The almighty protein

This is definitely the most famous macronutrient among bodybuilders. What’s the number one answer you get when asking someone for advice on building muscle? “Train hard and eat lots of protein!”. It would had been such an easy world if things only resumed to that, but let’s take a closer look at this wonderful nutrient. The name protein means primary and suggests the fact that it is critical to your body’s development and cannot be produced internally. There are approximately 20 amino acids. If you link several aminos together you get a peptide. Keep linking peptides and you get a protein. 

You might now wonder what separates protein from fats or carbs. Their uniqueness comes from the fact that they contain about 16% nitrogen which supports lean tissue growth, also known as anabolism. Proteins have another feature in the form of a thermogenic effect, meaning that its digestion, metabolism, and use require a lot of energy.

This is why from all the macronutrients, it is the least probable to end up as fat. However, people tend to badly interpret facts and this a good example of just that.
From time to time I hear about people that concentrate only on eating skinless chicken breast or protein shakes thinking that they’ll have enough amino acids to stimulate muscle grow, and because they only eat proteins they will not end up with too much body fat. Why is this a horrible approach? Because in special circumstances, protein can and will be transformed into carbohydrate and used as energy in the liver. This process is called gluconeogenesis and occurs whenever our body doesn’t find a source of energy (fat or carbohydrate). So that guy that was only eating protein, was actually using it as an expensive fuel. Another thing to keep in mind is that every gram of protein provides 4 calories. In other words too much of a good thing is not always a good thing.

At the beginning we said that there are about 20 amino acids. They can be divided in 2 categories:

-          Essential amino acids : histidine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, valine

-          Non essential amino acids: Alanine, arginine, asparagines, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamine, glutamic acid, glycine, praline, serine, tyrosine.

I know it sounds pretty complicated to remember all those names at first, but it’s good to know of their existence. I’m sure you’ve heard of aspartame… aspartame is a sweetener (and a bad one at that) which is consisted from 2 amino acids: aspartic acid and phenylalanine.

But proteins have a lot more roles than simple muscle building. They:

- build and repair tissue. Colagen is a structural protein which participates in such functions.  

- provide immune function

- synthesizes enzymes

- some hormones are protein, for example insulin and glucagon.

- have a transport function: albumin caries drugs minerals and vitamins throughout your body

In the end let’s look at the amounts of protein recommended for us. For:

- adults need 0.8g / kilogram of body weight

- infants 2g / kilogram of body weight

- adolescents 1g / kilogram of body weight

- bodybuilders 1.8g / kilogram of body weight

Posted in: Macronutrients