Barbell Shrugged - 857 - The Protein Blueprint

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

In this episode, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane break down everything athletes need to know about protein: what it does, how much you actually need, and how to make it work in the real world. They dismantle the myth that the body can only use 30–35 grams per meal, explain why protein needs should scale with lean body mass and training goals, and show how distributing protein across three or four meals can support muscle growth, recovery, and performance without obsessing over a narrow post-workout window. The conversation then compares animal and plant proteins, whole foods and powders, whey and casein, and the potential role of collagen for connective tissue. They explain why the calories accompanying a protein source matter (beef ribeye, chicken breast, lentils, and peanut butter deliver radically different amounts of fat, carbohydrates, and fiber) and how your choices should change when gaining muscle versus losing fat. From ready-to-drink shakes and egg-white blends to pre-bed protein and workout-day carbohydrates, this episode provides a simple framework for hitting your protein target while adapting the details to your body, schedule, and goals.

Shrug family. Doug Larson here and this week on Barb Bell Shrug, my man Travis Mash, Dr. Mike Lane and myself, we're talking protein for athletes and we answer all of your most common questions, including what is it, why is it important, how much do you need, what are the best? Plant-based versus animal base, whole foods versus supplements, cutting versus bulking, and more. So if you're looking to dial on your protein intake and you want to optimize recovery, build muscle, and perform at your best, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug and Doug Larson here with coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane. Today we're doing all about protein, all the basics, what is it, how much do you need, what are the best sources, what are like kind of the cheapest options that are still very high quality, how do you get into your diet? What are the myths? Mike actually right before the show brought up

kind of like one of the most common myths with you only have 30, 35 grams in one sitting, which we've all, we all probably thought that at one point or at least heard that at one point. I certainly did as a kid and now that I'm a little more experienced and I've had a lot more education under my belts I realize that's not fully true and that's kind of an at a minimum it's an overgeneralization Mike you want to kick it off with that one since you just brought it up we can kind of dispel this first myth and then we can roll into the basics of what protein does in your body and take it from there I love it we can start off on rant mode it's always a great place to start so one of the myths that was pushed upon me when I was younger was the idea that you can

only process 35 grams of protein in a sitting and so so per meal so if you think that's true it's great. We've now created the world's best diet because if you can only process 35 grams of protein in a meal, I'll have you eat 200 grams of protein worth of sad canned chicken three times a day because that's a lot of plain sad chicken to eat. And you'll only build a process what ends up being 105 grams of protein, which is only 420 calories, which means you're going to look like a starvation victim in less than a month. You will be shredded. You will be miserable. But boy, will you look lean, it just doesn't work like that. And the other issue is that's also saying that Simone Biles can process as much protein per meal as half more Thorson as Brian Shaw.

Exactly. And digestive tracts are going to scale based on body size. Our gut can adapt to the amount of calories we take in. So it's one of those situations where people are well-meaning, looking at really old research and trying to make extrapolations. And if you're Homer Simpson, You sit on the couch. You're not a very large person. 35 grams of protein at a sitting for three meals is probably enough to hit your RDA. But if you're someone who is a 300 plus pound super heavy weight that carries a large amount of muscle mass that is interested in performance, your total protein demands can easily be over 300 grams per day just because of the sheer amount of muscle mass.

And you can go the easy way, which is fine, which is where you're looking at that 1.2 to 1.5 grams per kilogram. body mass if you're an aerobic athlete, the 1.5 to 1.8, if you are a strength athlete, and then up to maybe like 2 to 2.5 if you're trying to maintain muscle mass in a cut. But the better way to look at it is to actually look at it relative to your pounds of lean mass, because that's where you need the protein. And so that's when you're talking about, like on the high end, you're talking about a little bit over a gram per pound. So now we've got a 400-pound person that has a body fat of over 50%.

they don't need 300-something grams of protein per day because their lean mass is only about 200 pounds of lean mass, which is still a lot. So that individual, realistically, we're talking more like 220, 230 grams of protein per day. And so the scaling of this gets wild really fast, and it really comes down to the individual in their goals. I didn't actually get that rant to there.

I feel like I kept an evening keel. No, that was good. Luckily, I met Charles Polackett early, And like, even though a lot of these things could be pretty crazy, but right away, he dispelled that one to me. And this was like early 90s, right when they were starting to say that craziness, like, he was like, that's insane. And so, you know, I just listened to everything he said at the time since he was so jacked. So I never got caught up on that one. He would do 60 to 100 grams of protein in a setting, especially his post-workout shakes were absolutely

great. Have you ever heard of this? Like he would put 60 to 100 grams of protein with like almost a box of corn. This is for weight gaining. And this is for his bodybuilders. I saw him. Say what you want about the guy.

