How Much Protein Do Athletes Really Need?

That’s the question I decided to tackle for a research project this semester. There are guidelines set for Americans about the breakdown of the macronutrients you should be consuming:

Carbohydrate: 45-65%

Fat: 20-35%

Protein: 10-35%

So what does that really mean? It means we need to do some math. Ack! For example, if you’re eating 2200 calories a day, 990-1430 of those calories should be coming from carbohydrate.

For protein, that ends up being 220-770 calories. And since there’s 4 calories per gram, that’s 55-192 grams of protein each day. That’s a huge span of protein, right? Sheesh.

Protein by the Numbers

There’s another way to look at it, too. It’s recommended that you eat 0.8g/kg/day. More math! So if you’re 140 pounds (that’s about 64kg), you should be eating a minimum of 51 grams each day. But what’s optimal? Research shows that 1.33g/kg/day for strength-training and 1.1-1.6g/kg/day for endurance athletes is better. A 140 pound strength athlete, then, needs at least 85 grams each day.

Tell me what that looks like in real food! Yeah, okay.

1oz almonds = 6g

1 cup skim milk = 8g

4oz chicken breast (boneless, skinless) = 25g

2 large eggs = 12g

1 cup shaved turkey breast = 18g

1 scoop whey protein powder = 20g

So that brings us to 89 grams. Dang, yo. That’s a lot of protein foods.

The Fuel Breakdown

But let’s go back to those macronutrient ranges. The Institute of Medicine took into account that not every person (or type of athlete) is going to require the same fuel (umm, duh). So they came up with new ratios for different types of athletes Macronutrient Needs of Athletes

But there’s a big problem with how that amount of protein was determined — it got the leftovers, essentially. It was determined how much carbohydrate and fat these people would need, and then whatever was left went to protein.

Don’t Forget the Bigger Picture

There’s no “upper limit” or maximum amount of protein you can eat in a day, but there are issues with consuming too much. When protein gets broken down for energy, we end up with urea, a nitrogen-containing compound that we, well, excrete. Nitrogen is toxic, so we gotta get rid of it.

We can’t get all bro-tastic and suck down a bunch of protein shakes just to make sure we’re getting enough for another reason.

We still need to keep our calorie intake in check, which means something has to get cut — either carb or fat.

Just keep in mind that fat and carb are important, too.

For example, carb is what fills your muscles with glycogen — which is essentially the fuel for your muscles. We want that!

Anyway, a few other things I learned about protein? You gotta supplement right after your exercise. The sooner the better, but don’t put it off more than two hours. After your workout, your muscles are all, “gimme the good stuff!” so send them some amino acids (protein) right away, okay? Okay.

Eating 20-25 grams of high quality protein is going to do the very best job of stimulating new muscle proteins. Yay, happy muscles!