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Probably the reason you're feeling so energetic right now is because you're recovering from a period of really low carb intake. Kind of like how my protein and fat intake was really low for many years, and once I flipped it around and started eating a lot more, it was like all my circuits were firing and I felt could wrestle a grizzly bear if I needed to.
Can you find a happy medium between 50g and 350g? Maybe start tapering it down until you find the sweet spot, or do high carb on your cardio days?
Good explanation. Well, before I did the low carb thing, I was averaging about 250-275g per day and was often run down. Maybe 300-325 would be ideal....but you wouldn't think a difference of 25-50g would make too much of an impact.
If you want, you could try 'carb cycling' which you would lower and raise your carbs on certain days to achieve weight loss without losing energy needed to workout or just to be normally energetic as usual.
this is basically what I do, as well as use proper carb timing. On rest days, I cut my carbs back. But on gym days(I usually work out at 5 or 530pm), I usually dont get my first carb intake until one or two hours before the gym. From then til bed time, I eat all the carbs!(well, healthy ones).
the general guideline is 1-1.5g per pound of bodyweight.
I have read that in some publications. But let's say I'm going for 2200 calories. If I need at least 300 g carbs, and go with 200g carbs, that's 2000 calories right there. I don't know that 10% fat is a good idea based on what I've read.
Different people react differently to different diets. I don't do well on low carb because I get sluggish and my workouts suffer. My wife, on the other hand, dropped weight like crazy on a low carb diet. Low carb diets are great for people who don't exercise much, but I also know tons of athletes and bodybuilders who swear by the keto diet. Find out what works for you.
the general guideline is 1-1.5g per pound of bodyweight.
You actually only NEED about .8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight to achieve optimal muscle growth and muscle maintenance, and usually not even that. More than that can be useful, however, especially when it comes to hunger satiety and the thermogenic effects of protein helping with weight loss. The 1 gram per pound of bodyweight is a good rule of thumb however, since it's better to have a little bit more protein than you need than not enough. The only downside to too much protein is a bigger grocery bill. 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight is a little wasteful, in my opinion, considering protein as a macronutrient costs about 10x or more than most carbohydrate or fat sources. If you are doing keto or low carb, however, 1.5 grams per pound is a good rule of thumb since you'll need to consume more protein to make up for the lack of carbs.
You actually only NEED about .8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight to achieve optimal muscle growth and muscle maintenance, and usually not even that. More than that can be useful, however, especially when it comes to hunger satiety and the thermogenic effects of protein helping with weight loss. The 1 gram per pound of bodyweight is a good rule of thumb however, since it's better to have a little bit more protein than you need than not enough. The only downside to too much protein is a bigger grocery bill. 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight is a little wasteful, in my opinion, considering protein as a macronutrient costs about 10x or more than most carbohydrate or fat sources. If you are doing keto or low carb, however, 1.5 grams per pound is a good rule of thumb since you'll need to consume more protein to make up for the lack of carbs.
Science nerds like me always want to see the research on the topic. Of course, if you know me at all, you know that I’ve read it all. To say that it’s a bit mixed is an understatement and even researchers can’t make up their damn minds, preferring to hold polite arguments with one another for months in scientific journals.
Some research seems to clearly indicate an increased requirement for protein. But it uses a methodology (nitrogen balance) that is questionable at best, so the low-protein folks will shoot it down.
Other research (done with low intensity aerobic work) suggests that training improves protein retention; that is, as athletes become more trained, their protein requirements may actually go down. But does research with lower intensity aerobic work apply to the kind of training a strength/power athlete is doing? Probably not, so the high protein researchers will shoot that down. Around and around it goes.
They even quoted a study from one researcher (Tipton) who actually recommends a higher protein intake than 0.8g/lb.
Quote:
And yet, I’m going to tell you how to rationalize all of the above stuff that I imagine most of you skimmed in the first place. Two researchers, named Tipton and Wolfe wrote a cool paper about this argument. In it they first detailed all of the stuff I just bored you with. At the end they gave their recommendations where they basically argued that
We don’t know how much protein is required to optimize all of the potential pathways important to athletes.
We know that a protein intake of 1.4 g/lb (3.0 g/kg) isn’t harmful and may have benefits that are too small to be measured in research
As long as eating lots of protein doesn’t keep an athlete from eating too few of the other nutrients (carbs/fats), there’s no reason to not eat a lot. And there may be benefits.
Essentially, a high protein intake won’t hurt an athlete (basically everything you may have read about the dangers of high protein intakes is nonsense), it may provide small benefits of importance to elite athletes and, at the end of the day athletes and coaches don’t give a **** about pedantic scientific debates over amino acid metabolism that gives researchers and nerds like me a giant hardon. Admittedly, they didn’t put it in exactly those terms but that’s the gist of it.
So here’s my recommendation, strength/power athletes should aim for 1.5 g/lb protein per day (again, this is about 3.3 g/kg for the metrically inclined). So for a 200 lb strength/power athlete, that’s 300 grams of protein per day. For a 300 lber, that’s 450 grams per day. If you’re Jeff Lewis, I imagine your protein requirements are basically ‘All of it’ or perhaps ‘A cow’. Per day.
Regardless though, the link you gave is directed more at bodybuilders and athletes. The first link I gave is general information for all dieting individuals, so it's a bit of an apples and oranges thing. As mentioned in the first link, the research on dieting and protein is a lot more conclusive than the other research.
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