But I saw Boyer Co. In his 50s. He came to Colorado Springs and they trained in the gym that I was the manager of. And I saw him put 30 pounds of muscle on this 50 year old. Obviously, they're taking. taking drugs I'm sure however boy code been taking drugs this whole life so that was nothing new but that dude got huge and jacked and they would do they would put grape juice corn flakes and then tons of protein and after their post workout meal it was insane of course you know when they start cutting you know that they didn't do that but um so I tried that I gained tons of weight

did a jiggle or did it flex yeah there would you say what did a jiggle or did it flex now it's jack but you know i was young you know you know i was at the limit train seriously like i could do whatever one there was no jiggling going on so back then now there would be a lot of jiggling going on if i did that now so i don't think the drugs boy your co-takes yeah i mean you think about like sorry you think about like grape juice and corn flakes and whatever protein that's that's just that's just it sounds disgusting it's like why why would you choose that combination but then again like i also used to do like i used to do like i used to blend tuna, like canned tuna and orange juice.

I'm going to throw up. It's like surprisingly good. If you're trying to just like put down a lot and you just want to just chug something, it's super cheap because I'd have money back then. And the orange juice really takes care of most of the tuna flavor. And it's just just carbs and protein. It was, I mean, thought was, you know, after you're working out, you know, your body was so like,

it was going to take the insulin and, you know, drive the protein straight to muscle. was the thought process. Whatever. I saw Boyer Co. get jacked. I don't think it was that. I think it was the drugs. But it was his training too.

So it worked for that guy. Yeah, the other piece to bring in is Boyer Co. I mean, yeah, he was never an Arnold, but he was a heck of a bodybuilder at his day. So this is a guy who is probably regaining ground. And you can always reground, regain ground about twice as fast as you got there in the first place. So, yeah, please don't do this at home. That's how you get to. Let me clarify.

Like Boyer Coen already like here's what's even cooler. He'd already been training. It was like he made this big comeback. It was an era where the Olympia was really making up. They're having this big push for the master because you know, you had Liff-Frignau. And so he was, he had been training. He was clearly jacked. And so and what my point is is he's been taking drugs probably his whole life.

And so to take an old guy like myself and like, assuming that the drugs were the same and to put muscle on the end like that it to me is probably more amazing than taking some 20 year old you know and adding 20 to 30 pounds because they're going to add 20 30 pounds or what they do but an old guy at boy or co and it was so like obviously with the eye you can see it with the eye in just getting bigger and bigger and one of the ways that he did it was um he was so good at pinpointing specific muscles you know like i don't know you're Iliacus or whatever or like you know like where you know he would do so he had such a good assessment program you know or um you know infraspinatus whatever and like say oh you're weak here let's train that and he would really like brush the smaller muscles that nobody really thinks to train so it was crazy he did crazy movements that i've never even heard of so anyway yeah 30 pounds on on a 50 year old even if you're regaining ground it's still amazing sorry to the to the old to the

in peace Charles he was a great guy not a great man for women he was rough but uh he was a good friend so so to think about the wonderful ability to build muscle mass and doing a really big post workout protein intake is a good choice because like obviously match brought up you do have better insulin sensitivity it's really you've got more glute for transporters sitting on the tops of the muscle cells that you used in that training so you really have this awesome sink for the carbs you bring in, which is also going to help bring in protein. You know, it's the reason why bodybuilders not just will have used anabolic as hard as when you think steroids like testosterone analogs, but they will also use insulin as a means

to drive more things in there. The thing for people to keep in mind is when you get to those body sizes and you're using growth hormone, you're using insulin, you are dealing with physiology that is so different than us as a normal, non-enhanced human that if we try to follow the same type of diet, We're going to run ourselves into possible metabolic disease because they're using an artificial amount of insulin. And if you screw that up, you go brain dead. A quick break in the action here to let you know that I've just recently chosen to get back into coaching. And I specifically am looking to coach Masters Jiu-Jitsu athletes, just like myself.

