't remember if we, I don't think that got asked. But.
But it has been argued that people using anabolics do need less protein because of improved nitrogen utilization, which is interesting because that might mean that that one gram per pound is too low for naturals. But let's go back to that. Even the people that steadfastly maintain 1.6 grams per kilo. Well, if you look at the studies, it's always total body weight. Well, here's the thing. Body fat doesn't have a protein requirement. You have to scale protein. Well, if you're not a [ __ ], you need to scale protein to lean body mass. So, go look those papers with the 1.6, 6 grams per kilo thing. It's usually males are about 17 to 20% body fat. Let's take 1.6 grams per kilo. If we scale that to lean body mass, you add 20%, right? That right? It's about two grams per kilo. So, right now, we're up to about 0.9 grams per pound of lean body.
Yes.
But you can still quibble about that. Here's the thing. A, one gram per pound is not going to hurt anybody. But B, consider the bodybuilders that were recommending one gram per pound. They were usually 10, 12% body fat. Lean body mass and total body weight is close enough at that point, right? That's why I don't use total body weight because someone with 40% body fat is going to end up with protein requirements that are so far out of the question, right? One gram per pound for someone who's 180 at 10% and someone who's 300 at 50%. Right? That you can't use total body weight when body fat percentage is that high. You have to scale to lean body mass if you have any sense. But let's face it, math is hard. Even the dumbest person on the planet can multiply their body weight by one. Okay, I'm sorry. This pedantic mathematical quibbling over 0.9 grams per pound versus one. Jesus Christ, one gram per pound saves you having to break out the calculator, for God's sake, right? So, let's, let's seriously. Also, when you scale to lean body mass, the numbers get a lot closer than you you think. Because even if you look at a lot of papers that are like 1.025 to 0.4, they're like, "Well, when you factor in some standard deviations, they're usually like 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilo." Well, that's a gram per pound. If you scale it up 20% for lean body mass, about 1.2 grams per pound. For God's sakes, call it a gram per pound of lean body mass and move on with your life. And more is not going to hurt unless it keeps you from eating sufficient amounts of other nutrients. So, I maintain everything I said in 2008 for all the reasons I just laid out. The Tromblan paper showed were right all along, because of course they were. The end. So, in summary.
Stay on the higher end.
Everybody else is wrong.
Yeah. It's, it's not going to hurt you. Like, don't go, don't go nuts. I mean, at one point, I think Birkin was recommending two grams per pound at maintenance, which is to me, I think that is absolutely excessive.
Like Lean Gains method book.
Says, you know, go up to 60% of your total caloric intake in protein. And he doesn't even advise a very big deficit.
Yeah. To control appetite, simply. It's, it's really hard to overeat protein. It's really hard to do. It's really easy to overeat carbs. That I'm pretty sure that was a appetite control more than.
Like, I would consider that excessive.
I think the highest ever effect of food.
Yeah. Whatever. If you're compat losing massive massive extremes, massive extremes.
Right? Okay, when you start, when you look at thermic effect of food, it adds up to nothing. Right? Fat is about 3%. Eat 100 calories of fat, you'll burn three calories. I've seen people like, "Oh, carbs, thermic effect of food." I'm like, "Yeah, 6%." You replace 100 calories of fat with 100 calories of carbs, you'll burn three extra calories per day for every 100.
We should probably clarify what we mean by the thermic effect of food.
It's the calories that get burned during digestion and metabolism that get burned off for energy. It's 3% for car fats, 6% for carbs. The difference is microscopic. Even if you were to, even if you were to exchange a thousand, if you were to exchange 2,000 calories of carbs with two, sorry, 2,000 calories of fat with 2,000 calories of carbs, you would burn 3% more. It's irrelevant. Now, protein can be anywhere from 15 to 25%. That can start to add up. If you were to place a 100 calories of carbs with 100 calories of protein, you will burn. Yeah. Okay. At a maximum 20 calories more. So, yeah, if you replace like all of your carbs with protein, you might get a couple hundred extra calories per day. Maybe. You probably also eat less. But it, it's only at the extremes that this stuff does come. And hey, the new sugar diet is claiming that you can raise metabolism due to FGF 21, and we're not getting into that, but whatever. Yeah. So, Martin was way higher than I like. Okay. And yes, in the original RFL, I know I did recommend two grams per pound lean body mass for very lean weight training. I've actually scaled that back. I think 1.5 grams per pound lean body mass, even under big deficits. And if you go look at Eric Helman's review paper from years ago, that's pretty much what he concluded for lean dieting bodybuilders only, you know, a decade after my book.
So.
So, you argue protein needs.
