I read that your body can only process X amount of protein every X hours. Does anyone know the correct amount.
I have been limiting my calorie intake to 1800 calories a day. I realize that you need so much protien per day. Let’s just say 100 grams per day.(just to make it round)
I also know that if I ate 100g of protein for breakfast that my body couldn’t handle that amount and it would not be processed by the body. So it is essentailly a waste.
So how much every X hours should I eat.
I don’t know where you got your information but it’s not correct. There is no normal limitation on how much protein your body can handle that is not equally applicable to carbohydrates or fats.
Any protein you eat is broken into amino acids and absorbed as it passes through the gut. Unless you’re suffering from diarrhoea or some other digestive tract problem it will all be digested and absorbed, none will be wasted. There would be an absolute upper limit somewhere to how much protein your body could absorb/hour, just as there is for water, sugar or salt, but food is digested over a period of hours anyway and there’s no way that someone on a calorie controlled diet could possibly reach that limit and stay there.
After absorption the amino acids can be either directly utilised to construct more protein, converted into an energy source or re-constituted into fat. I assume what you read was someone trying to say that there is a limit to how much protein your body requires to maintain itself and grow, and that any more protein will be essentially wasted in the sense that it will be used as a rather inefficient energy source. This is perfectly true but since you’re limiting calories I’m assuming your goal is to lose or maintain weight, not gain it. This being the case you’re better off sticking with the most inefficient energy sources available to make your body work extra hard to get the energy it needs to maintain itself. Protein is by far the best energy source to do this.
If you ate 100g of protein for breakfast your body would be quite easily able to handle it if you have no medical problems, and it would be digested over the normal amount of time. No waste involved.
How much protein should you eat every hour? Well unless you’re into really competitive body sculpting or something the amount per hour is bit too fine of a time scale. The amino acids will be absorbed gradually over a number of hours following the meal depending on a number of factors like their source, what the source was mixed with and how it was cooked. Your body will put them to best use as they become available.
How much should you eat per day? Well that depends on how much and what type of excercise you’re doing, including what you do at work, what the climate’s like and a huge number of other factors like age, body weight, amount of body fat, body type, level of activity and whether you’re still growing. A rule of thumb that a lot of the blokes I used to train with used was a minimum of 1.5g/kg body weight, but I have no idea if that’s true, and even if it is it would only apply to a young, lean male.
You need about 1 gram per kilogram of body weight, or around 70 grams daily. Add 30 grams for every hour that you exercise.
The sites regarding losing weight and not muscle say that your body only can use so much protein per 2 (or 3 or 4 hours).
Basically it goes on to say that if you take in more than X amount in say 2 hours it won’t be used by the body to build or maintain your muscles instead it will simply be converted to sugar and stored as fat.
But is there not a limit on protein per day? I read that is why the Atkin’s Diet is discouraged as it allows too much protein and that hurts the kidneys.
Is this not correct?
In an exercise physiology class a few years ago, I was told that any excess protein taken in will essentially be urinated out.
The professor went on to claim that high-protein diets that bodybuilders sometimes go on are a crock. Although protein intake would increase a bit for such a person, it would not go up indefinitely.
Now I don’t believe everything I hear in school, and there could have been new discoveries since then (five years ago). But that’s what I heard.
Which is almost exactly what I said above. Note the huge difference between ‘can only utilise limited amounts of protein to build or maintain your muscles’ and ‘can only process limited amounts of protein’. All protein consumed is very thoroughly processed. Eat as much protein as you like on your calorie controlled diet, it’s been allowed for in you budget as an energy source already and has actually been over-rated by most calculators, it’s not being wasted by any stretch. (caveat:- follow any medical advice first, IANAD, ensure a complete diet first and foremost with sufficient variety and plenty of fruits and veges etc. Watch your fat intake. Beyond that go wild on the egg whites and gluten slurries.)
As I said above, there would be physiologically but there’s no way that any person on a calorie controlled diet could ever come near that level. Remember that humans are opportunistic hunters by design and when prey is caught it had to be consumed rapidly in the tropical heat or left to rot. I can’t find a site but a doco I saw years ago quoted San bushmen as eating up to 5 kilograms of flesh each in one massive session and then continuing to gorge themselves for days until either the carcass was completely consumed or too rotten to warrant guarding against scavengers. Speaking from personal experience I know it’s possible to eat two whole chickens to myself in one meal without even making an effort. Understand that this isn’t pure protein but it gives you some idea of the capacity of the human body for processing protein and the evolutionary reasons why and how we do it.
Now from a nutrition point of view their may well be a maximum protein load advisable, but I suspect that unless you made an effort to pig out on gluten or something the amount of calories and particularly fat you’d be receiving would be far more harmful.
I have no idea what an Atkins Diet is, but it is quite possible to eat sufficient protein to put a strain on the kidneys. If your primary source of energy is protein, as I suspect this diet is attempting, this problem is exacerbated. Utilising protein as an energy source requires the amino groups in the amino acids to be stripped and excreted in the urine. Eating nothing but protein could certainly throw the system into overload, particularly when combined with even minor dehydration effects. Whether it would be possible to prove long-term health effects if sufficient water were being consumed would be another thing altogether. Best not to attempt anything that puts a strain on any organ system.
Any protein being excreted in the urine is a sign of some fairly serious kidney disorders and is never normal. Proteins are big molecules and your filters got to have some whopping big wholes to let them through. Amino acids are somewhat more likely to slip through but this isn’t normal and would also be a sign of some sort of illness. The human body is remarkably efficient at hoarding hard won energy, and any excess food, whether carbohydrate, fat or protein is rapidly laid down as fat for future service. In the process of converting amino acids to an energy source the nitrogen bearing amine group is stripped off and this is indeed excreted in the urine, hence the high nitrogen content of urine particularly of predators. The protein itself is not excreted, nor the amino acids under normal circumstances.
Patially true.As I said above, the body utilises what is necessary at the time the AAs find there way into the bloodstream. They can’t be stored as AAs or protein unfortunately because of problems with water balance and pH regulation, so the body de-aminates them and uses them as an energy source. Serious body builders/body sculptors rather try to ensure that there is a slight excess of complete amino acids available when they sleep and when they are exercising. There is evidence that this leads to an increased muscle build-up and fewer injuries. The reason for the high protein diets is that short of waking up or stopping training every 15 minutes to drink a glass of AA solution the best way to ensure a slow continuous release of complete AA mix into the bloodstream is to chow down on a sizeable chunk of animal carcass. Sure a lot of it’s burned as energy, but the theory is sound enough if you accept the premise that high blood AA levels improve performance. Don’t misread that as meaning body builders beleive that you can overload on protein. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any half-way serious meathead pushing the idea of overloading on AAs to improve performance. Currently they seem to be pushing overloading on carbohydrates, which may be just as silly but that’s another story. Most of the body builders I’ve met know a lot more about nutrition than I do.