I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 22 years and strength and conditioning for 30 years. I'm a black belt, of course, and I live that life. I understand exactly what goes into it. I understand what's like to run a family, do Jiu-Jitsu. try to tie strength and conditioning into it all and all of the ups and downs that come with it from from joint pain to busy schedules to travel and all the things so if you are a master's jujitsu athlete and you're looking for some support i'm happy to give it you can dm me on instagram at douglis e larsen or you can email me doug at barbell shrug dot com happy to help back to the show

they are using a certain amount of growth hormone which allows them to naturally not accrue body fat like a normal person would if they were do the same thing. So there's a lot of pieces in there. But there's still some through lines, which is you do need the protein coming in. And I think a number of folks will do a really good job if they smash that post-workout protein shake. But their breakfast was a bagel. Their lunch was a Pop-Tart.

And so it's one of those situations where in humans, what we see over and over again is, don't get wrong. The biggest thing is, do you get a protein in? So are you getting in if you need 150 grams a day, are you doing 150 grams? Because I don't care if you're doing four meals and each of them is 10 grams of protein per day. You are so below the goal you need, that's your problem. But then once we know you're getting in that number you need, now let's divide that over what looks like about four meals. Once we go to 5, 6, 7, now you're getting to bodybuilders that have to do so many damn calories

that if we do it over 4 meals, we're just feeling nauseous from the sheer volume of food. But for most guys, most gals, three meals, evenly spaced protein throughout the day is going to do more for you than worrying about that post-workout shake. And then, of course, if you do have the opportunity to do a post-workout shake for the fourth or doing some pre-bed protein, that's going to help build more muscle over the long term than just doing workout timing. But workout timing is all about carbs. You hit that. You'll recover faster and you'll feel better and be able to train with a higher frequency. I'm curious. I know we're mainly talking about protein, but like for the workout, like, you know,

how many carbs would you recommend? And would you recommend it, you know, before, if so, how long? What about during? What about posts? So let's think about first and foremost, how long are you training. If you're just training for half an hour, just drink water. Yeah, you're not really going long enough. I mean, even if you're going out, if you're going to run like a 5K or more,

you know, half an hour. Yeah, it's not the fastest, but I don't think you want to have that much stuff jiggling around inside you. Like, it's just going to be uncomfortable. You know, there's cliches about bodybuilders eating gummy bears and stuff like that because, you know, I guess we we had to keep our glucose up and that's not really a thing. But if you're going to train for two, three hours, taking in those carbohydrates, the longer the duration, the more the carbs are going to matter pre and perry. And then, of course, the carbs are doing post-workout, that's how quickly do we want to come back? So if you're a guy that you train lower body once a week, who cares?

In seven days, you'll be ready to go again. But if you're like one of your guys where it's like, no, dude, you're squatting today, you got snatched tomorrow, you're squatting again the next day, you better hit your post-workout nutrition because, yeah, if you're doing higher-rap stuff, you're burning through those carbs, lowering those muscle glycogen stores, and in turn, it's just going to feel harder. Like, you still can perform, but the perception matters at that level. Because if you just feel tired, it's, you're just working against yourself the entire session. So now to go to how much.

If we're thinking about the amount of carbohydrates going in, you can always just punish yourself with math and figure out like, okay, in that workout session, looking at my heart rate tracker, I burned 600 calories. Hypothetically, if it was all carbs in the workout, that's 150 grams of carbs. Right. The math isn't going to perfectly work out like that. So instead, think of it more along the lines of try to start off with

maybe about half of the calories you supposedly burn in that session through carbs, that's still going to end up being a solid amount. You still might be taking down 50, 60 grams of carbs and then see, hey, do I feel better during my longer sessions because I was sipping on carbs through the workout? And or do I recover faster? So I'm not as sore in the next day. And that can be in its own type situation. Right.

What about the, what about pre, you know? And like, where does protein figure into all that as well? So at the end of the day, protein isn't going to really have any major effect on your ability to perform in the session. But obviously, protein every single day is going to influence how much progress you're going to make and also how quickly you're recovering. So the pre-workout meal, that's going to come down to what are you trying to do. Avoid the no man's land of about an hour and a half to 30 minutes before the workout.

