Contrary to what the fitness experts would have you believe a body building diet does not need to contain crazy amounts of protein. A common suggestion is one gram of protein per pound of body weight. That is roughly 200 grams per day, for a 200 pound man. This is actually a low number compared to what a lot of the body building magazines recommend.
The RDA for Protein for Adults is .8 grams per Kilogram of Body Weight
So that would be roughly 64 grams for a 175 pound person. So why do these numbers vary so widely? Well first of all the RDA’s sugestion is based on research studying college aged men. This was the amount of protein needed to keep the nitrogen balance in these young men stable. Unfortunately, nitrogen balance is not a 100% proven way to predict muscle gain or muscle loss. So this probably wouldn’t be a good protein intake estimation for the body building diet.
The AMDR Recommends Between 10%-35% of Daily Calories to Be Protein
This makes the amount of protein you eat dependent upon how many calories you consume in a day. The AMDR stands for Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range and it was established by the Institute of Medicine in 2005. The issue with this recommendation is that it is a rather large range. Neither this recommendation or the RDA takes into account . Someone who trains hard would need to take their activity levels into consideration for their body building diet.
So It Doesn’t Look Like the RDA or the AMDR are Useful in Coming up With a Body Building Diet
Some body building magazines suggest as high as 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. That is 350 grams per day, for a 175 pound man! The problem with body building magazines are that they aren’t exactly unbiased. The number one way they make money is by selling ads to advertisers. The number one supplement the advertisers sell is protein. No doubt that 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight is way more than necessary.
The More Protein You Eat, The More Protein You Can Digest
The weird thing about protein is that your body will be able to absorb high amounts of protein at every meal, if it is used to high amounts of protein at every meal. If you are used to eating less, then a high protein meal will simply cause an upset stomach due to the body’s inability to digest that protein. You would think that digesting more protein would mean building more muscle, but it isn’t that simple.
Ten Times More Protein Digested Does Not Equal Ten Times More Muscle
Research has shown that the more protein you eat, the more your body switches to using amino acids as fuel. Your body uses protein, fat, and carbs for fuel. It will simply adjust what it burns for energy depending upon what you eat. So at a certain point it doesn’t make sense to eat more and more protein, but how much is enough?
A Study Which Shows 70-120 Grams of Protein Per Day for Exceptional Muscle Gains
Brad Pilon wrote a whole book on this topic called “How Much Protein”. He compared several studies and found that between 0.55 to 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight would be enough for exceptional muscle gains. In fact he quotes several studies that show that anything over 120 grams of protein per day didn’t contribute to any additional muscle gain. So you can believe the supplement companies or scientific research. The choice is yours. My suggestion is to average roughly 100 grams of protein per day, which is easily doable without adding protein shakes to your body building diet.