does eating protein

power pants

really help increase your muscles? Are there actually any studies to say that if a group of people followed the same exercise regime over a period of time and one eat steaks, protein shakes etc etc would they really be more muscular than someone eating a diet of weetabix and fish fingers?

I genuinely am not convinced

Alf Veedersane

JJayoo

power pants wrote: »

really help increase your muscles? Are there actually any studies to say that if a group of people followed the same exercise regime over a period of time and one eat steaks, protein shakes etc etc would they really be more muscular than someone eating a diet of weetabix and fish fingers?

I genuinely am not convinced

I think you should cut out all protein for a few months and report back, it would be the only way for you to know for sure.

evo2000

power pants wrote: »

really help increase your muscles? Are there actually any studies to say that if a group of people followed the same exercise regime over a period of time and one eat steaks, protein shakes etc etc would they really be more muscular than someone eating a diet of weetabix and fish fingers?

I genuinely am not convinced

its the illuminati if u look closely at steak theres triangles once these are consumed you re mind controlled from that point on to promote the consumption of protein to everyone and thus the cycle continues!

Proteins a lie!! wake up!

power pants

wow


Well, Im genuinely unsure

Eating a food high in fat doesnt make you fat so why does eating a high protein food make your muscles bigger.

Do the protein from the food just come apart and stick on to your body's muscles?

and to the other op, I might just give up on protein and see what happens

El Horseboxo

I tried it before. 4 months of the same workout routine. Same number of meals and same amount of calories. First 2 weeks was with what most would call good food. No alcohol or cheat meals. Mostly chicken, rice and veg with only enough sauce to taste. The other 6 months was as close as I could get calorie wise to the previous 2 months. Except this time I had cereal and bagels instead of eggs and oats. Some processed pop in the microwave or oven type stuff for other meals. Again no alcohol.

The difference I noticed was loss of muscle definition. Definitely felt less defined and a bit more fat over the muscles. I was more tired in the mornings and felt like I needed bed before my usual time. My skin felt more dry on my face. I would get some spots around my mouth and chin. And one strange thing. My finger nails seemed to grow a lot quicker. Overall my weight didn't fluctuate much. I still looked the same size there abouts too. Maybe a litter leaner in the first 2 months.

I don't know any science behind it but I definitely felt worse on the processed stuff. There were some noticeable differences as mentioned above. Nothing too major though. My sample size was quite small however and I never eat processed food or candy. So maybe the effects were just my body fighting off something it wasn't used to. But my body fat did increase. And after a few weeks back on my normal diet the spots, dry skin, fatigue all cleared. Also my nails didn't require clipping as regular as the previous 2 months. No idea about the connection there.

Zillah

power pants wrote: »

wow


Well, Im genuinely unsure

Eating a food high in fat doesnt make you fat so why does eating a high protein food make your muscles bigger.

Do the protein from the food just come apart and stick on to your body's muscles?

and to the other op, I might just give up on protein and see what happens

On the off-chance that this isn't a bizarre and unamusing troll...

Yes, there are more studies than you can shake a stick at showing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a high protein intake is absolutely essentially for muscle growth as part of weight training. It is in fact the number one predictor for how much muscle a person will gain in a given period.

Alf Veedersane

power pants wrote: »

Do the protein from the food just come apart and stick on to your body's muscles?

That's pretty much how Bill Bryson described it in A Short History of Nearly Nutrition

power pants

Zillah wrote: »

On the off-chance that this isn't a bizarre and unamusing troll...

Yes, there are more studies than you can shake a stick at showing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a high protein intake is absolutely essentially for muscle growth as part of weight training. It is in fact the number one predictor for how much muscle a person will gain in a given period.

its not a troll thread

These days it is now said eating fatty foods doesnt make you a fatty. In the past we were told it did

Likewise with sleep, need so much sleep to stay healthy, these days findings now say you dont need as many hours etc

Im just saying it might not be that unbelievable for the protein diet to actually be found out to be either inconclusive or false

Golfnut77

power pants wrote: »

really help increase your muscles? Are there actually any studies to say that if a group of people followed the same exercise regime over a period of time and one eat steaks, protein shakes etc etc would they really be more muscular than someone eating a diet of weetabix and fish fingers?

