00:00:00"What is the maximal anabolic dose of protein per meal for the goal of muscle building?"
00:00:06We boiled it down to first in the order of importance is total daily protein.
00:00:11If you get total daily protein right, the timing of the constituent doses of the total
00:00:16are just a distant secondary concern. It didn't make a difference.
00:00:19If you can give an across-the-board recommendation of how much protein people should consume
00:00:27post-resistance training, let's just leave cardiovascular training separately for the
00:00:31moment, post-resistance training, what would that number be? Would it be 20,
00:00:3530, 50, or 100? Should it scale with body weight? And how long after training should one
00:00:42consume that protein if the goal is muscle protein synthesis?
00:00:46To maximize MPS, we really haven't seen doses beyond 50-ish grams, 30 or so to 50.
00:00:54My colleague Brad Schoenfeld and I, we scoured the literature and we wrote this paper on what is the
00:01:01maximal anabolic dose of protein per meal for the goal of muscle building. And we boiled it down to
00:01:08somewhere between 0.4 to roughly 0.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. And so in freedom units,
00:01:16we're talking 0.2 to 0.25 grams per pound. And that is what appears to max out muscle protein.
00:01:24- 0.2 to 0.5 grams per pound. - 0.2 to 0.25.
00:01:28- 0.25. - Yes.
00:01:29- Okay. - Yeah. So like about a quarter
00:01:31of your body weight in pounds, if you're looking at grams of protein to maximize per muscle protein,
00:01:37yes, per meal. - Okay. Sorry,
00:01:39because I think many people including myself are going to say, okay, but this is only in the meal
00:01:44post-workout. I mean, I wake up in the morning and I try to work out before I eat because I like to
00:01:49do that. Sometimes I'll have a little bit of protein, but let's assume two conditions just
00:01:53for simplicity. Somebody did resistance training in the previous two hours or, and they're trying
00:02:00to evaluate how much protein to eat at that meal in order to maximize muscle protein synthesis,
00:02:05or they're eating a meal separate. On a day, they're not resistance training.
00:02:11And then as just kind of a generic example of a meal that doesn't follow resistance training
00:02:17in a window of two hours or so, how much protein should be consumed at these two different meals?
00:02:22- We did a meta-analysis of the existing literature, looking at the anabolic window thing. And for the
00:02:29listeners, a meta-analysis is a study of the studies. You collect all of the studies on a
00:02:34given question, and then you kind of see, you look at effect sizes and you sort of see where the
00:02:40evidence leans, whether there's a significant or meaningful effect. We collected studies that
00:02:46compared a protein timing condition where protein was timed within an hour, either pre or post
00:02:53exercise. And then the control group of the study would have to have protein a minimum of two hours
00:03:00of nutrient neglect on both sides of the training bout. So we collected all the studies that
00:03:05compared these conditions. Essentially, we found that as long as total daily protein was about 1.66,
00:03:121.7 grams per kilogram of body weight, so about 0.7 grams per pound, as long as total daily protein
00:03:20was at that or more, then the timing relative to the training bout didn't make a difference.
00:03:28- This is important for people to hear because what this translates to in my ears
00:03:33is a very simple takeaway, which is that you don't need to obsess about the
00:03:37post-training anabolic window, especially if you're eating prior to training because you have
00:03:46nutrients circulating. Now, if you eat your last bite of food at 8 p.m. and you wake up at 7 a.m.
00:03:53and you're training at 10 a.m., then perhaps by time you finish your leg workout or whatever
00:03:58resistance training workout you would want to prioritize getting some protein and other nutrients
00:04:03into your system. What you're saying, basically, it's so logical now that I hear it, which is that
00:04:10you have nutrients circulating in your body and stored in your glycogen and so you're pulling from
00:04:14a reservoir. If fasted doesn't necessarily mean starving. - First in the order of importance is
00:04:20total daily protein. So there's this hierarchy of importance. If you get total daily protein right,
00:04:26then the timing of the constituent doses of the total are just a distant secondary concern.
00:04:33- Is there anything wrong with consuming a high or very high protein meal every once in a while,
00:04:40especially if you're not eating much or consuming much protein throughout the day? And the reason I
00:04:46ask this is for practical reasons. Many people find it difficult to distribute their protein evenly
00:04:53through the day. Many people also find it difficult to get enough protein in the middle of the day
00:05:00meals or the morning meals. It can be done, and I know people will say, "Well, you have some eggs
00:05:04and some protein." There are ways to do it, sure. But at least in this country, most people tend to
00:05:09emphasize dinner as their largest meal for better or worse. So a lot of people stack their protein
00:05:14heavily towards the end of the day. Assuming caloric load is appropriate, et cetera, is there
00:05:19anything fundamentally wrong or bad about doing that from the perspective of body composition
00:05:24and health? We're talking about the general population, not somebody who's trying to
00:05:31win a physique competition or run a marathon or ultra. - I would say no. One of my colleagues,
00:05:36Yassine Locke, he took our pre-post model and he kind of like, he ran his own
00:05:46randomized controlled trial version of it, but he wanted to kind of exploit the possibility of
00:05:51further protein neglect on both sides of the training bout. So he compared an immediate
00:05:57pre and post, immediate pre and post 25 grams of protein, sandwiching the resistance training bout
00:06:03with a group that neglected all nutrients for three hours on both sides of the resistance training
00:06:09bout. Total daily protein was optimized at around close to a gram per pound, two-ish grams per
00:06:15kilogram of body weight. No significant difference, no meaningful difference in muscle size and
00:06:21strength gains at the end of the, I believe it was a 10 or 12 week study. - That's very reassuring to
00:06:27me. I mean, because I have a busy schedule as do many people. Sometimes people don't like to eat
00:06:32immediately after they train. Sometimes you have to shower up and head to dinner after you train or
00:06:39shower up and head to a meeting and you don't have the opportunity to ingest in the quote unquote
00:06:46anabolic window. So what I'm hearing through all these answers, correct me if I'm wrong,
00:06:50is that there's tremendous flexibility as to when you consume the protein that we all need,
00:06:56but that the overall protein requirement seems to center somewhere around 0.7 to one gram per
00:07:03pound of body weight, somewhere in there total per day. If the amount in a given meal is a bit higher
00:07:08than 20 or 30 grams, you're fine. If it's a bit lower, you're probably fine. But the thing that
00:07:16also I believe needs highlighting that most people don't talk about is distinguishing between what's
00:07:22in circulation versus when one ingests something. Like we love to think that we drink 30 grams of
00:07:29protein or eat the chicken breast or the piece of steak or have the eggs and suddenly those amino
00:07:33acids are available. And it makes so much more rational sense now that you describe it,
00:07:38that eating first makes those amino acids available for the muscles a couple hours later. And we just
00:07:46don't learn about it that way. So I'm very grateful that you're bringing it up that way. I realize we
00:07:51could probably drill into protein requirements ad nauseum, but think about this way. The way I like
00:07:57to put it is total daily protein is the cake, the specific timing of protein relative to the training
00:08:05belt. That is the icing on the cake and it's a very thin layer of ice.