Go up in a deficit. Would you argue conversely that they go down in a surplus?
You can, you can absolutely make that argument. Certainly. I don't usually fool with it because who wants to do that math? Just, just fix your protein at an appropriate level, like, and just don't worry about it. It's just like.
It's easy to get in protein in a surplus.
Because exactly.
Foods that are high in carbohydrates. You get protein in.
You're gonna get some. Right. They're gonna be tagalongs no matter what you do. Like, often people on like UD2 carb loads, Mike has no tan. Go look up our, our Shike Jr. people would often complain. They're like, "I can't keep my protein low enough on the carb loads because like, even a bagel has like four or five, six grams of protein." By the time you're like me and you're eating two bags of bagels, right, you're already, that's 70 grams of protein right there on top of there. Like, if anything, protein intake is hard to keep down. So, I just tell people not to worry about it. Um, so that's where I stand on the protein debate, which is that what I've been saying since 2008, I stand by that.
I'd rather someone be on the side of a little too much than a little too little.
There are obviously other tissue. There are obviously other tissues in the body that require protein and adapt to training. Even if we can't quantify how much, but it's certainly, it's a non-zero value. And by the time you scale this all to lean body mass in the first place, these supposed discrepancies between these recommendations rapidly go away.
Yeah. And I, I've got it right here. Even that 2022 Nunees paper, the systematic review and meta-analysis of protein intake stated that like past meta-analyses had found basically varying conclusions when examining protein intake's effects on, you know, muscle growth. So.
Given the wide variability in the research, it may be advisable to stick to the higher end of the protein intake, just to be on the safe side.
Yes, like I said, won't hurt, might help, you know, for a for an industry that's so concerned about the extra 0.05%, which does, you know, again, for the average person, does it matter? Probably not, you know, but why wouldn't you? It, it, there's nothing, no harm can come of it, especially since there's like all this supposed, I still see papers are like, "High protein intakes, you know, what are the risks?" Like, if if there were any, we probably would have seen them by now. If there was going to be an increase of incidence of kidney failure among bodybuilders, I think we would have seen it 70 years later, and objectively, it doesn't occur. So, yeah, so that's where I stand on it. All right, let's move on.
Yeah. Um, I guess it's one final question. Would you argue based on the findings in the Tromalin paper from 2023 that casein is a better general protein source than whey?
Well, yes and no. And this, I discussed this intensely in the protein book because that was, you know, there was the, there was the paper, the Biola paper, is what changed it all. That's what introduced fast and slow proteins to this industry, right? And so after training, they gave either casein or whey, and what they found was that the whey protein hit amino, hit the bloodstream very quickly and then tapered off, and the casein actually hit as quickly, just with not as big of a peak, and then was more sustained because it's more slower digesting. And it suggested that whey protein stimulated protein synthesis better, casein inhibited protein breakdown better, possibly using a fast protein after training and slower proteins at other times of the day, etc. And then there's milk protein isolate. Actually, casein is not 20% whey. You're thinking of milk protein isolate, that which is milk. That's what was in the cows. Casein is, there's whey protein. There's casein protein, which is this chalky ass milk subfraction. Then milk protein isolate is 20% whey, 80% casein. And I talked about that in that book, and I'm like, "That might give the best of all worlds, right? Where you're giving, you know, you're getting some whey, you're getting some casein." Whole foods all digest more slowly than that. And I've got a chart in my book that has the different, and we got into all that stuff with fast and slow proteins. I think it only matters when you're looking at studies giving 20 or 40 grams of whey protein in isolation after three sets of leg extensions and measuring shift for five hours. Clearly, that leads to, because it was funny, there was a criticism of the Traumalin paper, little editorial that didn't like the idea that just having one giant bolus meal could get it done. And they're like, "Well, this paper that compared its spread pattern to a a bolus pattern." By bolus, I mean giving all the protein at once.
Yeah.
