3 Easy Steps to Turning More Protein into Muscle
Proteins are made of amino acids. When you eat proteins, your gut breaks them into individual, pairs, and trios of amino acids before they enter your bloodstream. Once in your bloodstream, amino acids are taken up by your organs and muscles for repair and recovery. Next to water, muscles are primarily protein. Weight lifting damages your muscles and fosters a hormonal response that favors muscle growth. In consequence, your muscles need an ample supply of amino acids for two reasons: 1. To repair and replace damaged proteins. 2. To build new ones and fuel muscle growth.
As we mentioned before, weight lifting causes reaction due to hormones that lead to muscle growth. In simpler terms, when you train, your body enters a mode to prepare for building muscle. This mode is called anabolism, an anabolic state.
However, researchers have discovered that you don’t enter this muscle building anabolic state until you eat. That is, if you lift weights and don’t eat, you’re not building muscle. If fact, you’re actually losing muscle, since weigh-lifting sessions damaged your muscles.Muscles don’t grow when you train them, they grow in recovery between session, as they feed on protein and energy.
Thus, to maximize your muscle growth rate, you have to make sure your body has plenty of energy and protein available to your muscle at the times when your muscles are the hungriest: during the workout and right afterwards. Energy and protein from consumed food will fuel the muscle building mode, and your muscle will build up. Since your body begins digesting food about half an hour after you’ve eaten it, you should eat a pre-workout meal 30 minutes before each workout.
Having read the book, I can tell you the short answer is 1.2 grams per pound of body weight.
A man who weighs 180 pounds needs to eat 216 grams of protein every day (1.2 grams x 180 lbs = 216 grams) if he wants to maximize his muscle growth.
Your muscles build with the proteins they need from amino acids you have consumed. If you consume large amounts of protein, you maximize your muscle growth by supplying your muscles with plenty of material to build.So, the question is, how much protein exactly should we consume?
I thought this answer would be clear to me after an 100-hour long review of the research on this topic while earning my bachelor degree in exercise science. Everything I read after this study on protein consumption seemed like children’s books, until the day Lyle MacDonald published The Protein Book. I pre-ordered my copy and was blown away by the detail of his information. He not only researched various sources that I hadn’t thought of, while presenting his ideas clearly with practical applications.
Thus, to make sure you’re building the most muscle, you have to supply your body with plenty of energy and protein during and before the workout. These are times when you muscle will use up the energy and protein to build. Energy and protein from food will run the muscle-building hormonal state, allowing your muscles to grow.
Since your body only digests food 30 after you’ve eaten it, it’s a good idea to have a pre-workout meal about half an hour before you begin to train. Digestion will slow when you are training and many lifters have some discomfort when eat food during the workout. I recommend you drink you protein and energy instead to prevent this.
Pre-Workout:
0.2 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight;
0.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
During Workout:
30 grams of carbohydrate ; 15 grams of protein.
Post-Workout:
0.4 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight;
0.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
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