Protein Timing
Lately, I've noticed that more and more customers who come into the storefront know their protein number. I love this. If you don't know yours, find out here: Protein Per Day. If you are over 40 or highly active, 1.6 g/kg/day is often a good number. For example, for me at 82 kg (181 lbs), the calculation is 82 kg X 1.6 g/kg = 131 g / day. Yes, knowing your protein number is important, but, dare I say, “Timing is everything.”
To help establish why protein timing is so important, I often launch into how much protein the body stores. I first ask the customer, how many carbohydrates (glycogen) do you store in your body? The answer is usually expressed in time: we have enough carbohydrates to fuel high-intensity exercise for 2 to 2.5 hrs. We store this energy in our muscles and liver; if we don't ingest carbohydrates during intense exercise, we will run out of gas or “hit the wall” 2 to 2.5 hours in. In marathon running, you often hear of runners hitting the wall at mile 20; this is the point their glycogen stores have been depleted, and they have to rely more heavily on fat as energy, which takes more oxygen to convert into energy to fire the muscles. The higher oxygen requirement means we will go into oxygen debt if we attempt to maintain the same intensity. Next, I ask: How much energy does the body store as fat?
Of course we all have different levels of fat storage. For me, as an example, I weigh 82 kg and have approximately 18% body fat. This translates to 14.8 kg or 14,760 g of fat. Converted into calories, this equates to: 14,760 g X 9 calories/g = 132,840 calories. This means as long as I stayed hydrated, kept electrolytes in balance, and rode in zone 1—at 28 km/hr—I would cover 6,000–7,000 km before running out of fat. Next, I ask the question: “How much protein do you store?”.
Kind of a trick question: unlike carbs and fat, our body stores no protein. Protein and the amino acids from protein are only available while they are being digested and circulating in your system. Two important notes here. One, protein is only available during the timeframe it is being digested to be utilized for muscle repair or growth. Secondly, your body can only utilize so much protein at a given time; taking large amounts of protein at a single serving >50-60 g really only results in expensive pee. 40 g or so is utilized, and the remainder is excreted through our urine. So we now know timing matters. Since muscle is constantly turning over, it is really important to routinely take 3-4 doses of protein daily to hit your total protein number.
Think of your muscles like a brick wall. It is a normal process for bricks to be coming out of the wall. Muscle is constantly and naturally breaking down. To maintain optimum muscle health, we must always be putting bricks back into the wall at a rate that they are naturally coming out. Many North Americans get the majority of their daily protein at lunch and dinner, almost completely neglecting one of the most important times of the day to get protein in: breakfast. Our Moms and Grandmothers often expressed that breakfast is the most important meal of the day; not sure if they understood the physiology, but they were right. If my last protein intake was at dinner the night before, say 6-7 pm, and I skip protein at breakfast and wait until lunch for my first substantial dose of protein, I have gone 16+ hours without getting protein. Knowing that there is no storage of protein, this long timeframe in negative protein balance does not support optimal muscle health.
The key to optimal muscle health is to hit your protein number daily, do it in 3-4 doses of protein spaced out through the day, and look to perform 3 bouts of resistance training per week.
