Ep 131 – The Ultimate Protein Conversation

TRANSCRIPT:

Giacomo

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Giacomo.

Dani

And I’m and this is episode 131. Hey everybody, welcome back. Hope everybody’s having a great summer. We are just getting back from Anaheim Fit Expo right now and gearing up for our upcoming 12 week fat loss challenge, which if you haven’t gotten in on that, highly recommend it. It is 12 weeks with custom calculated macros by us, full workouts, daily lessons.

It’s a fantastic, fantastic challenge that lasts for 12 weeks and one person at the end wins three months of one on one coaching. And it’s just this fantastic group setting that people seem to have a lot of success in because everybody’s kind of in the trenches of it together. Can’t recommend it enough.

Giacomo

For sure. Yeah, I love our challenges. They really bring out the best in people who sign up for them and they get a little bit of everything from us, which is just like the best possible case scenario. And then it’s like, all right, well where do you want to take this thing? Maybe you’ll be the lucky winner that gets that three months worth of free coaching from us.

Dani

Well, it’s not a lucky winner, it’s a hard working winner.

Giacomo

True.

Dani

Do you want to learn how we help our clients lose body fat efficiently? Well, on Wednesday, August 9th at 6:00pm Eastern, I am going to be hosting a live free webinar teaching the five keys of vegan fat loss. If you show up to this webinar, you’re going to learn the exact tactics that we use to help our clients lose body fat while keeping their muscle without losing their minds.

And if you show up live, you will also get a free copy of our vegan pre workout guide. I will leave the

link to register for this in the show. Notes of this podcast spots are limited so make sure you sign up right away and I’m really looking forward to seeing you there.

Giacomo

I love the Fit Expos. That Anaheim one in particular, it’s not quite as big as la, but it’s got the same Fit Expo feel. It’s super fun because we get to cook and make things like Corinne makes a scramble, I make a taco meat recipe. We get to meet so many people and it’s just, it’s a real trip getting to be out there on the front lines having conversations with people and getting them into plant based foods and a vegan lifestyle.

Dani

So what are we talking about today?

Giacomo

Well, today we’re going to have an entire conversation on protein. We’re going to call this the ultimate protein conversation, which for us, we’ve been at this for forever. Some of you may not know, so it bears repeating. We were the first and only online vegan supplement shopping, hence the name vegan protein still trips people up because we are an online vegan coaching company.

However, we have our roots in being a supplement shop who our main thing was vegan protein powder back in the day, in 2004, I had to scour the Internet to find the source of vegan protein. And then by some miracle, because back then it was very. The Internet was not well indexed and there was just not a lot of information to be indexed. And I stumbled across this site and I saw this guy, Mike Mallor, selling pea protein.

I’m like, you know what? This was so hard to do. Why don’t we make this into an actual operation? And then somewhere it came onto the scene with rice protein. I’m giving you a little bit of history here. And then we started with that and whatever, like vegan protein powder became commercially available.

I say all this not to go off on a tangent here. I say all this because for us, we have been thoroughly investigating, researching and having our hands in all things protein when it comes to vegan athletes for a very, very long time. So this particular conversation is near and dear to our hearts.

Dani

Yeah, well, I mean, we’re called vegan proteins, which is kind of a confusing name for a vegan coaching company, which is what we are now. But when we were a supplement store, vegan proteins made perfect sense because that was the number one reason why people came to us and we weren’t going to change our name at that point. So. But protein has always been a really important

conversation to us, largely because I really think that a lot of vegans aren’t considering protein as much as

they ought to be for the goals that they have. Now, people who are not vegan seem to be super, super concerned with our protein, but people who are vegan, I think mostly are probably not eating quite enough for their goals. So I wanted to talk more about everything pertaining to that. This is not an episode about supplements at all, because even though we started as a supplement store, you can do everything that we’re about to talk about without supplementing protein in powder

form. You can if you want to, but you don’t have to. And I think it’s good to know things like how much protein do you actually need for your goals? Does it matter if you have a set? Like, do people who don’t have big physical goals need to eat more protein, do vegans need to eat more protein than non vegans? How does that break down in terms of timing, quality, yada, yada, yada? So that is sort of what we want to talk about today.

Giacomo

So maybe we want to lead with the straight stats on sedentary versus active and vegan or non vegan in terms of how much protein to get in. Dani, you think that’s a good way to kick this thing off? No.

Dani

I mean, we can start talking about just how much protein the literature suggests that people need in general, because I think that that is super, super important. Just as a baseline, when you go vegan, you hear a lot of people talk about how you don’t need to worry about protein because if you’re eating food, then you’re eating enough protein. That is the most common thing that we hear. So I don’t actually think that’s a lie.

I think that when you go vegan, you don’t really need to worry about protein. If your goal is just to survive, get by, stay relatively healthy. If you’re eating enough calories, as long as you’re not doing something stupid like eating just bananas or just watermelon, you’re probably gonna get enough protein so that you’re never gonna raise a red flag when you go to the doctor and get your blood work done.

Giacomo

We’re talking about general health, because I’m the one in the conversation here and I want to make sure I understand so that you as a listener can understand. You’re saying, Dani, straight up, just as a healthy person, you’re not going to become protein deficient, correct?

Dani

No, no. I mean, yeah, you would have to. You would have to, like, kind of try to become protein

deficient, I think. But that said, in our line of work, that is not most people’s goal. Most people have some kind of athletic goal, whether that’s to run faster or lift more weight or build muscle or get leaner and achieve this chiseled, toned look. That is a different thing entirely.

And protein does become more important for those goals. And you will have to think about protein. You might not have to think about it forever because it’s kind of like riding a bike. Once you know and change your habits, it becomes much easier to kind of get enough protein without thinking about it. But when you are first starting, it can be a big shift for someone.