Because if you do that, you get the one-two punch of your insulin level is up because your body's shodding the nutrients and your muscles. Then you start working out, which sucks more glucose out of your blood. stream and then you can go low blood sugar not like lethal unless you're diabetic but enough that you're going to zonk out and you're going to underperform so if you're going to do pre-workout carbohydrates simple carb this can be fruit this can be gummy bears not a shell for the industry just so we're clear sugar-free if you don't like the person give a lot of sugar-free gummy bears and or a real meal an hour and a half beforehand so you can be talking about you know go have yourself a sandwich

you know, go have yourself, you know, some potatoes, some rice, some other type of grains. So you're topping off those glycogen stores. But that meal's not in your stomach. So it's not going to be bouncing around in there and feeling bad. And you're already past that initial insulin rise. You're not going to risk going into that, you know, quasi-hypolycemic event when you're going. Right. So and your body's right.

Because I'm sure there's somebody listening at home that's saying right now, I'm an idiot. Every single time I try to do carbs within two hours before my workout. I just get cramps and I feel like I'm going to throw up. That's okay. Some people are like that. And some people are like me that we just enjoy staring and laughing into the face of death, that we will pound half a pizza and then jump in the deep end of the pool because we don't care. No.

Instead, it's more of like I'm somebody that I can eat and work out and I rarely have any GI issues, unless I'm pushing a prowler. That will make me take a visit to Puky because of the intra-abdominal pressure and driving hard. but listen to your body. So if you're somebody that, hey, pre-workout, I do an apple, I feel good, cool. You don't need to get that hard with it. But if you like, if I'm sure like I get, there's that person that likes to run and they know they cannot have any food in their stomach from 90 minutes beforehand because otherwise

they just get a real bad stitch and it screws up their entire run because they're just something that processes things slow. And that's cool. Individual differences are always going to be there. You know, I've always been able to eat as much as I want, and, like, it's never bothered me. Except Competition Day, a whole different ballgame. Like, you know, competition day, I don't eat real food. I mean, I stick to meal replacements.

It's just, it's easier for me to handle in light. I can get in all the necessary macros I'm looking to do and, like, without any type of GI issues. But I'm trying to eat a real meal on Com Day. It never goes well. too. Yeah. And that's where you're talking about the sympathetic nervous system because you're obviously up for it that day. Yeah. It's very normal for you to get a little GI upset. You know, I get to work with, you know, professional athletes and, you know, and tactical athletes and a number of them before they have to do, you know, they go start and insert this professional sport or they got to go do some high speed, scary things as part of SWAT. Like, go figure. Their tum tum does not feel good. And they typically got to go. blow the ballast in the court of Dave Grossman there before they go out there because, yeah, your stomach's not going to like that.

So again, I mean, you know those guys that you train with that, you know, you'd be like, what have you eaten today? And they're like, well, nothing. Because if I try to do it before I snatch, like my stomach just feels bad the entire workout. If I try to do that before I squat, you know, they're the guy leaning over the trash can two minutes later because they just can't handle it. Right. And, you know, it's, you got to solve for you, you know, use the size, find the average.

name. I mean, keeping it simple, like Mike mentioned a minute ago, like four meals throughout your day, you're just taking your grams per protein per pound of body weight per pound of lean body mass and just dividing it by four and make sure you get that amount at each meal. So say I'm 200 pounds, 10% body fat, that's 20 pounds of fat. So I'm 180 pounds, 1008 pounds about it by four. I got 45 grams per meal that I need to hit. And then on the days you train, which, you know, for most people, hope that's most days of the week.

You can just count that as another meal. So maybe now it's five meals per day and you just get you get a fifth of your protein as a part of your workout drink. And now you're hitting your protein numbers and you don't have to get as much protein at your meals. It's the easy way to make sure that you're hitting your numbers while at the same time accounting for your workout shake. What about right before you go to bed shake? Like, you know, I know you mentioned that. Like how important is that? Like what type of protein?

Does it change? You know, I know Charles should say at that point maybe go to me, maybe a kick. a casing type protein, but a casein or like a whole food protein, like any type of meat is going to naturally digest slower than a way. Away is really fast. That's why it's good post-workout as long as you can handle it. And so the idea is twofold. You want to spike blood amino acid levels, go back to baseline, spike it again, go back

to baseline, spike it. So if we do a typical person, you know, you're hopefully asleep for eight hours, well, If that's eight hours of you don't have any extra brick and mortar to build more muscle to help you recover, you're missing on recovery. Now, at the same time, you also have, if you're trying to digest a giant meal, right when you're sleeping, it's going to mess with your sleep quality. So now we're playing a game, which is more important. Is it more important to get in the more protein to help you recover faster, or is it more important for you to go to bed with an empty stomach? And so if you are option A or option B, you get in bigger protein balls as with each of those meals. So that way, you know, your last meal stops at 7, 7.30.

