To what extent can protein supplementation replace dietary protein?

Factual Questions
1

Question is a little more complicated than that.

Background: I’m trying to build lean muscle mass and lose weight via low carb dieting and exercise. I’m very confident that the most effective way to lose weight and gain general fitness is to build muscle and lean body mass, raising your basal metabolic rate/passive calorie burning and also just making you better at whatever you want to do physically.

Most people who diet do a low calorie/low fat thing that seems to me to give them insufficient protein intake which leads to stunted lean body mass development or even losing it. Especially if they’re doing it in the extreme - people will say it’s unhealthy to lose more than about 2 pounds a week, but I disagree. If you’re doing it due to severe caloric deprivation that comes with protein deprivation, then absolutely - losing that much almost certainly means you’re losing lean body mass in that instance which is counterproductive.

However, in the past I’ve had success with losing well over 2 pounds per week of fat while actually gaining lean body mass because I’ve eaten more than adequate calorie intake and more than adequate protein intake. Low carb diets in general tend to come with lots of protein.

But this time around - maybe because I’m older and I can’t work out as hard, or my recovery time is slower, or some other reason - I’m not seeing nearly as fast progress on the weight. I’ve never restricted calories at all before, figuring that with regulated blood sugar, the body tells you when it needs to eat rather than when your blood sugar drops. So I just followed the hunger, ate plenty, worked out a ton, and the weight flew off.

But since I’m not able to work out as hard or as often as I’d like, and I’m not seeing as much progress as I’d like, I’m considering watching my calories and cutting them down significantly. My concern is that if I’m not eating enough, then I won’t be building lean mass, which is ultimately counterproductive.

So my question is: can I increase my protein intake through supplementation (particularly whey protein powder) so that despite reducing my caloric and dietary protein intake, I can still build muscle while losing weight?

Or is there some other factor at work? Like supplemented protein isn’t an adequate replacement for dietary protein for some reason. Or that low calorie intake independent of protein intake can stunt muscle growth. Or that food would contain things the body needs other than protein that I wouldn’t be getting an adequate amount of?

I’m at about 295 now. An online basal metabolic rate calculator puts me at 2620. I swim every day (or about 3/4 days if I’m feeling too sore) for about an hour burning off somewhere around 700 more calories. I eat around 2200 calories. In theory, that should give me a deficit of around 1000 calories a day, so I should be seeing a 2 pound loss per week in theory. My actual loss has been slower than that, but I’m wondering if building lean mass is offsetting fat loss somewhat. In any case, I find 2 pounds per week to be inadequate for my goals, so I’m considering dropping my calorie consumption down to about 1200-1400 and supplementing with around 60g of whey protein.

What would the likely effects be?

2

First off, yes there is good evidence that adequate protein in a low calorie diet combined with exercise (especially some element of reistance exerice) can allow for preservation of, or even increase in, lean body mass (aka fat free mass or FFM) while losing weight. The total weight lost is about the same but more of the weight lost is fat. Protein is also satiating and its being relatively high on a low carb diet is thought by some to be the “real” reason that total calorie intake is usually less on a low carb diet even while being allowed to eat as much as one wants.

In the studies they often define the high protein arm as 20 to 30% of total daily calories. About 100 to 150 grams of protein a day (protein contains 4 calories per gram) on a typical moderately low calorie diet. I would not go over that 30% mark.

In more significant calorie reduction conditions higher protein merely allows for less mucle mass loss but some is still lost.

There is some thought that protein high in branched chain amono acids, especially in the window after exercise, fosters muscle mass growth more than other proteins. Dairy protein (whey and casein) are such sources, hence they are often prefered as supplements, especially dairly as it is absorbed quickly.

Protein has calories no matter how you take it in. Some supplementing makes it easier to hit the target you are aiming for and with the branched chain amino acid rich sources that may help your goal, but a variety of real food does have the advantage of other micronutrients. It is a supplement to your dietary protein intake, not a replacement of.