Giacomo

Who’S looking to get the most out of their body, good use out of their body, and live in a healthy, strong body as they’re growing to age, as opposed to someone who is just trying to be healthy in general on paper, as far as their nutritional intake. That kind of person. Someone who has athletical, someone who wants to have a strong body and make good use out of it. What are we looking at for the numbers here?

Dani

So are we talking about somebody who wants to build muscle? Because there’s three separate recommendations for protein. Okay. Yeah, sedentary individuals, completely sedentary. They don’t particularly have any goals. They’re not active, generally not usually. The listeners of this podcast, they would need about 0.54 to 0.82 grams of protein per pound. So, you know, the easy way to do that is take your body weight in pounds and cut it in half and it’s just above that number.

Giacomo

That number right there that you just mentioned is the number for those of you who have and have not. I’ll give you the context here. Back in the day, it was always like, okay, well, plants have up to 10% protein. Without focusing on protein dense sources, 7 to 10% of your calories are going to come from protein. P.S. don’t worry about it. That’s like for the average person to not be protein deficient, you’re going to probably get in that amount of protein, correct?

Dani

I don’t think so. Actually. I meet lots of people who get in. Okay, so I’m 100. Let’s just say I’m 140 pounds. The low end of that would be 70 grams of protein. I know plenty of people my size that don’t get in 70 grams of protein a day.

Giacomo

So it’s possible to get in even less than that just by throwing caution to the wind and being like, yay,

planes have protein. I’m not going to eat anything that’s protein dense.

Dani

Right. So the RDA in the US is 0.8 grams per kilogram, which is going to be, I think that’s just under 0.4 grams per pound. So it would be lower than that. But you know, we forget that the recommended daily allowance, it’s not a target, it’s a minimum that. That’s the number you don’t want to drop below.

Giacomo

Gotcha.

Dani

So it’s a little bit lower than that. But just to stay healthy, even if you’re sedentary and like, you know, try to keep what little muscle you have, we’re looking at that 0.54 to 0.82 number.

Giacomo

Even for that person, they still have to focus on protein somewhat.

Dani

Gotcha. Now, if you’re of a healthy weight and active and you just Want to keep your weight sort of where it is. You’re not looking to make any huge changes, but you’re, like, pretty fit and kind of want to stay there, then you would want to shoot for 64 to 0.91 grams per pound of body weight.

Giacomo

Okay, shoot me with that again for that number. These are for what kind of people, Dani?

Dani

People who are. They’re already, like, a healthy weight. They’re kind of active, but they don’t have any, like, huge, big goals, changes that they want to make supporting your.

Giacomo

Activity without having any sort of big change happening. Gotcha.

Dani

Okay, so 0.64 to 0.91. And then if you are, like, kind of already a healthy weight, but you’re specifically trying to build muscle or change your body composition drastically for the general population, and we’re going to get into how this is a little bit different for vegans in a little bit for the general population as 0.73 to 1.1 grams per pound. Okay. This is what the largest collection of, like, meta analyses suggests.

Giacomo

A pound of what? Body weight.

Dani

Body weight. Body weight.

Giacomo

Thank you.

Dani

Okay. But that’s assuming you’re already a healthy weight. So you have to take into consideration there are people outside of this in general. First of all, there’s vegans, which is most pertinent to this podcast, but there’s also people who are overweight or obese.

We wouldn’t want to do it per pound of their body weight. We would probably want to change that more to lean body mass, which I prefer anyway, to use lean body mass just for everybody. But that’s what I’m coaching them myself.

Giacomo

What about for someone who’s underweight?

Dani

For someone who’s underweight, protein is really less of an issue. They just need to get their calories up, up, up. Right.

Giacomo

So fair enough.

Dani

Yeah. So, yeah, there are other considerations to take into account, like people who are pregnant or lactating. It’s going to be different numbers for those folks. And then, of course, like, kids, it’s going to be different for them, too. But for the purposes of this podcast, we’re not going to get into that. But if you wanted to stay kind of on the safe side in any of these categories, Right.

Whether you’re sedentary, healthy, but don’t really want to change anything, or like healthy, but you want to build muscle and change your body significantly, you could stay in that, like, 0.7 to 0.9 grams per pound, and you would be great. So that’s just if you take one thing Away from this. Try that. Try.7 to 0.9%. 0.7 to 0.9 grams per pound of your body weight.

Giacomo

Right. We like to, like to use the word insurance. Have just a touch more than you need and you cover all your bases.

Dani

Yeah. So let’s talk about eating too much protein. Can you eat too much protein? Have they looked at studies where people are eating much higher than these numbers that we just talked about? And what does that actually look like? So what is your take on eating too much protein, Giacomo?

Giacomo

You absolutely can eat too much protein. You wind up selling yourself short because fat can be a healthy thing to get in for your endocrine system and for other various reasons. Carbohydrates are going to give you more energy. An excessive amount of protein is metabolically demanding, meaning it takes energy for your body just to metabolize protein and it can cause digestive discomfort. So. And it’s expensive. Protein is the most expensive thing to consume.

Dani

So it’s hard, like money wise, right?

Giacomo

Correct.

Dani

Yeah.

Giacomo

It’s hard on your wallet, it’s hard on your digestive tract, and it’s an inferior source of energy.

Dani

That’s the key thing for me is that it’s an inferior source of energy. So they have done some studies on this where they had people eating at that, with the rda, basically that super low number where if you go below that, you’ll flag things. And then they had people eating at the 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. So they had people doing like 0.4, just under 0.4 and then 0.8.

