Protein is the most important nutrient when it comes to building muscle & one that if we are low in, comes with a lot of side effects . Protein and the amino acids that make it up are the building blocks of muscle tissue. Your workout breaks the muscles down and the protein you consume builds them back up stronger.
To avoid deficiency, you need at least .8g of protein per kilograms of lean body mass. But if you are here, your goal is probably to gain muscle. Whether that be to aid in weight loss or to bulk up , protein is essential for building muscle. The range of grams of protein you should be intaking are 1.7g-2.2g per kilogram of Lean body mass. If you are working out several times a week and putting your muscles through strenuous workouts, you are going to want to shoot for the higher end of that range.
So let’s say you are 180lbs at 10% body fat.
180 x 10% = 18.6. Now you take that and minus it from total weight. We will stick with 18 to make it easier. So that’s 18 pounds of fat we are subtracting from the 180 total, giving our lean body mass total at 162lbs. Convert that to Kilograms since we measure food with the metric system. That’ll give us 73kg of lean body mass. Now we take that 73kg and multiply it with a number in that protein range I gave earlier. Let’s say 2.2 because we want to build muscle . 73kg X 2.2 = 160g of protein a day!
Take that number and divide it by how many meals you want to eat a day (40g per meal for the above example) and then boom! Now you’re hitting your protein goal!
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