Weights and Plates Podcast - #10 - Everything You Need to Know about PROTEIN
Episode Date: September 4, 2021It's probably the most talked about macronutrient, and almost anyone you ask in health and fitness would say you need a lot of it -- protein. Nevertheless, many myths around protein consumption, timin...g, amino acid profile, and more still abound. Robert and Trent break down what you need to know about protein, how much you should be eating, and, perhaps most importantly, what you don't need to worry about!  Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana  Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com
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welcome to the weights and plates podcast i am robert santana i am your host along with my co-host
trent jones yo yo you know my name's robert too really Really? Yeah, my first name is Robert. Yeah, I am a Robert Jones.
Yeah.
No relation.
No shit.
No relation to the golf course guy.
You know, he's got a bunch of golf courses across the state line over here in Georgia.
But yeah, sorry.
No relation.
I suck at golf anyway, so.
So why'd you start going by your middle name?
When I was in elementary school,
I remember there being like three or four other Roberts in class.
So I'm like, this is just way too many.
So I just, you know, I guess I could have been Rob.
I could have been Bob.
No, we had another Bob.
So I could have been Rob or I could be Trent.
And you don't really hear too many Trents.
It's an unusual name.
You're right.
You're right.
This is a good point.
Yeah. I was the opposite. Yeah. I unusual. You're right. You're right. This is a good point. Yeah.
I was the opposite.
Yeah.
I had nobody else with my name where I went.
Hey, there you go.
Well, I mean, dude, you just got to kill your last name.
Santana.
Yeah.
Like that's just go by your last name for everything.
Yeah.
Just Santana.
That's, that's. This is true.
So today we are going to talk about protein.
You know, it's the first nutrient you learn about when you go into a gym whether the person teaching you about it knows what they are
talking about or not um basically if you're going in the weight room somebody's going to tell you
that you need to eat more protein protein protein everyone got called protein protein yeah uh i was actually exposed to it uh in high school
swimming i don't know why somebody came in was like i'm taking whey protein powder and i think
some other guy was taking creatine and you know this was when you know mark mcguire was claiming
he was on creatine when he was on andro and right steroids probably testosterone when baseball was
awesome yeah so i was like oh that might be bad for you so i was like afraid of creatine either when he was on andro and steroids probably, testosterone. When baseball was awesome.
Yeah, so I was like, oh, that might be bad for you.
So I was like afraid of creatine.
Either way, like, you know, we're doing long distance swimming,
lots of miles.
Neither of those supplements made a whole lot of sense.
You know, I probably should have been taking a lot more carbs.
Right, right.
Although by the end, I figured out that I was a sprinter.
But even if you were a sprinter, you were putting in a lot of mileage, you know? And it's not like your workout was
different, at least at my program. I think, you know, more bigger, well-funded programs is probably
more divided, you know, especially if the team's bigger. But we all did the same thing. We were a
small group of swimmers. And I remember one guy brought in the protein powder. And I remember,
oh, I'll try this. And I would drink it after my swim practice.
And then, you know, about a week or two into that, I was like, I don't want to mix this up anymore.
It smells like shit, tastes funny, you know?
Oh, yeah.
Dude, those early protein powders, man.
This was 2001, yeah.
And even then, I'm sure they were better than what they had, you know, in the 70s.
Well, they had like a can, I think, back then.
Yeah, what is it, like protein, like with two e's um the original protein powder but yeah i i remember uh on the football
team there was uh muscle milk came out at some point and that was like you know we thought it
was something special because it was you know muscle milk right and it had like you know the
list of ingredients in the back was like six inches long um and i remember muscle milk and then i remember
inno explode like all the strong guys you know you know take an inno explode yeah and i don't
know what that was but i don't like beta alanine or something but um uh it was arginine arginine
arginine okay yeah there's a few like citrulline
all that stuff you know you find in all the pre-workouts what year did you graduate
2000 2007 okay so you were high school after me i've graduated yeah i graduated high school in
02 so the first no supplement I saw was called NO2,
and they had a guy in a lab coat that looked like a doctor,
and I never saw that before.
So I'm like, this must be legitimate.
They got a doctor advertising it.
Right, yeah.
He's wearing a lab coat.
Now we know about it.
He's probably like an optometrist.
Yeah, exactly.
It was like one of those infomercials,
and then I then you can
i think you can only get it online which was a big deal back then we didn't have amazon or anything
like that i think amazon sold books back then and uh yeah yeah this was what not 2002 i want to say
and then all of a sudden there was nox2 and i can buy that at vitamin shop and it was essentially
the same shit and i was like well how come the other one's more it must be better because i have that doctor you know and i couldn't get it at vitamin shop either i had to
get it online so i think i tried nox2 i forgot who made that and then they had all those pro
hormones back when those were over the counter like vp yeah that was probably you know wild yeah
you remember vpx i remember uh there was like a Trin one. It was called like Trin Extreme or something.
I didn't take any of this stuff because I couldn't afford it.
It was pretty expensive.
Yeah, like $100 to $150.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
For like a little jar, you know, 50 capsules or whatever.
But yeah, I remember, I think what it was, was basically like a compound that would metabolize into like the,
one of the metabolites of it would be like Trinbolone or, you know, so, but of course,
like, you know, you have no idea what else was, you know, what else it metabolized into and like
how much Trin you would be getting versus everything else. And so, yeah, but that stuff
is wild. You could just buy it at Walmart, you know, sometimes.
I don't remember that one.
I remember 2002.
GNC, at least.
Yeah.
They must have found loopholes.
So in 2002, it was entirely legal to buy a pro-hormone,
which, you know, can convert into the hormone once you ingest it.
And they would name them after actual steroids.
So they had one that was called 1-testosterone, you know.
Right.
That's a pro-hormone for testosterone.
Then they had Paradeca, and Deca is an anabolic steroid.
Then they had, what was the other one?
There was Paradeca.
There was One Test.
I don't remember.
There was a few other ones.
Those were the two that, like, jump in my mind.
And they came with these little droppers so it looked like a needle.
You know, you'd think about like a needle probably just by seeing it.
