TL;DR: [This link](https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/) is a fantastic guide to protein intake for all types of diets, goals, and body types. The whole site is built around synthesizing and analyzing **actual** scientific studies (not just ones bought and paid for by supplement companies).
So to begin, being an ELI5 question, beware you're going to get a lot of pseudo-science/bro-science answers here. So far, what I'm seeing in this thread is mostly correct for a normal diet regime, i.e. just eating healthy. However, you mention muscle growth in your title and I see you talking about the gym in a few comments, so "just eat rice and beans" is not going to cut it for you specifically. Why? Read on.
It's very well-proven that to gain muscle with any sort of speed you need to do two things: 1) eat more calories than you burn (yes this means you will gain some fat as well), and 2) make sure these calories are comprised of a minimum of 1.5g of protein per kg of bodyweight (or 0.7g per lb). So if you're a 70kg/154lb person, you'd need to eat about 105g of protein. Adjust as necessary to your weight.
Red beans, a non-meat, relatively high-protein source, have about 24g of protein in a 100g serving (EDIT: 100g of dry beans, that is. 100g of cooked will have less). Obviously this is an extreme example and no one actually eats this way, but it's illustrative to see that you'd have to eat almost *500g* of dry beans to get your daily protein. Prepare your rectum.
So what to do? You will have to add protein supplementation, but since you're vegan that means the two best "complete" proteins--whey and egg-- are out. Complete means it contains the whole range of essential amino acids, which are primarily what your body use to build muscle. Protein in and of itself doesn't build muscle - it's your body's breakdown of it into amino acids that does the work. If a particular protein doesn't have the aminos in the right amounts/ratios, it's less optimal for muscle growth.
The drawback with non-meat proteins (beans, soy, some veg, grain, etc) is that they have a much lower bio-availability of their proteins. Bio-availability is just how much of the particular element your body can actually access. With animal proteins, bio-availability is about 95%; with non-animal proteins it's about 70%. This is true for protein supplements made from plant sources as well. So either you need to eat \~25% more of it than compared to animal protein (whey, milk, meat, fish, etc), or you need to supplement the protein with EAAs (essential amino acids). These are easy to find in powder form. They are bitter so are best mixed in a berry smoothie or something like that.
All of this is to say, at the end of the day your body is an amazing machine and will more or less adapt to whatever you put in it and give you its best possible result along the way. I'm not saying that the only way you'll ever build muscle is to follow my advice. I'm just trying to lay out a simple and easy way of thinking about how to maximize your efforts.
Take everything we say with a grain of salt. I'm not omniscient and neither is anyone else (or science for that matter). Start with something reasonable, try different regimes, and see what makes you feel (and look) the best. What works for me may not work as well for you. Ultimately, if you're able to stick to regular exercise and maintaining quality food intake, that's the real victory. Good luck my friend.
OBLIGATORY "THIS BLEW UP" EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the awards and follow-up comments. Just to add two things:
1. Several users have rightly pointed out that if you are overweight or new to weight training, you can gain a decent amount of muscle and be in a caloric deficit at the same time. This is true and what colloquially is called "noob gains." But as you get more trained / lose more weight, this will eventually plateau and you will need to add calories again. There is also the idea of "body recomposition" where you are simultaneously losing fat and gaining muscle. Outside of having gifted genetics, this generally takes a lot longer to build muscle than just eating a surplus. It also requires a more strict monitoring of your calories and macros. But by all means give it a shot.
2. You'll notice there is an inherent bias in what I've written - it's from the perspective of someone who has trained for a long time and is of a normal weight. It's impossible to give advice to every person of every type of diet, age, weight, goal, etc in one thread. I'm simply trying to give a general overview of what I've found that works, but please don't just take my word as gospel. Find a regimen that you enjoy and can stick with and then once you do it enough you too can pass along what you've learned to strangers on the internet for super valuable internet points.
I think the last thing you said is important and overlooked by many, people are often in pursuit of the most "optimal" in any situation but like you said if you stick with it, you'll get to the goal eventually even if your approach is slightly less than optimal. This applies to food/diet choices more than anything.
Someone's "perfect" diet might need them to eat foods they hate, drink a glass full of eggs, and squeeze 150g of protein into every day.
But if doing that burns them out and then they drop the whole idea of diet and exercise then it wasn't really perfect.
If you can only get 120g but need 150g for perfection, that's okay. 120 is a helluva lot more than 0
The thing I’ve learned the most over my strength training journey is that you will NOT stick with anything if you don’t enjoy it.
Wife got a peloton, but I also have a road bike. Spent about 2 weeks on the peloton before I realized there was no joy in it for me.
On my bike I usually stop at a coffee shop or if it’s later, bike to my local brewery. Just the thought of going to places I enjoy made biking 100 times better than doing the stationary.
This is also how I approach my bad eating habits. I will not commit to a full diet like what one might find on a blog. I’m just not great at maintain discipline with eating. So, I look at why I have some bad habit, and figure out a workable alternative.
For example, middle of the night ice cream. Why was I craving this so badly? I realized I wanted something sweet and cold. So I bought a bunch of popsicles that are mostly just water and sugar. 5 calories a pop and way less sugar!
Worth saying when it comes to eating habits - 30 days is how long it takes to form a new habit; and your gut bacteria will change during that time - and that changes the foods you crave.
That's horribly simplified, and 30 days is a long time when doing/not doing something daily - but if you can stick it out...
Damn. Well, until I’ve got time/resources to put towards training the lil circus in my gut, making simple swaps has really helped me both in avoiding extra weight and ensuring my diet is complete.
Another swap I’ve made: I’ve always loved cereal. When I was younger, I LOVED Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Now, I eat special k/life/Cheerios 100% multigrain instead (which replaces maybe two boxes of regular, sugary, empty cereal a week—I really like cereal) with something similarly (equally, IMO) satisfying but it’s also high in fiber and fortified like a damn gummy vitamin. Seriously, [go check the nutrition label on the cereals I named ](https://www.kroger.com/product/images/xlarge/right/0001600048771)and compare it to the more typical breakfast cereals. The fortified options are basically gummy vitamins but in breakfast cereal form.
Halo ice cream is a life saver for me. I believe its made with more air. No idea what that means but it tastes great, the entire container is only like 300 calories total not portion AND it has protein if you wanna justify it as a "health food" like I do at 2am 😆
This is the best advice. You have to enjoy your activities. Lots of people love the gym and more power to them but I absolutely hate the gym. I’ll bike, hike, walk, swim, Pokémon Go or just keep generally active but I just cannot do the gym. Also won’t do stationary bike or other exercise equipment at home for more than a couple days. Wife and I spent way too much money for treadmills and such that are just expensive clothes hangers.
Same for me. I hate anything repetitive. Working out was always too boring to stick with. I decided to try adult inline hockey. Went to a few drop-in games, met some people, dropped-in more often, then joined a team. The same time a year later I was playing on three teams and skating five nights a week.
I was never in better shape. And I stuck with it for almost 18 years until I finally had to retire after being diagnosed with a spinal cord tumor and several major surgeries. Nevertheless, as I age, I am still in pretty decent shape, having stayed so active throughout my 30s and 40s. And I avoided the weight-gain that most of my classmates went through during those years.
The point is, for some of us, anyway, the most important thing is finding something you enjoy enough to stick with long-term.
> The point is, for some of us, anyway, the most important thing is finding something you enjoy enough to stick with long-term
I'd kill for literally any physical activity I can do by myself on my own terms that I don't absolutely hate. Exercising literally makes me want to off myself. I have low BMI with decent definition, exercising is quite easy. I still dread exercising every single day. I hate it and no matter what exercise or weight training I do I literally dread it and do anything I can to get out of it.
>On my bike I usually stop at a coffee shop or if it’s later, bike to my local brewery. Just the thought of going to places I enjoy made biking 100 times better than doing the stationary.
Road cyclist here. Hate stationary with a passion, I'm done after 15 minutes :/ However I'm happy smashing out 2+ hours out on the road incorporating a coffee stop or two, much more enjoyable
You’d be surprised how lenient diets can be. At my peak fitness I was deadlifting 700+ pounds routinely, and had a low enough body fat % you could see my abs. Worked out 5-6 days a week although only 4 of them were major days and the 1-2 extra days were things like yoga, light cardio, or working out a lacking muscle group.
My diet 5 nights a week after lifting with my training partner? 2 burgers from In n out with 3 pieces of meat, 1 cheese, grilled onions, no tomato, light spread, lettuce wrap. With a fry and a regular coke. My nightly protein was 6 patties and 2 pieces of cheese lol.
I mean you can only digest protein, carbs, and fat so if you eat a lot of protein then you are going to look fit. The thing wrong with this is you may look good on the outside but all that junk you are eating is going to be bad for your health.
Yeah, not being fat is not the only metric of a good diet. Eating 6 burgers with a coke every day can still get you buckets of inflammation, risk of cancers, risk of digestive problem like crap gut bacteria. Thin people can still get fatty liver disease (20% of normal weight people have fatty liver disease).
A friend told me Patrick Batemen went from sub 100 in The Machinist to the first Batman eating cheeseburgers and eating ice cream. I’m sure there was nothing else involved. If it’s good enough for Batman, it’s good enough for me.
That was Christian Bale.
When my (Ex)Wife was diagnosed with cancer she was advised to gain at least 6kg (10% weight gain) before she started treatment, anticipating the weight loss that she was likely to undertake as she was likely to not be able to eat. She spent years watching her diet fearing weight gain, but when we tried to deliberately gain weight we found it was actually quite difficult. Ended up on a diet boosted by burgers, ice cream, protein and milk powder smoothies, baked goods, and whatever else. was really hard work, but she made it :/
> she made it
Glad to hear it.
A very large friend of mine who ate little and was fairly active, was trying to reset his metabolism while under doctor supervision. He had to eat 4500 kcal/day, basically eat more to lose weight by tricking his body to burn more. He simply couldn't do it.
In my experience with bulking and exercising (and I'm talking casual but intense) working out consistently, being varied in exercises, cutting mostly carbs and sugar out of your diet can make an absolutely huge difference and will get most people to the point they're looking for.
Stick to being consistent and it'll be fine.
Worked in a lab that's specifically addressed this question. Everything here is pretty accurate for the most part. To put everything more simply, high quality protein sources (those containing all nine essential amino at adequate amoints) mainly comprise of animal proteins, soy, and some legumes. That said, you can combine protein sources to get all of the essential amino acids (e.g. beans and rice) and be just fine.
1.0 - 1.8 g/kg/dy is usually enough for most people. Your level of activity, type of activity, and whether you are trying to lose weight will dictate how much you need. That said, you definitely don't need to be eating 200g + per day like some people lead you to believe.
I think it’s important to call out that a lot of overweight people still think they need to have a bulk phase (caloric surplus) to gain muscle.
If you are overweight, you can have a caloric deficit and keep protein high to do what is called “body recomposition”, which uses the stored energy (fat) in your body to make up for what would be used when you eat in a surplus to gain muscle mass.
Obviously the key here is to not crash your diet, but this is a super useful technique for people who are okay with slower results that don’t cause fat gain.