And the difference in these people resistance trained during this study. And the difference in muscle mass was significant between those two groups. But they also had another group that ate 1.4 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And the difference between the group in the middle that ate like moderate protein like we just talked about, and the group that ate like very high protein.

There wasn’t a big difference in the amount of muscle they put on. There wasn’t a big difference in the amount of body fat that they lost. So we need up to a certain amount to achieve our goals. But anything in excess of that doesn’t seem to improve those results. But the difference between that RDA and that 0.8 grams was massive. So that is what we really ought to be focusing on.

But for all the reasons you said, going super high protein I don’t think is particularly helpful for anybody. And you’d probably have better workouts, better recovery and better sleep if you allocated Some of those calories coming from extra protein to more carbohydrates or fat above.

Giacomo

The 1.4 mark we’re referring to, right? So if someone weighs 100 pounds and they’re consuming 145 to 180 grams of protein, that’s completely unnecessary. As opposed to them consuming anywhere from 70 to 140 grams of protein. I’m not using an actual person here. I just don’t want to screw up the math and start to think about it. You get the point though, right?

Dani

Now, everybody that we’ve talked about so far, the types of people, they’ve all sort of been people, you know, the last group, if you’re healthy weight working to build muscle or change your body

composition. But there is another class that is just like straight athletes. Like, if you would consider yourself to be an athlete, you might fall into a different class where the research suggests that higher protein than that, 0.73 to 1.1 grams, could be helpful all the way up to like a

gram per pound of body weight. So when I think back to like the bro, the sort of bro science, right? Remember back in the day, that was always the suggestion, listen, back in the.

Giacomo

Day when I was in high school and I’m dating myself here, but in the 90s, they were pushing between 2 to 4 grams of protein per pound of body. I’m not kidding you. The kind of stuff that would like, take you out of the game and take you out of the gym and take you out of life, because who can handle that? But that was what it was like back then. Dani, I’m not kidding.

Dani

Your poor digestive tract.

Giacomo

Tell me about it.

Dani

Okay, well, when I got into fitness and bodybuilding, a very, very standard was like 1 gram of protein per pound. And I still think I understand. That’s super easy to remember, right? Who can’t remember that a gram per pound? And I still think, like, it’s not a terrible place to be. Like, I think if most people are doing that, they’re probably in the ballpark of where they ought to be.

I think there’s more specific ways, and I’ll tell you how we calculate it here at vegan proteins for people. But I can understand where people came up with that. In the studies that they did of athletes, they did find that they got really good results up to a gram per pound. Above that, they didn’t have fantastic results. Like, the results didn’t get better the higher they went beyond a gram per pound. But remember, these are athletes who likely already carry a significant amount

of muscle mass and likely don’t carry that much body fat. So a large amount of their weight probably is muscle. You know what I mean? So anyway, just something to consider. So obviously we are vegan proteins. We work with vegan athletes. Most of the listeners of this podcast are vegan or at least veg curious. And we hear a lot of stuff about how vegan protein sources are inferior to animal based protein sources.

Giacomo

Sure. And the very first argument is that they are not complete proteins. And then they start to get more specific about why they’re not complete proteins. And then it’s deconstructed and broken down to branch chain amino acids. And then more specifically, it’s deconstructed further and broken down into, well, even the best source is a little short in leucine. That’s pretty much how the argument goes.

Dani

You basically just summed up everything that I’m about to say and all of those things are true. Like, listen, this is a hard thing for me to say, but in isolation, each vegan protein source, probably the best one being soy, even that is a little bit lower than things like eggs, fish, milk, chicken in terms of bioavailability. Meaning, like if you e.

I’m just making stuff up here. If you eat 30 grams of protein from chicken, you’re probably going to actually absorb something like 29 and change grams from that. Whereas if you eat 30 grams of protein coming from soy, you might only get like 23 or 24 grams actually absorbed from that. So there is a difference there. And that is for a couple of reasons, some that you mentioned, like some of them are missing certain amino acids in isolation.

This is key. Like foods isolated by themselves. Some of them are missing certain essential amino acids which would make a complete protein. The other reason is that some vegetables have what are called like antinutrients, which are things like phytates and tannins, and they can just make certain foods a little bit harder to digest. So there’s that.

They also contain, just as a counterargument to this, in my opinion, they contain more nutrients. And obviously fiber is only found in plant foods. So there’s, you know, eat them, like obviously eat them. There are some people that use that as an argument to not eat vegetables. And that’s the silliest thing that I’ve heard yet.

So in order to build muscle, we need to stimulate what is called muscle protein synthesis. It’s a reaction that happens in our body when we eat a certain amount of protein. And in particular, one amino acid has to be High enough to kind of flip the switch to turn on muscle protein synthesis. And that amino acid is leucine.

Giacomo

So back in the early 2000s, this information started to become more well researched and more well understood. And you’d have those casual conversations about those who were consuming the science and the research and being like, okay, you talking to your buddy? And they’re like, yeah. And these are real conversations that I had back in college.

20 to 40 grams of protein, 20 to 50 grams of protein, two to three times a day. That was like the general conversation before we started to really understand. So that was what you would hear in the gyms. But then obviously much has happened since then and we’ve learned a whole lot like this study that we’re looking at here.

Dani

Right? So if leucine is sort of the most important, all of the amino acids are important, but leucine, like I said, they think it’s what kind of turns on muscle protein synthesis. And plant proteins. Plant foods in general tend to be significantly lower in leucine than non plant proteins. Right. Than animal proteins.

So because of this, plant proteins are often thought to be inferior. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are inferior because they have so many other health benefits that animal proteins just do not have. But in terms of stimulating muscle protein synthesis, they are a little bit less effective.

