I’m 59 and do the usual type of stuff that brings people to this group. I was carping to a coach friend about difficulty in improving with weight training and he said I needed to be eating 1g protein per pound of body weight.
I looked at the science for this and its just all over the place, so I’m turning to anecdote. Have other older athletes found any benefit to consuming this much protein? I would love to stem some of the muscle loss that seems to have come through aging, for example.
Yes
You can only beat yourself up so much training and not give your body what it needs to repair/recover. You will not make gains.
But are grams and pounds compatible?
That is a great question.
I eat all the proteins. Cant say I get 1gram per lbs. but I supplement with whey shakes and lots of fish on salads.
And nothing beats a nice clean whey protein powder with real whole milk and cacao powder and some cold brewed Black Rifle CC Beyond Black coffee waiting for me in the cooler after a nice hot FL run. If I’m feeling freaky I use some Nesquick Strawberry Bunny powder instead of coffee and cacao. The real powdered stuff not that horrible liquid stuff.
Honestly I attribute my ability to tolerate Ultra runs and 75 mile bike rides to the fact that I do strength training and eat plenty of protein and fats. I have to limit my carbs because I’m also a fatty. My friends don’t call me Battle Gnome for no reason.
Is protein important. Yes. But 1g per 1lbs of bodyweight for an endurance athlete isn’t supported by any literature I’ve seen. That seems high. Typically I’ve seen 1.2-1.4g per kg of bodyweight.
Protein Requirements Are Elevated in Endurance Athletes after Exercise as Determined by the Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation Method (nih.gov)
Personally I attempt to hit that target everyday, no matter the training I’ve done that day. It’s carbs that increase on heavy training days to replenish the calories lost.
The 1g to 1lbs may work for LEAN body mass, which isn’t your overall weight. This is more inline with 1.2 - 1.4g per kg.
Edit: fixed some units haha
If the goal is strength gain and continued high performance in endurance sport, alongside good body composition maintenance, for most folks 0.7-0.9g protein per pound of body weight is ideal. For folks over 40, increasing by 0.1g per pound is wise, so 0.8-1.0g per pound of body weight is ideal.
If muscle gain is a primary goal (different, but highly correlated to strength gain), erring even higher is a wise choice. 0.9-1.1g protein per pound body weight daily is a probably ideal. There are decent arguments for even higher, honestly.
For general health, muscle and strength *maintenance, *and endurance performance, 0.5-0.8g per pound body weight might be better for endurance folks. +0.1g per pound if you’re over 50.
Haha, he did not say 1g protein per 1g body weight daily!! Can you imagine eating 70kg of protein per day!!??!!
He said 1g per 1 lb, which as noted, is mixing units.
Anecdotally, I once followed the “PeOple eat enough ProTeIn to Not NeEd suPplements†recommendation, and could not recover from workouts very well. I now strongly attribute recovery to getting over 1.5g/kg of daily protein. This is different than an issue of replenishing glycogen stores for repeated training, which is done using carbs, so by recovery I mean reducing delayed onset muscular soreness.
With supplements, I usually get to 1.5 g/kg, where without supplementing I’d average less than half that. I can’t imagine the volume of food and calories associated with trying to get that much protein from “real foods.â€
But are grams and pounds compatible?
Hmmmm that is debatable but I would venture to guess based on the data that .5-.8gm per pound is a good starting point for endurance athletes and go up from there. Everyone responds differently so it’s more of a rule of thumb and not a hard law.
Anecdotally, I once followed the “PeOple eat enough ProTeIn to Not NeEd suPplements†recommendation, and could not recover from workouts very well. I now strongly attribute recovery to getting over 1.5g/kg of daily protein. This is different than an issue of replenishing glycogen stores for repeated training, which is done using carbs, so by recovery I mean reducing delayed onset muscular soreness.
