Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Bite: Study Showed Protein Calories Didn't Cause Weight Gain ft. Alan Aragon

Starting point is 00:00:00 Power Project family, this is a Power Byte, and a Power Byte is a highlight from a full-length episode that we do not want you to miss. Links to the full episode are on the podcast show notes, along with special perks for all of our beautiful listeners. Enjoy. And also, how about protein overfeeding? You know, they're the individuals that they choose to eat two grams of protein per pound or 2.5 grams per pound. So are there any massive negatives to protein overfeeding, um, or someone in the general population,

Starting point is 00:00:28 but then also someone in athletics, bodybuilding, powerlifting, et cetera, any dangers in a word? Not really in a word.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Not really. No, uh, you can build a case for somebody who has chronic or acute kidney disease. You can build a case for that person restricting their protein to the RDA. But, you know, aside from clinical, it's almost like with carbohydrate, it's like, can we really over-carbohydrate ourselves if we stick within the calories? Can we really over-fat ourselves? Well, why would it be so special with protein? Because of the policing of the kidneys? Because

Starting point is 00:01:09 of this or that? We just haven't seen that in controlled interventions, actually. And my friend, Joey Antonio, is responsible for a lot of the findings in that area where he puts subjects through these rather massive amounts of protein over extended periods of time. Anywhere from, gosh, the mid twos to the high three grams per kilogram of body weight, even up to one of them was 4.4, I believe, grams per kilogram of body weight, even up to one of them was 4.4, I believe, grams per kilogram of body weight. And no ill effects, no ill effects on any of the blood parameters that would send up red flags about liver and kidney dysfunction, no red flags about bone mineral density. Our body apparently is perfectly adept at metabolizing high amounts of protein, you know, believe it or not. And so the interesting thing about protein overfeeding in free living conditions is that it seems to disappear into thin air air so if you take a group of resistance trainees add four to

Starting point is 00:02:27 800 calories of protein on top and joey actually utilized uh quite a bit of protein powder to the so whey protein and so we're you know we're not talking about chunks of chicken or steak where you would imagine that really kind of satiating and and quotes, driving down the intake of the other macros, but protein powder did protein powder somehow disappeared into thin air in free living conditions for the tune of adding four to 800 calories of protein, raising protein from like, like 2.2 ish grams per kilo, all the way up to about three point, the mid threes, low threes, nothing happens in these resistance trainees. And so it's kind of a beautiful thing. And we can take that data

Starting point is 00:03:10 and apply it to dieters who want to kind of take a break from restricting. And so what we can do is just keep them training and add higher protein phases or protein hyperfeeds and keep them satiated and happy and not feel so deprived. And we can use protein as that kind of tool. So it's been an interesting set of observations lately in the past few years with protein overfeeding, thanks to Jody. Pat Project Family, is TRT or HRT something that you've been interested in? Well, if you are, that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. They are the premium telehealth TRT and HRT clinic. And the great thing about Merrick Health that is so unique about them is that versus every other telehealth clinic out there, they give you direct plans for you specifically.

Starting point is 00:03:59 Many clinics give you just plans that they give to everybody else. But we are individuals. We have different hormonal levels. We need unique plans. That's why you need to check out Merrick Health. And Andrew, can you tell the people how to do it? Yes. Over at MerrickHealth.com, M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com. When it comes time to actually purchasing these labs and paying for them, if you're talking to somebody on the phone, you can just mention promo code PowerProject15. Or if you are manually checking out on your own, you can enter promo code power project 15 to save 15 off all labs links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's get back to the video but matter can neither

Starting point is 00:04:34 be created nor destroyed bro yeah calories in calories out like what's um the uh the subjects in Joey's studies did complain to him that it was difficult to get all that protein down. It's difficult. And so we can interpret that as maybe there was a certain degree of over-reporting protein to avoid being shamed by the research personnel for not following the assignment. And it's really interesting with these studies, when you look at the macronutrients, carbohydrate, like carby, fatty foods, like sweet dessert type of foods, they tend to get underreported. And then the healthy foods, including a high, high protein and protein based foods tend to get overreported.

Starting point is 00:05:21 So, so yeah, that it's an interesting thing in free living conditions, which is cool. And then you can compare that research to metabolic ward research where they overfed protein and saw fat gain, but they all, but they saw equal fat gain and, and an increase in lean body mass with the higher protein conditions. This was Bray and colleagues in 2012. And so, um, it's just an interesting area of research. And what's really important when you look at free living conditions, you get to see what happens in the real world outside of the lab when you assign clients or subjects more protein and it's all good, actually. So there was some fat gain when the protein was raised in the clinical ward.

Starting point is 00:06:07 Is that what you mentioned? Yes. Yes. Yes. There was fat gain. They compared 5% protein in the diet to 15% protein to 30% protein in the diet. The 5% protein diet, rather unsurprisingly, they lost lean body mass. And the 15% and 30% diets gained lean body mass.

Starting point is 00:06:30 I don't think it was a significant difference between them, but the raw data showed the highest lean mass gains in the 30% protein diet. And they all gain an equal amount of fat. But that's when you put subjects in a metabolic ward and you watch everything that goes into their mouth 24 hours a day. And you prepare their food, you feed them their food, and they're on camera the whole time. But once again, there's definitely a disconnect between that and what happens in the real world when you assign somebody an extra 100 grams of protein a day, an extra, let's say, 60 to 100 grams of protein a day, 50 to 100 grams of protein a day, they're going to get satiated.

Starting point is 00:07:13 If they focus on the protein target, there will be a tendency for the intake of the other macronutrients to be driven down. And they'll also experience potentially greater or more favorable changes in body composition, especially if they had priorly been eating a suboptimal amount of protein. So it's very tough to find negative effects of overdoing protein, especially in free living resistance training populations. So with all that in mind, and even like the thermic effect of food, do you think it's still accurate to track protein as four calories per gram? Or do you think maybe that might possibly change?

Starting point is 00:08:00 That's a great question. I think just technically, it might not be totally correct to do the four calories per gram, but from a practical perspective and with people's tendency to underestimate and tendency to overeat, I think it's safe to keep that calculation at four calories per gram.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Bite: Study Showed Protein Calories Didn't Cause Weight Gain ft. Alan Aragon

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.