It was like a little vial, a vial everything else was plastic little glass vial
liquid then it had a dropper taped around it and they put it in a case so you had to get the manager
to open it up for you and i had a couple friends that took it that were like skinny and were doing
silly bullshit in the gym and they got bigger i mean the stuff, but then in 2004, Bush issued the ban on pro-hormones after the ephedra shit happened in Major League Baseball.
Those guys, the pitcher died from cardiac problems related to ephedra, supposedly, never mind that he was obese and dehydrated.
Was Andrew, was Andrew one of those pro-hormones?
I believe Andrew was legal, wasn't it, in the late 90s?
Yeah, that was.
Oh, it was legal at the time. Yeah, yeah yeah androstenedione yeah i remember that um that was big and uh then that got all that got
banned in 04 when they updated the the steroid controlled substances act whatever the fuck it's
called and uh then it was gone you know i never dabbled with it but i my close friends did and
i saw it work i just was afraid to fuck around with that stuff.
Yeah, and in hindsight, you're like, man, Lord knows what else you're getting.
Well, you don't know what else is in there.
With the active compound, yeah.
If it's even clean, yeah, if it's even a clean supplement, which probably it wasn't.
But yeah, it was a wild time, and protein was right in the mix too.
We joked about Celltech a while back.
Celltech was huge when I got out of high school.
Celltech, you know, all the stuff that the muscle tech,
you know, how the marketing dollars behind it.
But yeah, so for a long time,
we've had this idea in the fitness community
that we need to be supplementing our protein.
We need lots of protein.
I remember guys like Bill Kazmameyer you know the strong strong
midu is like yeah man every day i eat 300 grams of protein five i try to get 500 grams of protein
every day nitrotec remember that one that was the nitrotec that was a protein that was a protein
line i thought it was called that i just want to double check it was neither nitrotec was the
protein cell tech was a creatine that's fantastic all. So, but yeah, so we've had this idea
that we need lots of protein
if we're going to be training seriously.
And I'll tell you my practical experience with this
and I'll see if it kind of jives with the science.
So my practical experience has been
coaching a lot of people of different ages and
demographics. My experience has been that more or less the sort of bro standard of eating one gram
of protein per pound of body weight holds up pretty well as a good recommendation. Now, you do
have to scale that, right? If I've got a guy in the gym comes in and he weighs 300 pounds, I'm not going to tell him to eat 300 grams of protein. I'd
probably tell him to eat 250 grams of protein. Frankly, I'd be happy if he ate 200 plus,
but, um, it, so it doesn't scale perfectly. And the same thing on the other end, you know,
if I have a woman that comes in the gym and she's 115 pounds, I'm not going to tell her,
well, I might have her eat 115 grams of protein, but if, you know, she's, she, she may have a woman that comes in the gym and she's 115 pounds, I'm not going to tell her, well, I might have her eat 115 grams of protein.
But if, you know, she may have a little bit smaller ratio than that one gram of protein
per pound of body weight than a man would.
But more or less, that seems to hold up pretty well.
And my practical experience has been, if you are strength training in the manner that we have talked about on this show, you're actually training, you're not exercising, that if you eat sufficient protein, then you're going to maximize your gains as long as you're eating enough carbs, enough fat to fuel your training. If you don't eat enough protein, then you're going to have some problems. And that seems to manifest primarily in people getting
random aches and pains. They might get tendonitis. It might have some joint pain.
And that's what I generally see when people try to strength train
in the way that we do
and they're under eating protein.
So those are kind of just like some general observations
that I've just gleaned from practically
just from coaching a bunch of different people.
And it's been a few years
since I've looked at any studies
on how much protein you need,
but how does that jive with the science?
The science.
The science, Capital S.
How does that jive with the science? Well, the science states that, you know, you only need 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. That's what the recommended daily allowance for protein is.
Now, there's other government ranges as well, but let's, you know,
let's put that into context. So if it's 0.8 grams per kilogram, that will be 0.2.2 per 2.2 pounds,
right? Right, right. So that will be what? 0.36. We could round it to 0.4 so yeah this the science says that you know you only need 0.8
grams per kilogram to have an adequate protein intake hold that thought there so in pounds that
comes out to 0.36 grams per pound uh which is a lot less than 1.0 well the uh recommended daily
allowance is one range first First of all, there's
another accepted range. And it even has the word accepted in it accepted macronutrient distribution
range, which is 10 to 35% of calories to which, you know, is a much fairer range, because now you
got a range there, you know, depending on what's going on. But if you're in that 35 percentile,
if you're eating two to 3000 calories 3,000 calories, or let's
say 1,500 to 3,000, depending on your calorie needs, that could be a lot higher. It could even
be closer or over that 1.0, right? Yeah. So if I take a 2,000 calorie diet,
and we go to the highest 35%, so the high end of that range, that would be 700 calories of protein so if we divide by four
to get grams 175 grams of protein yeah so if you're 175 pounds you're a gram per pound right
yeah that's that's probably that's a pretty reason that's a pretty healthy amount of protein for
someone eating a 2000 calorie diet but uh the point here is, and more importantly, since we're talking about ranges established by the science, there's no tolerable, toleratable, always mess that word up, toleratable upper limit or UL for protein.
There isn't one.
There was a time where people would talk about kidney failure completely out of context because high protein intakes
aren't known to cause kidney failure.
Low protein intakes are recommended for people that have kidney failure already to delay
getting on dialysis.
That is the whole rationale for that, that it will accelerate already existing disease,
but there is no causal relationship between the disease pathology and protein intake.
disease, but there is no causal relationship between the disease pathology and protein intake.
So even within that argument, there are some nephrologists, which are kidney doctors,
for those of you who don't know, who disagree with low protein intakes for patients with kidney disease because they are of the position, and I've worked with some of them, they are of the
position that delaying dialysis
is not worth it because if they end up on dialysis and are malnourished from not eating enough
protein, you could have bigger problems like infection, sepsis, etc., especially since some
of these people start out on a catheter, and catheters are associated with higher infection
rates. So some doctors won't prescribe that. They'll say, no, eat normal amount of protein because you're probably going to end up on dialysis anyways.