Giacomo

So what you’re saying here is there are certain amino acids that when consuming enough of them throughout the day, they’re going to help stimulate muscle protein synthesis as opposed to those 20 to whatever hits of protein you get multiple times a day. It’s also the type of amino acids that you get to pull from and your amino acid pool from the protein you’re getting throughout the day. And leucine is one of those amino acids, correct, Dani?

Dani

Yes. Okay, so what do you do? Well, first of all, everything I just said is talking about foods in isolation. Most of us don’t eat foods in isolation. We don’t just sit down and eat just a bowl of tofu or we don’t just eat seitan and no other forms of protein. And if you do, I highly recommend that you mix it up for these reasons. Specifically, you should be getting your food from a wide variety of sources.

You know, the old myth about food combining, like needing to eat rice and beans at the same meal in order to form a complete protein, was based on this theory that has since been debunked. In fact, the person who did the study and published it has since retracted it and said that it was an error. So it’s not just like other people debunking her, like she said. Nope, that was wrong. Because all the food that we eat all day, all of the protein and it gets broken down into an amino acid pool

all day. And basically as our body needs it, it pulls all of the amino acids out of that pool to form one like protein. And that goes off on its way. Right. So we’re pulling from that pool all day. So you don’t have to mix these foods up at the same meal. You just need to be getting a wide variety of foods throughout the day.

Giacomo

Right. So a non vegan athlete is not going to be hyper fixating on the highest quality proteins and saying these are the only ones that count. Based on the science. Now they understand that whether they’re eating, whether there’s broccoli on their plate or something else that’s non vegan, that contains protein, for example, the protein they’re getting from that is still usable.

Dani

Yes, that’s a great point that you bring up. Back in the day, you would only count protein from protein sources. Right. So even when I got into bodybuilding, I was only counting the protein, like from my protein shake or from my tofu or my Boca burger or whatever. And the non vegans were only counting the protein from their chicken or egg or whey or whatever, even though, you know, the oatmeal that they were having

also had protein and the veggies also had protein. But now I feel like it’s pretty understood across the board. Yeah, there is protein in everything and you can count it all.

Giacomo

I would like to think obviously there’s bias here because we don’t work with non vegan athletes and we are both vegan athletes. But I would have to imagine, since the science is coming out and it’s not biased, it’s not like there are vegan scientists publishing this with an agenda. It’s science. And I would like to think that, yes. That people think differently now, Athletes think differently now.

Dani

I think so. But the takeaway piece here is really, I think, food variety and making sure people are not just always eating the exact same source of protein. I have a caveat here, but like, I’m talking about food. Don’t just eat seitan. You know, I have some clients that love seitan and I love seitan. But if the only real protein source you’re getting is like from wheat, if that’s your main protein source, there’s gonna be some holes in that amino acid pool.

Giacomo

Or like, if I were to be like, okay, well, 70 rice, 30p. Well that’s what I’m getting, has the same amount. Like it’s basically almost a carbon copy of whey. And it has the best amino acid profile possible, blah blah, blah. I’m just gonna have four to five protein shakes with 70p30 rice. Cause that’s how I’m gonna build the most muscle.

Dani

So let me elaborate on what you’re talking about here. Cause I think people might be confused.

Giacomo

Sure. Break it down.

Dani

So there have been studies where they compare. Okay, so now we know all of this stuff. What if we make the amino acid profile of a plant based protein powder line up with that of the standard non vegan protein powder, which is whey. And they did that by making protein powder blends that are 70% from pea protein, 30% from rice protein. The amino acid profile of that matches whey.

And they ran studies where they had one group do the plant one and one group do the whey one. And then they measured their strength and their muscle thickness. I think it was in their quads and there was no difference. Like when they were matched up gram for gram of protein, the vegan proteins performed just as well as the whey proteins. So that actually is something that you can do. I don’t do very many protein powders at all because I just don’t care for most of them and I like to eat my

food. That said, you could theoretically drink protein shakes once or twice a day and not even have to worry about anything I just said at all. Because the protein powders nowadays versus when you and I started, they’re now designed to be complete. Almost all of the vegan protein powders are designed to have a beautiful amino acid profile on their own.

Giacomo

But Dani, would it make sense to only have. Let’s just say that you didn’t care about what you ate and you only wanted to eat like a machine. Would it still make sense to do that all day long? Would you still get the. Because I feel like it would still be helpful to get protein from different sources. Not just from a standpoint of enjoying what you eat, but also just to mix it up a little bit, like just help your gut out, et cetera, et cetera.

It’s more than just getting the best amino acid profile possible. Even if your goal is to be an extreme competitor. I feel like it’s also important to just be able to process your food better. Right?

Dani

Yeah. I mean it’s entirely up to the person. If someone doesn’t like tofu or tempeh or seitan and they like their. I have clients that love their protein powder and they mix it up as a pudding and eat it for multiple meals per day sometimes. And it’s like, okay, I would never do that. But you do. You. That’s gonna work just fine.

Giacomo

Sure.

Dani

So, and they also, I mean, they eat other things. They eat fruits and vegetables and things like that.

They’re just not eating like a mock meat instead.

Giacomo

Put it this way. Yeah. Be flexible. But I feel like it helps to eat a variety from every food source. That’s just my opinion. You know, do what works for you, but it’s never going to hurt you to vary up your protein sources.

Dani

So there’s a couple other things we can do to sort of combat this. And one of the things that I do is I actually do, for our vegan athletes generally program about 10% higher protein than these recommendations are, just in case. So these are like little insurance policies.

So remember we said like general rule, like 0.73 to 1.1. What we do is 0.8 to 1.2, but it’s per pound, not of body weight, but of lean body mass. We’ll get into that later, but I’ll touch back upon this. So you can increase the amount of protein by about 10%.

