Calories and protein...

[oselifer]

If you take much protein lets say 2.5g/kg but not taking much calories and weight train hard what's gonna happen?

Will you gain muscle mass or no?

[Richard]

I am not an expert, but I think your body can only use so much protein per day to build muscle. I don't know what would happen to the surplus, but certainly there is a limit on what your body can do with the protein, it wouldn't all go into building muscles. As for not having many calories, how many are we talking about? I imagine you would feel tired and pretty hungry if you went very low and were training hard - it would probably affect your performance during workout if you hadn't had enough calories, especially over a long period.

Edited December 5, 2007 by Richard

[beforewisdom]

If you take in too few calories from the rest of your food past a certain extent your body will use the protein you take in as fuel. Your body's first choice in fuel is carbohydrate. It burns the easiest, it burns the cleanest.

[LongTimeVegan]

In my experience, it is very hard to make substantial gains without eating lots of calories. Protein alone does not do it for me (tried this for several years with little success).

 

It sounds crazy, but when I'm training hard, eating lots of protein and calories, I actually lose body fat. This is true even when I'm not doing "dedicated" cardio, just intense lifting for a short period each day(1 hour or less). From the reading I've done, this is because it takes lots of energy to build muscle, and once your new muscles are built, your body will require more calories to maintain them.

 

Every body is different, but this is what has worked for me.

 

-Chris

[Guest]

Thats a very dangerous venture. Its not healthy to eat that much protein but if you do and don't have the carbs to support it you'll go into ketosis. You don't want to do that. You'll lose fat at first but after a while you won't have any energy without carbs. Even the high protein eaters on here don't try to remove carbs completely...outside of a few days before a competition.

[Richard]

It all depends on what is meant by "not much calories".

[Guest]

I was thinking maybe 20-50g of carbs which I've heard of many people doing(I did it myself on a few occations cutting weight for lifting competitions when I was younger). You will lose fat doing this but you just won't have the energy source to excersize enough to gain muscle...in fact if you have muscle and stay on this kind of diet for too long your body will eat itself after a short while...which is why pro bodybuilders don't stay lean for very long after competition. They can't sustain that mass without fuel.

[oselifer]

No i didn't mean this...

Lets say i am 60kg..

And i take 2000 calories of which 1000 are carbs(250g) 600 are protein(150g = 2.5gX60kg) and the rest 400 are from fat..

 

If i really need about 2400 calories and follow this diet with intense weight lifting what will be the result?

Losing fat and gaining muscle?

[LongTimeVegan]

I usually try to match my carbohydrate and protein intake. (eg: I weigh 208lbs and eat about 200g protein, 200g carbs per day). I lose fat and gain mass if I eat like this while performing intense lifting 6 days a week.

 

250g carbs and 150g protein seems like a lot of carbs to me if you're only weight training (no serious cardio).

 

Again, this topic is highly debated, so you may need to experiment to find out what works best for you.