Jeff Nippard is an American bodybuilder, a personal trainer and a fitness instructor. He created his own website to educate people on the importance of protein in our diet.
As a celebrity fitness trainer, Jeff Nippard provides fitness tips to celebrities around the world. His ability to build muscle and lose fat has made him one of the top celebrity trainers in the country.
How Much Protein Do I Need?
There’s no doubt that you need to eat enough protein each day. It’s a key player in assisting with muscle recovery, helping to build lean tissue, and keeping you feeling satisfied. But how much do you really need? It seems like there’s always a new study published or new article written about the optimal amount of protein we should consume, but for those of us who aren’t dieticians or nutritionists, the information can be confusing. Do we really have to calculate grams per pound per day? Should we be eating more than 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily? (And what does that even mean?) How much is too little and how much is too much?
Luckily, while there are many factors that can influence your individual needs when it comes to getting proper nutrition, you don’t have to worry about being too far off if you’re sticking to recommendations like these:
- Consume between .8 – 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight daily (1.6 – 2 grams per kg)
- Eat at least 20g of protein with every meal
These two guidelines will help make sure your body has the resources it needs to run efficiently and effectively—allowing you to do the things you want to do without feeling fatig
How Much Protein Can Your Body Absorb from a Meal?
It’s hard to say exactly how many grams of protein you can absorb from a meal. There are so many factors that can affect your efficiency at the time of digestion, such as how much time has passed since the last meal and whether you’ve eaten other types of protein, like steak or eggs, in the past few hours.
Some research suggests that with each passing hour after your last meal of animal protein, you absorb less of it. As well as food-borne bacteria and enzymes, proteins in our intestines are broken down by digestive juices and proteins in our bodies to produce amino acids and urea, which are then processed by cells throughout our bodies.
Our body requires amino acids—four per liter of blood—but we don’t store them for long periods, so we need to eat protein regularly or we’ll be deficient in them even if we’re eating enough calories overall.
What About Fasted Cardio?
Fasted cardio is an excellent tool to utilize before an event where you want to lose as much body fat as possible while maintaining as much muscle mass and strength as possible. This is because there are a few benefits of fasted cardio:
- You will burn more fat during training. This is due to the fact that your body will be forced to tap into its fat stores for energy since it no longer has a ready supply of glucose from food.
- You will also create greater insulin sensitivity after your fasted workout due to depleted glycogen levels. Insulin sensitivity is a fancy way of saying how well your body responds to insulin.
- The better it responds, the more efficiently it can shuttle nutrients into cells, which increases recovery and decreases carbohydrate storage (and subsequent fat gain). However, this benefit only lasts for 24-36 hours after your workout, so make sure to feed yourself plenty of carbs during this window if you want them shuttled into muscle cells instead of being stored as fat.
- You will tend to feel less full/bloated after cardio when done in a fasted state since you haven’t just eaten a large meal before training. This makes fasted cardio ideal for those who have trouble comfortably doing cardio on a full stomach
Does Protein Timing Matter?
In a professional tone: We’ve all heard—and maybe even believe—that it’s important to eat food with enough protein at the right times in your day so that your body can make all the proteins it needs for good health. However, does this actually have any real-world impact?
Well, according to a recent study from the University of Missouri, timing is not as important as we thought it was. The researchers found that eating a single meal with protein at breakfast had no significant impact on how much protein your body made throughout the day.
What was important was eating at least one meal with protein each day, and not skipping any meals where you ate protein. So instead of worrying about taking any particular time to eat protein, focus on making sure you’re getting enough of it each day.
Last Words
Daily Protein needs are highly individualized and based on a number of factors. It’s well supported fact that your choice in diet will determine your protein needs. Vegetarians for example need about 60% more protein than your average omnivore and vegan diets can be as high as 80% more protein.