Power Protein

From: The Powerfood Nutritional Plan

Of the calories you consume, make plenty of them protein. Protein is chock-full of the amino acids required to make the enzymes, hormones, and antibodies your body needs for manufacturing red blood cells, buttressing the immune sys-tem, and otherwise supporting the proper functioning of the human body. Protein also helps repair muscle tissue that's been temporarily damaged by resistance training. For reasons just discussed, active guys should consume considerably more protein than guys who just sit around all day.

Don't be surprised if it's more than you consume nowexercise increases the need for protein over and above any prescription suitable for a couch potato. The added protein will give you an abundance of the essential amino acids needed for constant muscle growth and repair.

Uncle Sam, with the vast array of scientific resources and billions of dollars at his disposal, suggests in his Recommended Dietary Allowances, or RDAs, that you consume 0.36 grams of protein per pound (or 0.8 grams/kilogram) a day. With a small margin for error baked in, the RDA aims to keep protein synthesis and breakdown more or less in equilibrium for the general population. In other words, the RDA was designed for the average guy who sits at his desk all day long and then comes home and sits on his couch.

You need much more protein than that. You exercise, right? which highlights the most glar-ing problem with the RDAs. Like most government recommendations on nutrition matters, the RDAs address sedentary individuals. How backward. We live in a nation with a pitifully out-of-shape populace, as evidenced by near-epidemic obesity, with a government rhetorically dedicated to getting citizens more physically active, and yet the protein recommendations it makes target couch potatoes who do precisely what the government says they shouldn't be doing: sitting on their butts all day.

For those of you who exercise, and I'm assuming that means everyone reading The Powerfood Nutrition Plan - you need approximately two and a half times what the U.S. government recommends. That may sound radical, but the research is in our corner, not theirs.

Here are some tips for meeting your protein needs.

Consume 1 gram of protein daily per pound of body weight. Guys who lift weights should be consuming 0.8 grams of protein for every pound that you weigh, each and every day. And if you're trying to gain muscle, which is the focus of this chapter, that amount needs to be bumped up to 1 full gram. This higher amount accounts for the energy you expend training, as well as the physiological processes set in motion by exercise. For example, amino acids aren't used as much for fuel during weight training as they are during cardiovascular exercise. Still, you need them to provide raw materials to your muscles to spur growth. Amino acids are not only the building blocks of new muscle, they are the catalysts of the muscle-building process.

Don't go overboard. If twice the RDA for protein is good for guys who work out, might still more be better? Probably not. At a certain point excess protein likely just gets wasted.

Keep in mind that in the context of your everyday diet, some of these numerical differences can be relatively insignificant. For a 200-pounder, the difference between consuming 0.70 and 0.85 grams per pound of body weight is less than the protein contained in a can of tuna fish.

A final caveat regarding protein amount: When guys consume supplements to push their protein intake above 1 gram per pound of body weight a day, urine output typically doubles. In unusual circumstances, a guy might expel five times his usual amount of urine. If you're consuming heaping amounts of protein, be prepared to double your fluid consumption. Monitor your body weight for a week after switching. If you lose several pounds almost overnight, that's obviously water, so drink up until you erase the deficit.

Opt for real food over fake. No disrespect to protein supplements, which are very useful in certain situations, but a healthy diet always starts with whole foods. Among the best sources are lean meats, fish, low-fat dairy products, and soy products, although all of these contain varying amounts of fat and cholesterol. Therein lies the trick with whole-food sources: balancing the need for high-quality, biologically complete proteins with the negative effects from ingesting too much saturated fat and cholesterol. This is where protein supplements, which I'll discuss momentarily, can play an important role.

Opt for quality protein foods. As long as you consume protein in ample amounts-consistent with the recommendations made here, rather than the RDAs-the form that protein takes seems to have a relatively small effect on the rate at which you gain muscle. (Exceptions include consuming whey protein, which is rapidly absorbed by the body pre- and post-workout.) At a minimum, consuming enough protein gives you a buffer if some of your protein sources for some period of time have low biological values.