Delaying it and becoming malnourished is not worth it.
That's their position.
And there's debate on that in the medical community, and I can appreciate that.
But we're talking about there's two types of people that we end up working with.
So there's two types of people that we end up working with.
You have, most commonly, you have somebody who is sedentary for most of the day or has a lot of sedentary time, as they call it, and spent a couple hours in the gym all day to offset some of that.
And, you know, as an aside, intensity can offset lack of volume.
So when it comes to light activity, that's where volume is great.
You want lots and lots of light activity if you can get it in. If you can't, for whatever reason, you can offset that with intensity. There's, you know,
data on that that, you know, seems to make logical sense and checks out. You know, if you do some
hit intervals or, you know, spend 30 minutes, you know, running continuously at a pretty vigorous
pace that can offset all the time you sit on your ass at work. Anyway, that's another podcast for
another day. Then you have people that, you know, are pretty physically active in their job and, you know, are here to
take care of their joints because their back hurts, you know. And then you have others that are in
between. So I don't, I never liked when I worked in the gym business and the commercial gym business
and they would say, oh, well, you know, you need more protein because, you know, you're athletes. Well, no, they're not athletes. This isn't a full-time job.
You know, maybe recreational athlete at best, you know. I guess a powerlifter could be considered
an quote-unquote athlete because, you know, you're not going to spend more than three or four hours
a day lifting weights. It's not productive, you know. So that might be the exception to that rule.
You know, if you're a competitive powerlifter or weight lifter, you know, you're not going to spend as much time on
your sport as a runner would because it's heavy, you know. But most of the people that go into,
you know, Lifetime Fitness or LA Fitness or Vasa or whatever commercial gym you are at
are not athletes. They're spending a couple hours a day doing physically demanding
activity, which would be weightlifting or conditioning or a combination of the two.
So the need for calories is higher. The need for essentially, you know, all three of the macros,
certainly protein and carbohydrate is higher. You know, need for fat is slightly higher,
but probably not as much as the other two because of the nature of the activity.
You know, need for fat is slightly higher, but probably not as much as the other two because of the nature of the activity.
So, you know, the RDA, recommended daily allowance, 0.36 grams per kilogram, is not going to cut it if you're doing physically hard shit.
AMDR is probably fine for most people at first at least.
You know, maybe you need more.
We really don't know how much protein any individual needs.
We just know that more is necessary than somebody who's doing nothing for obvious reasons.
And so maybe could you give us a little background on how that RDA is derived?
We don't have to go all the way down the rabbit hole, but my understanding is basically that the RDA is sort of like what is sufficient to sustain life.
They're doing nitrogen balance studies that are acute, you know, and what we're doing
in the gym is chronic, you know?
Okay, yeah.
So basically, they're just trying to say like, okay, how much protein do I have to feed this
test subject until I see a positive nitrogen balance in their urine?
Or neutral, you know?
Or neutral.
I have to go back and, yeah.
So basically, so that they're not in a catabolic state.
Would that be fair to say?
Exactly.
Yes, yes, yes.
So they're not losing muscle, but that's not the same thing as eating enough to actively gain muscle mass, which is what we're doing, like skeletal muscle mass.
And that's the problem with all these studies on protein that look at these acute markers.
Actually, last time I researched this, and it's been a few years, it was a pretty good study.
I like the design.
You know, there's limits with all these things study. I like the design. There's limits with all
these things, but I like the way they designed it. They did all these acute measurements of
protein balance and they were looking at tracer infusions to see arteriovenous difference,
to see how much of the protein was absorbed, et cetera. And then they did a training intervention
for a few months and then looked at body composition, and they found that these acute measurements did not correlate well with the body composition changes, which was not surprising to me because there's a lot of things that probably occur cumulatively over a long period of time, over repeated training sessions that progressively get harder, you know, and the chronic effects are harder to measure because, you know, if you take somebody in and, you know, you have them take
a protein shake after their very first workout and you, you know, run a tracer in them, for those of
you who don't know, a tracer is exactly how it sounds, like a little tracking device is how you
want to kind of visualize it. They put in your bloodstream so they can trace how much of the
protein is going in and how much of it's coming out. And that difference tells you how much stayed in and
assimilated, you know, into the muscle, into the cells. And, you know, you could do that after
workout one, but, you know, that person's going to add, you know, probably a hundred pounds to
his squat in a couple of weeks, you know? So what happens after workout two? What happens after
workout 15 or 25, right?
That was always my question.
Are there adaptive effects?
Do you see the same response from somebody who's lightly trained versus somebody who is untrained on day one?
And they've done some of these studies on trained lifters too.
But what does trained mean, right?
We all know that guys have spent years in the gym doing it wrong.
We know this.
That never gets addressed either.
Exactly.
Exactly.
You could take a 10-year gym rat that's never gone through a novice linear progression because they've never actually progressed.
Right?
It's your guy at the gym.
That was me.
That used to bench 295 or whatever.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
So, okay.
Yeah.
So there's some limitations to the research there on the chronic effects of eating protein and how much you need.
We know that, you know, calorie surplus and progressive training is likely going to, you know, add muscle.
When it comes to the nutritional aspect of it, we don't really know a whole lot in terms of, you know, if you want to look at it through
the lens of a scientific study, because you can't study these things adequately. You know, number
one, like I said, a novice is untouched, right? So therefore, you know, an acute measurement of
protein balance or fractional synthetic rate or any other measure of protein synthesis is not
going to tell us a whole lot because
people that are listening to this that have worked with us or coaches like us understand that the
weight on the bar is going to go up quickly. And this is understood in the scientific literature
too. They don't call it the novice effect, but they talk about how you make neuromuscular
adaptations early on and strength as measured by, you know, 5RM,
1RM, weight on the bar for lack of, you know, to make it clear, goes up very rapidly initially
and eventually tapers off. And it's been acknowledged that muscle mass follows a similar
curve. You tend to put it on quicker in your first year, slower in your second, eventually you get to
a point where it's immeasurable. So, you know, this is pretty well understood.
But if you're going to do blood work and, you know, look at a tracer study that's measuring protein synthesis, I'll just start using that word for it because I get a lot of questions about muscle protein synthesis.
