Jan 30 2012
How much protein should you have per day?
How much protein should you have per day?
One question that is often asked is how much protein should you supplement your diet with per day? This is a difficult question to answer, because everyone has had different experiences and many ‘experts’ recommend different things regarding protein supplements.
In this article I’m going to highlight some of the more popular ways of working out how much protein you should be getting each day. We’ll start off with the official recommendation for how much protein you should be getting per day.
The official RDA of protein from the FDA
The FDA (Food & Drug Administration) have recommended daily allowances of various nutrients per day. For protein, the FDA have recommended 50g per day for the average adult that has an average level activity level. If you were a bodybuilder having around six meals per day, this would be only 8.33 grams per meal. This is much less that what you would see a top bodybuilder eating.
The other well known RDA amount is 0.8 grams per kilogram of weight.this would mean that a man of 80kg would need to have 64 grams of protein per day, which over 6 meals would workout to be only 10.67 grams of protein per meal.
How much protein for endurance athletes per day
Other research online has suggested that endurance athletes require a greater amount of protein than people leading a sedentary lifestyle. For athletes it is recommended for them to consume 1.2 to 1.4 grams per kilogram of bodyweight.
This would mean that for an adult weighing 80kg they would need to consume 104 grams of protein per day (assuming they need 1.3 grams of protein per kg of bodyweight). For an 80kg endurance athlete eating six meals per day, they would need to consume 17.33 grams of protein per meal.
How much protein would a strength athlete or bodybuilder require?
The same resource details how someone that is taking part in extreme strength training would require even greater amounts of protein. It is recommended that a strength athlete consume around 1.7 to 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight.
For an 80kg bodybuilder, this would be 144 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. If the bodybuilder were eating six meals per day, this would be 24 grams of protein per meal. When researching how much protein some bodybuilders consume, many actually have a lot more than this per day.
Can I have too much protein?
There is a lot of debate regarding whether consuming large amounts of protein would be bad for your health, however, there is no conclusive evidence either way and so it is up to you to decide whether or not you decide you want excessive amounts of protein per day (200+ grams per day). We would always recommend that you consult your doctor or dietician before following any high protein diets in case you body is likely to have an adverse reaction.
It should also be noted that recent studies have shown that muscle protein synthesis is at its maximum between 20-30g. Anything above this amount does not increase protein synthesis. This additional protein just ends up being used for energy. Therefore it makes no sense to actually get more than 30g of protein per meal (for most people anyway), which would total 180 grams of protein if you were having 6 meals per day. There are, however, many bodybuilders out there that take more than this.
It can often be difficult to get this much protein into your diet. One way to easily get extra protein is by using supplements such as protein powder. There are a number of different types of protein powder available, with whey protein being the most popular.
I really think that it is important for people to find their own way. It is important to try and find what works best for you. Have you tried a number of different diets? Have you experimented with how much protein that you consume each day and per meal? What did you discover and what worked for you? Let us know in the comments section below.
