Scientist Defends Eating LESS Protein For Muscle Growth

Summary

In a lively discussion on the RP Strength YouTube channel, Dr. Mike and his colleague Menno Henselmans explore the nuances of protein intake for muscle growth. They dive deep into different studies and meta-analyses to understand optimal protein consumption. The conversation is punctuated with humor and insightful critiques, challenging the notion that higher protein intake always equates to greater muscle growth. Their discussion aims to clarify common misconceptions around protein needs, especially concerning nutrient timing and calorie control, advocating for a balanced approach based on existing scientific evidence.

Highlights

• Discussion centers on optimal protein intake for muscle growth with Dr. Mike and Menno Henselmans 🎙️.
• They explore whether more protein always means more muscle gain, challenging conventional wisdom 💡.
• Meta-analyses and their methodologies are critiqued, revealing potential biases and limitations 📊.
• Henselmans advocates for a nuanced understanding, considering individual needs and overall dietary habits 🌱.
• The conversation is lightened with humor, making complex scientific discussion accessible and engaging 😂.

Key Takeaways

• Protein intake over 1.6 grams per kilogram per day generally shows no added benefits for muscle growth 🤔.
• It’s crucial to distinguish between protein intake benefits and other factors like nutrient timing and calorie intake 🍽️.
• Studies often don’t control well for variables, leading to mixed results about protein needs 🧪.
• For most people, 0.8 grams per pound is adequate, but those seeking maximum gains might aim for up to 1 gram per pound 💪.
• Nutrient timing and balanced calorie intake play significant roles in optimizing muscle growth alongside protein consumption ⏰.

Overview

The video, hosted by Dr. Mike on RP Strength, features a deep dive into the science of protein intake with expert Menno Henselmans. They engage in a spirited debate over the ideal amount of protein necessary for muscle growth, considering the impact of different scientific studies and methodologies.

A key point of discussion is the critique of meta-analyses, where both Dr. Mike and Menno evaluate how these studies often fail to control for essential variables like nutrient timing and calorie intake. This oversight can lead to misconceptions about the benefits of higher protein consumption.

Dr. Mike and Menno inject humor into their discussion, making it not only informative but also entertaining. They simplify complex scientific topics, ensuring that viewers can follow along and understand the practical implications of protein intake on muscle development.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The introduction chapter discusses studies on nutrient timing and protein intake. The focus is on examining studies where protein intake was controlled without adding it to the habitual diet through supplements. Notably, out of 45 studies analyzed, none found benefits in consuming more than 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. The context is a conversation with Dr. Mike from the RP Strength YouTube channel, featuring an esteemed colleague as a guest.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Guest Introduction and Podcast Setting The chapter begins with a humorous exchange between the host and guest, Menno Henselmans. Menno jokingly admits that he usually just says he's happy to be on a podcast, but this time he genuinely means it. The conversation shifts to a recent social media post made by Menno about Milo Wolf, hinting at deeper topics to be discussed later in the episode. This sets the stage for a relaxed yet insightful podcast episode.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Discussion on Protein Intake Recommendations The chapter delves into the topic of protein intake recommendations, sparking a lively and somewhat humorous debate. A potentially controversial statement is clarified, emphasizing the varying opinions on how much protein one should consume. Reference is made to a previous guest, Milo, who discussed emerging data that suggests increased protein intake might be beneficial for certain individuals.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Critiques of Research Studies The chapter delves into the critiques of research studies focusing on protein intake recommendations. It highlights the variability in expert opinions, with some suggesting an intake of 1.25 grams of protein per pound of body weight, while others argue that 0.75 grams per pound suffices for most individuals. The discussion portrays a humorous disagreement among experts, akin to a playful argument between parents, ending in a light-hearted metaphorical pillow fight. This illustrates the ongoing debate and lack of consensus in nutritional research.
• 05:00 - 08:00: Meta-Analyses and Limitations In the chapter 'Meta-Analyses and Limitations,' the discussion revolves around understanding differing perspectives on nutritional analysis. The conversation delves into Milo's reliance on a Japanese meta-analysis conducted in 2020. The focus is on the findings that indicate nutritional benefits starting from 1.3 grams per kilogram per day. The narrator seeks a clearer understanding of these analyses with their limitations and seeks explanations that would be digestible for someone with a self-described limited intellect, aiming to distinguish between differing viewpoints.