It gave 20 grams four times a day versus 80 once a day, and it showed a difference. And it was whey protein at every meal. Well, yeah, but they, they were so determined to not like this new finding, they're like, "Yeah, but you've just identified the problem. Giving whey, a fast acting, small amount of whey protein four times a day is not ecological. If you eat 200 grams of protein at dinner, if you do one meal a day, you were to eat 200 grams at midnight, it will take at least 20 hours to digest." The highest rate I found was 10 grams an hour. I think. And most proteins are slower than that. Now, it is important to note when you eat large amounts of food, and this hand, this does occur for protein, carbs, and fats, digestion rate does improve, increase by about 20% if I recall, which is why because if you look at these numbers, right, like, let's go backwards, like, okay, well, if 100 grams of protein takes 12 hours to digest, doesn't that mean that there's a per day limit? Should be the limit of digestion speed, right? How are these gigantic dudes eating 400 grams of protein and utilizing it, even at 200 pounds body weight? Like, well, because digestion does speed up when you eat a lot of the time. So, a single meal, a single meal study cannot determine that. But if they done 200 grams of protein, it would have been digesting for at least 20 hours. This is why all this meal patterning, all this stuff doesn't matter. And the studies show that that intermittent fasting patterns, and I think they've actually studied Lean Gains in one paper, there was no difference in muscle gain outside of calorie intake because it doesn't matter if you're eating a ton of whole food protein, it is taking forever. This is why this whole thing like, "You must eat protein every three hours," your muscle flaw. No, eat, eat a 100 grams of steak at breakfast or eggs or whole food protein. It's going to be digesting at like 8 a.m. It's be digesting till like 6 p.m. You're good. And you can eat it all at night or all in the morning. I'm not saying you can't. They're practical aspects. But it's only when you use liquid whey protein by itself over the short term that you start to draw these conclusions and use a myopic, dumb endpoint with NPS and not considering any other tissue or protein breakdown. I said, these are not esoteric arguments, and the Tromblan paper said, "Yeah, I was right all along." He said, with no, no overly aggressive confidence or smugness whatsoever. But factually, I was. Jordan got real butt hurt over the title of my video too. The author claims that he has been making these arguments since two. No, the author doesn't claim anything. Probably I've been saying this since 2008, and you can go back to my original protein book and see this exact same argument. So, but whatever. More drama. Anyway, moving on.
Thank you very much.
Protein, protein, good. That's that's all you.
Protein good.
Protein.
TL;DW: Protein good.
Now, I think now I think the next logical question is the post-workout anabolic window an actual thing? Because that really sort of ties into something we just talked about about whey post-workout and all those early studies and that stuff. Is the anabolic window a thing?
Okay, let's define terms. What do we mean by anabolic window? The idea originally was that immediately after a workout, you have a limited window of time to consume nutrients to get optimal adotension. Essentially, that's.
Okay.
Yeah. Now, this did have early literature to support it, but as always, you have to look, the, you know, the devil is in the details, as the saying goes, right? So, we go back way back when, there was a paper by Zawadsky in the early 90s. It's really amazing. As I'm getting older, I can remember papers from my 20s and 30s. I can't remember Jack Crab now. I cannot tell you an author that I've read recently. My my memory is failing. It's getting really bad. Anyway. And he showed that terrifying.
Giving protein and carbs immediately after training.
I want to say was to gave a better response than either one in isolation. This was part of the whole, "Let's combine the two to get an optimal response." But there was research that had shown, for example, if you train, that waiting even two hours to consume protein gave a decreased anabolic response. Because we know that after training, both muscle protein synthesis and protein breakdown are both increased. Protein turnover is increased. So, what these studies seem to find was that if you did not provide nutrients immediately, like with, I think it was like within an hour, and then they waited a couple hours, you got a worse response. Boom, the anabolic window is born. That was a thing for the longest time because if you weren't, I mean, if if you were hardcore, if you weren't drinking your protein and carb drink walking out of the gym, you were a noob. Clearly, the workout was failed. Your muscles would fall off. You'd lost all your gains. And then more data showed up, and we found out that it's contextually, it's context-specific. A lot of those studies were having the people train fasted, meaning they had no nutrients in their system at all. And I'm sure they tried to control the pre, the meal before the night before, but whatever. In that situation, if you didn't provide nutrients immediately, you didn't get as good of a response. Now, realize this was also short-term. What was happening over 12, 24 hours? That wasn't being example. Because then the first papers started to come out, and most of this is in my book too, that actually in a fasted situation, pre-workout amino acids had a better, gave a better response than post, which makes logical sense when you start to look at protein digestion rates. Even in the Biola, whey versus casein study, it still took like 30 minutes or something, I don't remember, I don't have the chart in front of me, for the amino acids to. If you've eaten before workout, those aminos are available. Hell, they're available during the workout and they're available immediately after. So, actually pre-workout under fasted conditions was more anabolic than post-workout. And basically, this led to the idea that if you're fasted, if you're training first thing in the morning and haven't eaten, I'm going to come back and contextually address that in a second. But yeah, it's probably pretty important to get something in right afterwards, or the anabolic window will close, quote unquote. But again, we also know that there's, while there is this short quick short-term increase, there's also a longer term increase in protein synthesis and stuff like that. So, like, basically, it started to kind of not matter. As long as you've eaten beforehand within some range of time, right? An average size meal, 4 or 500 calories, probably takes three to five hours to digest. Somewhere in that range, four to five hours, depending on is it solid, whole foods, liquid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So, if you are training at noon and you've eaten at 9:00 AM, you're fine. You've got nutrients in your system, though, pretty much. So, everybody walked it. And of course, they overcorrected. There is no anabolic window. Everything you've ever heard is dumb. Like that's fasted cardio for fat loss. Fasted cardio is dead. Really, guys? Can I call it the pendulum of stupidity? I've got an unpublished article where we just go from one extreme to the other because God forbid we consider comp context and nuance. Though there is a paper, and I cannot find it, and I could not find it, where basically the researchers kind of, and again, this is for athletes, they make the point that, "Okay, in the strictest physiological sense, there's probably not an anabolic window, assuming you've been fed. However, for athletes, it may represent another eating opportunity." And we know that carbohydrate intake is increased in the muscle due to GLUT4 translocation and glycogen synthase activity. We know that amino acid uptake, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, insulin drives amino acids in the muscle, etc., etc., yada, yada, yada. They basically said this still represents an opportunity for athletes to eat to get sufficient calories and nutrients. So, even if it is not required in a physiological sense, it may be beneficial in that sense.
