How much protein do we need, any way?

[Misnagid]

And how do you figure it, based on what you weigh or what your goal weight is?

[Sherri]

Here's some info I found on that Misnagid.
How much protein do you need in your diet to build healthy muscle?

Find out how much protein you need to build healthy muscles.

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Protein is commonly found in many different types of food, especially in the meat and dairy categories. A three ounce serving of beef, for example, contains roughly thirty grams of protein. One cup of yogurt has about ten grams of protein in it, while peanut butter contains roughly four grams per tablespoon. Milk, cheese, soy products, fish, eggs, and nuts also contain protein, just to name a few more foods.

Protein is essential for the proper operation of your body's functions. It plays a major role in regulating the glucose level in your bloodstream. It also helps our bodies create antibodies to fight against infection. Your hair, fingernails, toenails, muscles, and cartilage are all created from protein.

If you are a fairly inactive adult, according to the the recommended daily allowances (RDA) that are set by the Food and Board, you need to consume 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight every day in order to get the needed amount. That means, for example, that if you weigh one hundred and fifty pounds, then you need to consume about fifty-four grams of protein daily. Your protein intake should make up about fifteen per cent of your daily caloric intake too. That means, for example, that if you consume eighteen hundred calories, that two hundred and seventy of those calories should be from protein.

It is estimated that the average man consumes about ninety grams of protein every day, while the average woman consumes around sixty grams of protein daily. Therefore, according to these statistics, the average man and woman get a sufficient amount of protein in their every day.

The people who are more prone to suffer the most from a protein-deficient daily diet tend to be the elderly, the ill, and people who have eating disorders.

If, on the other hand, you are an active athlete, or if you are on a schedule, you may fill up on in order to give you the energy you need to work out and perform up to your best potential. Carbohydrates such as spaghetti, potatoes, and bread will do just that too. Will carbohydrates help build stronger, healthy muscles too? The answer is no, that you need protein to help do that. Is is estimated that athletic persons require a much higher amount of protein in their diets, as much as 0.55 to 0.73 grams of protein per pound of their body weight. Athletes or trainers who lack in their daily intake of protein can feel weak and worn out. The purpose of the higher protein intake is to help enhance and the repair of tissue in the body. It is also beneficial to certain hormones that help in performance and energy.

However, consuming a high amount of protein will not make your muscles grow stronger and healthier. A combination of a proper, well - balanced diet and exercise will accomplish that goal. If you consume more protein than your body needs, the excess will simply be thrown off as waste from your body. In fact, an excess of protein can actually be stored in your body as fat, not muscle. Another negative factor in consuming too much protein is that it can cause undue stress on your kidneys because they have to work harder to expel the excess from your system.

The bottom line is this: if you are an active athlete, or if you are on a strength training schedule, and you are seeking to build healthy muscle, then you should eat a balanced daily diet that consists of the major food groups. You should make sure that your daily diet contains a sufficient amount of protein in order to further your muscle building goals, but you should be careful not to overdo it. Even if your goal is not to build additional muscle, you should still eat a healthy daily diet and make sure that you get enough protein in your diet so your body can function properly.

[liv]

I think another good question is - and I have not been able to find an answer to it- is how much protein is too much. If I were to consume 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight every day that would amount to about about 47 grams. But I eat far more protein than that. So at what point is this protein turned into glucose? I don't know. So far I have tried to follow the "rule" of limiting protein to 30% but that on a normal day is probably between 90 and 100 grams of protein

[Chicklady]

I've kept mine (with some gorging exceptions ) to 100-120 g per day, or about 1/2 gram per pound of body weight. I'm not sure where I got that figure, but I've been storing it in my head for years!!!!

[Sherri]

Good morning Misnagid, Chick, Liv and posters,
Here's some more info on this subject. Liv raised another good question, "How much protein is too much?"
Maybe this will give more insight.
Sherri


The Metabolic Shift Approach

… fat-burner for life …

How Much Protein?