Giacomo

So you’re saying that as a vegan athlete compared to a non vegan athlete, you’re going to recommend the vegan athlete gets in about 10% more protein than these numbers?

Dani

Yeah, Right.

Giacomo

And I can just more than imagine, I know the arguments, I know the fitness world because we’ve been in for a while, it’s like, well, that’s metabolically inferior. Because you have to eat a little more protein, you could be getting more and fats, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But consider the alternative. If you could get in less protein and your macros will look more legit, but the food that you were eating was not necessarily high quality, meaning you’re not going to get

nutrients from it, you’re not going to digest it as easily, you’re going to risk getting in too much dietary cholesterol, blah, blah, blah. I don’t feel like the trade off is worth it. I say eat an extra 10% protein. I know we’re preaching to the choir here because it’s a vegan podcast, but still it’s worth mentioning because I think.

Dani

That if you look at most athletes that are not vegan, they’re eating way more protein than this anyway. Perhaps like way more protein than this. I think the industry has Changed a lot. And people are eating less protein than they used to, but it’s still pretty high.

Giacomo

That’s true.

Dani

Like people are still eating kind of a lot of protein, probably more than they need to.

Giacomo

Fair enough.

Dani

Except you know, I’m talking about established athletes, newer folks are generally not eating enough protein. So the last possible suggestion, and this is the only time that I make this suggestion, is you can supplement with leucine. You can get a powder that has leucine in it and add that to like have that a couple times a day if you want to.

Leucine is in branched chain amino acids, BCAAs. So leucine by itself is much cheaper. Branch chain amino acids tend to have all these flavorings and fun stuff in them which makes them taste much better. But they are pretty expensive. But you could do that also.

Giacomo

So let’s paint a nice picture here of a protein powder free protein source plan for someone for a day. You have your seitan, you have your tofu, you have your protein adding up from all the foods that you eat throughout the day. And maybe you have something else like something you bought from the store that has plant based protein in it, for example, I don’t know, chicken strips, whatever, no protein powder.

But you’re getting in 10% more than what is written down that is required for someone who’s active. You’re probably going to be okay. As opposed to the alternative of like I need leucine, I need branch amino acids, I need to have at least one or two meals of protein powder. I think, I think that’s a pretty plausible thing to say.

I mean, what do you, do you agree? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it’s like we wanna, we wanna always get to the most complicated approach to get to the answer, but in reality it’s simple. If you eat about 10%

more protein than what is required because you’re vegan, then you don’t really have to obsess over the details.

Dani

No you don’t. Well that’s the thing. So all of this, I think it’s important that as like representatives in the vegan community, we don’t just say nuh, vegan protein’s just as good. Because there are reasons people say that it’s not. And I think it’s important to discuss those reasons and then talk about how they’re actually really friggin easy workarounds for that. You know, the science is true. Like I said, the plant proteins are very technically less bioavailable, they’re

less digestible. They are individually, they are lacking in amino acids. Let’s talk about it. Okay, what do we do about it? The answer isn’t just, oh, well, I’m just not going to be vegan. Like, to me, that would never be the answer. The answer is actually really simple. So, yeah. Okay, so why are our protein recommendations what they are? 0.8 to 1.2 gram per pound of lean body mass?

Giacomo

You tell me.

Dani

Okay, so I like to, rather than base the protein stuff off of someone’s full body weight, most of the reason that people require more protein is because they carry more muscle. But there are a lot of people, especially folks that we work with, that are just getting into this sort of a lifestyle. They don’t have a ton of muscle and they might have more body fat.

You know, they might have, you know, 40 pounds that they want to not have, like 40 extra pounds that they’re trying to take off. That’s largely body fat. This muscle is not really. I mean, sorry. This body fat is not super demanding of protein, you know, so if you.

Giacomo

Have someone that’s say £225 and they want to be £150, so to speak. Yeah, I mean, obviously we’re not going to use numbers because so much can change your body composition. But, like, you’re not going to use this formula based on £225.

Dani

Exactly. If someone comes to me and they are trying to lose half their body weight and they are 220 pounds or something, I’m not going to recommend they eat 220 grams of protein. No, that is so much more protein than they need.

Giacomo

But people do that.

Dani

But if I look at this person and I say, okay, this person is probably at least 50% body fat right now. So then I’m actually basing my calculation off of £110, not £220, because I’m just looking at their lean body mass.

Giacomo

Correct.

Dani

And with that, I’m doing the math in my head here, but 0.8 of 110 is probably like 85 grams. To all the way up to 1.2 would be like 132 grams. Right. So that is where our recommendation would fall for that person.

Giacomo

And sometimes if you want to put a little higher just because protein is satiating, it’s fine. But within reason, like maybe you send them at like 165 if they’re looking to change their dietary habits, so to speak. Right. But you’re not going to shoot for any more than that. And technically they could be as low as 130 without even worrying about it.

Dani

And people say, well, how do I know? How do I know what my lean body mass is? You’re going to have to estimate a little bit. And you can use those bathroom floor scales that tell you your body fat percentage. It’s not going to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You know, if it says 22%, you want to multiply it at 20% body fat or 25% body, that’s fine.

We just are trying to get in the ballpark here. When my clients send me their starting stuff, I can do it with. I just look. I just look at them and look at their measurements, and I can estimate, based on my eyes, within 5%. Like, I can estimate within 5% when I’m looking at somebody. And you can kind of do the same thing with yourself by looking at pictures on the Internet.

I actually have a page in my book that is pictures of kind of what different body fat percentages look like. Now, of course, that’s not perfect because everybody’s different, but it’s just to give you an idea of

how to figure out your lean body mass. The other question I get is, why don’t we do protein as a percentage of calories?