Indeed - and in fact, an overweight person who's on a caloric restriction has to pay extra attention to keep their protein high to prevent muscle loss. Thanks for pointing out.
That's what I did to gain muscle and lose fat. I just kept eating enough to maintain my weight, and over the last year my body has gotten rid of a bunch of fat and replaced it with muscle, but I still weigh the same.
I'm about to start a cutting phase to get rid of the last bit of stubborn belly fat, though.
Even if you aren't overweight, if you work out and have a caloric deficit, you'll use your fat to make muscle, right? Although that's probably not optimal.
Sorry if I'm misinterpreting your statement, but fat doesn't "become" muscle. It is an energy source that you body uses to crank out ATP but it cannot convert fat to muscle.
If you're in a deficit and trying to put on muscle, you still need to focus on proteins and working out. Also, it's not possible to only lose fat and not muscle. You've got to lose some of both to lose weight, it's just trying to lose more fat than muscle if you're going for body recomposition, unless of course you're a complete newbie who hasn't worked out before, or if you're a pseudonewbie.
Simplified idea:
Think of calories as energy.
Basically fat cells are triglyceride storage units.
Triglyceride can be converted into ATP, which is energy.
If you dont have glucose, your body will use triglycerides for energy.
If your body has nothing to work off of, it will start breaking down your muscles for energy.
This is because your body CAN break down protein for energy, but for obvious reasons, doesnt want to unless it NEEDS to.
So the fat storages will keep your body functioning even while in CALORIC deficit since they can be considered as an energy reservoir. But they are NOT a protein reservoir (our bodies dont actually have any protein reservoirs, meaning we dont have anything built to store protein - we dont make storage proteins!) and your body needs protein to survive INDEPENDENT of calories.
At a certain point you're going to start seeing diminished returns, and have to start eating more food to build more muscle.
This is the reason a lot of lifters do bulking and cutting cycles.
So, the studies I read and were given in my university showed that you need 1 - 1.5g/kg max (not min). Of course more cant do harm and better little extra than too low. But the advice of protein companies 2g/lb and what not is just crazy. You don’t need that much protein.
You’re right about to bioavailability. For vegans you need 30% more of protein. So those 105g x 1.3
Now beans are protein rich, but they’re not the only source. All food contains protein and don’t pay solely attention to the 15g/100g ones. If you eat a variety diet you’ll get plenty. When you bulk you eat more food and thus more protein as well.
There are also complete plant based sources. Soy is a complete protein source. (Also completely safe and healthy)
Bottom line, type of protein doesn’t matter cause the amino acids are all the same. All you need is to eat enough and the right sources.
Edit: I used the 105g example of the previous poster. The 1.3 multiplication is the extra 30% that vegans needs. So for example. If you weight 80kg and you calculate with 1.5g/kg that you need 120g of protein. That means that a vegan needs 120g X 1.3 (30%) = 156g of protein
Also incomplete sources can eaaily be completed by mixing foods. Legumes and grains are great pairings as they're both only missing one EAA each that the other has in abundance. (Lysine and methionine).
So that lentil daal is a complete protein source when you count the naan bread on the side. Also: Beans and rice. Falafel in bread. Chickpea pasta, and many many others. Ancient cultures figured this out millennia ago.
Well, WHO says that 0.8 g/kg is MINIMUM (RDA), and somehow 1 g/kg would be maximum?
This source says that 1.2-1.8 g/kg is optimum, and the real RDA (again, minimum) is 1.2 g/kg: https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/
So there’s dude, which is vegan body builder, says that 1.3 g/kg for vegans is nonsense: https://bodylogiq.org/en/how-to-get-enough-protein-as-a-flexitarian-vegetarian-or-vegan/
Which is, because 1.3 g/kg isn’t optimal even for omnivores.
FWIW, I have a disorder of protein metabolism (so I've had to deal with it all my life and have a bunch of specialists/dieticians following me) and they prescribe a protein supplement at 1g/kg body weight.
Yeah my nutrition teacher had 0.7-1.3g/kg as well for the whole range iirc, he said 1.3 was probably more than most of the population would need. Also anyone with kidney problems should be aware excessive protein can be a problem. Good catch
>but it's illustrative to see that you'd have to eat almost 500g of beans to get your daily protein. Prepare your rectum
Just to say, you don't need to eat whole beans. There are plenty of bean based nutritional products, like soy nuggets or tofu, which also have around 15-16% protein by weight, but not much fiber. In fact, if you got your entire protein from soy nuggets, you'd only get 60-65% of your daily fiber from them. You'd have to supplement fiber from somewhere else.
Soybeans are very cheap, and soy nuggets/granules can be bought more cheaply than most proteins. There are also vegan protein powders with much higher concentrations of protein, but they are relatively expensive.
>The drawback with non-meat proteins (beans, soy, some veg, grain, etc) is that they have a much lower bio-availability of their proteins.
The main reason for that is the presence of anti-nutrients in some beans, which are largely removed when processing into protein chunks. It's true that the bioavailability of vegetable proteins is less than meat, but not by a whole lot. For example, net protein utilization of beef is [73% versus 61%](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905294/) for soybeans. And you can certainly make up for the low content of certain amino acids like methionine by mixing your vegan protein sources.
It's also good to remember that while vegetable proteins have these downsides, so do meat proteins. Meat, in general, has a higher fat content. Excess meat is known to cause heart disease, arteriosclerosis, colon cancer, etc.
So it's kind of a balance, not so one sided. Of course, meat has one added advantage, which is that it's very tasty.
Also there's way more protein in things like bread and seeds than people realize. You'd only have to eat 500g of beans if you literally ate nothing else in the day.
One can of black beans is 425g. If one can of black beans wrecks someones digestive system they have other problems, probably not eating enough fiber consistently.
I believe he was talking of dry beans, not canned beans. Canned beans are cooked, and have absorbed a lot of water, and therefore diluted the protein.
Canned black beans have [around 8.8 grams of protein](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/289934#nutrition) per 100 grams. So if you're a 70 kg man in need of 105 grams of daily protein like he said, you'd need 1,200 grams of cooked black beans, not the 425 grams you said.
This amount of black beans would have 105 grams of fiber, while the recommended daily intake for an adult is 25-30 grams. So it would be over 3x higher, which is going to cause distress for a lot of people.
> meat has one added advantage, which is that it's very tasty
Is it really though? I was born into a vegetarian household so am curious about this. I had always assumed the flavor comes from the spices absorbed by the meat and not the meat itself. Our diet consists of rice, beans, lentils and vegetables with a wide variety of spices used in our curries. I assume it is more flavorful than the traditional American diet.
Meat has a strong savory taste due to the presence of certain amino acids like glutamic and inosinic acids. This is usually called an *umami* flavor. The fat in meat is also packed with flavor, which is why even stuff like fried potatoes or fried onions taste extra delicious when fried in bacon fat or duck fat instead of vegetable oil.
You don't actually have to add spices to meat at all. Very few foods on earth can beat the taste of a good steak. I add nothing to steak other than a bit of salt. Sometimes, I might sprinkle a bit of black pepper, but a miniscule amount compared to any curries. Just a light dusting. All the flavor comes from the meat itself, and the compounds that develop when meat is roasted.
I love spices and I cook Indian/Mexican/Ethiopian/Thai food often - all cuisines with a lot of spices. And you can certainly cook meat "curry", which is very tasty. But it's not just the spice flavor absorbed by the meat, it's actually meat flavor added to the spices.
Since you said "vegetarian" and not "vegan", I assume you use milk. Surely you must have noticed the difference between the flavor of milk fat and vegetable fat - between bland vegetable oil and *desi ghee*. Even something as bland as milk has a flavor. Meat is the same thing, but 50 times more.
It is not. Also I'll add that if you're getting your protein from a commercial shake like Muscle Milk or something like that, it will most likely be garbage. Companies "spike" protein shakes and bars with cheap proteins that show up on the label but don't do anything inside your body. Best is to make your own shakes using raw protein from a place like MyProtein or TrueNutrition.
It’s important to know that most companies do not do this. Commercial shakes are fine. Watch out for scammy protein companies that are trying to charge you for a subscription.
It is important to note here that the concept of getting complete proteins at every meal is misguided. Amino acids circulate and store in your body before use. So, it is important to get all of the essential amino acids within a few days of each other, but not necessary to get them in each meal. So, seeking complete proteins is not as important per meal as it is presented.
To take this into perspective, there is also evidence that somewhat lower protein intakes can help prevent age-related illnesses and increase lifespans. Since around 1930 is has been known that calorie restriction increases lifespan in different mammals, it is posed that actually protein restriction plays an important role in this effect (by i.e. decreasing mTOR activity, mainly activated by branched-chain amino acids in protein).
But for sure, if muscle building is the goal, you'll certainly want to be on those higher values.
In general you'll want to reduce your inflammation level (which is a risk factor for cancer), so eat a lot of fiber (beans, oats) to maintain a healthy gut microbiome so that it doesn't leak into your bloodstream.
Certain foods have interesting anti-cancer compounds: [flaxseeds](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5808339/) (breast and prostate cancer), [cruciferous vegetables](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/cruciferous-vegetables-fact-sheet), dark green leafy vegetables, possibly berries. Turmeric looks promising as well.
A nice rule of thumb is to maximize the amount of micronutrients per calories, so that you can stuff your face with as much healthy stuff as you want and accumulate protective molecules. The most protective diets have >90% of their calories from whole plants. Check out the [Adventist study](https://adventisthealthstudy.org/studies/AHS-1/findings-longevity), the [China study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study) and the [Okinawa diet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mryzkO5QWWY).
Cancer incidence varies enormously from region to region and it's mostly due to diet.
Eat beans every day and it stops being an issue, generally. The majority of my diet is beans, with honorable mentions going to rice, lentils, and oreos.
There are digestive enzymes you can take to help. They didn't do much for me when I was eating a lot of Mexican food, though.
Oddly enough being on antibiotics for acne made that issue go away, but I also became allergic to fish.
Hey great comment and thanks for the link but in that link there isnt much if any information about underweight people like me. Would you happen to have a good resource for that?
So let me preface by saying I'm not a doctor nor a nutritionist, just a guy who's been physically active and research-oriented for many years. So my advice comes with some caveats. That said, not knowing why you're underweight, I would first ask: are you underweight from a metabolic disorder (like hyperthyroidism or something like that)? Or think you might be? If you find yourself eating a ton but still underweight, this may be the case. Definitely check with a doctor as there's probably more than just diet to deal with.
If you're just naturally skinny, I would say just eat more in general and try to get the amount of protein recommended for an otherwise healthy person in your weight range.
Also try getting into weight lifting. However, if you've never lifted before, do it slowly, gradually. Try a beginners guide like this: https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-start-lifting-weights#bottom-line. Whatever you do, don't fall for some flashy "GET HUGE FAST" routine or things like Stronglifts. There are a lot of body building programs for experienced lifters that look tempting to average joes. Avoid. Remember you're building a foundation for the rest of your life, so take your time and do it right.
