Protein is required for life as it supplies the body with nitrogen (the essential element (essential means required) to all living things).  Protein’s building blocks are amino acids – think of them as our body’s working currency or legos (#proteinislegos).  Just like you cannot build a brickhouse without the bricks, your body cannot grow, repair, build, regulate hormones, protect your immunological health, and more without adequate protein.

Each gram of protein offers our body an average of 4 calories (kcals) per gram of energy.  The standard dietary recommendation (RDA) for protein consumption is only 0.9g/kg a day (with an additional 25g/day for pregnant and breast-feeding women)!  Also, it is to be noted, consumption does not necessarily equal absorption – as there are many factors that affect how we assimilate our nutrients. 

Those of us that know the importance understand that more protein is needed than this minute recommendation above.  Most in the nutrition and fitness industry recommend a minimum of 1g/lb of lean mass or your ideal body weight.  This is where it can get tricky because some people do not know what ideal body weight is for them, or they do not have access to a lean mass determining tool.  Plus, there is a margin of error associated with such tools.  To be safe, I am including this chart here to assist in determining ideal body weight (this is a standard industry chart).

After we eat our body takes the food we’ve provided it and breaks it down, shuttling it to where the greatest demand is needed.  This could be immediate energy, repair and grow new tissue for that paper cut you got yesterday, build those biceps you were working at the gym earlier today, or even help your body grow the baby you are carrying inside.  We cannot tell our body what to do with the nutrition (carbs, fat, protein) we give it specifically, all we can do is give it what it needs to survive and hopefully thrive.

Protein is also the most thermogenic macronutrient (macro) we can eat as it costs our body energy (kcals) to break it down (this is called TEF or thermic effect of food).  The average “cost” is 20-30% depending on the protein source provided (beef, chicken, Greek yogurt, beans, eggs, tuna, et cetera). 

This of course means less calories consumed overall – while you would not worry about this in your day-to-day goals it is important to know.  Protein is also the most satiating macro too – just means it satisfies you and helps you feel full sooner and for longer.  This can be very helpful when we are in a fat loss phase of a diet as appetite, cravings, hunger, and such can creep up. 

Ideally, we want to increase our protein intake as we dig deeper into fat loss while lifting weights.  We need to create a stimulus for our body to “hold on” to the muscle (lean mass) that we have and even more so if we are hoping to acquire more muscle during this time frame.  I generally recommend or suggest to clients I work with to eat 30-35% of their day’s calories in protein; not necessarily in the beginning, but again, as we dig deeper into fat loss.  Of course, this is contingent on many variables.  This usually equals out to .9g/lb in the beginning to 1.2 to even 1.4 – 1.6g/lb by the end of the fat loss phase. 

In a recently released study by Ruiz-Castellano et al (2021), it’s recommended that resistance-trained athletes in a weight loss dieting phase need a protein intake of 2.2 – 3g/kg of body weight/day to support muscle retention while dieting (or ~0.9 – 1.4g/lb).  The leaner the individual is, and the more extreme the calorie deficit is, the greater the protein need is.  This ultimately put the athletes closer to the 3g of protein/kg at the end of the diet.

References

Metropolitan Life Insurance. (n.d.). Ideals weights for adults per body frame.

Ruiz-Castellano, C., Espinar, S., Contreras, C., Mata, F., Aragon, A., & Martinez-Sanz, J. M. (2021). Achieving an optimal fat loss phase in resistance-trained athletes: a narrative review. Retrieved from doi: 10.3390/nu13093255