141: The Protein Mistake That's Costing You Muscle

141: The Protein Mistake That's Costing You Muscle
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Today I wanna talk about something that's incredibly important but not talked about enough, and that is your daily protein intake, and more specifically, your protein timing. And not in the context of exercise performance, but in the context of living a healthy life, living a long, healthy life where you don't become fragile and fall apart as you get older.

And, you know, the thing is, your recommended daily allowance, you know, the, the amount of protein that the government suggests that you need per day is about 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. Now, the problem is that number was reverse engineered to keep a couch potato from getting sick. So it's the absolute minimum that you need to consume to not get sick That doesn't mean by eating only that amount you're gonna thrive and stay as healthy as you could possibly, uh, be.

So, and the other nuance of it is that a lot of people have been treating that floor like a ceiling, you know? And so in today's episode, I wanna talk about how much protein you actually need to thrive, plus that one part that nobody talks about, and that is how you dose it, because it's incredibly important.

You can hit your daily total protein intake and still not build and maintain the muscle tissue that you need, again, not to look good in the mirror, but to function optimally. Welcome to the Primal Shift Podcast. You know, protein isn't just for, for gym pros, you know? It's a struc- it's structural. It's not optional.

And muscles are also not optional, you know? And I'm not talking about, you know, bodybuilding or, you know, benching 300 pounds or whatever, you know. And that's not the point. Muscles are incredibly important because they're a metabolic engine. They are a sink for glucose, so even if you consume carbohydrates, if you have sufficient muscle tissue, that extra glucose gets stored in the muscle in the form of glycogen, so instead of converting into fat and growing your belly, you know?

And it's also an incredibly, muscles are incredibly important insurance policy against, uh, frailty, you know? Strength is one of the most important predictors of independence as you get older. So if you're strong now in your 40s and in your 50s, the chances that you're gonna thrive when you're 75 or 80 are significantly higher than for anyone who is already weak and with not, uh, enough lean muscle tissue when they are younger.

It's also, protein happens to be most of the, one of the most satiating macros, and it's incredibly hard to overeat. You know, here is the thing. People always ask me, "Dude, you know, how do you stay so, so ripped and, you know, and muscular," and all of that. You only go to the gym twice a week on a, in a good week, you know?

Sometimes I, last three weeks I have gone once, you know? But I still maintain enough muscle mass. I mean, obviously, you know, I, I trained for that in the past. I did CrossFit five times a week or so. But the way I maintain it, I'm not, you know, trying to grow muscle tissue anymore, I'm just trying to maintain Is by consuming enough protein, and I eat like a pig.

I- I've said it often in the past, I frequently overeat, but I usually overeat in protein, and that's incredibly difficult to overeat from the perspective of, of having negative health outcomes. You know, when I eat, overeat in protein, you know, it's not that it gets converted to fat. I mean, it technically it can.

You know, it can technically, but that's not very likely. It's very expensive for the body to convert protein into, into energy and into fat and store it, you know? Um, and that's one of the things, you know. You, you can maintain muscle tissue signific- very, very well if you just consume a reasonable amount of protein.

And so what is a reasonable amount? Well, for anyone who is somewhat active, and again, you know, I'm going to the gym maybe twice a week. Um, not that I'm a couch potato all the time. You know, I do work on the homestead. I move around, I lift feed bags. You know, I do all of those, you know, farm fit kind of things, but it's not that I'm lifting weights, you know, five times a week.

And for anyone who is somewhat active, I recommend, I would recommend one gram per pound of body weight, not the one gram per kilo that you might have heard somewhere else. One gram of pound, and at least 0.7 gram, but I would shoot for one gram per pound of body weight. And the older you get, the more protein you need, not less, you know?

Because as you get older, your anabolic resistance increases, and that means for the same dose, you get a weaker anabolic response, so you're building less muscle tissue even with the same amount of protein that you could get away with when you were 20. So the older you get, the more protein you wanna consume.

And I don't weigh my protein. I don't count my protein. I just make sure that every meal is centered around animal protein, be it beef, be it pork, be it eggs, be it, in some cases, poultry. You know, especially if those birds come from our own homestead. Animal protein is the center of almost every meal.

There are exceptions of course. Sometimes we have spaghetti night, but even then, I have a one serving of the spaghetti, sourdough spaghetti, and a ton of ground meat with tomato sauce on top or meatballs. There's always a significant protein component, and in most, in most cases, if we have burger patties for examples with, you know, some sides, I might eat, I don't know, six, seven, eight patties, uh, and then, you know, maybe sweet potato fries, fermented sweet potato fries or whatever on the side.

But the core is always protein, uh, without me having to count. Now, the one thing that is incredibly important is timing. Not from a perspective of, oh, you need to eat within 30 minutes after working out, otherwise you're gonna miss your protein window, whatever. No, I think that's BS for the most part. But what does matter is that, um, muscle building and muscle...

