Hi Parker,

Thank you.

The 20-40 g has been recommended for a long-time. The first 20 g of protein in a meal are very efficient. Going up to 40 g in a meal further improves the response, but with diminishing returns. Even bigger meals can be beneficial in specific context: when you won’t eat for a long time. 40 g is more than enough for breakfast if you eat a lunch. But if you won’t eat for 10 h after a meal, you want that breakfast to be even larger than 40 g.

1 g of protein per pound of bodyweight is quite high, likely higher than needed. The current best estimate we have to optimize muscle growth is 1.6 g/kg/d. You may want to go a bit higher to play it safe, but once you hit 1.6 g/kg/d, it’s unlikely that any further increase will give a noticeable benefit.

Thank you Lee.

Sleep has a huge effect. When you’re sleep deprived, MPS drops drastically. I will update the article at some point to include factors such as sleep. We also have an infographic on how important sleep is for body composition:
https://www.nutritiontactics.com/sleep-enough-while-dieting/

I loved your article, it is very informative.

I want to make sure I am not misunderstanding part of the article: is it the case that no more than 20-40 grams of protein per meal, for 3-4 meals per day, can be synthesized into muscle mass?

I have often heard the 1g of protein/pound of body weight per day rule of thumb. I am a 220 pound, 6’4” tall man. Your article seems to suggest that I, at most, would benefit from 160 grams of protein per day (or could maybe get away with as low as 80 grams). Is this the case? I may be spending more money than I need to on protein…

Hi Fernando,

Thank you for the kind words.

The Protein prior to sleep section was written when the balance of evidence was less clear. I will update this section soon.

Taking pre-sleep protein can improves muscle mass gains. But from that study you don’t know if it’s because it’s because you’re ingesting additional protein, because of a timing effect, or that both contribute. But taking more dedicated studies on protein distribution/timing into account, there seem to be little evidence for the concept.

So in short:
– hitting your daily protein target is by far the most important. Protein distribution may have a small benefit, but I don’t expect much benefit from.

Now, as someone who practices intermittent fasting (skipping dinner), I found the Protein distribution and Protein prior to sleep sections confusing and potentially contradicting.

In the protein distribution section you argue that protein distribution has no clear benefit. You go into this in more detail in your other article, ‘Protein intake distribution: Beneficial, Detrimental, or Inconsequential for Muscle Anabolism?’

However, in the Protein prior to sleep section, you claim that “Protein supplementation (27.5 g) prior to sleep during a 12-week resistance training program improves muscle mass and strength gains (Snijders, 2015).” Well… yeah, because it’s protein. But does it provide a greater increase in muscle mass/strength gains compared to the same amount of protein ingested at a different time of day? The two studies quoted don’t seem to support that conclusion since their control groups didn’t receive protein in replacement of the shake.

So, what are your thoughts on protein prior to sleep? Is it especially important compared to protein ingestion at other times of day?

Thank you for the kind words!

Creatine is a pretty simple supplement. 3g/d saturates your muscles within a month and then maintains max levels.
I don’t really know a detailed discussion of the biochemistry of muscle protein synthesis from the top of my head, sorry.