3

But if I could manage, say, 80g of protein through diet and another 50 through supplementation, would that be as good as getting 130 through diet? I hear stuff here and there about “incomplete” proteins and such, and I really have no idea how all that works. To use a comparison, taking a vitamin pill every day is a poor substitute for getting those vitamins in your food for reasons I don’t quite fully understand, but it makes me wonder if supplemental protein is similarly an inadequate replacement for dietary protein.

Practically speaking, if I’m doing resistance exercise, eating 100-150 grabs of protein a day combined, but only taking in maybe 1300 total calories, is it practical to expect to gain lean mass? Would it be at a very slow pace compared to if I were eating double that amount of calories but the same total amount of protein?

4

Let me see if i can explain this succinctly.

Proteins are made up of amino acids. Think of amino acids as the ingredients in a “recipe” for a particular protein. There are about 20 that are called “essential” amino acids because you have to get them entirely from your diet, your body can’t synthesize them.

“Incomplete” proteins are dietary proteins that don’t contain significant amounts of a particular essential amino acid or acids. Your body trying to construct certain proteins from such food is like trying to bake a cake when you have flour but no eggs, or not enough eggs. The essential amino acid becomes the limiting factor in how much of the protein in the food your body can use.

Happily, foods low in particular amino acids tend to be high in others, and you can combine them to increase the useable protein in your diet. It’s as if you and your neighbor collaborated to make a cake and you bring the milk and he brings the eggs and as a result you both get more cake than if you attempted to bake on your own.

This is the basis for combining beans and rice - combined they have more usable protein than if you ate the separately, they’re greater than the sum of their parts (and before anyone else jumps in, yes, I do know you don’t have to eat them at the same time but I’m trying to keep this simple)

So, when looking for a protein supplement it is important to know if it’s a complete protein or not. If it’s a complete protein derived from food (like whey protein) yes it should work just as well as actual food as far as protein goes, but you would most likely miss out on other important nutrients since the processing for such supplements only concentrates on the protein and not on anything else. You also have to worry about contamination of supplements but that’s a concern with many highly processed items.

5

Aha. In particular I have this stuff. It seems to be well reviewed. Whey protein isolate, lactase, aminogen, BCAA, glutamine - whatever all that stuff is. Apparently it’s a big deal that it’s made in the USA so it isn’t adulterated with lead and goat piss. Is that stuff an adequate replacement for reduced dietary protein if I reduce my caloric intake?

6

I used to take a whey protein supplement, and it gave me the worst, most insanely odorific gas. If you have to work around other people in an enclosed environment I suggest skipping the powder and eating a chicken breast or something.

7

Whey is a dairy derived protein, you need lactase to properly digest it. If you have insufficient lactase for the amount consumed yes, your intestinal bacteria will generate gas suitable for chemical warfare.

8

Well, here’s a question, which may also help the OP a bit, too.

With the supplements, I typically add frozen fruit, peanut butter, and stuff (and I use milk instead of water) to make it a more complete shake (at least in my mind).

Is that actually effective? For example, one of my typical recipes goes like this:

Two scoops of whey protein (16g protein/scoop)
12 oz whole milk
one frozen banana
frozen berries
about a 1/4 cup peanut butter
and if I’m feeling frisky about 1/4 cup Nutella.

Since I know the protein supplements are only for the protein I figured that may help.

Another interesting thing I saw about a week ago: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/drink-soylent-and-youll-never-have-to-eat-again

9

A few notes from personal experience. These are just observations I have made in counting calories over the years as part of weight loss and exercise efforts.

People vary widely in basal metabolic burn rates. Online calorie calculators are useful but not always all that precise. Those who have have gained and lost substantial amounts of weight over the years often have developed unusually low daily calorie requirements (versus the average) relative to the daily calories required to maintain a certain weight set point. Even with substantive daily exercise (working out swimming etc) your average real world daily requirements might be no more than 10 calories per lb of body weight. Assuming a daily requirement of 2,900 even with exercise if you are eating 2200 - 2300 cals a day your weekly deficit is probably closer to 4,000 - 5,000 per week or around 1 - 1.3 lbs of expected loss not 2 lbs. As your weight loss progresses your allowable intake levels will obviously become even more challenging.