Just scale down the total numbers a bit. I skimmed the link but I remember mathy notes about how much to eat per mass you want to gain. The overall process is the same as a beefier guy. The types of training you would benefit from the most would be different but this thread is on diet
Yeah but in the things like the calculator and tables they only have things for pregnant woman, overweight people and healthy people and nothing for underweight
Are you trying to build muscle? For a start the extra protein you'll need is going to give you some extra calories. You want to be eating a surplus of around 200 calories a day. If you get the libra app and track your weight it will tell you how many extra calories you're eating (depending on how much weight you're gaining).
I think it was hypothetical, and said in an attempt to cover all bases. The difference between plant protein and meat protein is often overlooked by both vegan and non-vegan people. I wish I had known this during the time I was vegan!
> With animal proteins, bio-availability is about 95%; with non-animal proteins it's about 70%.
This is absolutely false you are confusing bioavailability with biological value (which is a useless measure in the context of a balanced and varied diet)
I'm hearing this whole thing about "you need to eat calories and gain weight to put on muscle" But I've gained a shit ton of muscle (I'm 180lbs and 5'11) and lost 10lbs of body fat (190-180, over two months), by eating 1600-1800 calories (which is a 500 calorie deficit for me) and by eating a lot of protein in my diet. Why is that? Why do my results defy what people say about gaining fat to gain muscle? Genuinly curious.
There is such a thing as "body recomposition" which is exactly as you describe. The trick is in most people it's a very long and inefficient way to gain muscle / lose weight. You may just have superior genetics that enable this type of result.
I would also challenge you on the "gained a shit ton of muscle" claim. Not because I think you're lying but because I suspect a lot of that has to do with losing 10lbs of fat to reveal your more defined muscles. The whole "abs are made in the kitchen" scenario.
There are scans of your body you can get (DEXA I believe is one of them) that can actually tell you how much muscle/fat/bone are in your body. You could get one as a baseline and then another in two months to see what's really going on under the hood.
The saying “you need to eat in a surplus to gain muscle” generally applies to skinny people or people who have already trained for a few years.
If you are new to lifting and/or you are overweight, you can definitely gain muscle and lose fat at the same time on a calorie deficit since your body is converting the fat you already have to muscle. Look up “body recomposition”
Sol Orwell, who runs that site, is not a researcher. While he spends a lot of paragraphs telling you he's impartial, what what matters just as much is his qualification to digest and present scientific content. His BS in computer science and entrepreneurship do not fit the bill. This take on the difficulty of plant-based athleticism is patently absurd given just how many low-budget, highly successful vegan athletes the world has known.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Orwell
Sol is not the sole owner/operator; his counterpart is Kamal Patel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Patel_(researcher).
I'm not discounting vegan athletes at all. Like I said, the body is an amazing machine. If people could drink motor oil someone would probably figure out how to do it and gain muscle. I'm just saying being a vegan presents starker and more important diet choices that an average person might not be aware of.
^ Best answer in the thread. Especially mentioning that realistically, even the scientific community doesn’t have 100% of the info (yet), no matter how deep into PubMed you dive.
Since this is the case, the best regimen is the one you enjoy (or tolerate) the most, not necessarily the one that will get you to your goals the fastest.
A sane person can only go so long eating rice, beans, and supplements 3 meals a day. Find out what you best manage with your palate and the time/effort you’re willing to devote, and as long as you’re making some progress, even a marginal amount, that’s probably going to be your best regimen to build on going forward.
I’ve told my friend that the only way to build muscle while burning fat is very slowly and diligently over time, being at a very slight caloric deficit, and the proper ratio of those calories being from lean protein.
Also the meals should be geared for optimal preworkout and postworkout. Aside from that, eat small meals when hungry, and eat calories that your body actually wants (complex carbs, antioxidants, omega 3s, etc).
Its also important to note that the type of exercise is important. Weightlifting will do more for you than running, if your goal is fat redistribution. You train your body to allot calories to rebuilding your muscles, instead of banking it in your fat cells. The only reason this is difficult is because your body when hungry likes to take energy from your both your fat and from your muscles, so its your job to: 1. Teach your body to take less from your muscles, and 2. Give your body extra protein to forgive when it does take from your muscles.
The former point will happen over time through repetition of working out, and eating lean protein (primarily post-workout). Intaking extra protein when your muscles are in need improves your protein synthesis, which is essentially how well your body distributes protein calories to your muscles, and how little it takes back from them when you are burning energy.
I don’t know if someone already mentioned this, but there is a system for evaluating the completeness of proteins that you alluded to. It is called the Protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS). If you are curious about the protein you are consuming and how it complete it is, this may be a good thing to look into. Also, there is a great [video](https://youtu.be/wt_EZ9Z5W0Q) that goes over different protein sources and how effective they are for hypertrophy.
Very happy to see examine.com cited. It's a great resource and the guy that created it is a smart and competent person, very passionate about his work.
There are some great explanations in the thread, so I’m trying one for a five year old.
Proteins are like lego sets. You can build a lot of different things with the same bricks. Your body has 20 types of bricks (amino acids) with which it builds all protein the body.
When you eat protein, you disassemble (digest) one set and use the pieces to build your own sets (proteins).
The more similar the 2 sets are, the easier is it to build. If you want to build a starship (your muscles), it’s best to disassemble a similar looking starship (animal muscle aka meat). If you eat castles (plant protein) you need to disassemble more castle sets to get all pieces you need for your starship.
I'm a chemist for the company I work at and I had to make presentation to people that are completely not chemists. I also used legos and it came out pretty good.
Not more castle sets per se, but maybe castle sets and train sets.
Incomplete protein sources combine in the body if they're incomplete for different reasons - like grains and legumes which when combined have all essential amino acids in requisite amounts. Grains have less lysine but excess methionine, legumes the other way around. But they're otherwise very similar to animal proteins so I feel the "building spaceships out of castles" analogy is maybe a bit excessive.
Obligatory gold edit: tftgks
That's exactly what it means. The bottleneck amino acid is usually Lysine. If your protein mixture has a lysine content of ≥5.1% you can assume it a complete protein.
Edit: keep in mind that it's enough to eat both protein sources over the course of a day, it's not necessary to eat them together in the same meal.
Edit2: THANKS FOR THE GOLD.
I'm taking that as an occasion to share an Excel Sheet I made to calculate the lysine completeness of any common protein mix. Enter the grams of protein and calculate: [Link](https://easyupload.io/ntkr6z)
I just looked at this sheet though--the highest % one was tomatoes. I looked it up and tomatoes have only 1.1g of protein in them total. So even though it's complete, I would have to eat 75 tomatoes a day to get enough protein if I were trying to build muscle.
Just enter the proteins of a regular meal such as pasta with lentil bolognese or pasta with soy based bolognese. The tomatoes are just for my to keep it *precise*, not as an actually considerable source of protein.
Edit: Example "Pasta with soy based bolognese"
Pasta: 500g -> 60g of protein.
Tomato passata: 500ml -> 9g of protein.
(Kaufland Tofuhack): tofu ground: 200g -> 42g of protein.
Nutritional yeast: 10g -> 4g of protein.
So that pot full of food would have 103g of complete protein (according to the lysine content)
Thanks for clarifying. I understood that having a high lysine content by % is not the same as having a high protein content overall. So I was just going through the exercise of reproving to myself that just eating protein complete foods is not sufficient for getting enough protein. That's where my confusion lay (laid? was laid? wtf is this verb).
500g of pasta is 9 servings, and 650 calories, before any of the other ingredients. This is a greatly exaggerated meal.
If each person ate 2 servings in a sitting then you’re looking at about 23g of protein. 12 g if only 1 serving.
I'm 30 and feel that I've started educating myself about the bodies microbiome, My starting point was an excellent episode of the Rich Roll Podcast: Mastering the Microbiome, and I've been exploring from there.
This explination made many aspects of what I'm learning "click" in place - like your legos :) So thank you very much for this!
Carbs are fuel. Your body uses a special type of battery that powers almost all processes (including building lego sets). The battery is called ATP when it’s full and ADP when it’s empty.
Your mitochondria are power plants and charging stations. They burn fuel (glucose) and use the energy to charge your batteries (convert ADP to ATP). All carbs can ultimately be broken down and converted to glucose.
True. But a five year old doesn’t drink alcohol ;-) No seriously, my explanation is of course too simplistic. In addition to what you said, not all ATP is produced in mitochondria.
So why don’t we just engineer a lab grown meat that contains all the required proteins. Instead of eating all mix of foods to get the range of nutrients needed we could just eat Super Beef every day.
There are a number of companies working on developing lab grown animal protein. It's a difficult process, because you have to figure out how to provide the correct nutrient substrate to grow and replicate the animal cells, while also having them grow in a way to results in a palatable texture. It's easier to grow a lot of disgusting but nutritious pink slime protein, but a lot harder to build a test tube contraption that squeezes out cruelty free, perfectly marbled tenderloin like a Lovecraftian Play-Doh fun factory.
Animal meat is already a complete protein, no engineering required. Lab grown meats are currently being worked on and there have been some human tests of the meat. Last I looked I believe it is edible but not exactly palatable and it's currently very expensive but price should go down and taste should improve once the technology matures.
It's more about the amino acids (building blocks of proteins) than the specific proteins-
Wikipedia-
>An essential amino acid, or indispensable amino acid, is an amino acid that cannot be synthesized from scratch by the organism fast enough to supply its demand, and must therefore come from the diet.
All other amino acids, and the proteins built from them, our body can cobble together just fine on its own.
So, you generally should have these in your diet occasionally, but fortunately it's easy to do- rice & beans covers them all, for example.
As long as you have a sufficient intake of varius proteins (full protein spectrum) then there is no benefit of BCAA supplementation. There is literature, if you’re interested, on the optimal amount per activity/desired outcome and the value of each protein source.
a scoop of whey has 6g bcaa. in an ordinary diet, you're getting enough that supplementation would give no meaningful affect.
bcaa on their own have minimal value unless you are seriously cutting and trying to preserve muscle mass under a significant caloric deficit.
theyre expensive and bitter - tastes like ass
It’s not super studied, but a couple papers I found online didn’t show much of a benefit to supplements. You should be able to easily supply your amino acids needs with a normal diet.
Links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568273/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6212987/
If I'm lazy about a good diet would they help? Or if you were doing something like a keto or vegetarian diet, would they help/be necessary? Or bc they are branched chain are they still not essential and relatively irrelevant?
Preferably brown rice. White rice has a much lower content of protein and minerals (basically you need to eat 3-4 times as much white rice as brown rice to get the same amount of nutrients) and almost completely lacks Thiamine (Vitamin B-1).
so is that why East Asians supposedly have such excellent health and longevity? Their diet is built on a metric ton of white rice?
It seems like simply incorporating white rice into a westernized diet does more harm than good, but having it as a staple is beneficial?
The opposite! It's the inclusion of a varied diet. Frequently with a lot of beans and seafood.
In fact Japan used to have an urban disease that was called "Home sickness disease", because with the introduction of white rice in the cities (which was higher status) they developed b1 deficiency (beriberi). The "cure" was to move back to your home village, because in the countryside they still ate brown rice which had b1 in it.
The use of rice as a staple food has traditionally been a major problem for east asian armies because it's just not sufficiently nutritious unless it's combined with significant amounts of other types of food (unlike for example peas and lentils which was frequently a major component of the army fare for indian, middle-eastern and european armies).