Giacomo

Why don’t we do protein as a percentage of calories? That’s a very easy answer. Everyone’s metabolism is different. And so one person might need 3000 calories and they weigh a buck 50. Another person might need 1500 calories and they weigh 200. You just don’t know.

Dani

Well, I hope that I feel sorry for that last person. I hope they don’t actually exist.

Giacomo

It happens, though.

Dani

Yeah, that’s it. Your body requires a certain amount of protein, regardless of how many calories you’re consuming. If you’re consuming 2,000 calories, I’ll use myself as an example. Whether I am consuming 1600 calories or 2500 calories, I’m still gonna eat, like 120ish grams of protein every day.

Giacomo

Whether I’m consuming 4000 calories or 1800 calories, I’m going to be getting in about 175 grams of protein a day.

Dani

Yeah. So if you think about it as a percentage, like, I hear so many. I hear other coaches. This is what blows my mind. There are other coaches out there still telling, people, get 30% of your calories from protein. What? And then they come to us and it’s like they are eating so much more protein than they need.

And then when we’re like, hey, we could probably take this Protein down a bit. They’re kind of hesitant to trust that process, you know what I mean? Saying get 30% of your calories from protein is just so wildly lazy to me, it’s such a lazy recommendation.

Giacomo

Yeah. And I get some. I even have a hard time accepting someone saying something just to appease somebody because they don’t want to give them the whole explanation or they don’t want them to get lost in the details because you’re steering somebody in the wrong direction if you just tell them what they want to hear because you want them to do it.

Giving someone a percentage of calories to get protein in is spreading misinformation. And if that person does it on their own in the future after just following what you said, they’re going to screw up.

Dani

Yeah. So that’s how we come up with that number right there. That’s how we calculate protein for our folks. And then people say, well, do I need to change my protein if I’m building muscle versus losing fat a little? Kind of. I would still stay within that range no matter what you’re doing. But when you are building muscle, I think it can kind of be on the lower end of that range and when you’re losing body fat the higher end of that range, which I think most people get backwards.

They think that they need to bring their protein down when they’re trying to get leaner. But if you bring your protein down when you’re trying to get leaner, there’s a much higher likelihood of losing muscle. Keeping that protein a little bit higher when you’re trying to get leaner is a little insurance policy for your muscle that your body doesn’t just chew it up.

Giacomo

You’re more likely to stick to your plan as well.

Dani

Yeah. So let’s talk about how do you break that protein down throughout the day? What is the best way to break that protein down through the day to get the most benefit? Get the most bang for your buck. Protein bar.

Giacomo

You’re looking at pre workout, post workout, and two other meals of the day, whether it’s breakfast or lunch or dinner. And I think that depends on your lifestyle, your schedule, your day, what you prefer. Right. So if you’re focusing on your pre and you’re focusing on your post, you’re getting in two hits of protein during the day.

Then if you focus on two other major meals you have in a day, you’re likely to get in a good amount of protein four times a day. I feel like that’s pretty sufficient. You could be an overachiever and do five, but I feel like four is kind of a sweet spot.

Dani

Yeah, that’s the thing is we don’t actually know how many times people can stimulate muscle protein synthesis. We assume that it is somewhere between three and six and it might be different per person. So that’s why I usually Recommend People have 3, 4, 5 or 6 meals per day. But here’s the thing. In order to stimulate that muscle protein synthesis, remember the leucine we talked about earlier?

We have to reach that leucine threshold, which, let’s say your protein goal is 120 grams of protein and you like to eat six meals per day. That’s only 20 grams of protein per meal. That might not be enough protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

Giacomo

So the answer is upping your protein only for some of your meals throughout the day. And you start with the safest ones.

Dani

Your pre and your protein or having fewer meals or that. Right.

Giacomo

But I mean, you’re going to be flexible, right? Every day is not going to be the same. Blah. So I feel like it helps to have a foundation, as general rule of thumb, before and after you train and at least one other meal throughout the day, preferably two other meals throughout the day. And those meals should have protein. Like Dani said to her point, you don’t want to break up your protein evenly throughout your meals a day because that logic is flawed.

You’re going to go wrong. You’re not going to stimulate hitting that leucine threshold which is getting in a certain amount of protein in a meal to make sure you hit the leucine threshold.

Dani

And for most people, most people, it’s probably going to be somewhere between 20 and 35 grams that you need in a meal to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So the smaller you are, the less protein you need to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. The larger you are, the more protein you need at one feeding to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

So it’s not bad to have more at a particular meal. For example, like for myself, I think mine is around 30. I need roughly 30 grams to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. And yes, there is a formula to figure this out, but sometimes my meals have like 40 or 45 grams. I’m not super worried about it. But if I have a meal that has like 15 grams of protein in it, if I’m hungry and I have a snack and it’s a protein

bar with 15 grams of protein in it, it’s good.

It all goes into the amino acid pool. But that meal by itself was probably not enough to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So you guys want to know the formula? Hope you get a pencil. Jot it down. It is 0.23 grams of protein per pound of body weight. 0.23. So how much do you weigh, Giacomo?

Giacomo

Grams? Hedge. What I was thinking.

Dani

Yeah. How much do you weigh? 190. 195.

Giacomo

195.

Dani

So for you, that would be 45.

Giacomo

Right.

Dani

And you’re close to 200 pounds. So 45 grams for you. But let’s say I was 120 pounds gal. That would be 27 grams. So, I mean, that’s a pretty petite person. So I generally like to say, yeah, 20, 20 to 35 for most people, but you can do the math for yourself there and try to figure it out. So if you do eat six meals per day, you know, some of your snacks don’t have to have protein in them.

