Do you need as much protein as the buff guy at the gym? While conventional wisdom suggests people carrying more muscle need more protein, new research is turning that commonly held belief on its head.
Instead, Scottish scientists out of the University of Stirling suggest that heavier people don’t necessarily need more protein post-workout. It all depends on the type of exercise you’re doing, not your size.
“There is this widely-held assumption that larger athletes need more protein, with nutrition recommendations often given in direct relation to body mass,” Dr. Kevin Tipton, an exercise science professor and study lead author, said.
“In order for nutritionists to recommend the correct amount of protein we first need to consider specific demands of the workout, regardless of athletes’ size. This throws commonly held recommendations into question and suggests the amount of protein our muscles need after exercise may be dependent on the type of workout performed,” Tipton said in a university statement.
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Tipton and his team recruited 86 young, strong men who were already doing weight training for their study. The men were divided into two groups: the lower lean body mass group weighed less than 143 pounds while their counterparts who weighed about 154 pounds or more made up the higher lean body mass group.
The men had to complete two types of workouts and then they were handed protein. In their first experiment, the participants had 20 grams of whey protein, and the second time around, they had 40 grams after their workout session.
Turns out, the sweet spot for protein to do its job repairing micro-tears and boosting muscle growth depends on how hard the exercise was. Forty grams of protein was more effective after a full-body workout over 20 grams. For a workout that involved only the upper body, 20 grams was the magic number.
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It didn’t matter what size these men were. But, keep in mind, these results are limited to younger men who are already training.
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It makes sense to Brad Pilon, a fitness writer and author of Eat Stop Eat. How much protein people should be eating is an age-old question the fitness community has tried to answer, he said.
“It’s a hard question because it’s multifactorial and it depends on your goals,” he told Global News.
“But we know a 180-pound Olympic athlete will need more protein compared to a 180-pound overweight computer jockey. What this is telling us is the protein needed to adequately recover from a workout depends on the muscle used in the workout – not the amount of weight a person is carrying,” he explained.
Numbers get tricky, though. If you’re an everyday Canadian fitting in a daily workout, 30 grams post-exercise should do the job, he said.
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Kirstin Schell, a registered holistic nutritionist and personal trainer at Goodlife Fitness, also suggests a handy rule of thumb.
If you’re a beginner at the gym, stick to about 1.2 to 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram in your weight.
If you’re a 120-pound woman, for example, that’d be about 72 grams of protein in a day. Split over the course of three meals, that’s roughly 24 grams per sitting.
If you’re moderately active, stick to about 1.4 to 1.6 grams per kilogram in weight. A 140-pound woman doing moderate weight training would need about 102 grams of protein in a day in that case.
If you’re doing heavy weight training, that requirement jumps to 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram.
“In any case, 20 to 30 grams of protein post-workout is a good range that’ll accommodate most people. When you focus on comparing weight next to other people, that’s too complicated and it’s discouraging,” Schell said.
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Thirty grams of protein looks like 1.5 chicken breasts, a scoop of protein powder in a shake, or an omelette made with four to five eggs, according to Schell.
Here’s the post-workout meal criteria:
- Aim for about 15 to 25 grams of lean protein within one hour of working out.
- Pair the protein with carbohydrates to aid with digestion and to produce insulin, which will help your muscles absorb amino acids.
- Load up on fluids, such as water, and even coconut water, to replace what you lost via sweat.
Your post-workout meal options:
- A smoothie made with one per cent milk, a banana, berries and Greek yogurt.
- A sandwich on whole grain bread with your choice of roasted chicken or turkey, tuna and hummus with your choice of vegetables as toppings.
- A burrito with chicken, black beans, brown rice, avocado, lettuce and salsa in a whole grain wrap.
- Soups, stews or chili made with chicken, fish or lentils, vegetables and whole grains such as brown rice, quinoa or whole wheat pasta.
- A two-egg omelette with mushrooms, peppers and whole grain toast.
- A baked potato or sweet potato stuffed with cottage cheese and broccoli.
- A mashed sweet potato with chicken breast and roasted beets.
- Whole grain pasta primavera with chicken or salmon.
Read Tipton’s full findings published in Physiological Reports.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
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