• 08:00 - 11:00: Higher Protein Intake Debate The chapter delves into the complexities and debates surrounding the optimal level of protein intake, particularly in relation to muscle growth and lean body mass. It highlights the lack of a definitive endpoint for benefits and acknowledges the issues present in the data, such as the absence of a specific breakpoint analysis. The narrative suggests that most meta-analyses should focus on lean body mass rather than just muscle growth. Overall, the chapter underscores the intricacies and limitations present in existing studies on protein intake.
• 11:00 - 15:00: Greg Nuckols' Insights The chapter discusses insights from Greg Nuckols on protein intake. It highlights a study focused on the correlation between protein consumption and muscle benefits. The study typically recommends an intake of 0.8 grams per pound or 1.8 grams per kilogram per day. However, it didn't explore the advantages of consuming more than this recommendation. The study pointed out a positive association with higher intake levels, starting from 1.3 grams per kilogram per day, and noted that higher consumption levels extended to around 1.3 grams per pound.
• 15:00 - 20:00: Practical Recommendations on Protein Intake Research shows that both lifters and non-lifters experience more hypertrophy, or muscle growth, as they increase their protein intake, up to 1.3 grams per pound. However, for non-lifters, the relationship between protein consumption and muscle growth diminishes once body weight gain is accounted for, specifically above 7 grams per pound, indicating that beyond this point, gaining weight may not significantly contribute to muscle growth. In contrast, for lifters, even after adjusting for body weight gained, higher protein intakes continue to contribute to muscle growth.
• 20:00 - 20:30: Final Thoughts and Recommendations for Special Populations The chapter discusses protein intake recommendations, noting that incremental benefits decrease after reaching 1.3 grams per pound. There is a mention of the importance of considering a broader data set due to potential flaws in the specific data being discussed. The chapter likely emphasizes that while certain data suggests a threshold for protein efficiency, a comprehensive evaluation is necessary to account for all populations and variables.

Scientist Defends Eating LESS Protein For Muscle Growth Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 if you look at the studies where nutrient timing was controlled so they just increased protein intake not like habitual intake plus protein shake usually they actually just told them aim for this versus aim for this mhm in those studies and there are about 45 of them there is none not a single study that has found benefits over the 1.6 G per kilogram per day folks Dr Mike here for the RP strength YouTube channel and today we have in the studio with us an esteemed colleague friend and person who I wish I
• 00:30 - 01:00 looked more like every single day that I have to stare in the mirror at this disgusting ridiculous mangled face men henselman glad to be here uh do you just say that on every podcast or are you really glad to be here I say it's on every podcast but in this case it's true oh my God man it's good to have you let's get cracking right into the meat and potatoes you earlier made a social media post where you said if I ever see Milo wolf around any amount of
• 01:00 - 01:30 protein we're going to be fist fighting each other and I want you to explain that I think I said fisting not fist fighting wow that really does change things but nonetheless still violent still very personal and still controversial about how much protein that YouTu recommend so just to put this in perspective we had Milo on the channel a while ago he said some emerging data suggests that for some folks it might be a good good idea to
• 01:30 - 02:00 eat something like 1.25 g of protein per pound of body weight and maybe even a little bit more in some cases you're typically of the perspective that for many cases if not most even as little as 75 gram per pound per day of protein can cover all almost all if not all of your bases and I'm like the coward that I am at a gram per pound right in the middle and it's like I have Mom and Dad in this case two dads and you're in that sort of fight where you're at first yelling and then like you start throwing pillows but
• 02:00 - 02:30 I'm just waiting for like you know the uh the dishes to start flying explain this to me in a way that with my limited intellect I can understand where do you think Milo is coming from where are you coming from and let's put some daylight between the two hit me from what I understand about Milo's perspective is that he relies primarily on the Japanese meta analysis from 2020 I believe and that one found well technically all it found is that there are benefits above 1.3 Grand per kilogram per day and they
• 02:30 - 03:00 found that there wasn't really a um a cut off point it seemed in the data but the analysis also didn't do an actual breakpoint analysis so they didn't actually check like what's the maximum point at which we find benefits for muscle growth or lean body mass lean body mass is what most of these met analysis should look at so that's also good to realize it's not necessarily even muscle growth and these data have many many many problems with them so for one just the