Protein
Protein is essential for life. It’s the stuff that builds hair, nails and muscle, and it participates in countless life-essential bodily processes. After water, we’re mostly made up of protein, and we’re losing it all the time. So protein is rebuilding your entire body every single day. The most important bits of protein are known as amino acids.
If you don’t eat enough protein, your body will get it from its own protein stores, your muscles. This is a catabolic state, meaning your muscles are wasting away, or more accurately, being eaten away (sort of like self cannibalism!). Losing muscle is bad news. The more you lose, the slower your metabolism becomes, the less you can eat and the slower you burn calories. Likewise, adding muscle increases your metabolism.
The average dieter who steps on ordinary weight scales is overjoyed at seeing the numbers drop. However, you can place a bet that more often then not, he or she has lost muscle. The quicker the weight loss, the more likely it’s muscle. This is why, if you can afford it, I recommend purchasing a set of scales that shows body fat and even muscle mass if possible. Also callipers if you can (acumeasure are under £10/$20).
This happens not just beacuse of a low amount of protein, but also when calories are too low. When we lower our intake of calories, our body needs to find its fuel from somewhere, so again will turn to the muscles.
Extreme Low-Carbers use this catabolic principle to our advantage. We create fat catabolism by going into ketosis.
Too Much
Wait, before you go stuffing yourself with all the meat you can eat and more, as some low-carb diets seem to allow, take note of the following. I had no idea about this but it’s so important to everyone and absolutely crucial to extreme Low-Carbers (LCers).
Like all things, there is a certain amount that your body needs and will use, and then there is either a shortage, or an over supply.
We know from the above what happens when there’s a shortage – self-cannibalism!
When there’s an oversupply, your body needs to deal with it too. An oversupply of all macronutrients is what we know in the old system as ‘too many calories’. We put on weight.
But in LCing, we’re told that the worst culprit is the carb. True of course. But guess what? Protein that is not used by your body is converted to……… wait for it …….. glycogen, that’s sugar!
Some experts simply tell us that any excess protein is converted into urea and passed as urine. Seems nice and easy. But this isn’t the whole picture.
Excess protein is converted to glucose, which as we know, is body sugar, and an excess of it, whether from dietary carbs or protein, is stored as fat. The kidneys flush out certain chemicals, like nitrogen, but there’s still the matter of the body sugar.
Protein seems to work in this order: amino acids used to build the body, extra is used as fuel for energy, excess is stored as fat.
Uh-oh, suddenly the advise to ‘eat unlimited protein’ is not so much fun.
Also worth keeping in mind, is that experts agree that too much protein leeches the body of vital calcium.
And finally, you need to drink lots of water to ensure the protein doesn’t dehydrate you, as it requires more liquid to be eliminated properly, and apparently water molecules are lost as amino acids combine to form more complex molecules. This is one reason why many on LC diets tend to become constipated. As long as your protein intake isn’t too high, your fat intake is high, and you’re drinking lots of water, you should never be constipated.
Very importantly, plenty of water will help the kidneys work at optimum capacity to get rid of the nitrogen produced from protein consumption.
So how Much?
According to the American Food Nutrition Board of the Academy of Sciences, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of protein is 0.8 grams of protein per kilo of body weight (0.35 grams per pound of body weight). This the same for UK recommendations.
This increases according to individual lifestyle. If you exercise more, especially cardio (fast breathing) or weight training, or if you’re often stressed or are pregnant, you’ll surely need more.
There’s a general consensus that we don’t need more than 20% of our total calories from protein.
Okay, so we’ve heard the advice of research. Now, let’s go to our bodies. If you’re monitoring your intakes (www.fitday.com is great for this), and are not afraid to experiment with your macronutrients (fats, proteins, carbohydrates), then you’ll soon find what your body prefers. The guideline of 0.8 per kg of body weight could be used as a starting point.
And don’t worry about how complicated this might seem. A little patience and effort, you’ll quickly learn how much protein a chicken breast, pork chop, egg or can of sardines holds. there’s no need to be exact.
HUGE TIP:
Some say that your body can go into a muscle eating (catabolic) state after only 2.5 hours without protein. That means, if you don’t have some protein for breakfast, by lunchtime your body has been eating into it’s own muscle stores. A good argument for spreading out your macronutrients (carbs, fats, proteins) throughout the day, rather than just thinking – I’ll skip protein for breakfast because I’m planning on a big steak for dinner.
If there’s a huge gap between lunch and dinner, more than 5 hrs, consider including a snack. But if you find you’re not hungry, simply eat your lunch in two sittings, or keep some of the protein for your snack. You’re eating the same amount just ensuring there’s no long gap without food or protein.
So while zero carb meals are perfectly fine, zero fat or zeros protein meals don’t seem beneficial, and perhaps even detrimental to fat loss. I would say that preferably, every main meal has all three.
Ketosis
If you’re trying out a ketosis phase, some experts say that our brains won’t start using protein for fuel until a week or three into the low-carb diet. Our brains run mostly on carbs, so to ensure we don’t start self-cannibalising, we should probably have more protein to begin with, so that sugar-fuel is coming from somewhere other than our own muscles.
In ‘The Ketogenic Diet’, McDonald says that the brain needs 100grams of carbs to function, but that this drops to 45grams after a few weeks.
So to calculate how much protein we need at the start, we need a different formula. You take 100grams, and subtract the carbs you eat.
As an extreme Low-Carber (LCer), I eat no more than 20g of carbs a day.
That’s 100 – 20 = 80g
That means that I need to supply my brain with 80g more of carbs!
Apparently, 58% of protein converts to carbs.
So 58% of 80g.
58 divided 100 x 80 = 46.4
My initial protein needs are – 0.8 x 52 (kg) = 41.6
Add the two totals – 46.4 + 41.6 = 88
Let’s round that up to a total protein requirement of 90grams. That’s quite a bit to begin with.
[Note: I can't find this anywhere, but this is something I decided was much more accurate and reflective of my body's needs. If you can work out your muscle mass, I use that to work out my initial needs. With a MM of 37.5, my overall protein needs drop to 76g. Not a huge amount of difference, but more accurate I think. And possibly important for very overweight people. If this is researched/stated somewhere, let me know.]
When my brain starts using the ketones and therefore no longer needs that extra protein, the formula changes to begin with a brain carb need of just 45grams as opposed to 100grams.
45 – 20 = 25g
58 divide 100 x 25 = 14.5
0.8 x 52 = 41.6
14.5+ 41.6 = 56.1
Rounded up to a total protein need of just 56g. [or just 45g according to my method]
Total Caloric Intake
This part is only useful for those getting into the minute details and fine-tuning their macronutrient needs. Ignore it otherwise, or come back another day after your brain has recovered from the above.
For those double checking things by monitoring calories (remember, there’s NO need to in the low-carb way! But useful at the beginning to fully understand your body’s needs), you can work out your macronutrient needs by grams and calories.
To do this, you’ll need to have a good idea of what your maximum daily caloric intake is to lose weight.
Take the total protein required amount, mine is 90g, and times it by 4 (1g protein = 4cals).
Take your desired carb gram intake, mine is a maximum of 20, times it by 4 (1g carb = 4cals)