I genuinely am not convinced

It's an absolute necessity in order to build muscle. And in your example fish fingers are rather high in protein. Not only to build muscle but just to live you require protein.

You will gain muscle by exercising because it's almost impossible to have a diet that doesn't have protein unless your diet is strictly fruits, certain vegetables and fizzy drinks.

power pants

ok take away my example of fish fingers

one tin of tuna a day

just weetabix for breakfast

yogurt and bread for lunch

tuna and pasta dinner

filled with 2000 cals of other things like more carbs

JJayoo

power pants wrote: »

its not a troll thread

These days it is now said eating fatty foods doesnt make you a fatty. In the past we were told it did

Likewise with sleep, need so much sleep to stay healthy, these days findings now say you dont need as many hours etc

Im just saying it might not be that unbelievable for the protein diet to actually be found out to be either inconclusive or false

Do you still like turtles?

power pants

what does that mean?

Brian?

can everyone stop accusing the OP of trolling. That's back seat modding.

Brian

Gummy Panda

power pants wrote: »

what does that mean?

We eat muscle to gain muscle.

Zillah

power pants wrote: »

These days it is now said eating fatty foods doesnt make you a fatty. In the past we were told it did

Yes, that was based on very little evidence. Then they did more and better science and realised fat was not bad.

The science behind the requirement for protein is very thorough and incontrovertible.

You do anything you want with your diet but your idea has already been shown to definitely be wrong.

wow exuberant

The protein doesn't literally "turn to muscle". It helps build muscle when you are resistance training. There comes a certain point of diminishing returns though, so a guy who only needs 150 grams of protein a day isn't going to see any difference between consuming 150 and 300 grams of protein a day.

blatantrereg

Excessive protein intake is counter productive since it results in lower testosterone levels compared to a high-carb diet. Been known a long time. For example:

Testosterone concentrations in seven normal men were consistently higher after ten days on a high carbohydrate diet (468 ± 34 ng/dl, mean ± S.E.) than during a high protein diet (3.71 ± 23 ng/d1, p<0.05) and were accompanied by parallel changes in sex hormone binding globulin (32.5 ± 2.8 nmol/1 vs. 23.4 ± 1.6 nmol/1 respectively, p<0.01). By contrast, cortisol concentrations were consistently lower during the high carbohydrate diet than during the high protein diet (7.74 ± 0.71 μg/d1 vs. 10.6 ± 0.4 μg/d1 respectively, p<0.05), and there were parallel changes in corticosteroid binding globulin concentrations (635 ± 60 nmol/1 vs. 754 ± 31 nmol/1 respectively p<0.05). The diets were equal in total calories and fat.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0024320587900865

Sufficient protein intake is necessary to maintain and build muscle. 20% of calories from protein is plenty for the most extreme training; probably more than enough. This is easily attainable in a diet without supplementation (even in a vegetarian diet).

Consuming 25g of protein after resistance exercise is shown to be beneficial to hormone levels. This is pretty much common knowledge I think.

Mellor

blatantrereg wrote: »

Excessive protein intake is counter productive since it results in lower testosterone levels compared to a high-carb diet. Been known a long time. For example:

What did they define as high carb and high protein? What was fat intake?
Without knowing that info it's useless. And if they high protein diet was low fat then, that would explain the hormone issue.

Either way, the changes in test levels are Prob offset by parallel changes in SHBG. I'd like to see free rest leveks, or androgen index ratio.

Consuming 25g of protein after resistance exercise is shown to be beneficial to hormone levels. This is pretty much common knowledge I think.

Which hormones?
Carbs+protein would probably invoke a better response.
25g also sounds very convient and arbitrary.

blatantrereg

Mellor wrote: »

What did they define as high carb and high protein? What was fat intake?
Without knowing that info it's useless. And if they high protein diet was low fat then, that would explain the hormone issue.