• 03:00 - 03:30 technical point that they technically didn't look at whether there are benefits above usually what I recommend is 08 gram per pound or 1.8 gram per kilogram per day they didn't actually look at if there are benefits above that they just found that the model said there is a positive Association essentially between higher intakes above 1.3 gram per kilogram per day and it seemed that they went all the way up to what uh I think Milo said was 1.3 G per pound something like that when not
• 03:30 - 04:00 adjusting for body weight gained both lifters and non-li saw more hypertrophy as they consumed more protein all the way to 1.3 G per pound however in non- lifters once you then controlled for body weight gained that relationship kind of went away like past like I think 7 grams per pound if then you know gaining weight doesn't really matter right however in lifters when even when adjusting for body weight gained higher protein intakes led to more growth all
• 04:00 - 04:30 the way to 1.3 G per pound it was there was still an element of diminishing returns where in the slope was kind of Greater up until around that previous figure of 1.6 gr per kilogram or8 roughly and then afterwards it kind of the slope diminished but it was still positive you you could make that argument based on that data based on those data I think it's not entirely unreasonable but looking at those data alone and not looking at the other data especially with with the many flaws of
• 04:30 - 05:00 that met analysis to me doesn't make a lot of sense we can go into like Greg Knuckles Point as well later if you want I think that's a bit more compelling but you want to just list some of the major um limitations for the met I want you to list them in a way that attacks Milo's character personally right but seriously let's get the let's get the flaw scientifically yeah so for one they didn't really look at a break point that's a big one and that's particularly
• 05:00 - 05:30 problematic because they didn't report anything that was it was honestly just a bad analysis they didn't report model fit statistics r squared model fit they just showed the the line they didn't even show the effect sizes the data points like normally you show what the actual data points are and then you show what kind of what the line that your model Works through those data points right and they didn't even show the data points they just show the model fit line which doesn't tell you much at all and it's kind of like just trust me bro now
• 05:30 - 06:00 going into the actual limitations of the data they got in in the first place is that they included weight loss studies and quite a lot of them were weight loss studies in fact they I think they said at some point in the paper five out of 104 something like five out of 105 papers were actually completely equal in conditions all the other papers had at least one confounding Factor so very often the higher protein intake group had a higher energy intake group because the control group just didn't supplement
• 06:00 - 06:30 protein so they looked at protein supplementation versus placebo basically nothing let me describe that to the folks listening what you're trying to say if you try to see which amount of protein will get me more jacked or get me less muscle loss but your study design is one group eats X and another group eats X Plus supplementary protein you're now comparing two conditions not just protein differences but protein and calorie differences and so we have to ask the question as scientists is are they getting more jacked because they're eating more protein or is it the
• 06:30 - 07:00 calories because then you would need a third group potentially that had extra protein uh uh for the first group regular second group extra protein third group extra carbs to equalize the calories and then you could really test is it the calories or is it the protein and so that wasn't done in many of the studies I assume almost all of them and then thus it's very difficult to see like is it really the extra protein doing the work yes another big factor was nutrient timing now a lot of people
• 07:00 - 07:30 will say nutrient timing doesn't matter but there are actually a couple studies where they supplement additional protein so most of these studies all of them actually they look at habitual protein intake in one group habitual protein intake in the other group and then one of the groups supplements additional protein on top of that like a protein supplement whey protein or whatever usually they supplement that preor post-workout or as an additional meal so you're increasing meal frequency or you have post-workout supplementation a lot of people in evidence-based Fitness will say that doesn't matter and largely I
• 07:30 - 08:00 agree with that like at least total daily protein intake is more important than when you consume it but it's more of a spectrum to me than simply saying it doesn't matter and there are actually at least three studies where the additional protein intake group ended up not having a higher total protein intake but they did have the benefit of the nutrient timing like post-workout protein supplementation and they still got better gains and that can happen because of these habitual intakes like you just get a bunch of people you tell half of them add some protein shake to