And, and by main- maybe also something to clarify. When I say I maintain my muscle tissue, that still involves building muscle tissue, creating muscle tissue, because cells get recycled, get degraded, um, and new ones have to be built, and there is this balance of degradation and creation, and you wanna be at, at least even, but ideally so that you build more than what degrades.

The same goes with joint tissue and all of those things. There's always this balance between destroying things and building new things, and you wanna make sure you, you're at least even, but ideally a little bit ahead of the game where you build more than what gets destroyed. And with muscle building in particular, again, that's important if you actually wanna build more muscle tissue or just maintaining it, um, that happens in pulses.

You know, it's not that if you eat, let's say you are 100 pounds and you, you eat 100 grams of protein per day, and you split it up into, into small junctions of maybe 15 protein, 15 grams of protein here, 15 here, 15 here, 15 here. That will not trigger muscle protein synthesis. You need approximately 30 grams of quality protein per sitting, per meal, to trigger muscle protein synthesis.

If you don't get that amount, then it's nothing is going to happen, you know? And so splitting your protein intake in a lot of smaller doses is a recipe for not building muscle tissue at all, you know, and not maintaining it either, because you're always gonna degrade, and if you don't rebuild at the same rate, you're gonna lose, you know?

Not a good thing. So what I do is typically I split my protein intake into two meals. That's breakfast and that's dinner. Um, you know, depending when I break my fast, and we typically have an early dinner. Occasionally, sometimes, especially when I work outside, like yesterday, I had to transfer 3,000 pounds of pig feed from big bags that were, uh, delivered on pallets using a five-gallon bucket into feed drums.

So I shoveled by hand five thou- uh, 3,000, um, pounds of that feed from A to B. That was incredibly exhausting, and I had to move the barrels. You know, there was a lot of physical labor involved, and I got really, really hungry, and so I had some beef, uh, snack in between. I ate extra meat, so to say, extra protein in between, um, to even in- to increase my protein intake even more in between those meals, you know.

But I, I never have three, four meals. That's just what I'm used to. If you wanna have three, four meals, that's fine, but I don't recommend, you know, like eating every two hours a little bit of protein, you know? For me, the two meals a day with sometimes a meat snack in between has been working incredibly well.

And, and the one reason why you need enough protein per meal is that there are specific amino acids that cause that muscle protein synthesis switch to be flipped, and one of those amino acids is leucine. You know, that's really the primary trigger. You need enough leucine in your meal, two to three grams, uh, approximately, to fire fully, so your muscle protein synthesis works the way it should.

If you have less leucine proportion, then you need a significantly bigger pile, you know, to clear that, that threshold. And that's also one of the reasons why plant-based proteins are not ideal for the purpose of triggering muscle protein synthesis. They have, generally speaking, less leucine proportion. So again, you need larger amounts.

They have lower digestibility scores because of the anti-nutrients, etc., that you u- usually don't see on the label. So the amount of protein that you might see on the label is actually not the protein that your body can use. Um, whereas with animal-based protein, that, you know, what you see on the label is typically what the body can use.

And also, they are, uh, plants have incomplete amino acid profiles. There are certain grains in particular, they are low in, in lysine, they are, um, legumes are low in, uh, methionine, and there are, there are certain amino acids missing to make the entire protein matrix incomplete, and also that's also gonna negatively impact your muscle protein synthesis.

So, you know, if, if you're on a plant-based trip or whatever, know that you need significantly more and combinations of different plant proteins to get somewhat close to what an animal-based protein can offer. So why even bother? In my opinion, just eat the, the animal-based protein and you get everything that you need.

Um, so timing is important, or dosing I should say. Not necessarily the timing, but dosing really is important. Um, and with that, I wanna talk a couple of... talk about a couple of myths that are surrounding your protein intake that are, some of which I'm sure you've heard. Well, number one is We have to interrupt this episode for an important message from your feet.

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 And now back to the episode. Well, if you consume a high-protein diet or eat that much protein, you know, that wrecks your kidneys.

And that's BS. I mean, yes, if you already have kidney damage, and I on... and, and are on dialysis, you know, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not telling you just ignore the, you know, your doctor's advice and eat a lot of protein. You know, I've never dealt with that. I have healthy kidneys, fortunately, but I know for a fact that anyone who is healthy, who has healthy kidneys, you cannot overeat on protein.

There is no evidence whatsoever suggesting that if you're healthy and you eat a lot of protein, you're gonna damage your kidneys. That's BS. The second thing that I wanna bust is, you know, that, oh, you need to consume protein 30 minutes before or aft- or before or after your workout, otherwise you close the window and it's not gonna do anything for you.

The total protein intake on a day, especially if you consume, you know, those larger amounts, at least 30 grams per meal, is all you need. Don't worry about the specific timing. I never worry about my timing at all. Sometimes I ... Well, most of the time I work out fasted, and I don't eat right after either.