And, you know, that gives you a snapshot in time and doesn't really, isn't really subject to
training effects, you know, these chronic effects of training overload, right? So my best guess is
the response to your first workout. So you take a guy who's been jacking off in the gym, you know,
doing a bunch of arms and chest, and then you have them do 10 sets of 10 knee extensions,
you know, you're going to see, you know, a rise in protein breakdown, a rise in protein synthesis.
The argument is you take a whey protein shake or a casein protein shake,
and you're going to increase synthesis to a greater magnitude,
and you're going to see that magnitude of difference be greater with the whey versus the casein
because the digestibility is greater or quicker. You
digest whey faster than casein. So that's where a lot of this stuff comes from. Take whey after
your workout, take casein before bed. It's a more sustained release, right? And there's
applicability to that. You know, I have a lot of clients that struggle to get protein,
so I do recommend those supplements. And I have no problem with that. What I'm saying is that an acute snapshot of
muscle protein synthesis as measured by these tracer studies, or sometimes they do muscle
biopsies and look at proteins there, that doesn't tell you the whole picture, right? Because there's
going to be repeated bouts of training with heavier and heavier weight that occur between
week zero and week 12 or week
24 would be better you know three months you're just starting to gain muscle probably yeah yeah
i would think you know my guess would be that over time you know you take that novice from zero to
week 24 and uh all of a sudden they are they are partitioning that you know those macro nutrientsutrients that they're bringing in, they're putting into their body, that they're actually able to use more protein than they were on day zero.
I'm not sure if that's true, but that would be my guess.
Well, I've actually heard that it's less.
I remember reading that somewhere a long time ago, and it kind of makes sense because you're adapting, right?
that somewhere a long time ago, and it kind of makes sense because you're adapting, right?
So a novice needs more protein than somebody who's more advanced because a guy like you and I,
we've been training a long time. Our body's used to this shit, and if there's anything we know about the human body, it will compensate to go back to homeostasis. Right, yes, absolutely.
So a novice doing his first three sets of five squats, that's a disruption, and it's going to
require, it's going to have a more pronounced response than you know us you know building up a bunch of tonnage it takes a lot to get that novel stimulus
so most of the time you know we probably don't need as much as a novice and that's why i noticed
that like i don't feel like i have to eat as much as i used to yeah make progress you know okay yeah
so i've i've noticed that as well that you know it's kind of and it's more like you know in the
past it's been times where i've just gotten off of, you know, tracking my macros or whatever. And it's, you
know, my eating just sort of, it just sort of does whatever it does. And then I'll, I'll, I'll track
it from time to time and be like, Oh man, I got to bring that protein up. But I have noticed over
the years that, yeah, I could maybe get away on, you know, with 150, 160 grams of protein a day.
Whereas before as a novice i i really did feel
like i needed the 200 you turn it over more efficiently sure okay oh that makes sense that
makes sense okay so so all right so we know that the we can't really rely on the ratios that we're
going to get from the scientific literature whether we're looking at the rda or a different
recommendation but there's a practical argument that you made there that i want to go back to from the scientific literature, whether we're looking at the RDA or a different recommendation,
but there's a practical argument that you made there that I want to go back to.
And that's that, okay, so we know that there's sort of a bottom limit or a bottom part of the range that is just what's necessary to not be in a catabolic state. But that doesn't really help us for training.
On the other hand, practically, we know that there's no upper limit.
So if there's no upper limit, it's probably wise to err on the side of a little too much protein.
Exactly.
There's also other benefits, too.
But before I go into that, let me just finish my last thought.
Okay, yeah.
In these studies,
when they're looking at protein turnover and protein synthesis, the most important variable that they cannot control, they cannot control it, is what the person is doing outside of the lab,
specifically their diet. Where's the rest of their protein intake? What are they eating?
And getting a self-report is not going to correct that.
I said this before.
My colleague, your colleague, Will Morris, is a physical therapist.
He's not in the diet business, but he has to ask diet questions as part of his assessment as a physical therapist.
And he always says that virtually every client says, yeah, I eat chicken, broccoli, and rice, you know?
Right.
I mean, we all know this.
The scientists know this, too. They just use it because the journal won't let them publish without
it. So we know self-report is junk. I saw a biostatistician five years ago, I want to say,
spoke at a conference, and he went over all the NHANES data. For those of you who don't know,
that's nationwide surveillance of various health markers, and they've been doing this for decades. And one of the things that they check is physical activity. Now they're using devices, which are better than journals, but still they have their problems. And nutrition and nutrition is often self-reported.
often self-reported. And the guy went through all this data. He was a biostatistician that,
you know, probably gets hired to analyze the data for these types of studies, hence why he was talking about this topic, because usually most researchers don't understand stats and hire a
biostatistician, which I have no problem with. Sure. We all have our strengths, and it's just
like any other type of business. You know, you farm out what you can't do. Yeah. So if you,
you know, if you're ever, if anybody here is thinking about a career in academia, that is the
most lucrative one because there's not many people that do it and they'll pay you more money for it.
But anyways, I digress. I remember his famous quote, and I'll never forget it to the day that
I die, and it was actually the title of one of the articles that he was on. He went over all that
data and talked about how some of it wasn't physiologically plausible when you look at the calories reported versus body weight and various things.
He went through all sorts of stats.
But he concluded his presentation, his hour-long presentation with, this is an example of when something is not better than nothing, until we have a better way to measure this, we're better off not using it at all.
do we have a better way to measure this? We're better off not using it at all.
And there's an article that he was on. He wasn't lead author. His name is David Allison,
for those of you interested. He was one of the authors on this article, but the title,
either he made it up or his group made it up and he just used it at the conference. It's called Energy Balance When Something Is Not Better Than Nothing. I don't know if it's energy balance or measuring energy expenditure.
Either way, he's right.
