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I am heading back from Nova Scotia on Christmas day and I get a call from my brother. He had forgotten to give me my Christmas present before I left.  He tells me that he’s donated a few chickens to a family in Africa on my behalf. I always like these gifts, and was grateful. Before we end the call, he reminds me that it wasn’t 11 chickens but he hopes it will do the job, I laugh. Good memories.  Let me share the story with you.

My first protein powder
I used to workout at a gym next to my high school almost everyday. I usually would workout with a couple buddies from football, but today I was hitting the weights with my brother, Kip. When we ended our workout we decided to check out the supplement store to try out some protein powder. We have no idea what we are looking for, so we talk to the salesman, a 300 lb man who could tear us in half like a phone book. Obviously, he knows a few things about getting big. So we ask him, which kind of protein powder is good for us?

He explains that protein powder should supplement the diet, not replace it. To this day I still think this is a fair statement. Then he asks us a question that has long been a running joke between Kip and I, “You are eating the standard 11 chicken breasts a day right?” Kip and I look and stare at each other blankly, and we breakdown and both start laughing. I think the last time I had 11 chicken breasts in a day was when when we had a 20 piece bucket of chicken from KFC. Probably not what this guy was talking about. So why did this guy suggest 11 chicken breasts? How much protein should you have in your diet on a daily basis?

How much protein did this guy actually recommend?
I went to my 1st year nutrition book, Discovering Nutrition (2006) by Insel et al. for this one. On average, a chicken breast weighs roughly 100 grams and contains about 30 percent protein or 30 grams. This however, is dependent on how the chicken was raised and fed. Free-range chickens can have 30-40 grams of protein where battery farmed chickens can have anywhere from 20 to 30 grams. Let’s go with the average.

So how much protein did this guy tell me to take? 30 grams x 11 pieces a day…… 330 grams. For my once 150 lb frame. In doing some math, this works out to be roughly 2.2 grams of protein per pound or 4.8 grams of protein per kilogram (for us Canadians).

Sounds ok but what do the experts think?
For the answer I decided to scour a few fitness and health blogs to see what they had to say:

The IF Life
Mike over at The IF Life recommends between 0.6 and 0.8 grams per lean pound and 1.0 to 1.5 grams per lean pound if you are trying to build muscle.

Mark’s Daily Apple
Mark over at Mark’s Daily Apple recommends the following with his Primal Eating Plan: A minimum of 0.5 grams per lean pound, 0.7 to 0.8 if active and as much as 1.0 grams per lean pound if trying to build muscle.

Women’s Diet and Fitness
Angie at Women’s Diet and Fitness recommends 0.9 grams of protein per pound to ensure your body burns fat, not muscle. She also recommends 1.0 to 1.5 grams per pound if trying to build muscle.

So each of the blogs have roughly similar recommendations.  Let’s see what my first year nutrition textbook recommends. Discovering Nutrition (2006) by Insel et al. suggests 0.4 grams per pound, and 0.5 grams per pound if pregnant or nursing. What about if you’re an athlete or trying to put on muscle mass? Well, they also recommend 0.4 grams per pound. The text also has a catch though:  if your caloric intake is extremely high, follow what is called the AMDRs or the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges. This is similar to a Zone Diet in principle, but the AMDR recommends 20-35% of calories coming from fat, 45-65% coming from carbs, and 10-35% coming from protein.

So, what’s a lean pound?
Both Mike and Mark made their recommendations as a gram per lean pound. Bet you didn’t notice that. But my textbook didn’t bother mentioning a difference.  A lean pound is your weight if you were to trim the fat. So if you are roughly 30% body fat, and 200 lbs, that would leave you with 140 lean pounds. So if we are in that weight lifting crowd (as you should be) let’s see how the recommendations all come together.* As a side note, let’s put them in terms of chicken breasts too:

*For a 200lb, 30% body fat, non-pregnant, non-breastfeeding male.

Should I be eating 2.7 chicken breasts or 11?
As you can see, we have a pretty big discrepancy over how much protein we should eat. If you are new to this nutrition game, let me catch you up to speed on how your body uses this protein. I like step-by-step, so  let’s do that.

Step 1 – Eat a skinless, boneless, tasteless, chicken breast.

Step 2 – Your stomach and small intestine use enzymes and acids to breakdown the proteins into peptides and amino acids.

Step 3 – The important amino acids get absorbed into the blood stream where they go to the tissues (to build muscle, etc.) and to the liver to manufacture important substances.

Step 4 – Some amino acids stay and float around the body. These are collectively called, the amino acid pool. All the leftover amino acids go to the liver and turn into ammonia.

Step 5 – Amino acid pool stays. Ammonia goes to the kidneys and leaves the body.

Piece of cake right? Now this is where it all comes together. Now the average body needs about 300 grams of protein everyday. I will explain in a minute how scientists came to that conclusion. But now you are thinking, geez, is my bodybuilding buddy right? There is one major catch. The body recycles it’s amino acids. By using that amino acid pool I talked about, the body recycles an average of 200 grams of protein a day! Doing some quick math, we can see that the body really only needs an average of 100 grams of protein (3.3 chicken breasts) from your diet. Go recycling!

Nitrogen balance
All the used up and leftover amino acids go into the liver and turn into ammonia. Ammonia is nitrogen and hydrogen mixed together, the downside to ammonia is that it is toxic to cells. The body has to get rid of it. So if you eat too much protein, it just comes out in your urine, feces, mucus, hair, and nail cuttings. Now this can be calculated, and from that measurement we can determine our nitrogen balance. So scientists can see how much protein goes in and how much comes out. This is how they found out that your body uses up roughly 100 grams. Now if we exercise and look at our nitrogen balance then we can assume that if we use more protein, our nitrogen balance is going to be negative, less will go out than go in. Many studies have been done on this and the results have not been conclusive enough to sway the American Dietetic Association. However, if you have good kidney function this has been no evidence to support the fact that eating slightly more protein than recommended will cause any long term damage. If you want more information on this, search for nitrogen balance and exercise. You can definitely find quite a few journals on the topic.

What I recommend
I would not recommend to ever take more 1.0 grams per pound of body weight. Stick with the 0.4 and bump it up anywhere from 0.5 to 0.8 grams per pound if you are exercising.  I try to stick with 20-30 grams of protein per meal (Breakfast, lunch, supper) and the same 20-30 grams of protein for an after workout snack. Here is a sample of how much protein to eat throughout the day. I would throw in a couple more fruit and vegetables than this, but this briefly sums up a sample daily meal. Nothing too fancy.

So here we have 115 grams of protein. For my 220 lb frame, I’m looking at 0.5 gram of protein per pound. That’s ok, muscle will come with that. Don’t think you need to spend a fortune on protein bars, powders, or shakes. Your diet will suffice. But that, is a post for another time.

Your Digital Trainer,

Jeremiah Bell

Images by midiman, dnorman, djevents, trekkyandy

Comments: Do you feel you get enough protein in your diet? Do you feel that 2.7 chicken breasts is too little? Is 11 too much?

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