You go to bed at 10 and you're on an empty stomach so you sleep well. But if you're a person that's trying to maximize your muscle mass and you're someone that's not as messed up with the sleep deprivation or the sleep modification because of digestion, then you want to do perhaps a slower digesting protein source. That way, while you're unconscious, you do have that brick and mortar available to help your body make more repairs and build more muscle. And so this is one of those things where I bring this up to my students all the time is what's more important, the good night of sleep or hitting your nutritional goals. And so if tomorrow is the national championship, tomorrow is the elimination game, sleep tonight matters more. because how much extra muscle you're going to build over the night means we want better sleep. But if this is the off season,

well, let's just improve our sleep hygiene or sleep quality, all the other pieces. Let's get into the damn protein because that's going to give us that extra a pound of lean mass in two months, which is going to help us be faster, more powerful, a better athlete in our sport.

That's awesome. So it comes, you know, it's everyone likes to go black and white, which is cool if you're colorblind. Like, I'm sorry, that's how you got to see the world. But, you know, the rest of us, like, it's all about what is the important thing for the individual of that piece of time. Yeah.

So we're talking about protein types here. We're talking about caseings, a slower digesting protein, usually compared against weight since it comes from milk. It's a milk-based protein. But what are the, what's the rest of the hierarchy of protein and protein quality look like? We've got animal sources, plant sources. We have kind of artificial sources, like protein powders and water. what not versus whole foods. Like what are what are the similarities and differences

between all these different types? Okay, so for search engine optimization, there's something that rhymes with animalism that, and not anabolic as in like, we will simply say dire situations on mountain ranges with no food available. So if we're to use that analogy, and you were to think about eating meat,

meat is typically we're talking about the skeletal muscle. Now obviously, thanks to charlatans like the liver king, there's obviously more interest in doing things like organ meats. But the example there has utility because when we think about collagen protein, collagen is the connective tissue of other animals, you know, melted down or otherwise and you go and do that. So the amino acids and like the ratios of each of them is different inside of skeletal muscle than it is inside of tendons. And hence, collagen protein powder can have some utility because it's got hydrochroline and a couple of amino acids.

you don't typically find in a lot of skeletal muscle. So that's where your complete animal proteins are typically a bit better for helping you build muscle mass than your plant proteins. Because don't come you wrong, the amino acid profile is a little bit different. If you're getting in enough protein, you're getting in, say, your goal is 200 grams of protein and you do it perfectly through animal sources and otherwise, oh no, you might have to do 210 to 220 grams of plant protein. but there is some research out there that shows that doing collagen protein post training for connective tissue strength like recovery from injury can be slightly advantageous with some vitamin C but if you're getting enough protein that's probably the biggest piece there so for individuals you know at home then we can get into the dairy conversation you know obviously all of us have

kids and you know in the first year of life hopefully your kid nearly doubles their body weight Now, if any of us double our body weight right now, we'd be really worried about mental health and thinking, like, are you okay, man? Like, that's bad. But dairy is awesome at just putting weight on organisms real quickly. And so it's a very anabolic food, you know, group. But obviously there's some people that are dairy allergies. There are certain people that are lactose intolerant. It's a good tool that you can use, again, for being animalistic.

I mean, you know, what is a chicken egg? chicken egg is literally all the prerequisites you need to make a little chicken. So you know you've got all of the different proteins and fats to make a small organism. And obviously then we can go into obviously using that as another good source of protein. And I am not against plant protein. I am not against whatever works for the individuals. But if we're trying to think of like this hierarchy of, you know, what's the best? And then we can get into, is it grass fed?

Is it grass finished? Is it wild caught salmon? Like we can go down on these rabbit holes, which are good, nuanced conversations. But total amount of protein. And then, yes, it's probably better to have chicken and beef than it is to have, you know, USDA grade question mark taco meat from certain establishments. But if you like lentils, you like tofu, you like different types of plant-based proteins, like, that's fine.

It's just the key thing is it can be more expensive. You can have more preparation. Actually, lentils are pretty cheap when you think about gram of protein per cost. The only problem is the fiber that comes with it, which causes another issue that you've got to. Yeah, you've got to tolerate or you got to deal with later. Yeah, the composition matters matters a lot, not the protein specific composition, like not the amino acid profile necessarily, but what comes along with it? If you eat a steak, you're getting a lot of protein and also a lot of fat.