The thing is, you get these guys that come in the lab,
you run a tracer or you look at urine or whatever the hell you're measuring,
and then you're extrapolating from that and making judgments
about their anabolic versus catabolic state
and then making recommendations on protein intake
without knowing their protein intake. don't know you have not measured protein intake yeah unless you
lock these people in a lab and you feed them everything that they put in their mouth like
yeah yeah we know that's just simply from uh experience with clients that people misreport
what they eat all the time whether they're intentionally doing it or unintentional a lot lot of times it's unintentional. They just, you know, they thought they were actually giving you
exactly what they did. And that's not true. How many times do you track your macros? I mean,
I don't know if you were as diligent as I was. You're going to bed, you're like, oh shit,
I forgot to log that bagel I had the other day. Oh yeah, right. Or it's like, you know,
I used to work when, you know, years ago when I worked in an office, right around the corner, there was a jar of M&Ms and like a little dispenser.
Oh, yeah.
And you get the little cup of M&Ms and it's like, you know, you're on a call and you're just like,
man, I just need something to get me through this. And so you walk over there and you get
a little cup of M&Ms and then, you know, come back later, a little M&Ms. And it's like,
how do you track that? Like, how many did I have? I don't know.
Three cups, but did you fill the cup every time?
Like, I don't know.
I just ate them.
I just threw them in my gullet.
So how do you track that?
You know, so sometimes you might not even remember that you put those, you ate those at all.
And if you did, you'd be like, well, I think I ate like two cups and it might have been four.
Yeah, exactly.
You don't know.
Yeah, it makes a difference. You
know, that could be a couple hundred calories. And I mean, think about us. I mean, squatting
is more complicated than, you know, weighing food, but, uh, how many times people come over
or they hire you online, whether online or in person, and they have all these fancy Excel
sheets and data that goes back months and months and months, years and years and years,
and they're squatting nine inches high. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So diet's the same thing.
You hand somebody a diet and say, follow it. You know, I don't care how well you educate and
explain it verbally. If you're not there watching them and, you know, making corrections, then
chances are they're not doing the program. Right. Not doing the diet. You know, they're not
following what they're supposed to be following. So that's why, you know, self-report's just, you know, random number generator, in my
opinion. But anyway, so yeah, that's the big thing there. Okay. So those are the limitations of the
literature we have. And I only point that out because I've, you and I both have had arguments
with people online where people trot out like the studies like, well, but there's this meta study that says that like this ratio is like the optimal and anything beyond that is just doesn't work at all, you know, and blah, blah, blah.
Right.
But it's there are some there are some limitations to what these studies actually tell us and how applicable they are to what we're doing, which is strength training, which is chronic.
Exactly. Exactly. So.
Okay. So, so let's, I want to, I want to kind of pin you down a little bit. So what do you tell
people that are new to barbell training? Like when you're telling them how much protein they
should eat, what are your recommendations? I've written an article on this and, uh,
the range that I gave and typically the range that I give most people, if you're male, you're going to need about 150 to 250 grams, depending on your size, right?
A guy who's 5'2", 165, you know, he might not need 200 grams of protein.
But it's enough to where you're getting, you know, if you're eating at least 150 or as high as 250, you're probably getting enough, you know, you're definitely getting over the RDA. You're probably in the
AMDR somewhere, and you're probably getting a gram per pound of muscle mass, lean weight, you know?
Right.
So, you know, I'd like to give ranges. Ranges are, you know, more reasonable. They allow more
flexibility. If you're on the top end of that range and you have no problem eating 250 grams of protein, it's probably going to be fine. It's not an insane amount. Females, I typically
say, you know, anywhere from 100 to 200, you know, somewhere in that range. And most female lifters,
they'll fall somewhere between 100 and 150. I really haven't gone higher than that. But again,
broad range, protein has other benefits besides building muscle. So there's, you know, you said something about optimal time to eat it or whatever.
Is that what you were mentioning?
Well, yeah, I don't know if I mentioned that earlier, but we could talk about that, right?
Like, so let's be real.
So what you just said for males, 150 to 250, for females, 100 to 200.
For someone who is new to training, that's a lot more than what they
probably have been eating. Like, odds are, you know, if they're female, they've been eating,
you know, 56 grams of protein. And if they're male, they're eating 100. So, that's, yeah. So,
does it matter when someone takes in these, you know, this new range of protein?
Sure, sure.
So there's all this argument.
I don't know what you said earlier,
but it reminded me of this topic.
This argument that you're not going to absorb all of it.
I had one professor in college.
Oh, yeah.
That's a popular sort of bro myth
that's still going out there.
It's like, well, if you eat more than X grams per meal,
you're not going to absorb it anyway.
That's bullshit. You digest and absorb 100 well, if you eat more than X grams per meal, you're not going to absorb it anyway. That's bullshit.
You digest and absorb 100% of what you eat, or most of it, I should say, close to it.
Maybe not 100%. Unless you have diarrhea.
Exactly.
The thing that gets lost is there's papers out there talking about how you're only using a percentage of it for muscle protein synthesis.
So if you eat 150 grams of protein in one sitting, you're only using a percentage of it for muscle protein synthesis. So if you eat 150 grams of protein in one sitting, you're only using a percentage of
it for muscle protein synthesis.
That's probably true, but that is not the same thing as saying you're not absorbing
it, you're not digesting it.
You're just not using it to build muscle.
You have other bodily proteins.
You know, immunity is a big popular topic today.
And immunoglobulins, you know, those antibodies, those are proteins, you know?
Yeah.
Your hair, skin, and nails are comprised of proteins.
The hemoglobin that makes your blood nice and red, that's a protein, you know?
They have all sorts of different proteins other than muscle.
Muscle accounts for about, I believe last time we were at 40% to 60% somewhere in that range.
But then you still have all these other proteins that you have to synthesize.
Yeah, yeah.
And also, again, remember, when we're talking about these studies,
these are lab studies looking at a snapshot in time that aren't measuring protein intake.
You know, does it mean that it's junk data?
Not entirely, you know, but they're not, it's not the verdict, right?
They're not taking into account the chronic effects, right?
Right.
So, yeah, no, there's other reasons to spread out your protein intake, eat every few hours.
And one of those reasons is that it helps with blood sugar control, right? If you're diabetic
or if you're trying to prevent diabetes, you know, I think it's generally good practice to eat,
you know, 20 to 40 grams of protein every few hours rather than eating 150, 200 grams in one meal.