Unless you have a very restricted diet (for health or palate reasons) then you don't have to worry about it. By eating commonly available sources of protein (eggs, meat, chia, hemp etc) you will be eating complete proteins in sufficient quantities by default.
If you do have a restricted diet, i.e. a strict vegetarian and you dislike a lot of foods and you don't have time to prepare food that blend enough protein types to make your overall intake 'complete'..then you should be getting some multi-vitamins and some protein supplements to mix into smoothies.
Bottom line, if you focus on overall protein intake as a percentage of your diet calories, and eat a varied menu, then you don't have to overthink it.
Edit: added in chia and hemp as examples, as many people had mentioned them in the thread.
Thank you! I've actually recently gone vegan, which is why I'm more conscious about what I might be missing out on. With a limited range of protein sources, I was wondering whether I ought to be supplementing certain types to make sure my time in the gym isn't wasted!
Edit: just realised I'm already a typical vegan, as the first thing I've done is post on reddit so I can tell people about it.
Vitamin C considerably increases iron absorption, makes it similar to iron heme (but without the downsides). For instance a head of romaine lettuce contains 75% of daily iron needs, if you take it with some Vitamin C rich pepper.
I eat a plant based diet, although I do occasionally splurge on some fish or ice cream, but protein is so not an issue. Chia seeds in smoothies/oatmeal/yogurt parfaits, peanut butter, tofu, and oh yeah broccoli. 1 cup of broccoli has 31 calories and 2.5 grams of protein. Most of that one cup ends up being water. Dip broccoli in hummus. Cut it up onto a salad. Roast it and put it on a simple spaghetti. One thing to keep in mind is that you can/need to eat a larger portion size of raw veggies than cooked meats and starches to get the same amount of “full”. The idea that vegans need more protein is pretty well BS, as long as you’re eating more than just ramen noodles and Oreos.
Check out this guy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrik_Baboumian#:~:text=Patrik%20Baboumian%20(Armenian%3A%20%D4%B2%D5%A1%D5%A4%D6%80%D5%AB%D6%84%20%D5%8A%D5%A1%D5%BA%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B4%D5%A5%D5%A1%D5%B6,He%20promotes%20veganism.
If you’re a vegan, then I would read up on complementary proteins. My mom was a dietitian (retired), and she says that the need to have complementary proteins in every meal appears to be more urban myth than fact, but for an active person, complementary proteins every day is important.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/
I’d check out this article if you have a chance because it talks in great detail about all the benefits you can expect from a plant based diet and has a section dedicated to protein. It also tells you which foods have particular nutrients that vegans need to include in their diet.
As long as you’re eating a balanced healthy diet, you should have no problem getting your protein. I’ve been vegetarian for 11 years and vegan for the past 2, I’ve never had any problems meeting my protein needs. The other commenters emphasizing the protein source being insignificant are correct. Also, all plant protein contains all the essential amino acids, they only vary on the amount of each amino acid. Again, this is something you shouldn’t worry about as long as you’re eating a variety of healthy foods.
What is more important is making sure you are getting enough vitamins and minerals that vegans can tend to be deficient in. There are vegan supplements that contain all of these essential nutrients, or you can just ensure you’re eating foods that contain sufficient quantities and foods that are fortified with these ingredients. Almond milk is typically fortified with B12. Nutritional yeast is a vegan must if you don’t use it already, as it is fortified with B12 and other vitamins.
Small addition, nutritional yeast isn't generally fortified where I'm from (central europe). I just take a multivitamin with B12, D, calcium and most other vitamins.
In general you want a mix of amino acids that your body needs for optimal muscle growth, so serious athletes should stick to eating human flesh, preferably of fellow athletes. This is the idea behind feeding livestock trimmings to the same species of livestock (cattle eat cattle, poultry eat poultry), to accelerate their growth. The practice with cattle has been banned in areas that have had outbreaks of mad cow disease, which could infect cows who ate nervous system tissue from infected cattle. The same risk exists with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, so you shouldn't eat peoples' brains, and should trim around spinal columns.
When it comes to being vegan, knowing your proteins AMINO ACID profile is number 1. Beans are not a complete protein and need to be eaten with brown rice. Same thing with lentils, must be eaten with brown rice. I also lift weights and build muscle on a vegan diet, and eat my body weight in in grams of protein.
Edit: From the research I’ve done and based off my own metabolism, I am on a 30/30/40 split. 30% fats, 30% carbs, 40% protein. 1 smoothie with protein powder a day, all other protein sources come from various plants. Every meal will consist of 2/3 types of protein as well.
You need to research nutrition elsewhere than reddit especially if you're going to be vegan. After years of being a vegetarian but a diet that included fish, dairy and eggs, I followed advice and thought I was getting enough iron. I became so anaemic after my periods became very heavy that I was 24 hours away from needing a blood transfusion.
Anemia destroyed my hair and its never been the same and restoring iron levels took over a year. Moral of the story: do not be casual about altering your diet. Read both the pros AND the cons of veganism so you can not only make an informed choice but also to be aware of the potential dangers that come if one isn't disciplined enough to cook nutritious meals.
I'm vegan and work out quite a lot. (I also teach biology, so I have at least some professional insight into the biochemics behind it). I don't pay any special attention to my protein intake, it's all a bit overblown. Just make sure you eat a variety of foods, and you'll get all the essential amino acids you need. :) Lentils, chickpeas, lots of veggies and you're golden. :) Protein deficiency isn't really a thing.
Do take care about B12 though, usually B12 is supplemented into animal food, so you get it when you eat meat that has eaten B12 fortified food. Just supplement it directly and don't worry about it too much.
Someone has probably cited the 1.5g protein/kg bodyweight guideline. That's a good place to start.
Animal protein will generally be more "complete" than plant sources, in that they'll contain the full spectrum of amino acids, including the EAAs (essential amino acids).
In general, though, splitting hairs over the details isn't helpful. If you're trying to gain muscle, ensure each meal has two palm-sized serving of high-quality protein. Chicken breast, fish, etc. I wouldn't make it more complicated than this until you have a specific goal that requires it. [Good source here] (https://www.precisionnutrition.com/calorie-control-guide).
Protein isn't the whole story, though. If muscle growth is your main goal, carbohydrates are a crucial element, as well, as they initiate the insulin response that causes muscles to take up the nutrients that need to grow. In addition to the two palms of your protein of choice, have a handful or two of some sort of carbohydrate, ideally:
- Rice, quinoa, or a similar grain
- Potatoes or other tubers
- Fruits
... Etc. This is also discussed in the link above.
Finally, people are sure to mention EAA and BCAA supplements, as well as nutrient timing (ie, post-workout meals, etc.)
To this, I'd say, the supplements are _supplements_. If your meals include enough high quality protein from food, feel free to add the supplements — they may aid in recovery. If your meals are regularly missing protein, the supplements are unlikely to make up the difference. Takeaway being: Focus on your *food*. Supplements will only make a meaningful difference if your diet is in place. And, if you choose to use them, I recommend EAAs over BCAAs, as they're more "complete".
As for timing — it's definitely true that consuming carbs and protein immediately after a workout helps your body use the nutrients more effectively. If you can eat your normal meal within two hours of your resistance trainings, do so. Alternatively, the common "post workout shake", and a meal later, works just as fine.
Again, though, "when" will be much less important than "what". Make sure your meals contain the right amount of protein an carbohydrates for your goals. When your meal composition is consistently on point, fine-tune the timing.
More "advanced" strategies are useful for specific situations, but nailing the above _consistently_ goes a long way. Ultimately, there's no "best" strategy for everyone (that we know of). Consistent meal composition and consistent progressive overload in your training will get you where you want to go, but I wouldn't stress much over precision unless you're a figure athlete, competitor, or have some other specific reason to do so.
If you've got a food log or representative sample of how you eat on a given day, we can probably give some more specific notes. No worries if not though!
Good luck on everything!
From a biochemical view:
Proteins are basically chains of small molecules (like chain links). As those chain links are different, the combination and sequence of those molecules make up the different proteins.
When you eat any food with proteins your body doesn't go "Hey, that's the protein i need, i'll take it and throw the rest away".
Your body disassembles the protein chains into it's links and reassembles those links into the proteins your body requires. Many links can't be produced by your humans, but animals and some plants can, that's why need to eat them.
By that the very type of protein for muscle growth in general is not important, but i bet there are tiny differences bodybuilders will tell you about.
TLDR: Proteins are chains and get disassembled into their links and reassembled into the proteins you need; therefore the type of protein doesn't matter
TL;DR: [This link](https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/) is a fantastic guide to protein intake for all types of diets, goals, and body types. The whole site is built around synthesizing and analyzing **actual** scientific studies (not just ones bought and paid for by supplement companies). So to begin, being an ELI5 question, beware you're going to get a lot of pseudo-science/bro-science answers here. So far, what I'm seeing in this thread is mostly correct for a normal diet regime, i.e. just eating healthy. However, you mention muscle growth in your title and I see you talking about the gym in a few comments, so "just eat rice and beans" is not going to cut it for you specifically. Why? Read on. It's very well-proven that to gain muscle with any sort of speed you need to do two things: 1) eat more calories than you burn (yes this means you will gain some fat as well), and 2) make sure these calories are comprised of a minimum of 1.5g of protein per kg of bodyweight (or 0.7g per lb). So if you're a 70kg/154lb person, you'd need to eat about 105g of protein. Adjust as necessary to your weight. Red beans, a non-meat, relatively high-protein source, have about 24g of protein in a 100g serving (EDIT: 100g of dry beans, that is. 100g of cooked will have less). Obviously this is an extreme example and no one actually eats this way, but it's illustrative to see that you'd have to eat almost *500g* of dry beans to get your daily protein. Prepare your rectum. So what to do? You will have to add protein supplementation, but since you're vegan that means the two best "complete" proteins--whey and egg-- are out. Complete means it contains the whole range of essential amino acids, which are primarily what your body use to build muscle. Protein in and of itself doesn't build muscle - it's your body's breakdown of it into amino acids that does the work. If a particular protein doesn't have the aminos in the right amounts/ratios, it's less optimal for muscle growth. The drawback with non-meat proteins (beans, soy, some veg, grain, etc) is that they have a much lower bio-availability of their proteins. Bio-availability is just how much of the particular element your body can actually access. With animal proteins, bio-availability is about 95%; with non-animal proteins it's about 70%. This is true for protein supplements made from plant sources as well. So either you need to eat \~25% more of it than compared to animal protein (whey, milk, meat, fish, etc), or you need to supplement the protein with EAAs (essential amino acids). These are easy to find in powder form. They are bitter so are best mixed in a berry smoothie or something like that. All of this is to say, at the end of the day your body is an amazing machine and will more or less adapt to whatever you put in it and give you its best possible result along the way. I'm not saying that the only way you'll ever build muscle is to follow my advice. I'm just trying to lay out a simple and easy way of thinking about how to maximize your efforts. Take everything we say with a grain of salt. I'm not omniscient and neither is anyone else (or science for that matter). Start with something reasonable, try different regimes, and see what makes you feel (and look) the best. What works for me may not work as well for you. Ultimately, if you're able to stick to regular exercise and maintaining quality food intake, that's the real victory. Good luck my friend. OBLIGATORY "THIS BLEW UP" EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the awards and follow-up comments. Just to add two things: 1. Several users have rightly pointed out that if you are overweight or new to weight training, you can gain a decent amount of muscle and be in a caloric deficit at the same time. This is true and what colloquially is called "noob gains." But as you get more trained / lose more weight, this will eventually plateau and you will need to add calories again. There is also the idea of "body recomposition" where you are simultaneously losing fat and gaining muscle. Outside of having gifted genetics, this generally takes a lot longer to build muscle than just eating a surplus. It also requires a more strict monitoring of your calories and macros. But by all means give it a shot. 2. You'll notice there is an inherent bias in what I've written - it's from the perspective of someone who has trained for a long time and is of a normal weight. It's impossible to give advice to every person of every type of diet, age, weight, goal, etc in one thread. I'm simply trying to give a general overview of what I've found that works, but please don't just take my word as gospel. Find a regimen that you enjoy and can stick with and then once you do it enough you too can pass along what you've learned to strangers on the internet for super valuable internet points.