• 08:00 - 08:30 your daily intake and it turns out yeah just because of life or whatever they their normal protein intake decreased and therefore or the other Pro other group had an increase in protein intake because it's it's not controlled in these studies it's just habitual intake and then it can happen that you do the study and as researchers you're often very sad to find out if also how it happen at the end oh the group that we wanted to consume more protein didn't actually consume more protein which kind of invalid your whole study but in some
• 08:30 - 09:00 of these studies you find that still they got better gains so that's a pretty robust Way by accident to measure the fact that nutrient timing at least seen in one of two ways one Perry workout nutrition or to an additional meal maybe you eat two or three times a day now eat three or four times a day we're unable to tell if it's like is it the extra calories is it the extra meal frequency or is it the attention to the par workout window that is really doing the heavy lifting to actually make folks
• 09:00 - 09:30 have better gains or less impactful muscle losses on a fat loss phase Y and if you look at the studies that have controlled for these things especially nutrient timing interestingly energy intake doesn't scream uh doesn't scream out to me like a a huge confounding variable if you look at the studies where nutrient timing was controlled so they just increased protein intake not like habitual intake plus protein shake usually they actually just told them aim for this versus aim for this MH in those studies and there are about 45 of them there is none not a
• 09:30 - 10:00 single study that has found benefits over the 1.6 gram per kilogram per day okay so let's open that up super super quick that's a big problem because one of the accurate critiques of the meta analytic approach of meta analyses as a class of research exploration is that sometimes through interesting processes of kind of statistical aggregation you can get a look from a meta analysis that no one
• 10:00 - 10:30 study actually found and it it wasn't even that oh well this is like a situation where if you look at one word at a time nothing makes sense but if you look at a whole sentence it makes sense it's not one of those it's actually just statistical uh uh anomaly that occurs and then you end up being like Oh there's something there but when there's a very well-designed 10 studies inside of a subset of 100 that are meta analyzed and those 10 studies exactly asked the very rigorous question you're asking and all of them say it doesn't work I it's really difficult to figure
• 10:30 - 11:00 out how that situation uh could actually play out and so maybe there is something emerging from the statistical noise that is true but we have to be guarded with the idea that like well actually man maybe there's not you know what I mean it's sort of similar to to kind of saying you know there are people that take multivitamins and don't and let's say the multivitamin people have like like a penis size that's like 8 Ines larger right but then you actually give people a multivitamin and measure penis size for 8 weeks and just nothing
• 11:00 - 11:30 happens to it that you got to be like man like we tested the exact thing we were asking that didn't work are we really comfortable in concluding for meta analytic which is kind of a rough proxy that This Thing Really Works that's a problem yeah yes yes absolutely especially because since our original meta analysis which also absolutely wasn't perfect but it confirmed simply exactly what I expected from the the fact of that we had at least studies
• 11:30 - 12:00 showing okay none of these studies actually find the benefits over 1.6 gr per kilogram per day and then we did a breakpoint analysis which found exactly 1.6 gram per kilogram per day as the most likely break point so the point at which additional protein intake no longer further increased lean body mass gains then I was like oh okay that's exactly as expected so a lot of people have looked at like armat analysis versus the newer met analysis I think both we our met met analysis so we I was part of a met analysis oh so it's fucking biased yes
• 12:00 - 12:30 it's just me defending my original biases and Milo coming out and me not wanting to believe when the researchers were doing the test tube stuff do you walk into the lab and hand them a dollar bill and you're like more in this test tube yeah that's how science work for the meta we don't have to do that we just change the numbers in the spreadsheet even easier you give yourself a dollar then so if it's like 1.6 um or they it's like maybe 2.2 and I'm just like one .6 science that's it
• 12:30 - 13:00 that's all there all right folks that's been fun all right yes okay uh heard loud and clear no I can play devil's advocate for um for my own views of course please for one the 1.6 I recommend 1.8 right to to be clear I think 1.6 is pretty much where the data show at this point we no longer see significant benefits but um to your point of this grams per kilogram yes okay so for people in the Civilized world that use pounds and have American Eagles as pets at home that's 8 gram per
• 13:00 - 13:30 pound per day 7 7 is where we no longer see significant benefits in uh randomized control trials that controlled for nutrient timing the very exact kind of studies you want to do to see if eating more protein will actually get you more jacked yeah but you could argue you could make a very reasonable argument gr knus made that argument in part that even though none of these individual studies find a benefit some of the studies which didn't have nutrient timing they did find a benefit