I'd be impressed if you could do that.
Yeah, exactly.
That's hard to do.
72-ounce steak in Amarillo, Texas, right?
Right, yeah.
Yeah, so you want to spread it out because it also keeps you fuller.
Protein is the most satiating of the three macronutrients.
Carbohydrate would be next. Fat is the most satiating. Sorry, fat's the most satiating of the three macronutrients. Carbohydrate would be next.
Fat is the least satiating.
No, fat's the most satiating.
Sorry.
Fat's the most.
Protein and fat are the most.
I can't remember if protein's one or fat's one, but those two are higher.
Thermic effect of food, fat is the least.
So, like, in terms of calories expended, so calories burned, digesting food, it's the opposite.
Protein's the highest.
Carb is second.
Fat is third.
In terms of being full, feeling full, protein, I believe, is the highest than fat than carb.
Yeah, sure. Yeah. And that's, I think you've mentioned before on the show, like,
if you have someone that is, you know, in a cut phase, maybe, and they're having trouble with
hunger towards the end of the day, you can have them drink a
protein shake with some casein in it. And that tends to be even more long-lasting, I guess,
or long-digesting than whey protein. But protein in general takes a while to digest, so it keeps
you full for a long period of time. Yeah. So there's useful reasons to spread your protein intake out.
Okay. Yeah. Then I get the most popular question I get from my novices. Can I just eat six protein
shakes a day or drink six protein shakes a day? No, no, I don't want you doing that.
There's some data out there on negative associations with, I think, bone health. I haven't read too much into it, but that's not the main reason.
Protein shakes provide you with protein, but not with all of the nutrients that are found
in protein-rich foods, like iron, like zinc, B12, vitamin D, vitamin A.
So no, you need to eat most of your protein.
One to two shakes a day is probably
sufficient for most people. My recommendation with shakes is have one after your workout,
you know, make sure it's whey. If you drink it in water, you know, it doesn't taste great,
but it goes down easy, you know, especially if you have digestive issues. It tends to,
you know, because the whey component, it doesn't really irritate lactose intolerant people as much.
And then before bed, I've recommended casein if you can tolerate it, or egg white protein, which I believe digests even slower than casein.
That's another good one. You know, all those marginal protein amounts and non-animal products or things like legumes, you know, tend to have a reasonable protein intake, I believe, eight grams along with 22 grams of carbs and, you know, serving of beans.
Yeah.
But, you know, get it from a variety of foods.
Sure.
Yeah.
And that's not going to hurt you.
There's no upper limit for this.
So, you know, me telling you to eat a gram per pound, first of all, you're digesting all of it.
You're absorbing all of it.
If you're overshooting, what's the harm in that? It helps control your appetite. You're
less likely to overeat. So I don't see a problem with that. The bottom line is, and this goes back
to our little bro history lesson in the beginning, from the moment I started going to gyms when I was
in high school, you need more protein. Here's a protein supplement.
Then you start picking up the magazines.
This is what we used back then.
I don't know where people get programs now.
Back then it was magazines.
And, you know, I'd say probably 90% of the magazine was advertisements for supplements.
And then some guy with, you know, veins between his eyes, you know, doing a bicep curl.
And, you know, back then it was like, what, cut-off jean shorts and, you know, between his eyes you know doing a bicep curl and you know back then it was like
what cut off jean shorts and you know work boots and he's just peeled yeah he's totally ripped and
you know veiny and you get all these supplements and even if you go into a magazine like men's
health or men's fitness it was a little bit better you get some recipes in there but
same thing like okay you need this supplement you need this supplement so then all of a sudden your mind starts thinking about supplements and nobody's,
and you know, you'll hear the guys talking about, oh, it's hard work. You know, they'll say,
they give some broad statement about the training like that, but they, you know, they won't sit
there and give you a long-term training plan that's going to get you where you need to go.
Overload was not emphasized at all. It's like, okay, do three sets of eight, three sets of 12, you know, try to do more and do 55 arm exercises, you know, not literally.
But, you know, the training kind of took a back seat and then it basically created a culture of gym bros and, you know, wannabe gym bros that I was a wannabe gym bro.
I wasn't a full gym bro because I would not actually take steroids and I wasn't naturally jacked either. Same here. I was a wannabe gym bro. I wasn't a full gym bro because I would not actually take steroids. And I wasn't naturally jacked either.
Same here.
I was a wannabe gym bro.
But then you have the culture of men that are in the gym that are just buying all these supplements and walking around with a pill container and a big gallon of water and a protein shaker bottle.
Yeah.
And then just doing arms and chest every day and not really changing much unless
you're one of the guys that are taking the sauce i had one guy when i first started doing the lp
linear progression 2013 he'd go in there and sumo deadlift 365 for a single and uh he's like yeah i
just got on test but i got a really low dose of testosterone because you know i'm just i don't
i don't want to uh i don't want to max out my gains too fast and i'm like why the fuck you want to test you you're not that strong i'm thinking that in my head you know, I don't want to max out my gains too fast.
And I'm like, why the fuck are you on test, dude?
You're not that strong.
I'm thinking that in my head, you know?
Right, right.
And I wasn't, you know, he was doing more than me at that point in time.
But I also was bought into the fact that, you know, any guy can get to 500.
You know, I believe that.
And that's what I was working towards.
And, you know, I did it.
So I still believe that to this day.
If you're willing to put the time in, you're going to pull 500 pounds're a male you know unless you're 75 you know but uh anyways so you know looking back on it i'm like yeah this
dude because he told me he's like i stopped growing i hit my limit i'm like looking back i'm
like this guy was nowhere near his fucking limit jesus christ you know right right but you know he
believed that he hit his limit because what that meant was the same silly bullshit's not working
anymore therefore any drugs you know yeah then i had another guy who was a little bit more honest
about it this is when i learned that you know sometimes you can't even tell if these guys are
on drugs because they're fat right yeah this guy was chubby guy and strong as shit but you know
he told me he was honest i was like yeah i did an lp and then i did texas method and i wanted to
keep linear progressing so i just got on drugs.
