Most Replayed Moment: The Truth About Protein Intake and The Simplest Way To Lose Fat

**Steven Bartlett** (0:04)
One of the things that I'm particularly intrigued by, which kind of dovetails into both of those subjects of fat and muscle gain, is the subject of protein. And because there's been so much said about protein, you know, when I was growing up, they said you have to have protein right after you eat your meal. You have to have this much protein, you have to have it before you eat your meal. It doesn't matter when you have it. So I want to do a bit of myth busting on the subject of protein. What are the biggest myths that people currently believe about protein consumption?

**Alan Aragon** (0:33)
The biggest myth is that they have the hierarchy of importance all screwed up. Like, everybody's worried about how much protein per meal you need to have for this or that goal. When do you need to time protein relative to the training bout or waking or sleeping or all that stuff? The main thing they need to be focused on is how much protein do they need to eat by the end of the day? Because when you hit that goal, you've basically won the whole game. The relative placement, the distribution and the doses of the protein, the timing of it. Oh man, it rarely matters. It rarely matters beyond getting that protein in, in a way that's comfortable and convenient for you and in such a way that you can stick to in the long term. Some people are more like grazers. Some people are more like gorgers. They're both fine as long as you hit the total by the end of the day. So the hierarchy is of utmost importance, get your total daily protein. And then of secondary importance would be what is the distribution of the constituent doses of that protein total through the day. And then of third importance down here is like when specifically are you supposed to time that protein around the training bout. So yeah, the way that I put it is like this.
The daily total for protein, that is the cake. The distribution of the doses through the day, that's the icing on the cake and it's a very thin layer of icing.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:10)
And how do we know that? How do we know that it doesn't really matter what time you have the protein and that the most important thing is just making sure you get the protein?

**Alan Aragon** (2:19)
That's a great question. The reason that we know that distribution doesn't matter as much as the total is through a couple lines of evidence that I can think of. So there's Yasuda who compared a three meal model with a two meal model.
And the three meal model had superior effects for muscle gain. But there is a study that was just published, gosh, within the last month. It was better from a methodology standpoint because they fed the subjects an abundance of protein. So Yasuda and colleagues who tested the two versus three, he totaled everybody out at 1.3 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. That's total daily protein dose. And so we know now that that's a suboptimal total if you want to push muscle growth. So for pushing muscle growth, we know you should be at 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, which translates to 0.7 grams per pound of body weight. That's where you really want to be if you want to maximize muscular adaptations to resistance training like muscle size and strength gains. So this latest study, they compared three protein feedings versus five protein feedings. And the totals of protein intake in the day in both groups were around a gram per pound. So right around 2.2 ish grams per kilogram of body weight. So we have the optimized daily total, and we're testing three versus five protein feedings. We're doing progressive resistance training. And this is the key. This happened in resistance trained subjects. There were no significant differences in muscle size and strength gain between the three protein feedings a day versus five protein feedings a day. And this is the best design study to date on the topic.

**Steven Bartlett** (4:27)
Because when I grew up and read stuff about gaining muscle, it said you have to have like five or six meals a day. And it said that's what bodybuilders do.

**Alan Aragon** (4:36)
Whenever we talk about any kind of physical goal, any sort of fitness goal, we have to address two main things. So who's the population and what goal are we talking about? And maybe a third thing we need to address is what is at stake? So what level are we talking about? So population, goal, what level? What's at stake? So with bodybuilders at elite levels, it is most of them consume five, six meals a day. Some of them do like even seven or eight in the off season. And these are individuals who are enhanced. And so their ceiling for muscle growth and their rates of muscle growth are significantly higher than people who are, in quotes, natural. And the amount of food that these individuals can process and use productively is significantly more. And so with that population, I can see it being pretty standard for them to be consuming at least five, six meals a day. Since they tend to have, since they tend to be eating double the amount of the average person. And so, but the interesting thing that happens is that the guidelines from this very sort of fringe elite population, that's what trickles down into the general public. And then they're stuck thinking, okay, maybe I need to eat every 2.5 hours or some such. But yeah, with the general population and even recreational athletes and people who are hobbyists and stuff, you really...