Reduced Protein Intake - Risky or Remarkable?
Acting as my own guinea pig
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“How many grams of protein you eat?” Anthony Mackie’s character asks Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s character in the blockbuster film “Pain and Gain”.
“Amino acids after you workout or before?” He asks again.
Have y’all seen The Rock in that movie? I would be asking the same questions, along with what his steroid cycle looked like.
Goooood morning my friends, Happy Friday.
We have reached another summer weekend and it’s the first weekend of July! Spooky how time flies when you dissociate from reality.
I recently made some changes to my eating habits and I’ve noticed a couple of things.
I’d like to tell you about them as well as some reasoning behind what I’ve been noticing and feeling.
Protein. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.
I’ve always consumed more protein than what the consensus of data shows us is necessary and beneficial for fitness pursuits.
I’m not really sure why, to be honest. I guess that’s still the stubborn meathead in me thinking that I’ll be able to squeeze a few more gains out with just a little more protein.
Recently and kind of on a whim I decided to change that. I didn’t reduce my total calories, but I reduced my protein and increased carbs.
The consensus of data shows that anywhere from 0.7-1g per pound of body weight of protein is more than enough for muscle and strength pursuits in the general population. So if you’re a person that weighs 150 lbs, having your protein intake be in the 100-150 g per day range is totally sufficient for muscle building and recovery.
Having your protein intake be higher than this range has not shown to be harmful, but it’s also not been shown to be beneficial. You would be better off taking those calories from the superfluous protein and putting them to more carbs or fats.
Pause to acknowledge that I just used “superfluous” in a sentence.
For a long time now, I have sat above this amount and again I have no real good reason for doing so. But a couple of weeks ago I dropped down to be within this range. I’m still on the high end of it, but I’m within the range.
I guess I finally kind of clued in and dropped my protein intake because I thought maybe more carbs would benefit my workouts and energy levels.
It’s been about 3 weeks now since I made these changes and I’ve noticed a few things that I’d like to share with you, as well as what the reason behind some of these things could be.
I’ve been way hungrier
Those of us in the fitness industry, myself included, always talk about protein being more filling than the other macros but I’ve never really seen it in myself until now.
There are a couple of reasons that this could be the case.
First and very simply, high protein foods are not as calorically dense in most cases, so you can eat a lot of them and be nice and full for a relatively low calorie cost. This isn’t always the case of course, very fatty cuts of meat are going to be pretty high calorie, but in a lot of cases, higher protein foods are going to be fairly low calorie compared to others. I’m not vegan, and most of the time I opt for cuts of meat that are fairly lean, so it makes sense that this could be a reason.
Next, diets that are higher in protein have been shown to increase the levels of hormones that are responsible for reducing our total food intake.
There could be other factors, but taking these two things into consideration it makes sense why I could be experiencing increased hunger with a decreased protein intake and increased carbs.
I’ve been thirsty as hell
Maybe you’ve noticed this phenomenon.
When someone goes keto they usually drop a bunch of weight very quickly. This isn’t because keto is magic, but because carbs bring water along for the ride. So that quick weight loss with keto is usually just a drop in body water from the extreme reduction in carbs.
For each gram of carbs that your body holds, you also hold roughly 3 grams of water.
I’ve increase my carbs. More carbs brings more water. So again, this makes sense.
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I have noticed increased energy
I wondered if this would be the case because even before I made these changes my carb intake was already quite high.
I can now report back and say it has indeed been the case. Which is dope AF.
My lifts have been pretty solid and cardio has felt better than it did before.
Obviously, this makes sense. Carbs get stored as glycogen in the muscle tissue which then serves as the energy source for high intensity activities such as weightlifting, and our muscle tissue is an absolutely massive storage reserve for glycogen. So it stands to reason that adding more would result in more energy.
I only wondered if it would happen for me because my carb intake was already high.
As far as any changes in body composition go, it’s too early to tell. I’m not overly concerned with that anyway. My main priority is being strong and feeling good, but we’ll see what happens anyway.
What does this mean for you?
I find in a lot of cases, people that exercise fall into one of two camps. Either they grossly under eat protein, or they think that’s the only thing they can eat and neglect everything else.
I don’t need to tell you again that protein is important for fitness and strength pursuits, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard that already. So if you fall into the first camp, dial that shit up a little. I can’t really give you an exact amount to eat because it’s different for all the different body sizes, but a good starting point is to have a serving of protein roughly the size of your palm 3x per day.
If you fall into the second camp though, and you just shovel endless amounts of protein down your gullet, all that extra isn’t really doing much.
Take it from me, I’ve been over consuming protein for a while and I’m not 1975 Arnold here.
Still take in the necessary amount of course, but don’t be afraid to dial it back a bit if you are consuming more than is needed. Replace it with some more carbs and your workout quality and strength results will likely improve.
Just be aware some of those things I have noticed here might happen to you too.
I’m going to leave you there for today.
As always, if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or reach out to me directly.
If this article resonated with you, I would greatly appreciate a share!
I’ll see you next time.
-Justin