Sure.
And it's hard to argue against that. Right? If you're an athlete training twice a day, and again, we now get into the difference between, are we talking about competitive performance athletes? Are we talking about Gen Pop recreational lifters? Are we talking about Gen Pop wannabes? Like, who, what population are we talking about before we start stringing out these absolutes? Like, yeah, Gen Pop lifter. Do I think it's crucial to have protein? Well, if they're older, maybe, because they've got that anabolic resistance thing, different system. Talking about younger individuals, which is why you cannot extrapolate from one to the other. They're Gen Pop lifters. Does it matter? Probably not. Will it hurt? No. Um, but let's go back to the training fasted thing.
And the morning thing, because I know people that.
Typically, the way like what's now called time-restricted eating, intermittent fasting is actually not the right terminology for that approach where you have an eating window. It's more accurately called time-restricted eating for a bunch of boring reasons that I'm not going to go into. Just take my word for it. Typically, the way Martin originally presented it was that you know.
Martin Burken, that is.
Yes, fast during the morning, break your fast at whatever, two to four o'clock, depending. Have a small meal, lift, huge meal, dinner. As I, I believe that's what his system was. But it tended to assume evening training. And now, look, whether or not intermittent fasting is not magic, something he admitted in his shitty little diet book after he basically charged people tons of money to not eat breakfast. He's like, "Oh, I knew it wasn't magic the whole time." He basically said he was a lying sack in that book, and it was like, "Best book ever." Okay, cool. Whatever.
Anyway, there is logic in terms of calorie.
Review it one day, actually. Good video.
I'd have to read it. Yeah, I'm not gonna. I've skinned it.
I can do it like solo.
Yeah. And it just like, whatever. Took him 10 years to tell you to eat two grams per pound of protein and some fruit. Really? It's the best you can do, huh? And 80 pages of self-aggrandizing life story. Cool. Cool story, bro. Anyway, um, there is logic to that of clustering calories around training and calorie partitioning and blah, blah, blah. But there were people that were training first thing in the morning fasted, but not eating until the evening. And at face value, that seems problematic. But within the context of the Traumalin paper and digestion rates, if these people with an evening eating window, if they're eating a thousand calories at 8:00 at night, they've got nutrients in their bloodstream when they train because they are still absorbing that food. And that's why it works. And that's why all this meal timing and meal frequency, they're eating sufficient amounts of whole food, it doesn't make a crap's worth of difference because when you start to think about real world digestion speeds. So, does the anabolic window exist? If you have, if you have not had any nutrients in your system for a few hours and train fasted, yeah, you should definitely get something right after. It should be fast digesting.
Absolutely. I don't think anybody would argue that. And if they do, they're wrong. If you've eaten a few hours beforehand, take it or leave it. It gives you the opportunity to get a couple hundred extra calories, cool. If you're not going to eat for a couple hours, also cool. You're an athlete that has to train again in six hours, absolutely eat. Because you have limited time to recover. If you eat, you're doing time-restricted eating and you or OMAD, and you've eaten 2,000 calories at 10 o'clock, you're fine. Or 8 o'clock, you're fine because that food's not done till noon of the next day.
Right?
So, context, nuance. I know that's a crazy idea, but I guess you can't share that on Instagram. The anabolic window is dead. Why? Because people have repeated it until it became true. Except that it's only true, except when it isn't true.
Cool. Thank you.