EATING

FOR GAINS
Part II - Guidelines for Gains
Protein Quality
Timing Your Eating
How Much You Need
Copyright (c) 2019 by Chris Neander
PART II
How Much Protein Do You Need?

Protein requirements vary based on a wide variety of factors that are summarized in the
following table:

Requires Less Protein Requires More Protein

Young Older

Does strength training Untrained (or endurance athletes)

Higher levels of testosterone Lower levels of testosterone

Carnivore Vegan

Source: (4)

People in the left column build muscle far more easily than people in the right. In order
to maintain muscle mass, it’s essential that people in the right column are consuming
enough protein to ensure sufficient MPS.

For a given meal, 20g of protein gives a near maximal level of MPS. Returns diminish
after 20g, with 40g giving only an approximately 10% higher MPS rate.
As far as daily intake, the general guidelines are 0.8 - 1.2g per pound of bodyweight.
Your intake should be the upper end if you meet any of the criteria in the “Requires
More Protein” column of the table above.

As a note of warning, if you regularly consume more protein than the recommended
daily amount, you are training your body to oxidize protein as fuel. Your body will begin
to up-regulate the enzymes responsible for breaking down protein. That means if your
protein consumption drops, your body will use your muscle protein as fuel.

How Should You Time Your Protein Intake?

We now come to the most important part of this guide: protein timing.

As mentioned earlier, your goal is to maximize the number of muscle protein synthesis
responses that happen throughout the day. But MPS isn’t a continuous process—there’s
a period of time following a MPS response (called the “refractory” period) when, no
matter how much protein or leucine you consume, no MPS will occur.

Hence, you need to time your eating around these refractory periods.

It so happens that two of the PRIMAL Eating tenets go hand-in-hand with MPS
optimization: “Feast or famine” and “Eat ‘balanced’ over days; not on a single plate.”

Let me explain.

Protein and insulin response

Constant eating and snacking is one of the worst things you can do for MPS (and for
your health in general). Protein (and leucine in particular) is very insulinogenic, meaning
it creates a significant insulin response in your body.

We tend to think of insulin only in the context of mopping up after a large sugar intake.
But insulin is also a growth factor. It signals to tissues that the body is fed and
conditions are ideal for growth, development, and repair. The insulin response from
protein intake also suppresses muscle protein breakdown for a period.

Between meals, we need periods of fasting to re-sensitize our insulin response.

Feasting and fasting

When MPS is spiked after eating, it generally returns back to baseline in 2-3 hours. So,
there are between 3-5 hours from the time you eat until the next MPS response
opportunity.

During this time, it’s best to stay fully fasted. (Water and coffee only). Creating an eating
schedule that distributes MPS responses every 3-5 hours throughout the day is the
most effective way to optimize MPS.

I would strongly suggest not making this a permanent way of eating. It’s demanding a
lot from your body. Eating too frequently can lead to insulin resistance. (This is why we
created the PRIMAL Eating tenets in the first place). Personally, I’ll focus on hypertrophy
for a few months at a time, in which I’ll be eating much more frequently than usual. Then
I’ll go back to the far less regimented approach we described in PRIMAL Eating.

Separate macronutrients

PRIMAL Eating also advocates for not trying to “balance” all of your macro and
micronutrients at every meal, but instead to have meals that are (for example) meat-
heavy or vegetable heavy.

Maximal muscle protein synthesis occurs when protein is not consumed along with
other macronutrients.

That means that the ideal whole food sources of protein are lean meats, like chicken, or
low-fat dairy sources. Beef is a fantastic source of protein and leucine, but you should
look for leaner cuts.

Skip any starchy or high-carbohydrate side dishes. Co-ingestion of carbohydrates along

with protein delays protein digestion. (Although it hasn’t been shown to impede MPS
once it occurs).

Post-exercise

Evidence points to resistance training enhancing the MPS response to protein ingestion
for at least 24 hours. However, it does not appear that there is a limited window in which
you need to consume protein post-exercise.

Some studies have shown a benefit to protein ingestion within three hours post-
exercise, but the results are inconclusive.
 In short, if you are already focused on eating for MPS throughout the day, you shouldn’t
be concerned that you’re missing any opportunity for additional MPS post-exercise.

Example PDCAA Values

Cow’s milk
Eggs
Casein
Soy protein
Whey
Beef
Soy
Pea protein (isolate)
Chickpeas
Black beans
Vegetables
Peas/legumes
Cricket
Fruit
Cereals
Peanuts
Rice
Dried fruit
Wheat
Wheat gluten
0 25 50 75 100

Protein before bed

If you are trying to effectively distribute MPS throughout any given 24 hour period, it
makes sense to consume protein right before you sleep—which is your longest fasted
period.

Supplementing 20-40g of protein prior to sleep has been shown to increase muscle
mass and strength gains.

Carbs and MPS

Believe it or not, carbs can yield a strong MPS response too—with a caveat. Consuming
around 30g of carbohydrates yields the same results as consuming BCAAs, if you have
enough BCAAs available for MPS to occur.
And that brings us to another commonly asked question...

Do I Need to Supplement BCAAs?

There are arguments for and against supplementing BCAAs.

On the against side, your body is limited in the amount of EAAs it can absorb. Hence,
consuming large amounts of BCAAs can prevent the absorption of other EAAs, which
would limit their availability during MPS.

On the for side, our bodies burn the equivalent of around 10g of protein per hour for fuel
when exercising, and much of that comes from BCAAs. This argues for consuming
BCAAs post-exercise to replenish those lost.

It’s likely beneficial, especially during intense exercise bouts, to follow the latter
approach.

TL; DR - The Big Takeaways

1) Muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is your body’s process for building muscle mass

2) To gain muscle you need to create more net MPS than muscle protein breakdown

3) Any meal that creates sub-optimal MPS is a wasted meal in this context

4) The amino acid leucine is a primary catalyst for MPS response in amounts over 2.5g

5) Whey protein isolate is by far the best protein source for muscle protein synthesis

6) MPS responses can happen every 3-5 hours

7) It’s best to remain fasted in between MPS responses

8) You should eat between 0.8 and 1.2g of protein per pound of body weight daily

9) Make sure you are eating complete proteins. If you can’t eat animal-sourced proteins,
ensure that your vegetable-based meals contain a broad essential amino acid mix.
Citations

1. Hoffman JR, Falvo MJ (2004) Protein - which is best?

J Sports Sci Med. 3(3): 118-130
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905294/#!po=0.793651

2. Lennon, D (2016) Researchers Point to the Optimal Protein Dose, Timing &
Distribution to Maximize Muscle
https://medium.com/@dannylennon/researchers-point-to-the-optimal-protein-dose-
timing-distribution-to-maximize-muscle-e95c0ab570b0

3. Trommelen, J. (2016) The Ultimate Guide to Muscle Protein Synthesis

http://www.nutritiontactics.com/measure-muscle-protein-synthesis/

4. Feigenbaum, J
London 2014 Nutrition Seminar