Protein quantity

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(Robert C) #8

There is essentially 3 levels of body mass that get into these “X grams per kilogram of…” recommendations.

  1. There is “per kilogram of body weight” - this one is almost never the intended statement as it is obviously way off for obese people.
  2. There is “per kilogram of lean body mass” - where “lean body mass” is your true lean body mass as measured by a dunk tank or DEXA scan.
  3. There is “per kilogram of lean body mass” - where “lean body mass” is your weight when you are “lean” (i.e. maybe 17% body fat for men and 24% for women).

On the TKD podcast, I am pretty sure I remember them clarifying that “lean body mass” was (maybe, if you were slim at the time) your high school weight. They wanted to use this number because it didn’t require any complex (expensive) measurement. So, if you have some idea what your weight would be if you were somewhat fit and lean - it is that (in kilograms) times 1 to 1.5 grams.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

The recommendation on the forums is 1.0-1.5 g of protein per kg of lean body mass. Other experts phrase it somewhat differently, but it usually works out to about the same. Protein is essential to health, so most people generally eat the right amount without thinking about it too much.

The minimum daily protein intake to replace nitrogen loss has been calculated as 0.6 g/kg LBM, and at least one expert, Dr. Ron Rosedale, recommends not exceeding this minimum for fear of activating a process called mTOR that might shorten our life. Prof. Benjamin Bikman, on the other hand, says that in a low-carb environment mTOR is strictly regulated and not a concern. He is afraid of people losing muscle as they age, so he recommends 2.0 g/kg LBM.

@Allison You say you weigh 79.5 kg, so your lean mass is probably in the neighbourhood of 64 kg. If you check, that is probably about what you are eating (it comes to 9-10 ounces of meat). The body can handle a wide range of protein intake but has no means of storing amino acids above a certain point, so eating protein past that point is wasteful. Not getting enough protein is the very definition of malnourishment.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #10

Cronometer. :cowboy_hat_face:

(Full Metal KETO AF) #11

I also have seen a fourth way to calculate protein. Personally I haven’t had a DEXA scan and really have no idea what my true lean body mass is, and I suspect many of us are in the same boat especially if you have considerable body fat. So the fourth estimate method I’ve seen and I can’t tell you where I saw it was,

(1g. Per pound / 2g. Per kilo) of your projected goal weight, where you think that’s optimal.

I don’t actually set a target that’s more of a upper limit guesstimate. Sometimes I creep a bit over and more often I fall about 20g. or so short of that. I accept that going over that amount is kind of overkill. And that’s working out well for me so far. It means eggs and bacon for breakfast and a nice steak for dinner to hit 150g. of protein. I ate a large steak yesterday and ended up with 162g. of protein.

:cowboy_hat_face:

(Bob M) #12

When they do overeating studies, higher protein does not lead to higher weight gain, for most studies.

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I have yet to see any (real) evidence that “overeating” protein (by this, I mean animal protein) is bad in any way. Now, there may be benefits to eating higher relative fat when on low carb/keto/carnivore, but that does not mean there’s a detriment to eating more protein.

(PJ) #13

This interview is really great. This guy is one of the world’s leading protein researchers. He pointedly says that eating a lot of protein past a certain point doesn’t help in terms of ‘more protein/more synthesis’, but, also shows no sign of hurting one, either, and some people choose to substitute some of their carb calories with protein and that’s fine.

Episode 96: Professor Don Layman - The Importance Of High Quality Protein

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #14

The only downside I can see eating more protein than needed for maintenance/rebuilding is it becomes expensive calories unless one is bulking up muscle mass. I also think protein requirement is hugely variable with the individual, age, sex and level of activity.

Agreed. Does not work for anyone who is significantly off their ‘ideal’ weight.

(PJ) #15

Yeah, and this really does seem to vary with body weight. Or recovery. Because mine is so high (even after all my loss so far), for me I can track a huge difference to protein intake.

To the point of: if it’s <100g/d, especially <80, within a week I will have to go up my porch steps two feet at a time slowly gripping the railing like a child. If it’s about 100-130g/d, I can go up it fairly normally. If it’s 180-240g/d, I can bound up it. And to me even more importantly: if it’s lower, I’m just calm. If it’s in the middle zone I mentioned (for me) I have a lot more interest in my environment, my life, I’m more optimistic. If it’s in the high zone, I generally want to DO things, house projects, property improvement, creative things, you name it. In the end, it’s like three different personalities based on the quantity of protein I intake. Fat affects me too but not remotely as much.

