Coworker: “I’m on a keto diet, I’ve been having 6 eggs for breakfast everyday”
Me: “Wow, that sounds taxing on your liver, maybe check your plan with a doctor nutritionist”
Coworker: “Yes, it was my gym nutritionist who designed the diet, I also do protein shakes”
These gym bros have convinced each other they need to be taking literally hundreds of grams of protein a day it’s fucking wild
At some point they decided that the ideal diet, regardless of your goals, is that of an 80’s bodybuilder but without the PEDs
And crucially, without the insane volume required to actually turn all that protein into muscle tissue. Bodybuilders literally spend most of their day at the gym because they need to be lifting constantly to make their nutrition be useful.
high protein diets may not be as harmful as commonly believed tho, at least according to this one review paper that came out this month ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002916525002540)
tho if you ask me while there might be a case to be made for 3g/kg which is lowkey insane and entering straight unemployed min-max territory most people are gonna be just fine with anywhere between 1.8 to 2.2 g/kg which comes out to somewhere between 100-200g per day for most ppl, obviously in the context of resistance training not couch rotting
I’m not arguing about health risks of eating too much protein, but 1.8g - 2.2g/kg is just not based on anything though it’s bro science. NIH and FDA both recommendaround 0.8g/kg. People don’t get protein deficiency in the western world there just isn’t a justification for that, if anything people eat way more than is required to be healthy.
This is from an NIH meta analysis
It might be broscience but I struggled cutting weight for years until I actually counted my shit and aimed for 1.8g/kg protein. Then it was wholly manageable and I proceeded to lose 10+kg and I’m back on it burning a couple more. It was truly one of the rare times in life where it was like “Of course! I was missing… THE NUTRIENT!”
Were you cutting carbs at the same time?
I cut a lot of carbs, but it’s not fair to frame it as simply carbs. There’s also a lot of delicious fats that I stop partaking in for limited times of calorie restriction. So fried food, my beloved, has to wait.
true, though in lifting populations or people looking to “maximize gains”, theres some research on higher protein intakes being better for that goal, but like you said for most people it really doesnt matter much and they very likely dont need to be chugging protein all day
even in people who subscribe to the “maximizing gains” goal i think they tend to hyper analyze and lose the forest for the trees where theyd probably be better off not stressing about it as much and more productive reining in other variables instead
personally i just try to get as much as i can every day then go to sleep at the end of the day, its a peaceful life