How familiar are you with Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS)?

Most people think they are ingesting most of their protein from their post-workout shake.

Muscle protein synthesis is generally attained by ingesting varying amounts of protein (dependent on the clients current weight) and it is at a certain point when MPS really starts working to rebuild the micro-tears in the muscle fibers.

I think we should start with some basic physiology. "Protein" as we know it, is actually a string of amino acids that are held together by peptide bonds. These strings of amino-acids start to break down in your stomach, once it gets to the small intestine these strings are broken down into individual aminos. There is active absorption through the intestinal lining. When you think about the fact that your body has to go through a whole process of breaking these proteins down before they are even used for MPS. It makes getting to MPS a lot more complicated. Generally speaking when you ingest 100g of protein/day it actually breaks down into 400g/day.

All amino acids contain an amino or NH2 group and a carboxyl (acid) or COOH group. To form polypeptides and proteins, amino acids are joined together by peptide bonds, in which the amino or NH2 of one amino acid bonds to the carboxyl (acid) or COOH group of another amino acid

Different types of protein chains. I'm sure you are familiar with a few. Try looking up the ones you aren't familiar with. Some are essentials and some are not.

Say we are ingesting 20g of Protein in one sitting. 50% of said Protein is used in the gut and liver. Another 40% is used for energy and urea production. When you do the math on this you see that you are getting 10% that actually is being utilized for Muscle Protein Synthesis. Thats a whopping 2g!!!!!

Depending on what you are trying to utilize the protein for will determine how much you should be ingesting, what type of protein, and when. You can use protein for weight-loss, it can be used for muscle building, or just to keep your body maintained at the size that it is currently at.

Generally speaking there is a lot of research out there, but the current understanding is that if you are using it for weight-loss you should be ingesting .7-1 g/kg/day. This should equal about 30% of your daily intake of macronutrients. You should split this up into 12 hour periods and having a portion every 4 hours. Thats 3 servings. Very plausible!

When using protein to gain mass, especially FFM (fat-free mass) you are going to be intaking a bit more 0.8-1.6g/kg/day. 1.6g is actually optimal intake for FFM. 1.6g/kg/day translates to .7g/lb/day. We can go over metabolic equations another time. You want to break the portions down into every 1 1/2 hours for 12 hours. You also want to make sure you are ingesting 40g post-workout. This has shown to give you about 15% more MPS. However if you only have 20g post-workout you will still be getting about 85% MPS.