Find out in this article how much protein a day you need to eat
Whether your goal is to gain muscle or lose fat, you need a good amount of protein.
You know it’s essential, you probably even know the best foods to get it, but, do you know how much protein you need to eat daily?
This is the question you should be able to answer, and depending on your goal, your protein intake may vary.
The article is aimed at healthy people looking to gain muscle mass, or lose fat, and focuses above all on gym practitioners.
Let's start with fat loss.
Protein in fat loss
It’s not just to gain muscle mass that you need protein, it’s also essential for those who want to lose fat.
If you don't use enough protein, you risk losing too much lean mass, and with that, the results in the mirror will be lower, but not only.
The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn, so your fat burning progress will also be faster.
In addition, it is important to recover from workouts and keep your appetite under control.
If you are having difficulty controlling your appetite in your fat loss diet, take a look in this article.
How much protein should you use when you want to lose fat?
When you want to lose fat, it makes sense for your protein intake to be higher.
Because?
There are several reasons for this.
Although carbohydrates and fats are the body's main sources of energy, when you're looking to lose fat, cut down on calories and go for it. hypocaloric feeding.
In order to lower calories, you need to reduce the amount of macronutrients you eat, and therefore you start to reduce carbohydrates and fats.
When you do this, and especially in more advanced stages, or more aggressive diets, the body starts to use more protein as an energy source, which can lead to significant muscle mass losses.
In addition, cardio is usually used at this stage, which means more training, and greater need for recovery.
This study compared the differences between a diet for fat loss with 1g of protein per kilo of body weight, compared to a diet with 2.3g of protein / kg.
The conclusion was simple, the group that used more protein lost less lean mass.
Okay, how much protein do I use then?
A simple method to know how much protein to use is to go to the nearest scale and weigh yourself.
Take that number and multiply it by somewhere between 2.3g and 2.8g.
This is the amount of protein you must use to lose fat and maintain your muscle mass.
Example.
Vasco weighs 80kg and is determined to lose fat, but he does not want to lose the muscle mass that so much work has given him to gain.
He took out his cell phone and made a simple calculation to find out how much protein to use in his diet.
80 x 2.5 = 200
Therefore, Vasco with his 80kg, decided to multiply by 2.5g of protein, which means that he will consume 200g of protein daily to have good results.
Note. It starts with a lower value, between 2.3 g and 2.5 g, and if necessary, increases up to 2.8 g.
Protein and muscle mass gain
If your goal is to gain muscle mass, you can reduce your protein intake compared to the fat loss phase.
Yes, you read it well, you can reduce the protein.
But not too much.
This is because the body, as we mentioned earlier, uses above all carbohydrates and fats as an energy source.
To gain muscle mass, you need a hypercaloric diet, rich not only in protein, but also in these two macronutrients.
Bearing in mind that the body has an excess of calories, and enough carbohydrates and fats, it will depend little on protein to give it energy.
In other words, the protein you use will be used mostly for what interests you, gaining muscle mass.
How much protein should I use then?
Well, you can cut it down, but not too much.
The method does not change, so you need to know your body weight.
Once you know your weight, you multiply by a value between 1.8g and 2.3g.
This means that you will consume between 1.8 g and 2.3 g of protein per kilo of body weight.
Example.
Tiago, unlike Vasco, wants to gain muscle, is not satisfied with his 70kg and wants more muscle.
Your account is as follows.
70 x 2.1 = 147
Using the value of 2.1g of protein, Tiago came to the conclusion that he will need 147g of protein to have good results.
Note. It starts with the lowest values, between 1.8 g and 2.1 g, and if necessary, increases up to 2.3 g.
Conclusion
Protein is undoubtedly essential to achieve your goals successfully, and knowing how much protein you need per day is essential to achieve the best results.
As you may have noticed from the article, it is not too complicated to calculate your daily protein requirements.
Weigh yourself and multiply your weight by an amount appropriate to your goal.
These values are only general suggestions, which result in most cases, but they are not sacred numbers, and you may need to adapt them.
This does not mean that 10g per kg is a good idea and will bring you extra results.
Finally, don't forget that your diet is not just protein, and you also eat enough carbohydrates and fats.