You know, not every meal has to have mad protein in it. Maybe you just have three squares that have a decent amount of protein in them, and then your snacks just have whatever trace protein is in it, which is fine, and you don’t sweat it too much.

Giacomo

There you go.

Dani

The last consideration would be for older folks, where protein becomes more important as we get older. So I don’t think you have to make huge, huge changes to any of the numbers that we talked about, but just consider the fact that as we get older, it becomes more important that you pay close attention to these, and you would want to stay closer to the higher range of everything that we’ve talked about here. And when I say older, I mean, like, above 60.

Giacomo

Here’s my question, Dani. Is this just because it becomes that much more important to have insurance? Because as you get older, bone loss is more common and muscle loss is inevitable, and you want to not only prevent that, you want to reverse the aging process and try to, like, make up for that deficit and even put on muscle for as long as possible. Is that the reason why or is it something else? That work?

Dani

Yeah, that is a huge part of the reason why is because you’re, you know, we all know that as we get older, we start to lose muscle. Lose? Yeah, lose our muscle tissue. It’s called sarcopenia. When we start to lose our muscle, we also, you know, people get more frail as they get older, the bone density gets worse, etc. So it does become more important to focus on getting enough protein because we don’t want to lose that muscle.

And just like we talked about, when you’re in a deficit, keeping that protein higher is insurance to keep your muscle when you’re dieting, getting it a little bit higher as you’re older kind of does the same thing. It just helps you to hang on to it.

Giacomo

I still wonder if there are any other reasons outside of that for older folks.

Dani

I would have to do more research on it, honestly, to see if there are other reasons why it is more important. I’m not 100% sure, so I don’t want to talk about it like I am. But you know, I would just stay in these numbers but just maybe err on the slightly higher end of these.

Giacomo

Ranges hey listeners, we hope you’ve been.

Speaker 3

Enjoying this episode and we appreciate your love of all things vegan fitness. For those of you who want even more support on your vegan fitness journey, check out our Muscles by Brussels community and become a member by joining the team. You are one of our exclusive VIPs. As a member you’ll find over 200 macro friendly high protein recipes that can meet any of your meal planning needs. You’ll also receive training programs that update monthly.

This training has progressive overload built into it so you can be sure if you’re following the program you are making progress. All of this and more is located inside our Vegan Proteins Members Only app. As a Muscles by Brussels member, you’ll unlock bonus courses, challenges and more every month. You’ll also be invited to our live Zoom video calls which happen two times a month and are absolute gold to.

Giacomo

Those who show up.

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Giacomo

I think the perfect way to sum up everything here and move on and make this conversation what it needs to be is to talk about protein sources as opposed to just assuming that everything has protein right. Personal favorites ones that I tend to recommend and I lead with are definitely tofu and seitan. I think those are the easiest, most accessible and most generally accepted as enjoyable sources of protein pretty much across the board.

Dani

And if you’re making your own seitan. You can improve the amino acid profile of the seitan by making it with not just vital wheat gluten, but like adding in chickpea flour as well when you’re making it.

Giacomo

When you’re making seitan. So mixing chickpea into chickpea flour with.

Dani

The vital wheat gluten to make seitan. Yeah. Will improve the amino acid profile.

Giacomo

Gotcha. Right? Because you’re getting protein from different sources. What other taste?

Dani

Yeah. Tastes great. Issa Chandra Moskowitz has a fantastic recipe for seitan that uses both, and that was one of the first recipes I ever made. And it’s still really great.

Giacomo

And we got lots of recipes on our YouTube channel as well. It’s for free. And then obviously we have even more recipes for mussels by Brussels members.

Dani

Yes. So you said tofu seitan. Tempeh is fantastic. Lentils are great. Some of the mock meats. If you’re looking at mock meats and looking at the label and, like, I don’t know if this is a good one or not, you would want to look at the ingredient list and see if it has multiple sources.

So if it’s not just made from soy or not just made from gluten, or not just made from peas, if it’s kind of a combination of those things, then it’s probably slightly better in terms of being an independent, higher quality of protein.

Giacomo

And I like the fact that these days, pea protein is worked into a lot of the vegan meats that you’ll find on shelves that you don’t make at home. Because if you’re not doing protein powders, this is a way to vary up your protein sources as opposed to work. But you can also work with it at home. You can buy texturized pea protein, and they’re literally crumbles.

And you can make your own beefless grounds out of that, for example, as opposed to, like, going old

school and getting texturized tdp, texturized vegetable protein, which is really just soy. Right. So soy, wheat and pea, I feel like those are.

Dani

Soy by itself is a great. Soy by itself is the best that you can get in terms of a single food in terms of protein quality as a vegan.

Giacomo

And of course, you can get protein powders that use pea and rice as the base, and they can also mix up with lots of other different protein isolates.

Dani

There’s so many different kinds of protein powder. Like pea and rice was the one that they studied. But there’s a lot of different combinations of protein powders. That companies have made at this point that have great amino acid profiles. So, you know, if you don’t like one, try another one. You might find another one that you like as well.

Let’s talk about some whole food sources. I know I mentioned lentils. So beans. Beans are one that come up all the time. So to me, beans are more of a carbohydrate than a protein. Like if you were to look at percentage of calories coming from protein, it’s like 15% of beans calories are coming from protein and almost all the rest are coming from carbohydrates.

Some of them are higher than that. But my point is they do have protein in them and it does all count, but I would consider them more of a carbohydrate source. Mushrooms have a high percentage of their calories coming from protein. Dark leafy greens have a high percentage of their calories coming from protein.

Giacomo

Broccoli, kale, collards I would say are the three main ones. Spinach as well. Sorry. Yep.

Dani

Yeah. So, you know, would those be your main sources of protein? Probably not, but it all adds up.