And if you're eating beans and rice and trying to get complementary proteins because the amino acids of each are not in themselves complete. And so you're eating in them as a pair, which is often recommended. In order to get, I actually ran the numbers on this one time many years ago. I remember the exact numbers, but it was in order to get 200 grams of protein by the beans and rice combination, you had to eat like 5,000 calories. You know, because it is a majority carbohydrate combination there. And so if you have a majority protein food versus a not majority protein food, like some people think peanut butter is a protein source. And it's like 15% of the calories or something like that. It's mostly fat.

Right. Then you're not, it's not an apples to apples comparison. So if you're eating a plant-based protein powder versus a way protein powder as an example, like it might not be that different because it's been it's been consolidated to just protein in that case. But if it's a whole food, then you also need to consider what comes along for the ride. That is a great point. There's a reason why a lot of bodybuilders in the off-season, that's when they will do more steak, more fatty cuts of meat. But when they go in-season, that's when they're living off of tilapia and essentially chicken breast. Because you're right.

Like you're talking about a cup by cup, you know, seven ounces of chicken compared to seven ounces of a T-bone steak, you're going to have massive different chlorate densities. And that in turn is going to influence your total calorie intake. and that's why, yeah, to go further, and that's the reason why people will use skim dairy as opposed to full fat dairy. And, I mean, that's fine. If you're a hard training athlete and you're in the example that MASH had

where you're trying to gain body weight, do the whole fat. They taste better. You know, they're going to, you know, possibly be less expensive depending on what you're talking about. But if your goal is to get lean,

yeah, you've got to do be mindful of how calorically dense what you're taking is. And again, before we get to the first, thousand calories of beans and lentils we need to have a big conversation about the 100 plus grams of fiber you're going to have and your proximity to toilets and hopefully the day minimize chafing.

That's a lot of process. Crop dusting your family endlessly, walking through the living room. That's that's single man stuff. That's you live alone. Yes. To be fair with my peanut butter comment, if you eat like a rib eye, it's also like 80% fat and then 20% protein. It's a very high high fat food.

So there's better and worse. I don't know if I was even phrasing it. There's there's a leaner and less lean cuts of beef as an example. So I mentioned the rib eye. That's probably like one of the fatier cuts. It's going to be like something along the lines of 80% fat. Is that right? Of the calories by fat.

It's something like that. It's majority for sure. Well, I mean, Wagu would be worse. But yeah, it's still. Yeah. But then if you have like a super lean cut of beef like a London broil, which probably nobody ever buys. Or then again, you mentioned chicken breasts and I mentioned can't tuna earlier.

Like those are super, super lean sources where you're getting the vast majority of calories by protein. Yeah. And, you know, I would never discourage someone from eating salmon, but obviously that is a fatty or cut of fish, which, of course, you know, the fatty acid profile and things like that are awesome, but it's how much it's kind of like whole eggs. I would not discourage someone from eating whole eggs. But at the same time, if you are trying to get contest,

ready. You're trying to get spring break ready. Things along those lines. That's where, yeah, pretty much all protein is going to come with a certain amount of fat just because the way it works in nature. And then it becomes a matter of like, okay, now we're thinking back to total calories, what's your goal? If you're leaning out, there's a reason why the broccoli, chicken, and then maybe like some oatmeal sad bodybuilder diets are such a cliche because they're plans. You don't eat that much. And B, you're not getting in much fat. And you can, I mean, if you, you, if you're listening at home or someone that's managed to get morbidly obese off of eating only with broccoli, please talk to me. I am very intrigued. But it's just the thing, it's not

that chlorically dense. But then, you know, we put cheese on it. You know, we put something else in there to make it taste better. And that's what increase the chloric density. And that's, it all matters. And so the analogy that I give my students when we're thinking about, like, the amount of protein we're taking in per day. And we think about the total calories we're taking per day is a cup inside of a bowl. So once we overfill the cup, then the sides start leaking out into the bowl, which is cool. You want to figure out how much protein you need to take in so you at least fill the cup. So maybe you do the math and like, oh, sweet, I should be doing 150 grams of protein a day.

And then, you know, you feel good. Your soreness goes away fast. You're making progress in the gym. But you're like, I really don't like eating that much chicken. You know, I don't like eating that much. That's fine. try 140. Do you still recover as well?