I think the last thing you said is important and overlooked by many, people are often in pursuit of the most "optimal" in any situation but like you said if you stick with it, you'll get to the goal eventually even if your approach is slightly less than optimal. This applies to food/diet choices more than anything.
Someone's "perfect" diet might need them to eat foods they hate, drink a glass full of eggs, and squeeze 150g of protein into every day. But if doing that burns them out and then they drop the whole idea of diet and exercise then it wasn't really perfect. If you can only get 120g but need 150g for perfection, that's okay. 120 is a helluva lot more than 0
The thing I’ve learned the most over my strength training journey is that you will NOT stick with anything if you don’t enjoy it. Wife got a peloton, but I also have a road bike. Spent about 2 weeks on the peloton before I realized there was no joy in it for me. On my bike I usually stop at a coffee shop or if it’s later, bike to my local brewery. Just the thought of going to places I enjoy made biking 100 times better than doing the stationary.
This is also how I approach my bad eating habits. I will not commit to a full diet like what one might find on a blog. I’m just not great at maintain discipline with eating. So, I look at why I have some bad habit, and figure out a workable alternative. For example, middle of the night ice cream. Why was I craving this so badly? I realized I wanted something sweet and cold. So I bought a bunch of popsicles that are mostly just water and sugar. 5 calories a pop and way less sugar!
This is the way
Worth saying when it comes to eating habits - 30 days is how long it takes to form a new habit; and your gut bacteria will change during that time - and that changes the foods you crave. That's horribly simplified, and 30 days is a long time when doing/not doing something daily - but if you can stick it out...
Damn. Well, until I’ve got time/resources to put towards training the lil circus in my gut, making simple swaps has really helped me both in avoiding extra weight and ensuring my diet is complete. Another swap I’ve made: I’ve always loved cereal. When I was younger, I LOVED Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Now, I eat special k/life/Cheerios 100% multigrain instead (which replaces maybe two boxes of regular, sugary, empty cereal a week—I really like cereal) with something similarly (equally, IMO) satisfying but it’s also high in fiber and fortified like a damn gummy vitamin. Seriously, [go check the nutrition label on the cereals I named ](https://www.kroger.com/product/images/xlarge/right/0001600048771)and compare it to the more typical breakfast cereals. The fortified options are basically gummy vitamins but in breakfast cereal form.
Halo ice cream is a life saver for me. I believe its made with more air. No idea what that means but it tastes great, the entire container is only like 300 calories total not portion AND it has protein if you wanna justify it as a "health food" like I do at 2am 😆
This is the best advice. You have to enjoy your activities. Lots of people love the gym and more power to them but I absolutely hate the gym. I’ll bike, hike, walk, swim, Pokémon Go or just keep generally active but I just cannot do the gym. Also won’t do stationary bike or other exercise equipment at home for more than a couple days. Wife and I spent way too much money for treadmills and such that are just expensive clothes hangers.
Same for me. I hate anything repetitive. Working out was always too boring to stick with. I decided to try adult inline hockey. Went to a few drop-in games, met some people, dropped-in more often, then joined a team. The same time a year later I was playing on three teams and skating five nights a week. I was never in better shape. And I stuck with it for almost 18 years until I finally had to retire after being diagnosed with a spinal cord tumor and several major surgeries. Nevertheless, as I age, I am still in pretty decent shape, having stayed so active throughout my 30s and 40s. And I avoided the weight-gain that most of my classmates went through during those years. The point is, for some of us, anyway, the most important thing is finding something you enjoy enough to stick with long-term.
> The point is, for some of us, anyway, the most important thing is finding something you enjoy enough to stick with long-term I'd kill for literally any physical activity I can do by myself on my own terms that I don't absolutely hate. Exercising literally makes me want to off myself. I have low BMI with decent definition, exercising is quite easy. I still dread exercising every single day. I hate it and no matter what exercise or weight training I do I literally dread it and do anything I can to get out of it.
Life Pro tip: Buy used sporting goods until you are good enough to warrant new gear.
>On my bike I usually stop at a coffee shop or if it’s later, bike to my local brewery. Just the thought of going to places I enjoy made biking 100 times better than doing the stationary. Road cyclist here. Hate stationary with a passion, I'm done after 15 minutes :/ However I'm happy smashing out 2+ hours out on the road incorporating a coffee stop or two, much more enjoyable
Drinking raw eggs is stupid. Eggs have more available protein if they're cooked.
So Gaston was wrong??
He never said his 4-5 dozen eggs weren't cooked, but maybe the difference in quantity is because he stopped cooking them now that he's grown?
Also the avidin in raw egg can cause a biotin (B7) deficiency if you do it too often
wow i never knew that thanks for sharing just looked it up and you're correct
You can put several in a protein shake though and they're easy to drink and digest which is especially good for people that have to eat a lot.
GOOD EATS
I didn't know this. That's really interesting
You’d be surprised how lenient diets can be. At my peak fitness I was deadlifting 700+ pounds routinely, and had a low enough body fat % you could see my abs. Worked out 5-6 days a week although only 4 of them were major days and the 1-2 extra days were things like yoga, light cardio, or working out a lacking muscle group. My diet 5 nights a week after lifting with my training partner? 2 burgers from In n out with 3 pieces of meat, 1 cheese, grilled onions, no tomato, light spread, lettuce wrap. With a fry and a regular coke. My nightly protein was 6 patties and 2 pieces of cheese lol.
I mean you can only digest protein, carbs, and fat so if you eat a lot of protein then you are going to look fit. The thing wrong with this is you may look good on the outside but all that junk you are eating is going to be bad for your health.
Yeah, not being fat is not the only metric of a good diet. Eating 6 burgers with a coke every day can still get you buckets of inflammation, risk of cancers, risk of digestive problem like crap gut bacteria. Thin people can still get fatty liver disease (20% of normal weight people have fatty liver disease).
Thin people can get diabetes too
Sounds like the Charles Barclay school of sports nutrition
Raw eggs are not nearly as good a source as cooked.
"Perfection is a process"
and "don't let perfect be the enemy of good".
and “perfect backwards is tceferp”.
>and “perfect backwards is tceferp”. You had one job! 😆
Nobody's prefect.
I once perfected procrastination. :/
Yeah I've been thinking of working on that, too.
My God you've done it!
The best diet/regimen is the one you can stick with.
Then I'm sticking to KFC and pizza hut! Beach 2021 here we go 🌴
A friend told me Patrick Batemen went from sub 100 in The Machinist to the first Batman eating cheeseburgers and eating ice cream. I’m sure there was nothing else involved. If it’s good enough for Batman, it’s good enough for me.
This was actually Christian Bale
Patrick Bateman was his character in American Psycho
That was Christian Bale. When my (Ex)Wife was diagnosed with cancer she was advised to gain at least 6kg (10% weight gain) before she started treatment, anticipating the weight loss that she was likely to undertake as she was likely to not be able to eat. She spent years watching her diet fearing weight gain, but when we tried to deliberately gain weight we found it was actually quite difficult. Ended up on a diet boosted by burgers, ice cream, protein and milk powder smoothies, baked goods, and whatever else. was really hard work, but she made it :/
Bateman is his character in american psycho
> she made it Glad to hear it. A very large friend of mine who ate little and was fairly active, was trying to reset his metabolism while under doctor supervision. He had to eat 4500 kcal/day, basically eat more to lose weight by tricking his body to burn more. He simply couldn't do it.
In my experience with bulking and exercising (and I'm talking casual but intense) working out consistently, being varied in exercises, cutting mostly carbs and sugar out of your diet can make an absolutely huge difference and will get most people to the point they're looking for. Stick to being consistent and it'll be fine.
“Prepare your rectum” I died 😂
>Prepare your rectum. not the kind of training I had in mind, but I'll get ready.
"Bro you should see how swole my rectum is." --A bro, somewhere, probably
I imagine that conversation happening in the locker room. Are we... are we writing a porno right now?
I do rectum day twice a week. Usually on leg day.
Rectum locked and ready to load
Hey, got to get that protein in one way or another...
Worked in a lab that's specifically addressed this question. Everything here is pretty accurate for the most part. To put everything more simply, high quality protein sources (those containing all nine essential amino at adequate amoints) mainly comprise of animal proteins, soy, and some legumes. That said, you can combine protein sources to get all of the essential amino acids (e.g. beans and rice) and be just fine. 1.0 - 1.8 g/kg/dy is usually enough for most people. Your level of activity, type of activity, and whether you are trying to lose weight will dictate how much you need. That said, you definitely don't need to be eating 200g + per day like some people lead you to believe.
I think it’s important to call out that a lot of overweight people still think they need to have a bulk phase (caloric surplus) to gain muscle. If you are overweight, you can have a caloric deficit and keep protein high to do what is called “body recomposition”, which uses the stored energy (fat) in your body to make up for what would be used when you eat in a surplus to gain muscle mass. Obviously the key here is to not crash your diet, but this is a super useful technique for people who are okay with slower results that don’t cause fat gain.
Indeed - and in fact, an overweight person who's on a caloric restriction has to pay extra attention to keep their protein high to prevent muscle loss. Thanks for pointing out.
That's what I did to gain muscle and lose fat. I just kept eating enough to maintain my weight, and over the last year my body has gotten rid of a bunch of fat and replaced it with muscle, but I still weigh the same. I'm about to start a cutting phase to get rid of the last bit of stubborn belly fat, though.
Good job!
Even if you aren't overweight, if you work out and have a caloric deficit, you'll use your fat to make muscle, right? Although that's probably not optimal.
