Macronutrients like carbohydrates and essential fatty acids play an important role in building muscle and losing fat. There is another macronutrient that is absolutely critical to your fitness success.
Read on to see how your body uses protein to build muscle.
Like essential fatty acids, proteins are involved in many important functions in your body. Your body simply won’t function very well if it doesn’t have the protein it needs to sustain it.
Protein is particularly important for people like YOU who lift weights, because protein is considered one of the “building blocks” of muscle. Protein helps you build new muscle and helps repair damaged tissue.
There are two types of protein sources:
Complete proteins. These are foods that provide all the essential amino acids your body needs to thrive. In general, most animal sources of protein (eg, meat) include all essential proteins, making animal protein complete.
incomplete proteins. These are proteins that do not include all the essential amino acids. You will usually find incomplete proteins in your plant sources.
The key (whether you’re a vegetarian or not) is to eat protein from a variety of sources. It is very likely that these incomplete proteins complement each other.
How much protein do you need to eat?
One guideline you can use is to get about 40% of your calories from good protein sources. Since you’re lifting weights (or bodybuilding, if you want), there’s another guide. That is, you should be getting about one gram of protein for every pound of body weight.
That is one way to do it. The second popular method is to eat one gram of protein per pound of lean tissue. That means you calculate your body fat, subtract how many pounds of fat you have, and eat one gram of protein for the remaining pounds.
For example, let’s say you weigh 200 pounds with 14% body fat. That means you are carrying 28 pounds of fat (200 pounds X.14 = 28). Now subtract that 28 pounds from your total weight (200-28) and you’ll get 172 pounds of other fabric. In this case, you should eat 172 grams of protein.
Now, look at the recommended daily allowance, and you’ll see that nutrition experts often recommend around half that amount. So here’s what I suggest: split the difference and start tracking your results for a month or two to see what works best.
That’s all for this time. Remember, if you are not satisfied with the amount of muscle you are packing, you can increase your protein levels until you are in the range used by professional bodybuilders.
Peace!
-David McCready