Protein and it’s importance in muscle building
Protein & it’s role in our body
Proteins are essential to all life. In animals they help form supporting and protective structures such as cartilage, skin, nails, hair and muscle. They are used by the body to build, repair and maintain muscle tissue. They are also the major constituents of enzymes, antibodies, many hormones, and body fluids such as blood, milk and egg white.
By chemical composition, proteins are linked chains of individual amino acids. Amino acids, which themselves have very important role in our body, are principally made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Some amino acids also contain other elements such as sulfur. Without these amino acids it would be impossible for our body to build, repair or even maintain our muscles. We will talk more about amino acids in a different post.
Once we complete our workout or any intense physical activity, we damage our muscles in doing so. Our body considers it as a requirement of more and stronger muscles in those areas and along with healing those damaged muscles, it also makes those areas stronger by adding more muscles. In doing all of this, our body needs essential amino acids, which are provided by protein.
Sources of protein
As we learnt that our body needs protein to build, repair and maintain our muscles, what are the best sources of protein? Before talking about various sources of protein, let’s discuss how much of the protein provided by food, can our body utilize for muscle building. The body actually cannot use all the protein we ingest for muscle-building unless all of the necessary amino acids are also present. However, the body itself can only produce some of these amino acids and the others, called essential amino acids, have to be obtained from the foods we eat.
Some foods contain what is called complete protein – that is, they provide all of the amino acids necessary to produce usable protein. Some examples of such foods are milk, meat, fish, eggs and various vegetable products such as soybean. But even these foods contain differing amounts of usable protein per weight. That is, even though a food might contain, say, 10 grams of protein, our body is able to use only a certain percentage of it – for example, only 7 or 8.5 grams in weight.
Following chart shows on the left what percentage protein makes up of various foods commonly used as protein sources and on the right what percentage of that protein our body is actually able to use for building muscle:
Food | %Protein by Weight | %Net Protein Utilization |
Eggs | 12 | 94 |
Milk | 4 | 82 |
Fish | 18-25 | 80 |
Cheese | 22-36 | 70 |
Brown rice | 8 | 70 |
Meat and Fowl | 19-31 | 68 |
Soybean flour | 42 | 61 |
This chart tells us, for example, that an egg contains only 12% protein by weight. Yet because of the specific balance of amino acids present in that protein, 94% of it can be used by our body. So there is a big difference between how much protein a food contains and how much of that protein you can actually use to build muscle.
Foods like rice, potatoes, and bean give you considerably less usable protein than eggs or fowl. The reason is they have some, but too few, of the essential amino acids that are required for complete protein. You can, however, combine two or more sources of this low-quality (incomplete) protein to obtain high-quality, complete protein. That is, one food lacks certain amino acids that are supplied by other food, so in combination they give you what you need.
Combining incomplete protein in this way is useful because it usually involves eating foods that are relatively low in fat and thus contain fewer calories than many common complete protein sources. When you are trying to build maximum muscle mass with as little body fat as possible, this can be a great advantage.
Anabolic and Catabolic states
Protein is made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen (as other macro-nutrients), but one more element which none of other macro-nutrients have – nitrogen. When someone says he/she has positive nitrogen balance, that means they are having sufficient amount of protein through their food and are able to build muscle. Such state is called Anabolic state. In contrast, when someone says he/she has negative nitrogen balance, that means they are having insufficient amount of protein through their food and hence are not able to build muscle. Such state is called Catabolic state. In this state our body actually fuels itself by breaking down our hard earned muscles for energy and hence we loose our muscles.
It is extremely important to consume sufficient amount of complete protein to build your muscles.
How much protein should I consume?
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for protein is around 0.8 – 1g/kg of body weight. However this is the estimated amount of protein a person needs to avoid deficiency. A few experts believe wrongly that even hard-training people (or bodybuilders) do not require any more protein than this. In this area, however, the bodybuilders have been way ahead of most nutritional experts in recognizing that building muscles (in fact, hard training of all sort) requires a lot more protein intake than had been formerly realized. Most of consistent bodybuilders take protein at least 1g/pound (or 2.2 g/kg) of body weight and more advanced professionals even take around 3.3g/kg of body weight. However as we have discussed below, how much protein our body needs (or can use) for muscle-building has more to it than just following these numbers and any amount more than that, like any other nutrient, provides your body with more calories than required and hence results in adding more stored fat.
The protein need of our body not only depends on our physical activity level, but also on our fitness goals and how mature our muscles are (i.e. a person training for more than 5 years need much more protein than a beginner). So we shall strictly match our intake as per our body needs. Use below table to find your protein intake needs –
Physical Activity | Protein Intake |
People who don’t workout | around 1.1 g/kg of body weight, so a 60kg person shall take around 66g protein per day |
People who workout 3 times/week for muscle building | around 1.8 g/kg of body weight, so a 60kg person shall take around 108g of protein per day |
People who workout 5-6 times/week for muscle building | around 2.2 g/kg of body weight, so a 60kg person shall take around 132g of protein per day |
People who workout 5-6 times/week for fat loss | around 2.2 g/kg of your target weight, so a person targeting to come down to 60kg weight shall take around 132g of protein to retain muscles, while losing fat |
People who are working out regularly for more than last 5 years | around 2.6 – 3.3 g/kg of body weight, so a 60kg person shall take around 156g – 198g of protein per day |
Stay hydrated and drink at least 4 litre of water everyday.
Protein supplements and their role
The protein supplements are quick source of lean protein and helps in faster recovery of torn muscles when consumed with in 20 minutes, post workout. Whey protein is a good protein supplement. But please note that pure protein supplements that are not consumed with a meal or added carbohydrate are not metabolized efficiently. Research indicates that for protein to be utilized more for protein synthesis(or muscle building) than for energy production, it must be consumed with additional calories, especially from carbohydrate. Also, intense training depletes your glycogen stores that should be refilled immediately after training with fast digesting carbohydrates, along with protein. More on this later in a different post.
Finally also remember that protein supplements are not designed to be the sole source of dietary protein and should only be consumed for 10-20% of your total protein intake. The remaining 80% of your daily protein should come from a balanced whole-food diet, which is an important aspect of healthy life.