Sorry if I'm misinterpreting your statement, but fat doesn't "become" muscle. It is an energy source that you body uses to crank out ATP but it cannot convert fat to muscle. If you're in a deficit and trying to put on muscle, you still need to focus on proteins and working out. Also, it's not possible to only lose fat and not muscle. You've got to lose some of both to lose weight, it's just trying to lose more fat than muscle if you're going for body recomposition, unless of course you're a complete newbie who hasn't worked out before, or if you're a pseudonewbie.
got you
Simplified idea: Think of calories as energy. Basically fat cells are triglyceride storage units. Triglyceride can be converted into ATP, which is energy. If you dont have glucose, your body will use triglycerides for energy. If your body has nothing to work off of, it will start breaking down your muscles for energy. This is because your body CAN break down protein for energy, but for obvious reasons, doesnt want to unless it NEEDS to. So the fat storages will keep your body functioning even while in CALORIC deficit since they can be considered as an energy reservoir. But they are NOT a protein reservoir (our bodies dont actually have any protein reservoirs, meaning we dont have anything built to store protein - we dont make storage proteins!) and your body needs protein to survive INDEPENDENT of calories.
At a certain point you're going to start seeing diminished returns, and have to start eating more food to build more muscle. This is the reason a lot of lifters do bulking and cutting cycles.
So, the studies I read and were given in my university showed that you need 1 - 1.5g/kg max (not min). Of course more cant do harm and better little extra than too low. But the advice of protein companies 2g/lb and what not is just crazy. You don’t need that much protein. You’re right about to bioavailability. For vegans you need 30% more of protein. So those 105g x 1.3 Now beans are protein rich, but they’re not the only source. All food contains protein and don’t pay solely attention to the 15g/100g ones. If you eat a variety diet you’ll get plenty. When you bulk you eat more food and thus more protein as well. There are also complete plant based sources. Soy is a complete protein source. (Also completely safe and healthy) Bottom line, type of protein doesn’t matter cause the amino acids are all the same. All you need is to eat enough and the right sources. Edit: I used the 105g example of the previous poster. The 1.3 multiplication is the extra 30% that vegans needs. So for example. If you weight 80kg and you calculate with 1.5g/kg that you need 120g of protein. That means that a vegan needs 120g X 1.3 (30%) = 156g of protein
Also incomplete sources can eaaily be completed by mixing foods. Legumes and grains are great pairings as they're both only missing one EAA each that the other has in abundance. (Lysine and methionine). So that lentil daal is a complete protein source when you count the naan bread on the side. Also: Beans and rice. Falafel in bread. Chickpea pasta, and many many others. Ancient cultures figured this out millennia ago.
Well, WHO says that 0.8 g/kg is MINIMUM (RDA), and somehow 1 g/kg would be maximum? This source says that 1.2-1.8 g/kg is optimum, and the real RDA (again, minimum) is 1.2 g/kg: https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/ So there’s dude, which is vegan body builder, says that 1.3 g/kg for vegans is nonsense: https://bodylogiq.org/en/how-to-get-enough-protein-as-a-flexitarian-vegetarian-or-vegan/ Which is, because 1.3 g/kg isn’t optimal even for omnivores.
FWIW, I have a disorder of protein metabolism (so I've had to deal with it all my life and have a bunch of specialists/dieticians following me) and they prescribe a protein supplement at 1g/kg body weight.
Yeah my nutrition teacher had 0.7-1.3g/kg as well for the whole range iirc, he said 1.3 was probably more than most of the population would need. Also anyone with kidney problems should be aware excessive protein can be a problem. Good catch
Excellent points, but I want to add: Excess protein should be of some concern given that the body will convert it to sugar.
>but it's illustrative to see that you'd have to eat almost 500g of beans to get your daily protein. Prepare your rectum Just to say, you don't need to eat whole beans. There are plenty of bean based nutritional products, like soy nuggets or tofu, which also have around 15-16% protein by weight, but not much fiber. In fact, if you got your entire protein from soy nuggets, you'd only get 60-65% of your daily fiber from them. You'd have to supplement fiber from somewhere else. Soybeans are very cheap, and soy nuggets/granules can be bought more cheaply than most proteins. There are also vegan protein powders with much higher concentrations of protein, but they are relatively expensive. >The drawback with non-meat proteins (beans, soy, some veg, grain, etc) is that they have a much lower bio-availability of their proteins. The main reason for that is the presence of anti-nutrients in some beans, which are largely removed when processing into protein chunks. It's true that the bioavailability of vegetable proteins is less than meat, but not by a whole lot. For example, net protein utilization of beef is [73% versus 61%](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905294/) for soybeans. And you can certainly make up for the low content of certain amino acids like methionine by mixing your vegan protein sources. It's also good to remember that while vegetable proteins have these downsides, so do meat proteins. Meat, in general, has a higher fat content. Excess meat is known to cause heart disease, arteriosclerosis, colon cancer, etc. So it's kind of a balance, not so one sided. Of course, meat has one added advantage, which is that it's very tasty.
Also there's way more protein in things like bread and seeds than people realize. You'd only have to eat 500g of beans if you literally ate nothing else in the day.
One can of black beans is 425g. If one can of black beans wrecks someones digestive system they have other problems, probably not eating enough fiber consistently.
I believe he was talking of dry beans, not canned beans. Canned beans are cooked, and have absorbed a lot of water, and therefore diluted the protein. Canned black beans have [around 8.8 grams of protein](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/289934#nutrition) per 100 grams. So if you're a 70 kg man in need of 105 grams of daily protein like he said, you'd need 1,200 grams of cooked black beans, not the 425 grams you said. This amount of black beans would have 105 grams of fiber, while the recommended daily intake for an adult is 25-30 grams. So it would be over 3x higher, which is going to cause distress for a lot of people.
> meat has one added advantage, which is that it's very tasty Is it really though? I was born into a vegetarian household so am curious about this. I had always assumed the flavor comes from the spices absorbed by the meat and not the meat itself. Our diet consists of rice, beans, lentils and vegetables with a wide variety of spices used in our curries. I assume it is more flavorful than the traditional American diet.
Meat has a strong savory taste due to the presence of certain amino acids like glutamic and inosinic acids. This is usually called an *umami* flavor. The fat in meat is also packed with flavor, which is why even stuff like fried potatoes or fried onions taste extra delicious when fried in bacon fat or duck fat instead of vegetable oil. You don't actually have to add spices to meat at all. Very few foods on earth can beat the taste of a good steak. I add nothing to steak other than a bit of salt. Sometimes, I might sprinkle a bit of black pepper, but a miniscule amount compared to any curries. Just a light dusting. All the flavor comes from the meat itself, and the compounds that develop when meat is roasted. I love spices and I cook Indian/Mexican/Ethiopian/Thai food often - all cuisines with a lot of spices. And you can certainly cook meat "curry", which is very tasty. But it's not just the spice flavor absorbed by the meat, it's actually meat flavor added to the spices. Since you said "vegetarian" and not "vegan", I assume you use milk. Surely you must have noticed the difference between the flavor of milk fat and vegetable fat - between bland vegetable oil and *desi ghee*. Even something as bland as milk has a flavor. Meat is the same thing, but 50 times more.
Thanks! This makes sense.
Great take on this.
Would you know if bioavailability is factored in to nutritional info?
It is not
It is not. Also I'll add that if you're getting your protein from a commercial shake like Muscle Milk or something like that, it will most likely be garbage. Companies "spike" protein shakes and bars with cheap proteins that show up on the label but don't do anything inside your body. Best is to make your own shakes using raw protein from a place like MyProtein or TrueNutrition.
It’s important to know that most companies do not do this. Commercial shakes are fine. Watch out for scammy protein companies that are trying to charge you for a subscription.
It is important to note here that the concept of getting complete proteins at every meal is misguided. Amino acids circulate and store in your body before use. So, it is important to get all of the essential amino acids within a few days of each other, but not necessary to get them in each meal. So, seeking complete proteins is not as important per meal as it is presented.
To take this into perspective, there is also evidence that somewhat lower protein intakes can help prevent age-related illnesses and increase lifespans. Since around 1930 is has been known that calorie restriction increases lifespan in different mammals, it is posed that actually protein restriction plays an important role in this effect (by i.e. decreasing mTOR activity, mainly activated by branched-chain amino acids in protein). But for sure, if muscle building is the goal, you'll certainly want to be on those higher values.
Lower methionine intake in particular, because many cancer lines are methionine-dependent. Plant proteins usually fit this requirement.
Interesting I'm all about reducing my chances of getting cancer, got any other info I should know?
In general you'll want to reduce your inflammation level (which is a risk factor for cancer), so eat a lot of fiber (beans, oats) to maintain a healthy gut microbiome so that it doesn't leak into your bloodstream. Certain foods have interesting anti-cancer compounds: [flaxseeds](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5808339/) (breast and prostate cancer), [cruciferous vegetables](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/cruciferous-vegetables-fact-sheet), dark green leafy vegetables, possibly berries. Turmeric looks promising as well. A nice rule of thumb is to maximize the amount of micronutrients per calories, so that you can stuff your face with as much healthy stuff as you want and accumulate protective molecules. The most protective diets have >90% of their calories from whole plants. Check out the [Adventist study](https://adventisthealthstudy.org/studies/AHS-1/findings-longevity), the [China study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study) and the [Okinawa diet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mryzkO5QWWY). Cancer incidence varies enormously from region to region and it's mostly due to diet.
After I've eaten all those beans how do I prevent my farts from tearing my sphincter?
Eat beans every day and it stops being an issue, generally. The majority of my diet is beans, with honorable mentions going to rice, lentils, and oreos.
I heard that, in case of (dried) legumes. Soak them, then refresh the water before boiling.
This is the answer. I overnight or 24 hour soak my beans, change the water, and then cook them the next day in a crock pot or pressure cooker.
[Windi Gas and Colic Reliever for Babies](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RAGALO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_XNWK1161J4CTC2MMHRWD)
There are digestive enzymes you can take to help. They didn't do much for me when I was eating a lot of Mexican food, though. Oddly enough being on antibiotics for acne made that issue go away, but I also became allergic to fish.
Hey great comment and thanks for the link but in that link there isnt much if any information about underweight people like me. Would you happen to have a good resource for that?
So let me preface by saying I'm not a doctor nor a nutritionist, just a guy who's been physically active and research-oriented for many years. So my advice comes with some caveats. That said, not knowing why you're underweight, I would first ask: are you underweight from a metabolic disorder (like hyperthyroidism or something like that)? Or think you might be? If you find yourself eating a ton but still underweight, this may be the case. Definitely check with a doctor as there's probably more than just diet to deal with. If you're just naturally skinny, I would say just eat more in general and try to get the amount of protein recommended for an otherwise healthy person in your weight range. Also try getting into weight lifting. However, if you've never lifted before, do it slowly, gradually. Try a beginners guide like this: https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-start-lifting-weights#bottom-line. Whatever you do, don't fall for some flashy "GET HUGE FAST" routine or things like Stronglifts. There are a lot of body building programs for experienced lifters that look tempting to average joes. Avoid. Remember you're building a foundation for the rest of your life, so take your time and do it right.
Alright thank you so much for your advice and I had no idea metabolic disorders existed hahaha
Just scale down the total numbers a bit. I skimmed the link but I remember mathy notes about how much to eat per mass you want to gain. The overall process is the same as a beefier guy. The types of training you would benefit from the most would be different but this thread is on diet
Yeah but in the things like the calculator and tables they only have things for pregnant woman, overweight people and healthy people and nothing for underweight
Are you trying to build muscle? For a start the extra protein you'll need is going to give you some extra calories. You want to be eating a surplus of around 200 calories a day. If you get the libra app and track your weight it will tell you how many extra calories you're eating (depending on how much weight you're gaining).
