How much protein?

Too Much Protein?

The typical active male does not get enough protein if the USDA guidelines are followed.

However, most "muscleheads" tend to eat way more protein than they need. Too much protein just gets converted to fat. There are much more fun ways out there to gain body fat than overeating on protein, such as drinking alcohol!

Amount of Protein Needed

My recommendation is to consume 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Lets assume you weigh 200 pounds and have a lean body mass of 160 pounds.

By multiplying the above number by 160, this would mean your daily protein requirement would be 160-240 grams of protein.

We will assume you are doing lots of cardio and intense weight training as part of your fitness program, so we will go with the high number of 1.5 grams per pound of lean body mass. Therefore, someone with a lean body mass of 160 pounds should consume 240 grams protein per day.

Stick with lean meats and protein supplements such as whey protein to meet this requirement.

Percentage of Protein in Your Diet

One gram of protein is approximately 4 kcal.

(I have referred to kcal, which is actually 1000 calories, simply as "calories" up to this point. For simplicity, I will continue to use the term "calorie").

From the above calculation, we know that someone with a lean body mass of 160 pounds should consume 240 grams protein per day. Let's caculate how much of a percentage of protein this is on a daily basis:

• 240g x 4kcal/g = 960 calories.

• (960 calories of protein/ 2500 total calories) x 100 ~ 38 percent calories from protein.

With 26 percent protein in our diet program, we now need to determine how much carbs to eat.