I assume this also relates to the fact I was horribly anorexic for many, many years (not nervosa. It was a medical side effect of a birth-defect heart valve causing serious malnourishment, which led to no appetite and even more malnourishment) and am still recovering from that. I do think that having a great deal more body weight regardless is related, even though surely only a slightly larger quantity of mass is ‘lean’ weight and organs compared to my ideal weight.

(Troy) #16

1 for 1 for me these days
1g per 1lb of lean body mass ( per DEXA ) …At least :slightly_smiling_face:
Usually closer to or above Total body weight

(Erin Macfarland ) #17

@ctviggen I’m 5’7” and between 120 to 125 lbs or so…I’m pretty active and lean, and I can eat upwards of a couple hundred grams of protein a day. I don’t measure…this is a guess- I eat mostly fatty ribeye, then add vegetables if I want, maybe eggs, pork rinds…I love pork rinds! Lol…but I seem to tolerate this just fine. Protein gives me a feeling of satiety like nothing else. So I say eat fatty meat as the basis of your diet and your body will tell you what feels good!

#18

If you’ve been a vegetarian in the past (I was for 25 years), and/or if you’re only eating one meal a day it certainly may be a lot (at least it is for me, it’s hard for me to eat more than around 50g protein in one sitting as I love the alkalinizing powers and anti-oxidants of veggies too, and aim for 2/3 of my plate being alkalinizing and anti-oxidating veg).

But on days you eat three meals a day, that’s only 20-25 gr of protein per meal - a half can of salmon/tuna, two eggs and some cheese, a chicken thigh, or a super-high quality keto grassfed protein bar that is as good as homemade! Personally, I prefer to only eat two meals a day, in a short eating window of about 5-6 hours, in which case the rest of the time I am fasting and thus require less protein and I don’t worry about reaching 60-70 grams and stick closer to 40.

Forum admin and IDM educator @Brenda has done huge recomposition on lower amounts of protein - I think somewhere she said she averages 45g a day and has maintained muscle mass with strength training just fine. :muscle:

#19

I’ve never been a breakfast person and my current schedule allows only for a very quick lunch. With my appetite low, lunch oftentimes is easily skipped. Most days I don’t get hungry til 4:00. That leaves supper. Can a body absorb a whole day’s protein in one sitting? And if I eat to satiety, I know I’m not getting the quantity I should get. I could do two sittings if it were just me but with hubs and two young kiddos my schedule isn’t really my own. I worry about protein shakes and bars. They’re quick and easy but concerns of “chemical shitstorm” echo in my head. And unless it’s a small steak I can’t finish anything decent sized. Just left wondering what to do.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #20

I’ll let others who eat OMAD respond to your question about whether/how you can eat a day’s worth of food at one meal. My only input is think out of the box and ‘go for nutritional density’. If you have a very low appetite, make the most of it when you get the chance.

For instance, organ meats are much more nutritionally dense than the more typical cuts of muscle meats. Liverwurst has a fat to protein ratio of 2 to 1. Cod liver and/or cod liver pate have fat to protein ratios of 5 to 1 and 4 to 1 respectively. Liverwurst and cod liver pate have a bit more than 3 grams of carbs per 100 grams, cod liver 0.

@Momof5 is in a similar situation as you. That is having to prepare food for non-keto family members and keto for herself. She also has issues with the amount of food she can consume at one time. Hopefully she will have some input here.

I start each day with ‘keto coffee’. That’s just ordinary coffee with a mix of fats and proteins to my keto ratios. Not a so-called fat bomb. It’s a real meal that I developed through trial and error. I usually use my countertop blender to make the oil slick go away. This starts the day off with a goodly amount of fat to ‘prime the pump’ for the rest of the day.

Brazils, walnuts, pecans or macadamia nuts mixed with bacon bits (the real stuff, not the artificial stuff made from textured soy) is another way to get a high fat to protein ratio. Nuts and bacon bits is a very quick and easy meal. There are a fair amount of carbs in the nuts, so you need to plan your other meal(s) of the day around whatever amount of carbs you get from the nuts.