• 13:30 - 14:00 plus if we aggregate all of these studies together we do see some trends that the effect sizes tend to be greater in the higher protein groups even though individually none of the studies that's statistically significant okay they have pretty small sample sizes you know train lifters eight we study how much muscle growth are you going to get okay they get maybe a little bit more gains in one of the groups it's hard to detect yeah it's there's a lot of variants there so it's like if you have a ruler that measures only in integer inches but something in increased by two cenm which
• 14:00 - 14:30 is uh 2.54 cm is one inch you would actually conclude from that study that like nothing happened but like 2 centimet is damn near almost an inch and so it you would be finding a a result you basically your study is not powered enough to detect the difference exactly and we already know the difference is quite small from eating plenty of protein to eating extra plenty but like if you're eating it for years and you're training really hard it is worth to get an extra five or 10% gains which is kind of a big deal especially if you're Advanced that's kind of how the understanding goes yeah yes yes so I probably want to do a new met analysis
• 14:30 - 15:00 based on especially Greg Knuckles critique Milo wolves studied not so much The Meta that he uh is there something you don't like about Japanese people that you want to tell us about on this channel I like uh I like the researchers I like the fact in particular that they essentially admitted that their methods were not so good and they did another meta analysis afterwards on strength development and they switched essentially to R method which excluded weight loss studies and then they found that for strength development maximum gains occur at 1.5 gr per kilogram per
• 15:00 - 15:30 day so even a little bit lower technically speaking than the 1.6 we we do know strength training probably on mechanistic grounds does not require as much protein to have the whole process go to maximum yes but at least theoretically if there was substantial additional muscle growth that should translate into greater strength development in the long term yeah again in short term you might not see that effect so again there is some uh room for debate there but it's pretty striking that the number is almost exactly the same like 1.5 1.6 yeah so
• 15:30 - 16:00 and again none of the individual studies find statistically significantly greater muscle grow or strength development or muscle growth when we control for nutrient timing and even when you don't control for nutrient timing there are again like 45 studies and there are three or four that find benefits of higher intakes now one additional major limitation of all these habitual intake studies is basically what people think happens is so protein intake 1.6 other group assumes 2.2 this group has more
• 16:00 - 16:30 gains therefore 2.2 is better that is not the case in one of these studies with habitual intakes which all the Met analyses look at I don't know why that is I addressed it when we did the Met analysis as well it's easier to study I guess but what we're interested in is look you target 1.6 I Target 2.2 and then we see who gets better results right and then with whole group of people not just one individual if I look at group of people consuming 1.6 habitually like their normal intake that means 1.6 is the average MH that's
• 16:30 - 17:00 usually normally distributed which means half the people in that study are consuming less than 1.6 gram per kilogram per day so if there are benefits of the 2.2 it could very well be the case that all of those benefits are from the 50% of people that weren't even consuming the average intake to begin with that makes sense so in essence what you're saying is it could be that 2.2 is better on the average but mostly that's because when you compare to 1.6 a ton of those people that are
• 17:00 - 17:30 eating like one in the 1.6 average are dragging down the curve and if you just eliminate the really nasty low intakes which most of the 2.2 people have that's where you get most of the benefits it's kind of like um if you take Runners of very different running speeds and you put like a rabid bear behind them that runs at like 10 meters per second um it's not that you need to run much faster than that it's that if you run any slower you get eaten and so much much less than 1.6 could be the real problem bringing the 1.6 down potentially yes especially in these
• 17:30 - 18:00 habitual intake studies because you're you're not looking at 1.6 versus 2.2 you're looking at a distribution of people with average 1.6 versus average 2.2 cor correct there's also multiple confounding factors are people who take in 2.2 typically are demographically more interested in optimizing hypertrophy and maybe sleeping better training better more attention to detail theyve seen better gains and thus have jumped on the wagon of gaining more protein because they have better genetics cuz you have shit gains either way way you're kind of like fuck this um