But anyways, where I was going with that was that there's this big emphasis on diet, right?
Diet's very important for training, but there are guys that think they can diet their way to a trained body, just like there are guys who believe they can exercise their way to
a trained body, just like there are guys who believe they can exercise their way to a trained body. The emphasis on training harder and harder and harder incrementally is lost.
Right. Yeah.
It's lost in space. You either get one camp where I want to worry about my nutrient timing and
getting X amount of grams of protein and making sure it's fresh food and not processed and making
sure that I'm taking creatine, protein, and NO and all this other shit. And where's the emphasis on, well, I got to add weight to the bar every week. And if I missed,
well, did I sleep enough? Did I eat enough? You know, but there's no emphasis on the progressively
harder and harder training. And it wasn't there back then either. They give you all these workouts
and then they sit there and say, oh, you got to change them because what did Arnold call it? The
shocking principle. Other people call it muscle confusion.
Muscle confusion.
You know, once I stumbled upon this information, I'm like, well, this makes logical sense.
If you're adding more and more and more over time and you're focusing on your main lifts, you're probably going to gain muscle mass, you know.
And, you know, all that stuff about volume and tonnage and work capacity, it has its place.
It's not useless.
I've used that for some clients.
Sure.
And you have to build up volume.
You have to build up fatigue.
And then you have to build up intensity.
Most people focus on the first one because it involves light weights.
Right.
Anything you can do to lift light weights and not heavier ones.
Number one.
Yeah, exactly. The number one priority when it comes to building muscle is what you do in the weight room and getting stronger one way or another.
I don't care if you don't want to do a 1RM.
Your 3RM better go up.
Your 10RM better go up.
Your 5RM better go up.
It has to go up.
If you're lifting the same amount of weight three years from now, you probably look exactly the same. And you know that. You know that. You've noticed this,
and you're pissed about it. I was. But yeah, that's my point. So protein-wise,
yeah, you need more protein. And you can supplement if you're having trouble getting all
150 to 250 or 100 to 150, 200 if you're a female. Sure, take a protein shake.
Take it after your workout.
You're starving anyway.
It'll help manage your appetite so you don't go eat the entire fridge if you're a fat guy
who needs to lose weight.
Right, yeah.
And you tend to feel better on high-protein diets.
I've heard that.
There's lots of benefits to them beyond they'll want bigger biceps.
Yeah, I can tell you that one of my experiences is training people who are under eating protein.
You know, this is the guy who's eating 100 grams of protein
while he's trying to do linear progression
or the lady that's eating 75
while she's doing linear progression
is that you tend to start seeing
like random little things pop up.
It's like, oh, my shoulder hurts today.
And then the next day it's like, my knee kind of hurts.
And so there's no pattern, right?
It's not like a chronic inflammation that's building up
or you see tendinitis start to pop up.
Oh yeah.
And that's really common.
And it's generally the first thing I look at is like,
well, how much protein are you eating every day?
You know, because if it's not enough, then.
What are your connective tissues made out of?
Protein.
Protein, right? Exactly. And yeah, so, well, that's good. enough then what are your connective tissues made out of protein protein right exactly and um yeah
so well that's good so i i think of supplements whey supplements casein supplements egg white
whatever you want to take i think of those as i don't even think of them as supplements really
i think of creatine as a supplement whey to me is just food. Now, of course, it's preferable to eat,
you know, like lean meats, whole foods, right? Fish. And that's great. But you could still,
like, I think of whey as just another, an extension of my food that I eat. Because I know
there are some people who I've encountered who are like, well, I don't know, like, I kind of
want to be like all natural and I don't want to eat, I don't want to take supplements. And I'm like, well, it's, is whey really a supplement?
You know, it's just, it's just spun down milk more or less. So, so what, what kind of maybe
like before we, we sign off, like, what are your favorite types of, you've already kind of told us,
but what are your favorite types of protein supplements
that you take? I don't take any. When I have, I typically take whey after my workout or during,
and then I take casein before bed. I've recommended egg white to a lot of people.
I actually default to that one more because there's fewer overall digestive issues.
But casein is a crapshoot, and I get a lot of clients for whatever reason.
I think chronic dieting fucks up your intestines, so I tend to get people that have dieted so
many times, and they also have intestinal issues, or they're hiring me because their
intestines are fucked up for whatever reason.
Okay, yeah.
I don't know, maybe half the people that hire me can't tolerate milk products for some reason.
And most of them can tolerate whey but not casein.
So I tend to say, yeah, go with the egg white protein if you have digestive issues or lactose intolerance or anything like that.
Okay.
Yep.
I've noticed, too, that, like, when it comes to whey, like, if you just go to the store and buy a can of whey, nine times out of 10, unless it says
otherwise, it's going to be whey concentrate. And that's just, it's also the generally the
cheaper ways will be whey concentrate. And that concentrate, that could, that's fine if you can
tolerate it. Personally, I've noticed that will give me terrible gas if I have more than a scoop
of that. So, but I have had for years now, I've been taking whey isolate.
And my understanding is basically they essentially remove the ingredient that causes gastrointestinal distress for some people in the whey isolate.
And that seems to be much more gentle on my system.
That's what I used to take actually, whey isolate.
Yeah.
It's a little bit more expensive.
It's a couple dollars more per pound, but I found it to be worth it. Still pretty cheap overall. Okay. But so we've got egg
white protein. What about those people out there that are, um, that are vegetarian or vegan?
What about those protein supplements? So you've got like hemp and rice and pea protein.
I'm sure they're sure they're all fine.
I think that they fortify that with the missing nutrients.
Typically, plant-based foods are lower in, I believe it's methionine and cysteine.
Those are the sulfur-containing amino acids.
I don't remember the leucine content of all those various plant foods.
Typically, you would be worried about leucine because the literature, the literature, the
literature, the literature, I can't, man, I can't talk today. Anyways, a lot of the literature
on protein synthesis says, talks about leucine because leucine is supposed to be the key
regulator of protein synthesis. And there's probably a higher content in animal products that I don't remember offhand.