Do you still make as much progress? Because when you overeat on protein, there's not really major negative things that happen. Look at Jose Antonio's work. It's really like all the arguments they used to make for bone metal density, otherwise I'm disproven. But at the end of the day, protein is expensive. And so, and if you're doing extra protein,

you're probably doing less carbs. So that might work against your exercise tolerance. You're doing less fat, which means you might be enjoying food less. Like at the end of the day, maybe try to taper it down to where it's like, oh, man, like, I'm still recovering as well. But now I don't feel like I'm punishing myself with sad chicken or sorry, tuna blended with orange juice. Who hurt you, Doug? Actually, I would do tuna and grape jelly.

So I'm not, I can't. I got no leg to stand on there. So sorry, Mesh, we're both sick people. But at the end of the day, also try the other experiment. If it says you should do 150, try 160. Do I feel like I recover better? do I feel like my soreness isn't as bad? Am I making more progress in the gym?

Because the research is great because it's going to be like on average. That's why there's a range of that 1.5 to 8 before I brought into the pounds of lean mass situation. So some of those athletes only need that 1.5, but others need that 1.8, and there's still going to be people on the tails of that bell curve that might be higher or lower.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I actually like the gram proxin per pound of body weight. I think gram protein per pound of lean body mass. is actually more accurate on paper. But I also think that people are poor estimators of how much they're actually getting in. They're especially with protein. They're very likely to undershoot rather than overshoot. And the downside of going over is very low if nothing.

And so giving prescribing something that's, you know, 10% too high actually feel like is totally fine. And they're more likely to actually get the amount they need. And again, if they actually do go over, there's basically no downside. And if anything, they're eating more good food and they're less. likely to go then eat more bad food because they're so full off the good food. There's a room for the bad food, so to speak. Right. It's satiated and probably maybe it also increases the internal temperature too.

Like maybe burn more calories. Like either way, you're definitely like, you're not going to feel hungry. If you, if you overeat on protein, if you can do that, which good luck. Oh, let's go meat sweats any day of the week, guys. We go to the Argentinian steakhouse. It's tough bit too. They're awesome. Yeah.

Dude, Jimmy Cherry. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, they get nervous. But you guys do make good points there, which is, you know, if you're going to air, air to the side of taking in more than you think. And I'm a big fan just run the experiment. You're just solving for you. So if you go and I will be the first to admit it, my sister and her boyfriend, God, he's a good guy, but he's like, I don't know, is that a protein for you, dude?

Is that a protein? I'm like, you are very interested in my dietary intake. And, you know, because I was straight up, like the times where I don't get enough because I chronically train, I mean, I wake up and I feel like someone just beat me with a hammer. Like, just I just don't recover as well because go figure my turnover is higher just because I carry a decent amount of lean mass. So, you know, when you solve for you and maybe you are that person that you run hot, like you're supposed to be to 150, but every time you do 180, that's when you don't really get sore. That's when you feel good. I just obviously always want to keep in mind you don't crowd. out the carbs that matter for your work capacity.

You know, fats are important for recovery, but it's kind of hard to not get enough fat each day. That's one, as Doug point out, it's real easy to go over on because you're like, I'm just going to do chicken thighs. And then you look at the difference between chicken breast and chicken thighs on that grams of fat per serving. And you can, you can do the work there. I was able to look up the whole with the ribbi. Yeah, it's between 50 to 70 percent. You know, fat.

Dang it. That's such a sad thing. I can eat ribbyes all the time. Yeah. But again, it's about your total day, though. Like, if you know you're going to eat a rib eye and you're going to have extra fat that evening, like you just bump your fat grounds down for the morning and afternoon. And then by the end of the day, you're even, so to speak, and you can, you can account for it.

And I've always been, and I know this is probably not the best way. It's like I've always been the person who's going to do a lot of the protein shakes. Like almost every single day, at least one of my meals is going to be like protein powder, blueberries like maybe the smallest amount of like natural you said peanut butter but like

that's that's definitely going to be one meal a day almost every single day I'm just not a huge eater too like I'm busy and like if I'm at work I'm like you know you're high anxiety

so it's like it's not the best you know it's not so fun to sit down and chill and eat a meal you know I'd rather just crush it and move on yeah

You can't beat the convenience of a pre-made protein shake. You can't. You have those like power core proteins or whatever. They're like 42 grams in a little shake. Like a banana in one of those. For me, I'm never hungry in the morning. So doing something like that is something that's like palatable and tolerable enough where I can do it quickly.