Your loss rate goals are kind of at odds with building muscle. To do a sustainable job of losing weight and replacing it with muscle to the extent possible, even with protein supplements requires a fair number of calories for sustaining muscle growth (and not inconsequentially also having the energy to work out hard, and this is going to mean a fairly slow loss rate of 1-1.5 lbs per week. It’s very difficult to have the fast loss rate you are looking for and still be able to build substantial muscle.

Going to starvation calorie levels to get loss rates of 3-5 lbs week is going to make it near impossible to slap on substantive muscle. You can certainly do this and get more fit aerobically with exercise, but muscles need a decent calorie intake level to build themselves up.

10

What exactly is the mechanism for muscles needing calories to build? I mean, your body can metabolize your own fat stores to get whatever energy you need for the process. So I would think that it would be a lack of building resources for those muscles rather than a lack of energy that’s the concern. Hence my whole questions about the protein intake.

I mean in an extreme hypothetical, ignoring other micronutrients and such, couldn’t someone with substantial fat stores + eating a ton of protein suppliments conceivably build muscle? If not, what’s stopping them exactly?

11

The broscience hypothesis on this is that the hormones (and other signals) that tell your body to start breaking down fat stores cannot operate at the same time as the various anabolic pathways. In other words, it’s hard or impossible to tell your body to build muscle while also telling it to use fat, in the same way that it’s hard to go forward and reverse at the same time in a car because your metabolism is analogous to a transmission.

I don’t know whether that has a foundation in non-broscience. Anecdotally, plenty of people manage to put on some muscle mass while losing fat. Obviously, even if the anabolic/catabolic hypothesis is true, you could still alternate between them in a beneficial way.

I would be curious to hear from the medical types whether we know if these metabolic modes are a real thing, and if so, how quickly your body can go from one to the other.

12

No you do not. Lactase is needed for digesting lactose, the common sugar of milk. Whey supplements typically contain little to no lactose.

Yes. Protein causes an insulin spike (which helps drive the amino acids into the muscle cells) and some carbs along with it is a good idea. Just remember that what have created is a decent amount of calories.

Two part answer.

  1. The broscience is roughly correct. It is hard to send the messages to build tissue (anabolism) and to breakdown tissue (catabolism) at the same time. As mentioned it can be done, to some degree, if the there is adequate protein, only a modest calorie deficit, and in the face of resistance exercise, but your early years experience of losing fat quickly while gaining muscle mass is extremely uncommon. That said in the 80s protein sparing modified fasts were sometimes used (highly monitored and supplemented with various micronutrients) and managed to result in weight loss with sparing of fat-free mass. They went by the wayside partly because of bad press from one version that used an incomplete protein and had an unfortunate side effect of sometimes killing people (pdf), the realization that the loss did not keep, and I suspect, the emergence of bariatric surgery as an option.

  2. There seems to be an upper limit to how much protein the body can handle, often stated as roughly 35 to 40% of total daily calories. (Although I am not clear if that is actually a gram amount based on an active adult male’s calorie needs; it may not apply to a low calorie diet.) Much more and ammonia builds up which is, shall we say, not a good thing.

13

My understanding is a high protein, very low calorie diet is fairly good at muscle sparing, and those diets are less than 500 or so calories a day, and likely only involved 80-100 grams of protein a day.

Another theory I have heard other than the ‘2 pounds a week’ theory is that each pound of fat can burn X calories a day, beyond that you start burning muscle. I have no idea how true it is, because we are all so genetically different. back when I used to care about my appearance I used to read a lot of studies on pubmed and the like about underfeeding and overfeeding. Even among small sample groups of a few dozen people you’d get drastically different reactions to overfeeding or underfeeding. Some people gained tons of fat, some gained none. Some lost tons of fat, some lost almost none. etc.

I don’t know the figure for the ‘calories per pound of fat per day’ theory, but I think it is about 30-40. So if you have 100 pounds of fat, you can run a deficit of 3000 calories a day and most of it will be fat.