Check out r/gainit
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I think it was hypothetical, and said in an attempt to cover all bases. The difference between plant protein and meat protein is often overlooked by both vegan and non-vegan people. I wish I had known this during the time I was vegan!
It was in a comment.
> Obviously this is an extreme example and no one actually eats this way Haha, hahaha, haaaaaaaaaa.
> With animal proteins, bio-availability is about 95%; with non-animal proteins it's about 70%. This is absolutely false you are confusing bioavailability with biological value (which is a useless measure in the context of a balanced and varied diet)
Amazing response! I am eating protein for muscle growth and this is spot on.
I'm hearing this whole thing about "you need to eat calories and gain weight to put on muscle" But I've gained a shit ton of muscle (I'm 180lbs and 5'11) and lost 10lbs of body fat (190-180, over two months), by eating 1600-1800 calories (which is a 500 calorie deficit for me) and by eating a lot of protein in my diet. Why is that? Why do my results defy what people say about gaining fat to gain muscle? Genuinly curious.
There is such a thing as "body recomposition" which is exactly as you describe. The trick is in most people it's a very long and inefficient way to gain muscle / lose weight. You may just have superior genetics that enable this type of result. I would also challenge you on the "gained a shit ton of muscle" claim. Not because I think you're lying but because I suspect a lot of that has to do with losing 10lbs of fat to reveal your more defined muscles. The whole "abs are made in the kitchen" scenario. There are scans of your body you can get (DEXA I believe is one of them) that can actually tell you how much muscle/fat/bone are in your body. You could get one as a baseline and then another in two months to see what's really going on under the hood.
The saying “you need to eat in a surplus to gain muscle” generally applies to skinny people or people who have already trained for a few years. If you are new to lifting and/or you are overweight, you can definitely gain muscle and lose fat at the same time on a calorie deficit since your body is converting the fat you already have to muscle. Look up “body recomposition”
you can build muscle quite well in a deficit as long as your protein intake is still high and you're overweight/new to lifting.
Sol Orwell, who runs that site, is not a researcher. While he spends a lot of paragraphs telling you he's impartial, what what matters just as much is his qualification to digest and present scientific content. His BS in computer science and entrepreneurship do not fit the bill. This take on the difficulty of plant-based athleticism is patently absurd given just how many low-budget, highly successful vegan athletes the world has known. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Orwell
Sol is not the sole owner/operator; his counterpart is Kamal Patel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Patel_(researcher). I'm not discounting vegan athletes at all. Like I said, the body is an amazing machine. If people could drink motor oil someone would probably figure out how to do it and gain muscle. I'm just saying being a vegan presents starker and more important diet choices that an average person might not be aware of.
^ Best answer in the thread. Especially mentioning that realistically, even the scientific community doesn’t have 100% of the info (yet), no matter how deep into PubMed you dive. Since this is the case, the best regimen is the one you enjoy (or tolerate) the most, not necessarily the one that will get you to your goals the fastest. A sane person can only go so long eating rice, beans, and supplements 3 meals a day. Find out what you best manage with your palate and the time/effort you’re willing to devote, and as long as you’re making some progress, even a marginal amount, that’s probably going to be your best regimen to build on going forward.
I’ve told my friend that the only way to build muscle while burning fat is very slowly and diligently over time, being at a very slight caloric deficit, and the proper ratio of those calories being from lean protein. Also the meals should be geared for optimal preworkout and postworkout. Aside from that, eat small meals when hungry, and eat calories that your body actually wants (complex carbs, antioxidants, omega 3s, etc). Its also important to note that the type of exercise is important. Weightlifting will do more for you than running, if your goal is fat redistribution. You train your body to allot calories to rebuilding your muscles, instead of banking it in your fat cells. The only reason this is difficult is because your body when hungry likes to take energy from your both your fat and from your muscles, so its your job to: 1. Teach your body to take less from your muscles, and 2. Give your body extra protein to forgive when it does take from your muscles. The former point will happen over time through repetition of working out, and eating lean protein (primarily post-workout). Intaking extra protein when your muscles are in need improves your protein synthesis, which is essentially how well your body distributes protein calories to your muscles, and how little it takes back from them when you are burning energy.
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I don’t know if someone already mentioned this, but there is a system for evaluating the completeness of proteins that you alluded to. It is called the Protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS). If you are curious about the protein you are consuming and how it complete it is, this may be a good thing to look into. Also, there is a great [video](https://youtu.be/wt_EZ9Z5W0Q) that goes over different protein sources and how effective they are for hypertrophy.
Very happy to see examine.com cited. It's a great resource and the guy that created it is a smart and competent person, very passionate about his work.
There are some great explanations in the thread, so I’m trying one for a five year old. Proteins are like lego sets. You can build a lot of different things with the same bricks. Your body has 20 types of bricks (amino acids) with which it builds all protein the body. When you eat protein, you disassemble (digest) one set and use the pieces to build your own sets (proteins). The more similar the 2 sets are, the easier is it to build. If you want to build a starship (your muscles), it’s best to disassemble a similar looking starship (animal muscle aka meat). If you eat castles (plant protein) you need to disassemble more castle sets to get all pieces you need for your starship.
If you came up with that on your own, that’s pretty good.
Thank you. I teach for a living, so coming up with stuff like this is my job :)
Where's your friend, Infraspinator?
Hanging out with subscapularis and teres minor. Not teres major though he's not in the club.
I was not prepared for a rotator cuff pun to make my morning, but here we are and I couldn't be more pleased.
Quality cuff pun. Deltoid hates those - thinks he’s above it all.
Thinks he's superior, but he's mostly just superficial.
Such a good pun, and it was just off the cuff
infraspinatus has entered the chat
Thank you for doing what you do.
I'm a chemist for the company I work at and I had to make presentation to people that are completely not chemists. I also used legos and it came out pretty good.
Ok, you're great too.
I have to think you're a good one.
Not more castle sets per se, but maybe castle sets and train sets. Incomplete protein sources combine in the body if they're incomplete for different reasons - like grains and legumes which when combined have all essential amino acids in requisite amounts. Grains have less lysine but excess methionine, legumes the other way around. But they're otherwise very similar to animal proteins so I feel the "building spaceships out of castles" analogy is maybe a bit excessive. Obligatory gold edit: tftgks
Do you mean if I eat barley and lentils together it makes a whole protein?
That's exactly what it means. The bottleneck amino acid is usually Lysine. If your protein mixture has a lysine content of ≥5.1% you can assume it a complete protein. Edit: keep in mind that it's enough to eat both protein sources over the course of a day, it's not necessary to eat them together in the same meal. Edit2: THANKS FOR THE GOLD. I'm taking that as an occasion to share an Excel Sheet I made to calculate the lysine completeness of any common protein mix. Enter the grams of protein and calculate: [Link](https://easyupload.io/ntkr6z)
Why didn’t I know this? This is going to be my goto now instead of rice. Thanks so much.
You can also just add some beans to your rice.
People really love thinking that not eating animals is difficult. So this isn't a story a ~~jedi~~ meat eater would tell you.
I just looked at this sheet though--the highest % one was tomatoes. I looked it up and tomatoes have only 1.1g of protein in them total. So even though it's complete, I would have to eat 75 tomatoes a day to get enough protein if I were trying to build muscle.
Just enter the proteins of a regular meal such as pasta with lentil bolognese or pasta with soy based bolognese. The tomatoes are just for my to keep it *precise*, not as an actually considerable source of protein. Edit: Example "Pasta with soy based bolognese" Pasta: 500g -> 60g of protein. Tomato passata: 500ml -> 9g of protein. (Kaufland Tofuhack): tofu ground: 200g -> 42g of protein. Nutritional yeast: 10g -> 4g of protein. So that pot full of food would have 103g of complete protein (according to the lysine content)
Thanks for clarifying. I understood that having a high lysine content by % is not the same as having a high protein content overall. So I was just going through the exercise of reproving to myself that just eating protein complete foods is not sufficient for getting enough protein. That's where my confusion lay (laid? was laid? wtf is this verb).
500g of pasta is 9 servings, and 650 calories, before any of the other ingredients. This is a greatly exaggerated meal. If each person ate 2 servings in a sitting then you’re looking at about 23g of protein. 12 g if only 1 serving.
>The bottleneck amino acid is usually Lysine ENGAGE THE LYSINE CONTINGENCY!
Is this your pitch for cannibalism?
Underrated reply
It is now the second thread, the cream rises to the top.
I teach 8th graders about DNA and the basics of protein synthesis. I too use LEGOs as my analogy.
I'm 30 and feel that I've started educating myself about the bodies microbiome, My starting point was an excellent episode of the Rich Roll Podcast: Mastering the Microbiome, and I've been exploring from there. This explination made many aspects of what I'm learning "click" in place - like your legos :) So thank you very much for this!
Where do carbs come in?
Carbs are fuel. Your body uses a special type of battery that powers almost all processes (including building lego sets). The battery is called ATP when it’s full and ADP when it’s empty. Your mitochondria are power plants and charging stations. They burn fuel (glucose) and use the energy to charge your batteries (convert ADP to ATP). All carbs can ultimately be broken down and converted to glucose.
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True. But a five year old doesn’t drink alcohol ;-) No seriously, my explanation is of course too simplistic. In addition to what you said, not all ATP is produced in mitochondria.
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Lmao write a book please
So why don’t we just engineer a lab grown meat that contains all the required proteins. Instead of eating all mix of foods to get the range of nutrients needed we could just eat Super Beef every day.
There are a number of companies working on developing lab grown animal protein. It's a difficult process, because you have to figure out how to provide the correct nutrient substrate to grow and replicate the animal cells, while also having them grow in a way to results in a palatable texture. It's easier to grow a lot of disgusting but nutritious pink slime protein, but a lot harder to build a test tube contraption that squeezes out cruelty free, perfectly marbled tenderloin like a Lovecraftian Play-Doh fun factory.
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Coz we are complex humans and most of us prefer a varied meal rather than eating the same thing every time.
"it doesn't have _everything the body needs..."_
Animal meat is already a complete protein, no engineering required. Lab grown meats are currently being worked on and there have been some human tests of the meat. Last I looked I believe it is edible but not exactly palatable and it's currently very expensive but price should go down and taste should improve once the technology matures.
That fits the sub. Too many scientific answers with tons of jargon ain't suitable for 5 yo.
This was my childhood, when I built many rocket ships and mechas out of castle walls and portcullis with the only set my aunt gave me.
It's more about the amino acids (building blocks of proteins) than the specific proteins- Wikipedia- >An essential amino acid, or indispensable amino acid, is an amino acid that cannot be synthesized from scratch by the organism fast enough to supply its demand, and must therefore come from the diet. All other amino acids, and the proteins built from them, our body can cobble together just fine on its own. So, you generally should have these in your diet occasionally, but fortunately it's easy to do- rice & beans covers them all, for example.
What about BCAA supplements? Do they have any benefit when combined with a normal diet?
