Latest / No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK / HOW MUCH PROTEIN DO I ACTUALLY NEED TO LOSE FAT AND GAIN MUSCLE?

Transcript

HOW MUCH PROTEIN DO I ACTUALLY NEED TO LOSE FAT AND GAIN MUSCLE? · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutritionist: Hello and welcome to No Forking Nonsense, the second most listened to nutrition podcast in The United Kingdom. And we've got one goal to answer your nutrition questions with no nonsense. To send your question in email podcastthenutritionistuk dot com. Give me your name, what your problem is, what your question is, a little bit about yourself and we'll get your questions answered. Let's get stuck in to today's question.
• 0:25
  Is from Dan in Sheffield. Paul, I'm 38, I work shifts as a paramedic and I train three or four times a week, mostly weights with the odd run thrown in. I'm trying to lose a bit of fat while hanging on to the muscle that I've got and like everyone right now I've been swept up in the protein conversation. Every label, every influencer is banging on about it. I've ended up with protein bars, protein yoghurt, protein cereal, even protein water, well, in my trolley.
• 0:55
  But I genuinely don't know how much I actually need. Some people say one gram per pound of body weight, others say that it's marketing nonsense and I'm wasting my money. I'm eighty two kilograms, training a few times a week and my shift patterns are all over the place so my eating is too. Am I getting conned by all the high protein packaging or do I really need that much? Also, does timing matter or is the whole anabolic window thing overblown as well?
• 1:27
  What a brilliant question and it s one that s obviously quite important because most people don eat enough protein. First place to start is that the NHS guidance is consistently and has been for god knows how many years completely against all research. I think NHS suggests that you have 0.8 gskg. The honest evidence based for someone, well anyone really, is actually in kilograms and not pounds per body weight and I know it gets confusing, but for someone training and trying to hold muscle, you want roughly 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, not pound. Now if you re not training and you re not lifting weights, you still probably need an absolute minimum of 1.2 gs per kilogram of body weight.
• 2:28
  I usually try and sit people anything between 1.5 up to 1.8 gs depending on circumstances. For Dan, at eighty two kilograms, you need probably around 100 and thirty-one 180 grams a day, so somewhere in between that 1.6 to 2.2. The one gram per pound rule, which would put you near one hundred and sixty five grams, lands at the top of this range, so it s not wrong but it s the ceiling, not the requirement. People treat it as a minimum and then they panic if they miss it. I guess the key nuance for DAN specifically is that when you re in a fat loss deficit and training, protein becomes more important, you need to nudge it up and not down because it protects muscle, it s going to keep you full because it well it just keeps you full.
• 3:21
  So your instinct to prioritise it is right but potentially you're overshooting the precision there. Anywhere in the range that you've outlined, so hitting 150 gs versus 165 gs is not going to be a big difference between results and no results, you consistently just need to be hitting it across the week, that matters more than nailing the number daily. The thing to say though when you re training is that we need a certain amount of carbohydrate to maximise the metabolism of our protein. So if you are just having pure protein and not enough carbohydrate, it's unlikely you are going to get the results that you are after. Are you getting conned by high protein packaging?
• 4:02
  This is a big one and very, very current right now. The word protein on a label is an absolute trigger right now, I have seen all sorts of stuff. I haven seen protein water, so that s a new one. But I ve seen high protein on a bag of nuts when it's a fat source, I've seen high protein everything, right, and I'm sure you have, Dal. But it just comes with a price premium.
• 4:28
  The trap is that a lot of high protein products add only a token amount of protein, while still being high in sugar and fat for the cost. There s a lot of protein noise and the thing that I often say to people is you want to try and work out the kind of protein to bullshit ratio and the way that you look at it is how much protein per 100 gs versus how much sugar per 100 gs. If protein is superior, then we re in a good spot and that goes for fat as well. If sugar and fat numbers are higher than the protein and it says source of protein or high protein, probably not ideal. Protein cereal is probably one of the worst offenders because you just pay an extra cash for a label with.