14

One lb of fat contains approx. 3600 food calories. The typical calorie range used in estimating the caloric deficit needed for a lb of fat loss is based on this estimate of calories per lb of fat, however within this context there is some debate over whether human body fat burn rate *in the body *can really be accurately gauged by this metric and if 3,600 calories of deficit will really equal 3,600 of body fat loss. Based on my calorie counting over time I’ve found that it’s not an exact 1 to 1 correspondence of caloric deficit to fat lost, but it’s not all that far off and it suffices for general loss estimate projections when dieting.

I’m not sure how you are projecting a real world deficit of 3000 cals per day. Baring some metabolic disease you would have to be working out like a professional athlete and eating at starvation levels to achieve that.

15

So interesting experience. In my first 6 weeks of swimming I actually gained 5-8 pounds in the first week and then slowly lost them over the next 5 weeks, very slow loss rate. But I hurt an abdominal muscle (and maybe something else) and took a week off for it to heal. During this week off, though, I dropped 7-8 pounds.

Strange, and maybe there’s something else at work (can the extra water your muscles take on under stress disappear that quickly when you stop using them?), but could that be explained by the fact that my body was having an easier time sending the fat burning signals when I wasn’t actually working out?

16

I’m going to chime in here and add, cardio is magnificient, but if you are keen on losing fat quickly, you need to introduce weight/strength training.

When you do aerobic (cardio) like swimming, that bumps your metabolic rate while you are exercising, and for a time after, until it slows back to your basal rate. If you increase muscle mass though, your basal rate needs to rise to accommodate that - so the best program is one that combines both aerobic and anaerobic exercise.

I will caution you though, when you start to build muscle, you need to get used to ignoring the scale and paying more attention to the condition of your body/clothes fitting. I have found my weight seems to have stabilized, but my clothing size is getting smaller as I get stronger. Another great thing about building more lean muscle is that you won’t notice a jump in weight or anything if you go on vacation and pooch your eating plan for a few days, because your body hasn’t been starving and is better able to handle that increase.

One more thing - if you cut your calories too much you will stop losing any fat at all - you need to consume enough to spur your metabolism. Women fall into this trap a lot “crash” dieting and then complaining that they are not losing.

17

I think that is what happens. It seems to be a fairly common pattern with platueas. No weight loss, no weight loss, all while pretty strict calorie restriction and exercise … loosen up a bit on one or both and a bunch of weight comes off. Persnally I am convinced that the stress causes reactions that result in retained fluids even while fat loss is gradually ongoing. That fluid can come off fast though. That though is just an educated guess.

It’s part of why the focus is not on the scale but on staying with a plan; the scale does not adequately reflect what is really happening with loss of fat mass, which is what you really care about.

18

And to toss a further complication into the mix - High Intensity Interval Training appears to work better for fat loss than steady-state cardio work. The theory is that it juices up the metabolism longer. (Cite.) So it is better to run hard for a minute, then walk for thirty seconds, and repeat the cycle ten times, than to jog for the equivalent amount of time.

If you weigh 295 I would recommend an exercycle rather than running, to spare your joints.

Regards,
Shodan

19

Good and succinct information, as opposed to the bloviation heard around the gym (BHaTG).

Query: what is “broscience.” BHATG?

Also, SenorBeef, the numbers you gave for weight gain after first week of swimming seem crazy high. In any event, I too gained weight at the beginning too because I was so damn hungry after the gym, and over-ate. I’m not sure of any physiological reasons (unless they were mentioned here and I need to be redirected).

Finally: one of the best username/OP-and-header posts I’ve seen in a long time.
ETA: did I read “bioscience” upthread as “broscience?” If so…nevermind. Although it is a good word with the definition I’ve given it.

20

I thought “broscience” was “the kind of science you hear from your bros at the gym” as opposed to “what scientists found”. Not necessarily wrong, but not terribly reliable, and not always right for the reasons given.

Regards,
Shodan