• 18:00 - 18:30 dope can you tell us a little bit more about Greg Knuckles recent articles excellent article Stronger by science everyone should go read it if you have 50 hours if not just read the first several paragraph where Greg is kind enough to summarize uh the article's findings in an awesome table I mean Stronger by science is just like just an amazing resource go check it out and so what did what did Greg do this slightly different than Milo well actually just what did what did what the summary that you can give of of Greg's insight and what do you think about it personally is Greg still one of these just totally stupid people that just can't reason about protein although he's real smart
• 18:30 - 19:00 but about protein just dumb as rocks yeah so Milo's argument rested pretty much entirely on finding out that there was another Japanese meta analysis that seemingly found benefits of higher in which is good right it's good that he surfaced that because people were just to his point citing only exclusively the older meta and just never even recognize the new one exists which maybe for good reason but maybe like we should be aware of it yes um then I would say you know he didn't recognize the fact that the same researchers using better methods found at least for strength development
• 19:00 - 19:30 that the um the earlier results of ours was were very neatly replicated sure and then what Greg nuggles did funny enough is he looked at yet another met analysis that nobody looked at nunas at all in 2022 if I'm not mistaken now where are they from nun at all um I think it was a mixed group I think the lead offer is Brazilian if I'm not how much do we really trust the Brazilians as a people I mean um that's actually honestly not uh an entirely unfair point when it when it comes to exercise science studies
• 19:30 - 20:00 because there have been multiple instances especially by the Matos barbalo and Paulo gentil where those research groups have been implicated in um I think actually Greg Knuckles said that um what is it statistically improbable data patterns I call it statistical malf yes uh so but I mean uh I've lived in Brazil Brazil is great they're very dedicated very into fitness a lot of good researchers there love Fitness um and in this case a metan is is not like one of those studies and
• 20:00 - 20:30 none of these researchers were implicated in any whole thing out people I'm just trying to stir the fucking pot for no reason so let's exactly let's uh assume that all the data were well done it was we have every reason to believe that it was all well done yeah actually one of the offers on the new met analysis nun is at all was also on our mat analysis Stuart Phillips he's also great yes Ste Phillips uh um if he ever ceases to exist I believe all protein will also cease to exist because he is connected to the protein Force yeah so there was a a much better
• 20:30 - 21:00 analysis but they didn't really perform a breakpoint analysis they looked at kind of categories and they found that the people that ended up with higher protein intakes than 1.6 did get better gains than the people that ended up with protein intakes in the range of 1.3 to 1.6 mhm but again you don't know if it's the benefits going up to 1.6 that make the difference or if there are benefits to higher intakes so Greg Knuckles took the data from that mat analysis reanalyzed it in a much much better matter really good very compelling math
• 21:00 - 21:30 analysis I would argue I would even dare say it's the first time I've seen evidence that made me question like oh shit maybe actually there are really benefits of more than 1.8 gram per kilogram more than 0.8 gram per pound and I actually have no critiques at all on the way he did the analysis the only issue is that he took the data from the Nunes atal met analysis which again is data where pretty much all the protein studies are lumped together no control for energy intake no control for
• 21:30 - 22:00 nutrient timing and again looking only at these studies where they has habitual intake versus habitual intake plus protein intake and the data on those studies are a lot more positive than the data that controlled as I said for nutrient timing and they looked at groups where it's you target this you target this so at this point I'm actually not entirely sure I'm working on um like an updated met analysis where we specifically look at the control studies with 1.6 or higher intakes and
• 22:00 - 22:30 see if there is some benefit that we can in a met analysis tease out the showing that there are some benefits to higher intakes Greg Knuckles said based on his data analysis the break point is more likely to be two grams per kilogram and it's going to be somewhere in the range of I think 1.7 to 2.3 or 2.4 even um which is also quite a wide range but he said the most likely break point is 2 G per kilogram now no breakpoint meaning eating any more than
• 22:30 - 23:00 this almost certainly does not cause any better gains yes and again statistically that holds up entirely the only question is is that because in these studies they have better nutrient timing higher energy intakes or if it's really the protein intake there's actually an interesting it's not a formal subanalysis but it's a qualitative examination of data that you can do that I'm a real big fan of when you have lots of um studies examining a certain subject what you can do is not not even not even formal subgroup analysis what you can do is take all the studies and