Sometimes, you know, I, I, I do eat before or I work out later, whatever. It don't matter. I mean, I've not seen ... I mean, you know, I, I've never seen an impact on my timing. Dosing, yes. Timing, no. Um- Another thing that you might have heard as well that if you overconsume protein, you know, that just turns into carbohydrate or glucose and, you know, it, it, you, it becomes fat then at the end of the day if the body doesn't need, you know, the, the glucose and you store it as fat, et cetera.

Technically true, there is such a thing as the body converting protein to glucose. That's a, that's a thing. It can happen. But again, protein is the hardest, uh, macro to store, the most expensive to digest, and the most filling, and it's incredibly difficult to o- to truly overeat on protein. Yes, you can obviously eat too much and you feel full and you feel like, oh, you know, I can't move.

But be- beyond that, I overeat on protein, I don't know, I wanna say five out of s- of, of, of 10 meals. I have not gotten fat. I have not seen any, any evidence whatsoever that that causes any, any problems. Uh, I think overeating in fat, yes, you know, it's a lot of, lot of energy. Overeating in carbohydrates obviously, you know, can have negative side effects.

Overeating in protein, very difficult. So, so I would not worry too much and especially in the context of, you know, counting. Um, and all, not all proteins are the same. I mean, I already talked about that. You know, uh, 30 grams of beef is not the same as 30, uh, grams of a grain blend. You know, there are, you know, amino acid compositions, you know, digestibility, completeness, you know, all of those things vary.

Animal-based protein is one of the best sources of protein, and I'm not only talking about, you know, muscle protein. There's obviously protein in, in organ meats, uh, et cetera, you know, in eggs, et cetera. So all of those, all animal-based proteins are good. There are obviously digestibility issues or differences I should say, not necessarily issues, but differences between the various animal proteins.

You know, some people do better with bison versus beef, et cetera. Some people have trouble with egg, especially the egg whites. Um, so all of that, you know, aside, but animal proteins in a nutshell are significantly better and certainly not the same than plant-based, uh, proteins. So with that, you know, to recap everything, I would stop treating that recommended daily allowance, you know, the 0.36 grams, uh, per pound, as a target.

That's really the absolute floor. I would recommend, without you going nuts and counting and, and, and stressing out about it, um, to shoot for roughly one gram per pound And even more as you age. I know that maybe at the older you get, the more difficult you might find it to eat a lot. Um, I can see that.

But you know what? I've, I've noticed that, you know, a couple of beef sticks or, you know, a small stick of salami from a well-raised, you know, pig or well-raised pork, you know, that has a ton of... It's so easy to get just a meat snack and have 40 more grams of protein. You know, the other day, I just ate, ate a couple of...

Well, a couple of, I ate a whole stick of salami and a, and a, and a chunk of cheese, and I had, like, 50 more grams of protein. That was my snack in the afternoon. You know, that was not even counting my breakfast with eggs and beef, and then again, my beef or pork, you know, for dinner. So I weigh 215 pounds. I need to get, or my goal is to get 250 pounds or grams of protein per day.

That is a lot of protein, but it's doable. You know, it is absolutely doable, and the more active you are, the more you feel like, you know, you, you need more volume to eat. And if you make every meal, again, centered around the protein and not... Don't fill up with salad, you know, and all of those, and maybe the bread before the meal, you know, like in a restaurant and stuff.

No. Focus on the protein. If you do that, it's very easy to hit those numbers. At least that's the experience that I've had. And e- you know, even my, my wife, who is not as big of an eater as I am in the sense of, you know, she doesn't eat the volume, obviously. I mean, she's also half the size. But she also for a while, you know, said, "Okay, let's see if I can, you know, hit my 100, 115," or whatever, you know, her, her goal is, uh, grams of protein.

And, and she could do it as well. It is possible. You just need to center every meal around protein and then use everything else for flavor or, you know, variety, whatever you want. But make the center protein. You know, your body is built out of protein. It's the building. Protein is the building blocks of everything, and it's one of the, those predictors.

You know, your muscle, your muscle tissue, the amount of muscle tissue you have, lean muscle tissue, is one of the core predictors on how you will age. You know, do you wanna feel frail and not being able to move anymore and, you know, higher mortality rates and all of those things? Then by all means, don't eat protein.

But if you wanna avoid that, if you wanna stay strong, if you wanna say, stay mobile and, and be able to do things, just not, again, not lifting, not going to the, to the gym and bench pressing 300 pounds, but just being able to, you know, lift up your groceries, to carry buckets, to, to do, like, stuff that you need to do to function optimal, to, to, you know, to live your life, you need to consume protein.

That's incredibly important. Not only protein. A source of energy is also important. My preferred source of energy is, are animal fats, obviously. Uh, but also, you know, some carbohydrates are perfectly fine, but you cannot skimp on protein. So with that, we're gonna wrap it up. I hope you found this episode helpful.

Again, remember, 30 grams per meal at least or more. and one gram per pound of body weight. See you in the next episode