Either way, the changes in test levels are Prob offset by parallel changes in SHBG. I'd like to see free rest leveks, or androgen index ratio.


Which hormones?
Carbs+protein would probably invoke a better response.
25g also sounds very convient and arbitrary.

Graphs showing:
higher levels of protein consumption corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.
higher ratio of protein to carbohydrate corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.



from another study to the first: http://jap.physiology.org/content/105/1/58

Yes carbs and protein seem to invoke better response in PWO drink; wasn't intending to suggest otherwise.
25g is arbitrary but is also quoted sometimes as the most protein someone can digest at a time.

evo2000

blatantrereg wrote: »

Graphs showing:
higher levels of protein consumption corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.
higher ratio of protein to carbohydrate corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.



from another study to the first: http://jap.physiology.org/content/105/1/58

Yes carbs and protein seem to invoke better response in PWO drink; wasn't intending to suggest otherwise.
25g is arbitrary but is also quoted sometimes as the most protein someone can digest at a time.

My heads burst lol

fungie

blatantrereg wrote: »

Graphs showing:
higher levels of protein consumption corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.
higher ratio of protein to carbohydrate corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.



from another study to the first: http://jap.physiology.org/content/105/1/58

Yes carbs and protein seem to invoke better response in PWO drink; wasn't intending to suggest otherwise.
25g is arbitrary but is also quoted sometimes as the most protein someone can digest at a time.

Slightly unrelated but fitting equations to those data sets is silly.

Zillah

They don't mention if those men were doing resistance training...which seems like a big factor to ignore.

Also:
"With respect to hypertrophy, total protein intake was the strongest predictor of ES magnitude. These results refute the commonly held belief that the timing of protein intake in and around a training session is critical to muscular adaptations and indicate that consuming adequate protein in combination with resistance exercise is the key factor for maximizing muscle protein accretion. "
http://www.jissn.com/content/10/1/53

So
A) Protein intake timing is not very important, and
Total protein intake is the best predictor for muscle growth, so

...whatever is going on with hormones in the above study is obviously not following through on the claim that high protein intake is counter productive.

EDIT: I just read some of the details about that testosterone study. Ridiculous example to use. They were deliberately sleep deprived and fed restricted calories. What on earth you think is relevant about that to a typical gym-goer I don't know.

Also those data points from the other study for the serum testosterone are wildly erratic. There is overall a slight downward trend but we see it swinging from 14 at 17% calories from protein to 24 at 19%. This is what happens when you only have 7 test subjects.

blatantrereg

Zillah wrote: »

They don't mention if those men were doing resistance training...which seems like a big factor to ignore.

Also:
"With respect to hypertrophy, total protein intake was the strongest predictor of ES magnitude. These results refute the commonly held belief that the timing of protein intake in and around a training session is critical to muscular adaptations and indicate that consuming adequate protein in combination with resistance exercise is the key factor for maximizing muscle protein accretion. "
http://www.jissn.com/content/10/1/53

So
A) Protein intake timing is not very important, and
Total protein intake is the best predictor for muscle growth, so

...whatever is going on with hormones in the above study is obviously not following through on the claim that high protein intake is counter productive.

EDIT: I just read some of the details about that testosterone study. Ridiculous example to use. They were deliberately sleep deprived and fed restricted calories. What on earth you think is relevant about that to a typical gym-goer I don't know.

Also those data points from the other study for the serum testosterone are wildly erratic. There is overall a slight downward trend but we see it swinging from 14 at 17% calories from protein to 24 at 19%. This is what happens when you only have 7 test subjects.

Interesting lit review with surprising results. Worth noting that, if I read it correctly, the difference was only in terms of muscle size; there was no effect on strength gain. In a lot of contexts people would be aiming to maximise strength to weight ratio or trying to stay within a certain weight range so that would mean they would be better off consuming less protein.

