![grams per pound grams per pound](https://useruploads.socratic.org/3dftce71QuCWuEh5v4a9_pound%20gram%20conversion.jpg)
It’s worth bearing in mind also that more protein, at least within the margin of error we are talking about, is not bad for you. When they do, they are not as wounding when you were shooting for 1g/lb anyway. But for the rest of us, surprises happen. Maybe you have no uncertain terrain to navigate and can hit your 0.82 like clockwork every single day. If I’d been aiming for 125g of protein, I might have only had 90-95g so far that day, and suddenly have a much bigger shortfall. This rip-off of a fancy restaurant will not totally ruin me, even if it contributes no grams of protein. I’m already sitting at 115 grams for the day-pretty close to my 0.82g/lb figure of 130g. Not so fast: Because I was shooting for my 1g/lb, I had a tidy 40g protein breakfast, a 30g protein lunch, a 15g protein snack, a 30g protein shake after my workout.
![grams per pound grams per pound](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/b4/c9/20/b4c92049cf7bd901a47370153763f338.jpg)
Before my eyes, the protein empire I have built turns to dust around me. A “half chicken” that is so petite it can only have been actually a pigeon. “Hanger steak” that is two slices of meat buried in a jungle of sauced greens. “Ceviche” that is one tablespoon of fish and a cup of onions and cilantro. At this restaurant, no matter how many dishes we order, none come with more than a sliver of the protein that headlines the plate. Perhaps the effective protein intake ratio really is 0.82g/lb of bodyweight.īut the following scenario happens to me a lot: I am trucking along, mangia this, bon appetit that, when suddenly I find myself getting dinner at a restaurant with a friend. But I ran the experiment, and for me, it failed.ġg/lb is less a hard rule than a helpful margin of error To be fair, I am not everyone, and different things could work for different people. In this way I learned to respect the 1g/lb number. I went up to 1g-slowly, falteringly, being generous to myself and leaving emotional room for less than perfection-and that problem went away.
![grams per pound grams per pound](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9f/5e/aa/9f5eaa52e80daff1db44b45713834de6.png)
![grams per pound grams per pound](https://www.oregonwinepress.com/pub/photo/Vinespeak_Graph-800.jpg)
did less? When I dipped down to 0.7-0.8g/lb, the result was that my gym sessions were palpably worse and my progress faltered. Technically, I’d read that the effective window was 0.7-1g/lb of body weight, so what if I simply. My first natural reaction was to try not eating that much protein. It was still a lot of foods that were not that much fun to eat, or less fun than cereal and pasta. Like so many who start to lift and want to get strong, I ran the numbers on my protein intake, and then tracked my food for a single day on MyFitnessPal, and said, “How the fuck am I going to get an additional 100 grams of protein EVERY DAY for the REMAINDER OF MY DAYS?” I tweaked my foods and serving sizes in MFP, adding chicken breasts and cheese snacks and broccoli and glasses of milk as if it were a little nutrition simulator, until I arrived at the right protein number. It may be hard to believe now, but I was once a moon-faced youth, the wind at my back, the world at my feet, the gains arriving in the form of adding a steady 5 pounds to each of my lifts every session. ”Īs best I can tell, nothing in particular rocked everyone’s world this most recent time around it’s just that every once in a while, someone re-unearths this 2011 study that found no benefits to protein intake over 0.82g/lb of bodyweight.Īt the risk of being an iconoclast, I still stick to 1g/lb, in some scenarios. Some even go so far as to call the Golden Ratio a “ myth. Even some of my own favs were recently coming out against 1g/lb of bodyweight, saying that there are no appreciable benefits beyond getting 0.82g/lb of bodyweight. īut if you stayed into lifting over the last year or so, you’ve probably also seen some of your trusted sources go on the warpath against this figure. If you’ve gotten into lifting any time in the last decade or so, you’ve probably heard the Golden Ratio of Protein Intake for building strength or muscle: one gram per pound of bodyweight that you weigh (so if I weigh 160lb, 160g of protein a day) 1.