• 23:00 - 23:30 at least huris rank them on the qualitative strength of their methods like which one of these are the best controlled most rigorous have the best internal validity at least and hopefully external yeah and then when you get a ranking like that then you actually rank out next to them they roughly the effect sizes of their findings and you try to ask the question of like as the studies get better and better controlled in the sample of let's say 50 studies where is the trend for the results cuz often times there is no Trend and then you're like okay cool so like um we're actually
• 23:30 - 24:00 whatever the meta analysis says is probably the directionality of the data it's really really unfortunate if you find that the um data gets uh you know less convincing the better control is that you're then you know you're dealing with very poor data quality analytic quality and then and that's when you say like this met analysis is something we just just should probably not be looking at but sometimes and very often what ends up happening is when you have a ranked uh Studies by how good the studies are you have either a dissipation of the trend or or an improvement in the trend if it's
• 24:00 - 24:30 dissipation it really is like dude you guys this is probably statistical noise and there's very unlikely to be anything here if it's Improvement of the trend it's like well the better the study the more we find that there's something there there's probably something there like if you think you see a needle in a hay stack and they're closer you look you're like there's a needle versus the closer you look and you're like I think I don't see the needle anymore but when I back up I definitely think I see a needle you a there ain't no needle layer you're just losing your mind exactly that happens in a bunch of different sciences and so in this case if if we one of those you're pretty confident
• 24:30 - 25:00 that we would find that the higher formal controls we add to the study the less likely it's discover that higher protein is better yeah I'm certainly open to the possibility of higher intakes having like a marginal benefit but I would say that we should have found that more consistently in individual studies at least yeah and we also have a lot of studies now on vegan diets finding surprisingly small effects like much smaller effects than we anticipated say 10 years ago which also suggests that like even the
• 25:00 - 25:30 1.6 or 1.8 which I recommend is often already enough with vegetarian or vegan diets which again also suggests it's already pretty safe because if you were just if that was just like n kind of on a threshold and you significantly reduce the protein quality which happens in a vegan diet you would expect significantly worse gains yeah that's a very good way to go about it Mana what is your kind of summary take your current position on protein recommendation um recognizing Milo's insights your own insights and Greg
• 25:30 - 26:00 knuckle's recent um summary where do you tend to give like can you I would like two things from you how much protein do I need to eat if I just want to get awesome gains not have to worry and not have to turn my life into a giant protein feeding session and two if I'm like just have no friends no one cares about me at all all I have is the gym every gram of gains counts to me how much protein should I be eating to know with good margin that there's no new
• 26:00 - 26:30 meta that's going to come out and say look you kind of pissed away marginally the last year and a half of your training I would say that for almost all populations the 1.8 gram per kilogram 0.8 gram per pound is going to be sufficient so if I weigh 200 lounds I eat 160 grams of protein or more and like that's your minimum daily intake and at least 50% of that has to come from high quality sources okay and you have to distribute it across at least three meals with some reasonable Nutri in timing the workout has to be you're
• 26:30 - 27:00 not training fasted at least within a few hours after the workout or let's say within a 5H hour interal window uh you need to pre and the post-workout meals okay so that's the bottom end yes okay and if you consume that's not the Target no that's a minimum Target minimum Target yes so most people end up with higher intakes anyway yes which already buffers in some um there's an automatic buffer essentially when you um formulate it that way yeah but you don't want to get into telling your like RP
• 27:00 - 27:30 diet coach app like I'm going to I'm 200 lb I'm going to eat 160 uh you're going to want 160 to be like get B better eat that every time and it had better be high quality and you had better get your timing right so what's a comfortable buffer that you're going to tell people that like look okay yes it's 160 for 200 lb people if I eat 180 and I get my nutrient time is okay and I uh Zig when I should have zagged a couple times is that going to save me or do you need to 200 I would say if every gram counts you
• 27:30 - 28:00 don't want to wait until there's another meta analysis looking at the effect of study quality on these met analyses like an Arbiter then I would go with the GRE Knuckles two gram per kilogram so which is almost a gram per pound yeah and you could go with a gram per pound if you're like even more like look I don't even want a chance uh that maybe some new study comes out as well and then there's a new mathal and turns out yeah actually that there was like a 5% increase in gains um it's it's possible so the thing
