Eat too much protein = gain fat?
Hello everyone, welcome back. I want to touch briefly on our favorite thing in the world, protein. There's another study on it and I think it's interesting because a lot of people actually ask this question and I think it puts it all to rest in terms of what we should do moving forward. So if we overeat, so if we go over our maintenance, what happens if we go over our maintenance, eating a low protein diet, a normal protein diet, or a high protein diet? What happens?
Speaker 1:And if we consume an extra 1,000 calories a day above our maintenance. Okay? So say now your maintenance is 3,000 calories, 2,500 calories, you're gonna eat 3,500 calories. One group, their protein intake was 5% of their calories. The normal protein group, it was 15% of their calories and the high protein group was 25% of their calories came from protein.
Speaker 1:Most of you are in the high protein range if you hit your targets, just to let you know before I give you the results. Subjects actually lived in a facility for the entire duration. Every gram of food was monitored. Bloody hell, fair play to these guys, I would be able to do that. So let's have a look at what happened, shall we?
Speaker 1:They didn't do weights by the way, no resistance training, no resistance training, just overeating. So there were two phases to the study. There was the weight stabilization phase, so maintenance calories for four weeks and then eight weeks overfeeding intervention in a metabolic unit. These people are heroes. What happens?
Speaker 1:The breakdown, like I said, was 5% protein, 15% protein, 25% protein. They ate 40% over their maintenance levels, so another 1,000 calories a day for eight weeks. Here's the results. All subjects gained a significant amount of body weight during the eight week overfeeding intervention. In the low protein group they gained 3.2 kilograms.
Speaker 1:The normal protein group gained six kilograms and the high protein group gained 6.5 kilograms. What is happening? But what was gained? All three groups gained roughly the same amount of fat mass. The low protein group actually gained a slightly more fat mass than the normal high protein, which means obviously if you're a lower protein you're going be gaining more body fat even when the calories are exactly the same.
Speaker 1:But here's the interesting part. So the low protein group gained 3.8 kilograms of fat mass, yeah, but they didn't gain any muscle. The normal protein gained, 3.5 kilograms of fat mass, but they also gained three kilograms of lean body mass. And then the high protein group was the same. They gained three kilograms of lean body mass as well as 3.5 kilograms of fat mass.
Speaker 1:So if we think about this for a second, these people in eight weeks by eating a normal to high range of protein and you've overeaten on your calories, you've gone over your maintenance by a thousand calories a day. So a thousand calories a day, they've gained eight pounds in eight weeks, basically. When you look at the calculation with one pound of fat, 3,500 calories, they've gone over their maintenance by 1,000 a day, that's 7,000 calories a week. If you were to look at the numbers and I've covered the study before, it actually takes you more than 3,500 calories to gain a pound of fat. As shown here, this basically shows that it's taken them, they've eaten a thousand calories extra a day, so they've doubled that.
Speaker 1:So they've eaten 7,000 calories a week over maintenance and they've gained a pound of fat a week basically versus we assume it would be 3,005 pounds but not because it doesn't quite work out perfectly, which is great news for us. It means if you do go over your maintenance the chances of you gaining all of that fat is going to be slim. You have to really double that intake to gain that pound of fat. So that's good news for us. But what is interesting, they didn't do any weight training and they gained muscle.
Speaker 1:And in eight weeks they gained three kilograms of muscle. Do you know how crazy that is? That's a significant amount of muscle and we know from research now that your muscle, the amount of muscle you hold as you age is a huge, huge indicator of your overall health. Your ageing, how you're going to move, your posture, pretty much nearly everything. If you lose muscle it's going to be bad news for you.
Speaker 1:So the fact that you can gain muscle in this study by just going high protein and over consuming on your calories, going over maintenance is amazing news for us. There's another study that showed what would happen if you ate to your maintenance. So say now you said, Scott, I've eaten all my calorie target, I've gone over my 500 calories, I'm at my limit, I've gone over my calorie target, I'm still hungry. What would happen if you only ate protein over your maintenance? Would you gain fat?
Speaker 1:Because protein to be broken down to be sold as fat can happen in the body, but it's very rare to happen. And the study was done, think, in the early twenty fourteen, I think it was 2014, and it showed that the surplus of protein only for eight weeks had no effects on body composition, so basically no fat was gained. So if you're at your calorie limit and you're starving or you're very hungry, if there is something to overeat on, it's protein. And the chances of you gaining fat from that is slim to zero. So this is all brilliant news for us when we're thinking of our lifestyle, our long term journey with our healthy eating.
Speaker 1:We're thinking protein first. There are so many benefits to being protein first, high protein driven, that it would be silly not to include it into our way eating. Of We don't want to put too much limitations on what we do but high protein, I've hit my macros, I've hit my calorie target. I am hungry, well you can have protein yogurts and other some of the calories coming from carbs and fat there. I can have clear whey, whey protein, mix it with some almond milk or some aligar.
Speaker 1:You can have some lean meats, whatever your preferred protein source is, you can have that with veggies or whatever and you can go over and it's all good. These are all pieces of good information for us to know. I know a lot of you are thinking, well, I can't hit my protein target yet, it's quite high. Well, it's a journey to get to a higher protein lifestyle. It's not going to happen overnight.
Speaker 1:In The UK, there's a lot of options for higher protein foods. If you go to France, example, you'll struggle with there's hardly any high protein snack options there. But we've got so many options now. So you've got to take your time, find what works for you. Is it when you wake up and you have a protein shake in the morning Clearway or you have Clearway twice a day as your water.
Speaker 1:Basically, mix it with water and you have that twice a day, whether it's you're doubling your portion sizes that you already have for your protein sources, if you have chicken, if you have a chicken breast you're gonna have a chicken breast and a half, if you're gonna have certain foods like some beans that got protein, you're gonna double the the portion size there. Add more cheese if you're having one egg, you have two eggs, or you have three eggs, or you have some egg whites. It's it's things like that that all add up. Okay? So that's it really for today.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to remind you, let's get a narrow focus on today. Let's hit our protein target today. In five years' time, there'll be even more research coming out about the benefits of it and you will be grateful that you've had years of eating a higher protein diet. You're going to feel a lot better in yourself as well. To have more muscle mass, to feel stronger and to slowly incorporate weight training as when you can.
Speaker 1:There's no rush right now to do it. If your goal is fat loss, don't worry too much about it but over time you think eventually I'm going do once a week or twice a week and do the fundamentals and I'm going get the benefits. It's going to be a nice journey, nice progression to that point. And then you might fall in love with weight training or certain forms of training and you're going to do more. But let's gradually get there.
Speaker 1:Let's make our way there because guess what? Most people try and do everything for two weeks and they do nothing for months on end. So the people that you see are doing this and this and this. The candle burns twice as bright but half the time. You want to be going on a consistent force of nature moving towards these things.
Speaker 1:Steady, slow, manageable, boom. You're gonna do that. Think of it that way. You're just gonna happy days. So, yeah, have a good day, guys.
Speaker 1:Eat your protein, and I'll speak to you all tomorrow.