What I do remember offhand, though, was when I wrote my protein article and had to go back and
brush up on my macronutrient metabolism, I was surprised to see that the sulfur-containing
amino acids are actually lower in some of these plant foods than animal products.
But I'm sure there's differences in content in general.
And I think with these vegetarian supplements, they try to fortify them with more amino acid to make up the difference.
Sure.
It's just a challenge with these people because these fake meats and, you know, high protein
plant foods are also high in fat and carbs. So if they're, you know, if you're dealing with an
overweight person that wants to lose weight, it's a giant pain in the ass to get enough protein in
if they're not, they're totally vegan. Um, yeah. Yeah. I used to be vegetarian. Um, I was for a
few years and, uh, I had a lot of trouble gaining lean mass, gaining weight in general. I was for a few years and I had a lot of trouble gaining lean mass, gaining weight in
general. I was very underweight when I started my linear progression and, you know, not to say it
can't be done. I'm not saying that, but I certainly struggled with it. But, okay. So, that's what
about, last question here, what about BCAAs, right? So, you can take a powder that is essentially leucine, isoleucine, and valine,
the three major muscle protein synthesis amino acids, supposedly. You can supplement with these
separately. Would you ever recommend using BCAAs? If you're taking a protein supplement like whey,
it's going to be in there already.
And if you're eating high-protein foods, they're going to be in there too.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know, all that stuff, again, it's spawned from the literature.
And it just matters less in practice.
When you start looking at outcomes, like body comp changes, it makes no difference because I'd say probably 85% of that is driven by the training.
And then, you know, 15% of it's diet.
But obviously that 15% can destroy 100% of your progress after a certain point.
So I'm not saying diet's not important.
What I'm saying is if you are trying to diet your way to more muscle in the absence of progressively
more difficult training, it's not going to work. I mean, you can eat 200 grams of protein and send
your ass. You're not going to build muscle. The stimulus has to be there. And I find that to be
the bigger problem than any diet variable is, you know, that, you know, the guys we get are kind of
bought in already. You know, they read the book. They understand the program.
They're attracted to it.
And then they're just not eating enough.
That's one thing.
But when you look at people in the gym in the aggregate, the majority of commercial gym members that seek out personal training to change their body composition, which whether they know it or not, that means they want to build muscle, are trying to diet their way to their body, you know? And like, sure, if you have to lose weight,
you're going to do most of that because you're going to lose body fat. But if you're trying to
look like someone who's muscular, you know, you can't follow a fancy diet and then sandbag the
gym, the weight room specifically, and expect to look like someone who trains. You have to train.
I mean, I hammer this all the time because it drives me nuts, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, you know, like, you know, I just want to work my arms and build more arms.
And I'm like, you're pressing, you know, 90 pounds, you know.
Right, yeah.
Let's get that up to body weight.
Let's get a body weight press, you know.
Yeah.
So, all right, yeah, I think that's sage advice, you know.
Stop worrying about making your diet really complicated. If you're going to spend any mental energy trying to think about things, think about your training and how you're going to get that next PR on the bar because that's going to net you more than trying to overcomplicate your diet. Get enough protein, get those ranges, but don't spend too much time thinking about it beyond that.
It's not worth it.
I have some rather simple advice.
How about you start training, try to put weight on the bar, and then when you can't, fuck with your diet and see what happens.
That's what I do when I coach people.
I'm like, all right, well, let me see your baseline.
Okay, you're telling me you're not eating enough protein.
Well, we'll scale that up to these ranges we talked about.
Then you're going to squat three times a week, and then you're going to add five pounds.
Wait, hold on.
Week two, why the fuck are you missing 135-pound squat?
Okay, what are you eating?
Oh, you know, 165 carbs.
Well, you add another 100 to that.
Then all of a sudden it starts moving again, right?
And then they get to about 250, and they start missing that.
All right, well, we're going to do another push here. Let's go 350 carbs a day. And then
all of a sudden they get to 315. I mean, these are just examples that I can think of offhand, but
let your training guide your diet. You know, you're not going to diet your way to the results
of training. Let your training guide your diet if your goal is to build muscle. If your goal is to
lose body fat, it flips. The diet's probably 85% of it. The training is about 15% of training. Let your training guide your diet if your goal is to build muscle. If your goal is to lose body fat, it flips. The diet's probably 85% of it. The training's about
15% of it. But if you are trying to build muscle, then you need to get stronger. So try to get
stronger by lifting weights. Try to lift heavier weights. The stimulus is the training. So if the
stimulus isn't doing its job, then look at the diet, then look at your sleep, you know, then look at supplements.
But most of these people want the training down.
I find that a lot of people want to exercise their way to a nice body or diet their way
to a nice body, but very few actually understand and appreciate the role of training.
And guess what?
It ain't happening in 12 weeks.
You want 20 pounds of muscle, you're signing up for about two years and this is going to
be your second job.
Right. Exactly. I like that. I think, and this is going to be your second job. Yeah, right.
Exactly.
I like that.
I think it's a good place to end off, man.
Yeah, that sounds good to me.
I think we touched on a lot today, and we'll pick it up next time.
So thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at Instagram, the underscore Robert underscore Santana.
Weightsandplates.com.
How about you, Trent?
Well, you know, I've realized that you kind of tricked us with that name,
Weights and Plates.
See, because like you think it's weights and plates like, you know,
what you're eating.
But actually, actually it's weights and then plates,
like plates on the bar.
Put another plate on your squat.
And then you can come and ask your diet questions bar, put another plate on your squat. And then you can
come, then you can come and ask your diet questions, but put the plate on first.
That's essentially right.
All right. So you can find me on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. You can also send
me an email, Trent at marmaladecream.com. You know, I might, I was thinking about starting
another Gmail account because I need another Gmail account that badly. I, you know, my 11th account or whatever it is, but, uh, to do it with, uh,
you know, just for, for coaching emails, just so it's not at marmalade cream. Um,
it's people like, mate, do you sell ice cream or something like, no, no, it's coaching,
but you're not competing with Halo top. I know I'm not competing with Halo top or
skinny cow or whatever.
All right.
We'll talk to you next week.
Yep. you