In theory, however, if you're -really serious about weight training, or if you're an athlete who plays a sport or sports regularly, you want your diet to emphasize proteins that contain large amounts of the essential amino acids. Their exercise-induced depletion has been shown to diminish both adaptations to training and the strength of the immune sys-tem. What's more, certain high-quality proteins and essential amino acids have been shown to improve the hormonal and immune responses to exercise. So it makes sense to satisfy most of your daily protein needs from high-quality sources in foods (turkey, chicken, lean red meat and pork, fish, shellfish, eggs, low-fat or fat-free milk, yogurt, cheese), supplements (whey, egg, milk, soy), or both.

Eat a variety of foods. More important, probably, is making sure your diet includes a sufficient range of protein sources. Different types of protein function uniquely, which is why even though egg whites are a great protein source, you don't want to eat only them, or just cans of tuna, or just chicken breast. Mix it up.

This is doubly important for vegetarians: Vegetables, grains, and legumes also contain small amounts of protein, but these are incomplete, lower-quality sources. As a result, to get enough essential amino acids from a predominantly vegetarian or vegan diet, you have to eat a variety of plant-protein sources throughout the day and over a week's time, so that those low in one particular essential amino acid are balanced by ones higher in the same amino acid. Certain cultures have developed traditional dishes that often combine several foods that complement each other to create complete proteins. Combining beans with grains, flour, nuts, or seeds, for example, beans with rice, corn tortillas with refried beans, and pasta with bean soup, creates a fully nutritious protein meal.

Eat every 2 to 3 hours. When you're trying to build muscle, you need to stay anabolic more or less all day by avoiding energy deficits. Should they occur, these prompt your body to start scavenging for energy, resulting in muscle loss.

By consuming protein as part of smaller meals spaced throughout the day, rather than downing large amounts sporadically, you can likely keep your body's pool of amino acids adequate all day, which should lengthen, if not intensify, anabolism. A study published in a German journal found that consuming protein in six small meals versus two large ones leads to improved protein utilization and tissue growth.

Eat protein before your workouts. Consuming a snack containing carbohydrates and protein an hour or so before an intense workout has been shown to increase the availability of carbs toward the end of that session. Not only does this keep your energy levels up, it also increases the availability of amino acids and decreases exercise-induced catabolism of protein. Think of it as an insurance policy for your muscles and the best way to maximize your gym results.

There are a million great carb-protein combinations. Lean turkey on whole-wheat bread, yogurt and a banana, and homemade trail mix consisting of soy nuts, sunflower seeds, raisins, and dried apricots are all great snacks. If you don't have time to prepare or acquire even these simple snacks, eat a sports bar or drink a store-bought energy beverage.

And after your workouts. When it comes to building muscle, eating after your workout is just as important as eating before it. After you finish lifting weights for an hour, the pump you feel raging through your muscles might make you think that they're readying to grow, practically before your eyes. And though you won't blow up like the Incredible Hulk, your muscles are indeed primed after the pump, if only to absorb the nutrients they need to grow over the next few days. Study after study has shown that this post-workout window is the time when your body is most efficient at restocking carbs in their storage form, glycogen. Fed properly, your body also has the potential to be at its most anabolic during this period.

In fact, one of the best things you can do to gain muscle is to feed your muscles almost as soon as the end of your last rep, if possible, and definitely within 30 minutes of the end of the session. What that does, first and foremost, is trigger a major surge in the release of the anabolic hormone insulin, which will carry other nutrients into muscle cells for muscle building.

This first post-workout feeding should combine protein and carbohydrates. Your body needs both to -really hit on all cylinders with glycogen replenishment and muscle-tissue repair. Between 300 and 400 calories should do the trick, consisting of 3 grams of carbs for every 1 gram of protein, preferably whey. Your goal is to take in about 30 to 40 grams of protein, with a high proportion of all the essential amino acids. That's why whey protein is such a great choice.

Then, 2 hours after your training session ends, eat again. This time, feel free to have a more conventional meal, again rich in protein and carbo-hydrates, because the convenience issue should no longer be pressing. This double-barreled approach, a quick hit after training and a big meal after that, has been found to speed up glycogen reloading and maximize the anabolic effects of your hormones.

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Reprinted from: The Powerfood Nutritional Plan © 2005 by Rodale, Inc. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098.

© 2006 Rodale Inc.
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