• 28:00 - 28:30 with the range is that we're not just looking at the effect of okay the the optimal intake is likely here most most of the variance between these numbers comes from the uncertainty have that we have from the data like the data are limited yes right so it's not like Greg and I come to a different number and it's it's either this or it's that number it's like we both come to a range essentially and Greg says I think we should be here and I say I think this is is most likely enough when you add when
• 28:30 - 29:00 you account for all of these confounding factors but if you're like hey I don't care about any of that I just want to make absolutely sure I don't care about the data or for what reason if I absolutely want to maximize muscle growth I would probably go with the break points from Greg current gra current analysis which is two gram per kilogram two gram per kilogram roughly a gram per pound and to be extra safe and then so eating more than a gram per pound can you see a situation where drug-free bodybuilders in the last several weeks have contest prep on a very low calorie diet could benefit from more protein than that still or is that
• 29:00 - 29:30 to you like really possible but stretching expectations very much stretching it I would say the whole idea of higher energy intakes being necessary in energy deficit is really not well supported higher protein intakes necessary and low energy deficit yeah okay there's there's direct research and at least in untrained individuals showing it's not the case yeah in trained individuals we don't have a good study that essentially does a triple interaction effect right so we're not just looking at is there a higher protein intake in trains versus or in
• 29:30 - 30:00 training versus non-training individuals but then also does that interact with the effect of energy intake as well so it's like if you're training and you're in energy deficit then it's there's a further increase that's very difficult to find in studies yeah and current data simply don't support it yet it's not an unreasonable hypothesis but it also doesn't really mechanistically follow like a lot of people have some intuitive idea of like oh yeah makes sense because it prevents uh muscle loss or like then your body doesn't have to oxidize protein protein oxidation and breakdown they don't actually normally increase
• 30:00 - 30:30 much in energy deficit and if you're like woefully deficient it can but normally what happens is your body just Tunes down the protein symphysis yeah and if you think about it okay so there's less protein symphysis protein breakdown levels are the same then theoretically you could actually need less protein yeah sure we're not going to pull too much on that threat we're going to get cancelled for that one uh that is very insightful so basically you would say sort of like 08 grams per pound if you're doing a pretty good job and you need to be sure you're doing fine and then uh roughly a gram per
• 30:30 - 31:00 pound uh if you really just do not want to be on the wrong side of this yeah fright train of protein controversy there are a few categories which likely need the higher end of that maybe even more okay vegans uh people on gear I think actually funny enough I'm I'm known as the low protein guy but for people on gear I'm actually I actually recommend very high I don't like the term people on gear and I'll tell you why we used to call them homeless people
• 31:00 - 31:30 but now the politically correct term is people experiencing homelessness I don't like that because it irritates my right-wing Supremacy Vibe and so I actually do not like to call them people on gear I like to call them uh hopeless degenerate steroid addicts and I never abbreviate right okay so hopeless degenerate steroid addicts probably needs a little bit more protein in fact not a little bit a lot more but that's a personal hypothesis you have which has almost no support on the
• 31:30 - 32:00 data we have data on prote symphysis and people on gear okay and it goes up massively so it's uh data that's influenced not for real world data but inferential data based on physiological understanding of cellular processes Plus in the absence of data on how much protein intake is required to maximize muscle growth in this case shocker Shocker from the evidence-based I actually think it makes sense to look
• 32:00 - 32:30 at the protein the protein intakes of professional bodybuilders sure of course next best thing right you look at uh physiological rationale you look at real world practices and since we don't have any direct data you're not going to be like well both of these are wrong and stupid you're going to be like ah just do the safe thing and eat more protein yes and so like uh for steroid people maybe 1.25 grams per pound or something like that is uh one of those insurance policy numbers I think some of the survey data on like high level professional bodybuilders they're in the range of 2.3 to like three .1 G per kilogram so that's that's actually kind of like more like Milo recommendations
• 32:30 - 33:00 yes I think that makes sense are you saying Milo on steroids Scott that's the clip um very cool [Music] [Applause]