With supplements, I usually get to 1.5 g/kg, where without supplementing I’d average less than half that. I can’t imagine the volume of food and calories associated with trying to get that much protein from “real foods.â€
Yeah that was my conclusion too it’s just a lot of food.
There seems to be lots of mixed science and recommendations out there and it’s likely and likely highly dependent on training load…to a point.
Preface this by saying I rode my bike 25,000 miles lase year and about 1300 hours training. I have been successful getting to a very very cut/lean race weight without any perceived loss in strength.
I tend to operate by the Team Sky mantra of feeding protein every 2 hours during the day. I’m not yet confident enough with a full vegan approach therefore tend to ONLY count animal/whey/milk proteins. That means a full 20+g shot of that sort each feeding. I don’t count things like veggie protein, quinoa, rice, oatmeal/etc. It must be animal/whey/milk.
What’s that mean for me for grams per day? Yesterday was 216 grams. That’s pretty standard with a ~4000+ calorie diet. I weigh and measure everything so that’s total protein. But again I don’t rely on that total number but rather those every 2 hour protein feedings. 200+ is just where I tend to land with a roughly 50% carb, 30% fat, 20% protein type balance.
I love to research this stuff and certainly won’t claim to have all the right answers, but this diet keeps me at a pretty highly elite level and I tend to run a pretty high CTL in the 150 range much of the time. I hope to hold more toward 130 this year! LOL.
But are grams and pounds compatible?
Hmmmm that is debatable but I would venture to guess based on the data that .5-.8gm per pound is a good starting point for endurance athletes and go up from there. Everyone responds differently so it’s more of a rule of thumb and not a hard law.
That was just a little joke about mixing metric and imperial units. I work in calibration so it’s funny to me and most people I work with 
Yes It does. I do Olympic weightlifting and power lifting for fun and take 1.5~2g /kg
For I am 75kg, 165.347lbs, I take 120~150g /day.
I recommend eating pork ham(I mean a really lean meat) chicken breasts(also one of the leanest meat on earth) and salmon. Cow’s also fine if it has small amount of fat.
You can feel that the time for recovery shortens incredibly.
It’s kind of like the stems on bicycles where the one hole is measured in inches the other hole is measured in a millimeters and the length is measured in millimeters. Bicycle tire standards are also shockingly inconsistent and tend to freely switch from one measurement system to the other.
one thing to remember that more important than sport is this… as you age your body needs more protein just to help repair due to being older. ive read many many times that once you hit around 40 (where i am now) is when you need to start really trying to up your protein intake and focus on lite strength training to support a healthy body.
is the 1 gram per lb of body weight necessary? absolutely not… i shoot for 60-70 grams a day and dont even hit that sometimes and im somehow still alive and i can get faster and stronger.
Protein is not just for muscle growth, but nervous system signaling… mtor transport
But are grams and pounds compatible?
Hmmmm that is debatable but I would venture to guess based on the data that .5-.8gm per pound is a good starting point for endurance athletes and go up from there. Everyone responds differently so it’s more of a rule of thumb and not a hard law.
That was just a little joke about mixing metric and imperial units. I work in calibration so it’s funny to me and most people I work with
Okay, so it’s 2.2g protein per1 kg body mass, for the pedants.
1 g per lb or 2 g per kg of body weight or of lean body weight is pretty commonly recommended for lifters and for other athletes. Probably whey more than you need (see what I did there?) for health, but there’s some scientific support for numbers that high for athletes, especially if you get older. You can quibble with the exact numbers and start talking about the max you can absorb at one time, but it’s pretty clear that more is better up to a point and that point is high.
Unless you are eating nothing but chicken breasts and broccoli, it’s hard to get that much without resorting to protein powders. But nothing wrong with protein powders. Whey is just dried milk (a fraction thereof).
Prioritize protein.
Close enough
Sometimes we really give some strange units. I’ve had a flowrate on one of our calorimeters in UK hogheads per hour for about 8 years now and nobody has noticed.