Giacomo

Like we’ve talked about nutritional yeast, throwing that in, making your own cheesy sauces, sprinkling

on top of your vegetables, you can get in 5, 10 grams of protein. Even more than that, up to 15 throughout the day. Despite working with nutritional yeast, for example.

Dani

Nuts and seeds are similar to the beans, but instead of being mainly a carbohydrate source, nuts and seeds are mainly a fat source. But they do have grams of protein in them that all count.

Giacomo

Yeah, and certain more than others. Like pumpkin seeds, for example.

Dani

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, those are some really good sources of vegan protein. And hopefully this conversation was very helpful to you guys. If you want to see the kinds of meal plans that we create for our clients we just introduced. Well, it’s a couple months ago by the time this comes out. We introduced a new thing to our Muscles by Brussels membership, where every month at the beginning of the month, we send out a full meal plan that’s usually between 1800 and 2000 calories and about

120 grams of protein. Just as sort of a middle of the road place, but it’s got a full shopping list, all of the recipes, how to prep it for seven days. So you could do a whole week’s worth of the meal plan if you wanted to. And it also gives advice on how to pair it up if you need more calories or down if you need fewer calories. And then, you know, the longer you’re a member.

The more of these meal plans you collect, the more you just, you can shuffle through them sort of at your leisure. And who knows, over time we might start doing them bi weekly or, you know, my goal is to eventually get to a place where I can do them every week, but they take me a really long time to make so.

Giacomo

And you look at enough of those meal plans and you start to get a sense of how to do it on your own. Yeah, really helpful information.

Dani

These meal plans are made with all of the stuff we just talked about and so many other things in mind to give you guys like a great jumping off point for that. So if you’re interested, muscles by Brussels membership, it’s where it’s at. All right. Moving on to our question and answer segment. I think this is appropriate for this sciency episode. This question says maybe a bit deeper scientific question. Studies show that working a muscle twice per week gives better hypertrophy

than working it once per week. I’m wondering in what ways is this true? Let’s say two twins did the same workouts. One trained their body parts once per week. Once trained them twice per week, but they did the same amount of volume. Why wouldn’t they gain the same amount of muscle? Essentially, the question is asking why does training body parts twice per week give better results than training them once per week? Assuming volume is the same, Your results.

Giacomo

From weight training happen when your body has produced an inflammatory response to trigger muscle healing, repair and growth. And that period of time happens right after you train. And your recovery time improves as you continue to train because humans are adaptable creatures. And your body gets smarter at being able to continue to repeat the task at hand. So how do I explain this?

Simply put, you’re going to grow after you work out. And that period of time in which you grow after you work out shortens as you work out more frequently and consistently. And whatever body part you train, the growing that body part after the fact happens, if it can happen twice a week as opposed to once a week, you’re just gonna get better results. As simple as that.

Dani

And that growth is called muscle protein synthesis.

Giacomo

And in this very rigid example, just to illustrate the point, I would also like to say that your work capacity is eventually going to improve because you’ll wind up being able to do more volume than the person who only trains body part once a week overtime.

Dani

I’m also going to add something even simpler than that. If you do all, let’s say you have eight exercises that you do for your back in a week. If you do them all in one day, you’re going to be much more tired for the last few exercises versus if you split it up into four exercises this day and four exercises on another day, you’re going to hit those second four just as hard as the first four when you split them in half. So you just get better workouts. Also.

Giacomo

Dani, I’ve lost about 33 pounds this year through diet and lifting. I’m at around 11 to 11.5% and I’m thrilled to have gotten to this point. First time in my life I don’t have a lot of lean mass, only 135 pounds per DEXA at 6ft tall. So I suspect that’s the primary reason I perceive my body fat to be higher visually at least, versus what I see online. As examples of 11 to 12%.

That said, I’m getting a little frustrated because I don’t know how low I have to go to actually have a lean stomach. As of now, if I’m flexing, twisting, crunching, and under overhead light, you can barely see the muscles underneath. But the second I just go back to normal or, God forbid, sit down, it’s like I haven’t lost anything. Is this just a muscle mass thing?

Dani

Great question. So this is a tall guy. He’s lost 30 pounds. He’s the leanest he’s ever been in his life, but he does not think that it looks particularly lean compared to what we expect other guys at 11% to look like. I think it is largely a muscle thing. So I talk about this a lot, how people just think that if they lose a certain amount of weight, that they’re going to see muscle.

But if the muscle isn’t there, there’s nothing to see. If the muscle mass is not there, there’s nothing to see. And you’re going to be very disappointed. And I know this because I did it. I did exactly that. When I lost all of my initial weight, I got down to be quite small for my height and I was just like, why does this look so soft and weak? I don’t get it.

Like, this is the best shape I’ve ever been in and it looks nothing like these other girls that are my height and weight. Why? Because they had muscle and I didn’t. That’s the number one reason. So I know that it’s a super, super hard pill to swallow. That said, taking a year or more to deliberately focus on building muscle before you cut back down to 11% again is going to give you much better results.

You are not alone. A lot of people do this. And why wouldn’t we do this? We all just assume, oh, I have muscle under there. I just have to lo enough fat to show it. But I’m telling you that if you have not spent a good amount of time dedicating yourself to trying to build muscle, you don’t have nearly as much muscle as you think you have and you will likely be disappointed when you get there. All right everybody, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by

Brussels Radio. If you are interested in any kind of coaching, joining our members or one on one coaching, go to veganproteins.com and shoot us a message or fill out an application. You can also follow us on social media and if you have any questions or requests for the podcast, shoot us an email coacheganproteins.com and you will get a video response from one of us. Once again, my name is Dani and I’m Giacomo and we’ll talk to you soon.