Hey Guys,
I'm doing IF and on a cut. I try to get my macros in 2 meals/day plus a shake. I have a shake immediately following the gym, a meal about 1.5 hours later and then my final meal before bed.
Intermittent fasting coupled with a low carb/moderate fat/high protein diet has been so good at reducing my appetite that I actually have trouble eating enough volume of clean food.
So that brings me to my question... now that the myth of 30-40g of protein being the "max" our body can handle in one meal has been shattered, I'm wondering just how high I can push the whey content in my post workout shake without going totally overboard.
Would 75g be overkill? Or do you think our body can handle that much? This shake is consumed after a taxing gym session consisting of heavy compound lifts using a push/pull split.
Thanks,
Sac
Top Ten Fasting Myths Debunked (Major Update Nov 4th) | Intermittent fasting diet for fat loss, muscle gain and health
5. Myth: Maintain a steady supply of amino acids by eating protein every 2-3 hours.
The body can only absorb 30 grams of protein in one sitting.
Truth
Whenever you hear something really crazy you need to ask yourself if it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. It's a great way to quickly determine if something may be valid or if it's more likely a steaming pile of horse****. This myth is a great example of the latter.
Do you think we would be here today if our bodies could only make use of 30 grams of protein per meal?
The simple truth is that more protein just takes a longer time to digest and be utilized. For some concrete numbers, digestion of a standard meal is still incomplete after five hours. Amino acids are still being released into your bloodstream and absorbed into muscles. You are still "anabolic." This is a fairly standard "Average Joe"-meal: 600 kcal, 75 g carbs, 37 g protein and 17 g fat. Best of all? This was after eating pizza, a refined food that should be quickly absorbed relatively speaking.
Think about this for a second.
How long do you think a big steak, with double the protein intake of the above example, and a big pile of veggies would last you? More than 10 hours, that's for sure. Meal composition plays an important role in absorption speed, especially when it comes to amino acids. Type of protein, fiber, carbohydrates and prior meals eaten all affect how long you'll have amino acids released and being taken up by tissues after meals.
Origin
I think this "30 grams of protein"-nonsense started to circulate after a classic study from 1997 by Boirie and colleagues. "Slow and fast dietary proteins differently modulate postprandial protein accretion" was the first study to quantify the absorption rate of whey and casein protein and gave birth to the concept of fast and slow protein. After that, whey protein came to be known for it's ability to rapidly elevate amino acids in the blood stream and casein for it's ability to create a sustained release of amino acids. Whey was anabolic and casein anti-catabolic.
Given that 30 grams of whey protein was absorbed within 3-4 hours, I guess some people believed that meant 30 grams of protein can only be used in one sitting. Or that you had to eat every 3-4 hours to stay "anabolic." Unfortunately, people missed a few facts that made these findings irrelevant to real-world scenarios. First of all, this study looked at the absorption rate of whey protein in the fasted state. On it's own, and with no meals eaten beforehand, 30 grams of whey protein is absorbed within a mere 3-4 hours. With meals eaten earlier in the day, or if you'd consume a whey shake after a meal, absorption would be much slower.
Second of all, whey protein is the fastest protein of all and digests at 10 g/hour. Casein is much slower; in Boirie's study, the casein protein was still being absorbed when they stopped the experiment 7 hours later. Most whole food proteins are absorbed at a rate of 3-6 grams an hour. Add other macronutrients to that and they'll take longer.
Protein Per Meal: How Much Protein Can You Eat At One Time?
See, your body is good at handling most of what you throw at it. Which is why there is no reason to think your body won’t be able to handle/use/process/digest/absorb whatever amount of protein you give it in a single meal regardless of whether it’s 20g, 30g, 40g, 50g, 60g, 70g, 80g or any other realistically capable amount you can think of. It can and it will.
Various studies (including those looking at intermittent fasting, where significant amounts of protein are eaten within shorter time frames) all support this, and not a single study I’ve ever seen shows otherwise.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/90/5/1244
The answer to this question is… we don’t know. There really is no exact amount.
But the consensus “best guess” is… a lot. As in – like I alluded to a second ago – the maximum amount of protein you’d ever be capable of consuming in a single meal. Basically, you’d go “holy crap, I can’t eat anymore” long before actually reaching that unknown maximum amount.
