How Much Protein Per Day?
Protein Requirements For Bodybuilders, Sports People and Athletes
There is one thing that is certain when it comes to bodybuilding, or any other form of exercise: unless you consume enough protein, regularly enough throughout the day, then your progress will hit a plateau and your results will hit a brick wall. So the question is, “how much protein is required per day and how often is it required throughout the day?”
Well, it makes sense that as your muscles are mainly made up of protein and water, then the more muscle you gain, the more protein you need in your diet to retain it and build more muscle. 1.5g of protein per pound of bodyweight is therefore about right for a decent level bodybuilder, when between 3% and 10% body fat, in my opinion. However, for someone who has only been training a couple of weeks and is 30% body fat, then 1.5g of protein per pound of bodyweight would be excessive. To account for body fat and muscle development when working out your protein requirements, I would therefore use the following formula.
Protein Requirements Per Day
Protein per day = Z x (1.5W – 0.015FW), where:
- W is your weight in pounds (lbs);
- F is your approximate bodyfat percentage; and
- Z takes account of your current muscle development and is 0.8 for non-trained individuals, 0.9 for intermediate gym go’ers and 1.0 for advanced athletes and bodybuilders.
- Example 1: a bodybuilder weighing 200lbs with 7% body fat requires 1.0 x ((1.5 x 200) – (0.015 x 200 x 7)) = 300 – 21 = 279g of protein per day.
- Example 2: a new gym go’er weighing 200lbs with 25% body fat requires 0.8 x ((1.5 x 200) – (0.015 x 200 x 25)) = 0.8 x (300 – 75) = 180g of protein per day.
If you struggle to reach your daily protein requirements with normal food, then you could consider using whey protein shakes. They aren’t vital, but they make life much easier, as getting a carton out of the fridge, or blending some powder is a lot quicker and cheaper than cooking some chicken, eggs or other high protein food source.
Optimum Protein Consumption During The Day
Equally important to total protein consumption per day, is the regularity of protein consumption. Your body doesn’t store protein, it is either used as energy (through a process called gluconeogenesis) or it used for protein biosynthsis (which includes muscle building). It is therefore important that you consume as much protein per meal as will be used for muscle growth as possible, but not so much that it used as energy or worse still, stored as fat. The amount of protein that can be biosynthesised per meal will vary by individual, diet, lifestyle, age, exercise and many other factors, but 40g seems to be an upper limit every 2-3 hours.
I personally think that 20-25g every 2 hours is a better solution and is more in line with recent studies which say 9g of protein per hour is the maximum that the body can metabolise. Further, I think people could get much better results in the gym from consuming 8 smaller meals per day, so that their calories and protein are spread out more. Your body would use protein more efficiently for muscle building and you would probably be able to reduce the amount of protein you consume per day by regulating protein consumption in this way. Of course the supplements manufacturers wouldn’t want you to know this! See the Wikipedia whey protein article for more information.