You can make 20% yogurt using any plain, unsweetened 10% yogurt as a base. Here’s mine. A bone broth beverage is easy. Here’s mine.

#21

I eat OMAD and I can easily eat everything in one sitting, my husband, on the other hand, can’t, so he has a 20/4 eating window. Try different options and see what works for your.
I would stay away from protein bars, shakes, etc, try with real food. If you can’t seem to eat enough, eat IF or later try supplementing with protein powders. I think that protein bars and shakes might throw off your satiety reflexes due to their composition ( “fiber,” sweeteners, etc).

(Susan) #22

I found that I didn’t do well with OMAD and have to do TMAD -I eat lunch at 1pm and supper at 4:30. I make breakfast for my 3 year old grand daughter in the morning, and a tea for me, but I have it plain, so no calories. Then at 1pm I make Tea with HWC in it and lunch, then for supper if I haven’t had enough calories by then I made a special tea --usually Celestial Seasonings Black Cherry Berry -I make it hot, then add it to the blender with half a cup of HWC (400 calories) and icecubes and make an ICED tea. I don’t add any sweeteners (as I got rid of them in June). This helps me make sure I am getting enough calories and fats for the day. I was on a 2.5 month stall because I didn’t eat enough calories, I was doing a lot of fasting of 48 -74 hours and not losing any weight as well.

When I broke cycle, and starting eating more calories, more proteins and more fats, but always keeping my carbs at under 20 grams, I started losing again, Good luck!!!

(Bunny) #23

I now personally ignore all the height to weight, lean body mass ratio nonsense when it comes to protein intake and keep it at 30 grams per meal and I eat maybe once a day or every two days depending on how hungry I feel, I’’m a random eater and pay no attention to that 3 meal a day nonsense.

Fat intake is more important and is what gets ignored the most in real-life!

IGF-1 (somatomedin C) or the IGF-1 gene and is a hormone and is a biological process that takes place within the human body and will shorten your life-span if you get too much of it constantly!

You also eat the IGF-1 when you eat animal protein?

What %percent% can be accounted for?

Footnotes:

[1] “…Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is a natural human growth hormone that assists the body’s transition from childhood into healthy adulthood. Once the body completes this natural growth period, high levels of IGF-1 are no longer necessary and over-production may become detrimental to health. …” …More

[2] “…Studies suggest that high-protein diets can increase IGF-1 levels, but that higher fat intake, in particular, saturated fat, can lead to lower levels of IGF-1. Fasting and “extreme diets” may cause IGF-1 levels to drop and stay down for a period of time. (19) IGF-1 production may decrease in response to intermittent fasting, calorie restriction or starvation because not enough fuel is temporarily available to build new tissue. However, according to some animal studies, IGF-1 levels may bounce back after 24 hours of re-feeding, although not to starting levels. (20) …More

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #24

The other downside is the risk of overloading the uric acid pathway, which can lead to ammonia toxicity. All those extra amino acids have to be deaminated in order to be metabolised or excreted, and too much ammonia at once can overwhelm the pathway.

(PJ) #25

Yeah, I think there must be more to that though. Because I can eat (now and then) 330g of protein a day – no problem. But when I am off keto, which until this year I regularly was back and forth, if I eat even 100g protein but I’m also eating typical carbs, I have a serious ammonia issue. And I would explain how I know this but it would make this sort of icky and NSFW so never mind. But it led me to believe that for whatever reason, my organs only had a problem with even moderately high protein when I was also eating a lot of carbs. When eating keto I have not ever been able to spark even the slightest problem with too much protein, go figure.

(Bunny) #26

That is interesting thank you for sharing that information, here is a paper from 1931, that kind of delves into that:

THE UTILIZATION OF AMMONIA IN THE PROTEIN METABOLISM: “…Abderhalden hesitatingly reached the conclusion that “the addition of ammonium salts as the only source of nitrogen to a diet consisting of carbohydrates and fats, exercises a distinct influence on the protein metabolism, by causing nitrogen retention.” The relationship of this retention to the protein anabolism, he left an open question, suggesting, however, the probability that a reversible reaction had set in. …”

Phinney, Volek & Volk get more into that here:

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(Alex Pearson) #27

I wondered which kind of meat suits me best for getting nutrients so that there is a lot of protein and not so much fat. Because I work out in the gym and I need a large amount of protein, from the forum I found out exactly how much I need. Thank you very much for that.