• 5:12
  The rule of thumb is that you don't need engineered protein products to hit your target. Real food will do it cheap, chicken, eggs, green yoghurt, fish, tofu, beans, milk, tin of fish are all going to be cheaper and a better cost per quality every single time. Where protein products do earn their place are convenience, so when real food isn't practical, which is exactly what Dan's shift work problem is, they can be at all. As long as you are buying them for convenience and not because you think you need them, they can be really helpful. Where I would say that perhaps it is necessary is getting yourself a good protein powder or some good protein pouches just because they are convenient and they are just foods.
• 5:58
  I stand by protein powder is not anything but milk in powdered form, they can be really helpful. The heart of the problem in the question here is not the number, it s that he s eating chaotically because of his shifts, so the answer is about him addressing that as opposed to how many grams he needs. What you want to do if you're in Dan's situation is anchor protein to every eating occasion and actually this goes for everybody and you want to eat it as regularly as possible rather than chasing a daily total. So a good palm size of protein at every single meal will get most people most of the way without having to track. You could build a few portable no prep protein options that you can grab on a long shift and this is where a protein product can help, but alongside things like chicken and boiled egg, yoghurt, meal, leftover meat, whatever, but you want to front load as well where you can.
• 6:59
  If shifts mean that meals are getting skipped, getting protein in early when the day starts is going to of beat anything than cramming it in late into the day. Does timing matter, is the anabolic window overblown? So for those who don't know, back in the day there was a big trend and I certainly was caught up in it in the late naughtys early 10s, that you need to eat within thirty minutes of training or you're going go run to catabolic. So it is overblown, the idea that you have to slam a protein shake within ten minutes and otherwise you ve wasted a session is a complete myth. What actually matters is the total daily protein, with the secondary point being rough distribution across a day, so spreading it over three-four meals is marginally better than one big hit, rather than a magic post window workout.
• 7:49
  So if you're eating enough protein just across a day and you've spread it out and you're having enough before your workout, perhaps after your workout then you're going to be in an okay spot. For a shift worker, hopefully this is quite liberating because you can stop stressing about the perfect timing and just focus on getting enough across the day where you can. Is there anything else I need to say about protein? As a guide, depending on your weight, you need to aim for probably 20 five-thirty gs every time you eat, maybe even forty-fifty gs certainly for meals to try and get your protein in. Remember it's going to help with skin, it's going to help with hair, it's going help with growth, it's going to help with fat loss, going to help with energy, it's going to help with your sleep.
• 8:38
  If you re avoiding protein, or if you re not getting enough protein in, that isn ideal, but not all protein is equal. There is a lot of shit out there and a lot of it s really expensive. The easiest full amino acid profile of protein is your whole foods, your meats, your fishes, your nuts but be careful of nuts because they can be a high fat source, eggs, your seeds, your legumes, tofu, whatever, that s going to get to where you want to get it to. But I guess the takeaway for Dan is it s not necessarily being conned by protein itself, it s genuinely the nutrient most worth prioritising for most people but certainly for Dan, but he s probably being upsold by the packaging and overcomplicating the timing. The simple version is aim for a sensible target from mostly real foods, use protein products only when convenience demands it, get some at each meal and probably forget about the post workout window.
• 9:38
  The only time it matters is if you, let s say you ve gone to the gym, had your lunch and then you went to the gym at 04:00 and you didn't eat anything between lunch and your workout, which you probably should have done, and if you're not going to eat for three hours afterwards. Otherwise all the research tells us that you've probably got enough protein, got enough carbohydrate around your workout. Remember, certainly post workout you need carbohydrate to metabolise that protein. Smashed in a protein shake within ten minutes of working out, your body isn't going to digest it. If you've worked hard enough in the gym, it's unlikely that the blood in your body is not going to be able to digest it because it's nowhere near your stomach, so you just kind of slamming a protein shake is just going to delay the digestion.
• 10:24
  Hope So that made sense, Dan hope you found this tutorial, you want to get your question on next week's episode, email podcastthenutritionistuk dot com and I'll get your question answered, take care. Thanks for listening to this episode of No Forking Nonsense, if you would like to get your question on a future episode, email podcastnutritionistuk dot com. If you would like a free meal maker resource, click the top link in the description and don't forget to follow me on Instagram Paul, the nutritionist. Chat to you next week.