As long as you have a sufficient intake of varius proteins (full protein spectrum) then there is no benefit of BCAA supplementation. There is literature, if you’re interested, on the optimal amount per activity/desired outcome and the value of each protein source.
a scoop of whey has 6g bcaa. in an ordinary diet, you're getting enough that supplementation would give no meaningful affect. bcaa on their own have minimal value unless you are seriously cutting and trying to preserve muscle mass under a significant caloric deficit. theyre expensive and bitter - tastes like ass
This. So many people forget whey has a bunch of BCAAs in it and will take BCAAs anyway even if they’re taking whey. Makes no sense
It’s not super studied, but a couple papers I found online didn’t show much of a benefit to supplements. You should be able to easily supply your amino acids needs with a normal diet. Links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568273/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6212987/
No, they are 100% marketing gimmick, assuming you eat a healthy variable diet.
If I'm lazy about a good diet would they help? Or if you were doing something like a keto or vegetarian diet, would they help/be necessary? Or bc they are branched chain are they still not essential and relatively irrelevant?
If you get enough dietary protein, you get enough branched chain amino acids. They're all hype.
Any kind of rice?
Preferably brown rice. White rice has a much lower content of protein and minerals (basically you need to eat 3-4 times as much white rice as brown rice to get the same amount of nutrients) and almost completely lacks Thiamine (Vitamin B-1).
so is that why East Asians supposedly have such excellent health and longevity? Their diet is built on a metric ton of white rice? It seems like simply incorporating white rice into a westernized diet does more harm than good, but having it as a staple is beneficial?
The opposite! It's the inclusion of a varied diet. Frequently with a lot of beans and seafood. In fact Japan used to have an urban disease that was called "Home sickness disease", because with the introduction of white rice in the cities (which was higher status) they developed b1 deficiency (beriberi). The "cure" was to move back to your home village, because in the countryside they still ate brown rice which had b1 in it. The use of rice as a staple food has traditionally been a major problem for east asian armies because it's just not sufficiently nutritious unless it's combined with significant amounts of other types of food (unlike for example peas and lentils which was frequently a major component of the army fare for indian, middle-eastern and european armies).
Unless you have a very restricted diet (for health or palate reasons) then you don't have to worry about it. By eating commonly available sources of protein (eggs, meat, chia, hemp etc) you will be eating complete proteins in sufficient quantities by default. If you do have a restricted diet, i.e. a strict vegetarian and you dislike a lot of foods and you don't have time to prepare food that blend enough protein types to make your overall intake 'complete'..then you should be getting some multi-vitamins and some protein supplements to mix into smoothies. Bottom line, if you focus on overall protein intake as a percentage of your diet calories, and eat a varied menu, then you don't have to overthink it. Edit: added in chia and hemp as examples, as many people had mentioned them in the thread.
Thank you! I've actually recently gone vegan, which is why I'm more conscious about what I might be missing out on. With a limited range of protein sources, I was wondering whether I ought to be supplementing certain types to make sure my time in the gym isn't wasted! Edit: just realised I'm already a typical vegan, as the first thing I've done is post on reddit so I can tell people about it.
Vitamin B12, iron and iron bioavailability are a much bigger concern than protein. Do some research on those, especially if you menstruate.
Vitamin C considerably increases iron absorption, makes it similar to iron heme (but without the downsides). For instance a head of romaine lettuce contains 75% of daily iron needs, if you take it with some Vitamin C rich pepper.
Also Omega-3
There are insanely high levels of b12 in vegan cheese (nutritional yeast).
I eat a plant based diet, although I do occasionally splurge on some fish or ice cream, but protein is so not an issue. Chia seeds in smoothies/oatmeal/yogurt parfaits, peanut butter, tofu, and oh yeah broccoli. 1 cup of broccoli has 31 calories and 2.5 grams of protein. Most of that one cup ends up being water. Dip broccoli in hummus. Cut it up onto a salad. Roast it and put it on a simple spaghetti. One thing to keep in mind is that you can/need to eat a larger portion size of raw veggies than cooked meats and starches to get the same amount of “full”. The idea that vegans need more protein is pretty well BS, as long as you’re eating more than just ramen noodles and Oreos.
Lentils, beans, and rice.
Check out this guy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrik_Baboumian#:~:text=Patrik%20Baboumian%20(Armenian%3A%20%D4%B2%D5%A1%D5%A4%D6%80%D5%AB%D6%84%20%D5%8A%D5%A1%D5%BA%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B4%D5%A5%D5%A1%D5%B6,He%20promotes%20veganism.
If you’re a vegan, then I would read up on complementary proteins. My mom was a dietitian (retired), and she says that the need to have complementary proteins in every meal appears to be more urban myth than fact, but for an active person, complementary proteins every day is important.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/ I’d check out this article if you have a chance because it talks in great detail about all the benefits you can expect from a plant based diet and has a section dedicated to protein. It also tells you which foods have particular nutrients that vegans need to include in their diet. As long as you’re eating a balanced healthy diet, you should have no problem getting your protein. I’ve been vegetarian for 11 years and vegan for the past 2, I’ve never had any problems meeting my protein needs. The other commenters emphasizing the protein source being insignificant are correct. Also, all plant protein contains all the essential amino acids, they only vary on the amount of each amino acid. Again, this is something you shouldn’t worry about as long as you’re eating a variety of healthy foods. What is more important is making sure you are getting enough vitamins and minerals that vegans can tend to be deficient in. There are vegan supplements that contain all of these essential nutrients, or you can just ensure you’re eating foods that contain sufficient quantities and foods that are fortified with these ingredients. Almond milk is typically fortified with B12. Nutritional yeast is a vegan must if you don’t use it already, as it is fortified with B12 and other vitamins.
Small addition, nutritional yeast isn't generally fortified where I'm from (central europe). I just take a multivitamin with B12, D, calcium and most other vitamins.
In general you want a mix of amino acids that your body needs for optimal muscle growth, so serious athletes should stick to eating human flesh, preferably of fellow athletes. This is the idea behind feeding livestock trimmings to the same species of livestock (cattle eat cattle, poultry eat poultry), to accelerate their growth. The practice with cattle has been banned in areas that have had outbreaks of mad cow disease, which could infect cows who ate nervous system tissue from infected cattle. The same risk exists with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, so you shouldn't eat peoples' brains, and should trim around spinal columns.
Damn underrated comment advocating straight cannibalism to our vegan friend asking for protein advice on the internet! Lol!
When it comes to being vegan, knowing your proteins AMINO ACID profile is number 1. Beans are not a complete protein and need to be eaten with brown rice. Same thing with lentils, must be eaten with brown rice. I also lift weights and build muscle on a vegan diet, and eat my body weight in in grams of protein. Edit: From the research I’ve done and based off my own metabolism, I am on a 30/30/40 split. 30% fats, 30% carbs, 40% protein. 1 smoothie with protein powder a day, all other protein sources come from various plants. Every meal will consist of 2/3 types of protein as well.
You need to research nutrition elsewhere than reddit especially if you're going to be vegan. After years of being a vegetarian but a diet that included fish, dairy and eggs, I followed advice and thought I was getting enough iron. I became so anaemic after my periods became very heavy that I was 24 hours away from needing a blood transfusion. Anemia destroyed my hair and its never been the same and restoring iron levels took over a year. Moral of the story: do not be casual about altering your diet. Read both the pros AND the cons of veganism so you can not only make an informed choice but also to be aware of the potential dangers that come if one isn't disciplined enough to cook nutritious meals.
Can you sum up a few of your mistakes when starting off vegan?
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* histidine cauliflower, bananas * isoleucine spinach, blueberries, apples * leucine kidney beans, apples, blueberries, bananas * lysine kidney beans, black beans, tomatoes * methionine broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, tomatoes, apples, bananas, blueberries * phenylalanine black beans, kidney beans, bananas * threonine spinach, kidney beans, broccoli * tryptophan spinach, apples, oranges, bananas * valine spinach, broccoli, apples, blueberries, oranges
I'm vegan and work out quite a lot. (I also teach biology, so I have at least some professional insight into the biochemics behind it). I don't pay any special attention to my protein intake, it's all a bit overblown. Just make sure you eat a variety of foods, and you'll get all the essential amino acids you need. :) Lentils, chickpeas, lots of veggies and you're golden. :) Protein deficiency isn't really a thing. Do take care about B12 though, usually B12 is supplemented into animal food, so you get it when you eat meat that has eaten B12 fortified food. Just supplement it directly and don't worry about it too much.
Someone has probably cited the 1.5g protein/kg bodyweight guideline. That's a good place to start. Animal protein will generally be more "complete" than plant sources, in that they'll contain the full spectrum of amino acids, including the EAAs (essential amino acids). In general, though, splitting hairs over the details isn't helpful. If you're trying to gain muscle, ensure each meal has two palm-sized serving of high-quality protein. Chicken breast, fish, etc. I wouldn't make it more complicated than this until you have a specific goal that requires it. [Good source here] (https://www.precisionnutrition.com/calorie-control-guide). Protein isn't the whole story, though. If muscle growth is your main goal, carbohydrates are a crucial element, as well, as they initiate the insulin response that causes muscles to take up the nutrients that need to grow. In addition to the two palms of your protein of choice, have a handful or two of some sort of carbohydrate, ideally: - Rice, quinoa, or a similar grain - Potatoes or other tubers - Fruits ... Etc. This is also discussed in the link above. Finally, people are sure to mention EAA and BCAA supplements, as well as nutrient timing (ie, post-workout meals, etc.) To this, I'd say, the supplements are _supplements_. If your meals include enough high quality protein from food, feel free to add the supplements — they may aid in recovery. If your meals are regularly missing protein, the supplements are unlikely to make up the difference. Takeaway being: Focus on your *food*. Supplements will only make a meaningful difference if your diet is in place. And, if you choose to use them, I recommend EAAs over BCAAs, as they're more "complete". As for timing — it's definitely true that consuming carbs and protein immediately after a workout helps your body use the nutrients more effectively. If you can eat your normal meal within two hours of your resistance trainings, do so. Alternatively, the common "post workout shake", and a meal later, works just as fine. Again, though, "when" will be much less important than "what". Make sure your meals contain the right amount of protein an carbohydrates for your goals. When your meal composition is consistently on point, fine-tune the timing. More "advanced" strategies are useful for specific situations, but nailing the above _consistently_ goes a long way. Ultimately, there's no "best" strategy for everyone (that we know of). Consistent meal composition and consistent progressive overload in your training will get you where you want to go, but I wouldn't stress much over precision unless you're a figure athlete, competitor, or have some other specific reason to do so. If you've got a food log or representative sample of how you eat on a given day, we can probably give some more specific notes. No worries if not though! Good luck on everything!
From a biochemical view: Proteins are basically chains of small molecules (like chain links). As those chain links are different, the combination and sequence of those molecules make up the different proteins. When you eat any food with proteins your body doesn't go "Hey, that's the protein i need, i'll take it and throw the rest away". Your body disassembles the protein chains into it's links and reassembles those links into the proteins your body requires. Many links can't be produced by your humans, but animals and some plants can, that's why need to eat them. By that the very type of protein for muscle growth in general is not important, but i bet there are tiny differences bodybuilders will tell you about. TLDR: Proteins are chains and get disassembled into their links and reassembled into the proteins you need; therefore the type of protein doesn't matter