90 x 4 = 360 calories
20 x 4 = 80 calories
Subtract these from you total calorie intake (for fat loss) to work out your calories from fat.
Mine is 1000 calories. (yours could be 2800, or any number!)
1000 – 440 = 560
So 560 calories should come from fat. Divide this by 9 (1g fat = 9cals) to obtain the grams of fat you need.
So for me (you will be totally different), my macronutrient needs for weight loss, at the moment, would be the following:
360 cals/90g of Protein
560cals/62g of fat
80 cals/20g of carbs
After ketones have kicked in:
224 cals/56g of protein
696 cals/77g of fat
80 cals/20g of carbs
As you might see, I would now be in a proper Low Carb way of eating, which should be more fats than anything else.
But as I always say, listen to your body. Use these calculations as guidelines. They simply give you something to work from rather than just beginning at any random number. Guidelines should never replace personal experience.
I will post my success at working out my own exact needs for fat loss soon.
_____________________
References
MacDonald, L., 1998, The Ketogenic Diet,

[not2late]

During Atkins, protein comprises 30% of your daily calories.

[Misnagid]

Somehow, I seem to be missing the point and not conveying my question well.

What should my protein projection be based on? How much I weigh now or my goal weight? There's a huge difference, an eighty pound difference between the two numbers.

[liv]

I agree that this is confusing. Now the current wisdom (what Megs said) is that it should be based on what you eat and nothing else. So 30% of the calories you take it should come from protein.

[Chicklady]

90 x 4 = 360 calories
20 x 4 = 80 calories
Subtract these from you total calorie intake (for fat loss) to work out your calories from fat.
Mine is 1000 calories. (yours could be 2800, or any number!)
1000 – 440 = 560
So 560 calories should come from fat. Divide this by 9 (1g fat = 9cals) to obtain the grams of fat you need.
So for me (you will be totally different), my macronutrient needs for weight loss, at the moment, would be the following:
360 cals/90g of Protein
560cals/62g of fat
80 cals/20g of carbs
After ketones have kicked in:
224 cals/56g of protein
696 cals/77g of fat
80 cals/20g of carbs

Seems like starvation!!

[Misnagid]

But saying 30% isn't really an answer.

Our bodies presumably have a certain metabolic need for protein, to regenerate tissues and grow muscle. Without an adequate amount, we're going to be wasting muscle. I can choose to eat 1000 or 1500 or 2000 calories and still be losing weight but the absolute metabolic need I have for protein isn't going to depend on whether I'm eating 1000 or 1500 or 2000 calories.