Health Tips : Do bodybuilders and other weightlifters need more protein?

By Winston Salem in : Fitness Tips // Aug 24 2010

Protein isn’t necessarily the most important food source for muscle building. Actually, when bodybuilding, your primary consideration ought to be taking in adequate energy, or enough calories.

Research shows that consuming an additional 2270 to 3630 calories a week (approximately 500 extra calories a day), along with appropriate weight training, will result in one pound of muscle gain.

Muscles rely on glycogen (the energy they use for fuel) to perform work. When bodybuilders replace carbohydrate with protein in their diet, they have lower muscle stores of glycogen.

For that reason, a high protein/low carbohydrate diet can’t provide enough glycogen for our muscles, so they could feel weak, tired, and fatigue rapidly.

In addition, our bodies need to convert any excess protein we eat for burn it as energy or to store it as fat.

Protein conversion helps us get rid of the nitrogen contained in amino acids (the building blocks of protein), which we eliminate through urination; nevertheless, it can also contribute to dehydration, muscle cramping, and excess stress on liver and kidneys.

As a result, it is important for a bodybuilder to take in enough carbohydrates. Carbs are used to fuel the muscles you’ll use to help build lean body mass.

Lots of additional protein by itself will not add muscular bulk – carbohydrates actually spare protein so that it could be used to repair muscle tissue, which is how we build muscular strength and size.

How much protein do bodybuilders need? First figure out how many calories you need. If you are not taking in enough calories, you cannot build muscle tissue efficiently.

That’s because your body will be burning most of your calories, not using them to repair muscle tissue. For example, take a 180 pound guy – when he’s moderately active, he probably needs about 2700 calories a day (plus or minus a few) to maintain his weight.

Besides his moderate daily activity level, he might burn about 500 calories during an hour of heavy weightlifting.

If he wants to add one pound of muscle weight each week, he needs approximately 500 additional calories per day plus about 500 more to make up for the energy deficit from intense weightlifting. This makes his grand sum to be around 3700 calories a day.

So how can we translate this number to his protein needs? the RDA for protein has been established at 0.8 grams/kg of body weight for adults. This isn’t enough to build muscle mass for intense athletes.

Although it is challenging to pinpoint a specific number because you’ve to take into account depending on  variables, research has determined an acceptable range – even at the very high end, the top protein intake needs to be 1.5 to 2.0 g/kg of body weight. For our 180 lb. (divided by 2.2 = 82 kg) lifter, this would be 122 to 164 grams of protein per day.

Since protein has 4 calories per gram, then this amount of protein would comprise 13 to 18% of his daily caloric intake of 3700 calories; the usual recommendation is about 12 to 15%. As you can see, a enormous excess of protein isn’t needed.

It’s easy to get enough protein from food – and quite easy for many individuals to overdo it. If too much high-fat protein is taken in, and not used, gains might be seen in fat tissue rather than in muscle tissue.