It doesn't take any time to prep. I can just knock it out and go start working. That's the best. And that's just what I do almost every single day. Yeah. The portability of just having. having those options if again, you're not able to do meal prep takes time. And obviously, life's chaotic.

And the nice thing about RTDs, you're ready to drinks. Like, you don't got to throw in water. Like you can always bring your shaker and then, you know, mix it up whenever you got a water source that's available. But remember, you just got to get in the number in general. How you divide it up is up to you. You know, it's not one of those things that you wasted your workout because you didn't do a mediocre protein shake from a certain manufacturer that literally used that as their ad.

pain years ago. But instead, it's like, hey, if the one thing, because yeah, how many athletes do you work with that they wake up and they're not hungry until noon? But it's like, hey, it's hard to do that much protein with a lunch, a snack, and a dinner. So if we at least get started chipping away with breakfast and doing something like a shake, you've got, you know, yogurt that's essentially a lot easier grab and go for a lot of folks, you know, sitting down and making eggs every morning. Like that can be obviously a more of it to do. I mean, you can go Rocky style. Just throw those things in a glass and just pound them down and really just punish yourself with a early mornings and that choice.

How dangerous is that? I mean, what are the chances like a salmonella? About the same risk of getting hit by lightning. So the key thing is you need to smell the eggs first. And if they smell bad, they're bad. But at the same point, you know, salmonella is a, I mean, I'm just one more stomach flew away from my goal weight. So in seriousness, I would have you, it's not the safest choice. choice, but as long as you know, your eggs are good and you trust them, like, your odds are

relatively low, but they're not zero. Because, like, don't be wrong, but there's a big difference in risk of I'm getting hit by lightning because I'm swinging a baseball bat on the top of a mountain. And then I'm in my house, you know, in the basement. Right. So, yeah, like the shark attack thing. Like, turns out if I don't go on the ocean, land sharks are pretty rare. I mean, I was, I was thinking, I've done it so many times.

If anybody was ever going to get salmonella from, it would be me. Because, like, you know, I'll just put them in the, you know, I'll do a protein shake. And then I'll add eggs to it just to get, you know, you get the fat along with it. I'm trying to, especially when you're trying to gain weight. It's just. And there's people that will be the liquid egg whites. And memory serves, some of those companies actually go through and do some pasteurization. So like the liquid egg whites, which is pretty much pure protein, it's a complete protein.

Yeah. You can chug that. Go forth my brave soldier. Obviously, the taste profile is not the best, but it's a solution. It's a lot of times. It's a great addition. Like if you're scrambling eggs and you're trying to get a lot of protein with not a lot of fat and you want to have the ratio more exact.

You do three eggs and then you put liquid egg whites in there as well and you scrambled all together. Then now your ratio of protein to fat, to Mash's point, like you look at that rib eye and you go, oh man that's less too much like with the eggs you can kind of like adjust it and using pasteurized egg whites is a very convenient simple fairly inexpensive way to do that right here we're wrapping up here mike lane give us a big picture summary what your day is supposed to look like everything that you hope it will be no so your day should be make sure you're getting enough protein if that's just one giant meal of you just sitting there with an entire Costco was it roaster chicken and you're just going for it in the parking lot you know go for it for you for but Yeah. It's better to divide it more evenly throughout your day. And once we go dividing past four, it's not really helping us that much. And quality matters, but quantity is the most important one. It's the opposite of how you should approach your dating life.

Go for quantity first. And then once you've got that nailed down, then start thinking about the quality. Right. Yeah, get that number. You know, especially my, I have a lot of younger athletes. for those guys, yeah, just get the number. You're talking about dating now? Get some reps.

Just get some reps in both. Get some reps in boys. I was really talking about protein, but. Take some of both. A little bit of both, a little bit of both. Right on. Travis Mass. Where can you find you?

Mashel,leet.com. Anyone is going to be, I guess this won't be out by the time we're in New Orleans tomorrow. So, but yeah, we're all three going to be going to New Orleans. But by the time you hear this, we'll probably, already have seen you. Yep, and the state of national conference this week in New Orleans. Dr. Mike Lane. You'll find me sighing and watching the choices my fellow researchers are making on Bourbon

Street and otherwise, yeah, Mike Lane, PhD on Instagram. Beautiful. I'm Doug Larson on Instagram. Doug Larson, we are barbell shrug to barbell underscore shrug. If you want to work with Dr. Mike Lane, Coach Travis Mass, and Dr. Andy Galpin, you can go to biomolecularathlete.com backslash auret. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.