Didn't notice the thing about the subjects in the paper I linked being sleep-deprived; was skimming through papers looking for the relevant points so I missed it. Don't remember my original source for the information. I might or might not look further.

I would think that the amount of training done must have an effect on protein requirements also. Surely higher volume and intensity of training is going to result in a higher requirement for protein than lower volume and intensity of training.

Mellor

blatantrereg wrote: »

Graphs showing:
higher levels of protein consumption corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.
higher ratio of protein to carbohydrate corresponding with lower levels of testosterone.

[graphs]

As I suspected above, the high protein ended up being low fat, so the results are entirely expect. It's a huge leap to contribute the hormone changes to protein, when its entirely expected with the fat restriction, and also on a deficit.
Zillah's comments are spot on too. Study results are fairly uselsss.

25g is arbitrary but is also quoted sometimes as the most protein someone can digest at a time.

Often quoted, often with "the rest is excreted", but also completely baseless.
otherwise we could eat lean meat all day long and gain no fat- if only

Gummy Panda

The 25g is the maximum amount that can stimulate muscle protein synthesis. It's not a digestion limit its just saying diminishing returns kicks in. The uptake of protein is 5-10g an hour and the body is very self regulating in regards to consumption e.g. hunger blunting

Mellor

Gummy Panda wrote: »

The 25g is the maximum amount that can stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

Isn't it only 25g because the relevant study decided to observe over a 3 hours window. The idea of "in one sitting" really misconstrues the data.

A much more useful figure is;

The uptake of protein is 5-10g an hour ..

blatantrereg

With regard to my assertion that high carb diets result in higher testosterone levels than high protein diets - I stumbled across a previous reference I made to this in a similar context:

Testosterone concentrations in seven normal men were consistently higher after ten days on a high carbohydrate diet (468 ± 34 ng/dl, mean ± S.E.) than during a high protein diet (3.71 ± 23 ng/d1, p<0.05) and were accompanied by parallel changes in sex hormone binding globulin (32.5 ± 2.8 nmol/1 vs. 23.4 ± 1.6 nmol/1 respectively, p<0.01). By contrast, cortisol concentrations were consistently lower during the high carbohydrate diet than during the high protein diet (7.74 ± 0.71 μg/d1 vs. 10.6 ± 0.4 μg/d1 respectively, p<0.05), and there were parallel changes in corticosteroid binding globulin concentrations (635 ± 60 nmol/1 vs. 754 ± 31 nmol/1 respectively p<0.05). The diets were equal in total calories and fat. These consistent and reciprocal changes suggest that the ratio of protein to carbohydrate in the human diet is an important regulatory factor for steroid hormone plasma levels and for liver-derived hormone binding proteins.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0024320587900865

Mellor

What were the test levels on the high protein diet? 3.71 looks out of scale.
What this free or total test. As increase total test, is no good if SHBG increases, as the extra test is bound up keeping free test uniform.

Interesting none the less.

Transform

Mellor wrote: »

What were the test levels on the high protein diet? 3.71 looks out of scale.
What this free or total test. As increase total test, is no good if SHBG increases, as the extra test is bound up keeping free test uniform.

Interesting none the less.

protein timing etc generally only makes a difference when the individual is training multiple times per day or week, overall timing is not the issue when the same person cant sort out the basics of their nutrition or training first.

However, i quite like mike mathews work and he covers this point well here - http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-post-workout-nutrition/

Alf Veedersane

Transform wrote: »

protein timing etc generally only makes a difference when the individual is training multiple times per day or week, overall timing is not the issue when the same person cant sort out the basics of their nutrition or training first.

I was listening to the Sigma Nutrition episode with Mike Israetel and he reckoned that nutrient timing was, at best, 10% of the big picture and only really relevant to people training several times a day/serious competitors.

But people get bogged down in the like of 'when do I take my shake?' and 'when should I time my carbs around training?' when they haven't nailed down their intake and the macros, which is about 80% of the nutrition.