"How Much Protein Should I Be Eating to Maximize My Summer Body?"

Summer is almost here, and you’ve finally made the decision to get serious about your physique goal. Congratulations!

Or maybe it’s some other random time of the year and you’re looking to get peeled like a banana for some other warm-weathered trip.

Either way, that’s awesome and I’m excited for you and your new goal.

Now you just have to wade through all the hype surrounding protein.

And, if you are at all like I was when I first started, you probably have a lot of questions.

“Do I really need to be eating a lot of protein to look lean and toned?” 

”If so, how much? Is there a magical number?”

Trust me, I hear you and I’ve been there, so let’s get into it.

How much protein should you be eating per day?

I’ve found that aiming to consume between 0.7-1.0g of protein per pound of lean body mass (LBM) per day seems to be one of the most commonly accepted recommendations for people who want to achieve that lean, summer-ready physique.

If you’re in a time crunch, feel free to let that last sentence be your practical takeaway from this article and get back to your regularly-scheduled life.

LEAN BODY MASS VERSUS TOTAL BODYWEIGHT

But for those who want more nuance, know that most people aren’t really taking that LBM stipulation to account at all.

In other words, most people simply use their bodyweight instead of that LBM figure for the sake of keeping things as simple as possible (and this is totally understandable).

Why?

Because estimating your LBM isn’t always easy unless you have access to a DEXA or an InBody scan.

So, while some experts recommend a bit more protein per day (1.2g or more per pound of LBM) and other gurus push for a bit less (as low as 0.7g per pound of LBM), this “1g per Pound of Bodyweight Rule” still seems to be the most popular pick. 

Did you catch that detail? What I’m saying is that although using your lean body mass in your calculation is probably a bit more accurate, most people will use their total bodyweight instead.

But, why?

Well, I think the most obvious reason is because that 1:1 ratio of grams of protein to bodyweight is just a really easy way to calculate your daily protein intake.

And, let’s be honest with ourselves.

“Easy” works really well for most people because “easy” is usually adherence-friendly and sustainable for the long-term, which is extremely important.

Think about it this way. People like basic math because basic math is easy.

If you weigh 125 pounds, you’d eat a maximum of 125g of protein per day. Easy.
If you weigh 150 pounds, you’d eat a maximum of 150g of protein per day. Simple, right?
If you weigh 175 pounds, you’d eat a maximum of 175g of protein per day.

You get the point.

So, although I do think it’s slightly better to calculate your daily protein intake using your lean body mass, I think it’s also fine to use your total bodyweight in most (but not all) cases.

For a deeper dive on this, I’d encourage you to reference this article I wrote on a very other ways to calculate your protein needs.

Does everybody need to be eating that much protein?

Of course not. I want to be clear that these recommendations aren’t for everyday Joe’s and Jane’s – they’re for people who really want to start taking their body recomposition effort seriously.

In other words, I’m not suggesting your sweet Grandma Margaret should be shotgunning 60g of whey protein after her mid-morning gardening session to support optimal hamstring and glute development.

That would be, well, quite unnecessary (and also hilarious) since Grandma probably isn’t trying to look jacked and lean at the pool by mid-June.

Protein recommendations for people less interested in getting jacked and lean are, of course, much lower because they aren’t loading up their bodies with heavy loads with the focused intent of developing the size and density of their muscles.

Since proteins are widely considered the buildings blocks of muscle repair and growth, it makes sense to be eating more protein if you want to be more muscular.

Simply put, if you want to get jacked and lean, you need more protein relative to the person that doesn’t.

So, let’s just make sure we’re clear about that. If you’ve decided you want to be more jacked and lean, you’re in a different category of recommended protein intake now.

But, what does it mean to be “taking your body recomposition effort seriously?”

I’ve come up with the following checklist to help you make sense of that question for yourself.

You’re probably taking your body recomposition effort “seriously enough” if you are:

1. Training intelligently with resistance for hypertrophy or something like CrossFit 3-6 (or even more) times per week.

2. Eating purposefully in a caloric deficit, a caloric surplus, or at maintenance based on the specific goal at hand.

3. Prioritizing your protein intake across a minimum of 3 meals per day in most cases.

4. Trying to get the majority of your calories and protein from nutrient-dense foods while saving “junk foods” for treats and special occasions.

5. Optimizing your rest and recovery as much as possible.

6. Minimizing or eliminating alcohol consumption.

But back to protein and how much you should be consuming per day.

As wonderfully as the “1g per Pound Rule” works in most cases, there is one semi-exception worth mentioning.

An Exception for Very Overweight or Obese Folks

As we just discussed, that “1g per Round Rule” is based on your lean body mass (LBM), which isn’t the same as your total body mass (bodyweight).

So the implied exception is this:

The more overweight you are, the more important it is to calculate your daily protein intake based off of your lean body mass rather than your total bodyweight.

For example, if you’re a 180-pound female but you’d probably be a lean, healthy version of yourself at 130 pounds, I would argue that eating 180g of protein a day just isn’t necessary unless you really love eating protein.

But even then I would make the argument that those calories would be better spent on nutrient-dense carbohydrates or fats to aid in both day-to-day energy availability for quality training and optimized recovery.

And just to be clear, in this example, the 130 pounds represent a number that would be a much closer estimation to your lean body mass based on the Goal Weight Method, and thus a better figure to be using in your calculation.

The bottom line is this:

You don’t get bonus gains for eating more protein once you’ve met the evidence-based requirement, so make sure you aren’t consuming unnecessary amounts of protein as person who might be considered overweight or obese.

In fact, it can even be a detriment to your overall dietary pattern if your protein consumption starts to crowd out other important foods that provide macronutrient and micronutrient diversity.

So, what’s the takeaway here?

1. I think it makes the most sense to keep your protein intake as simple as eating between 0.7-1.0g of protein per pound of lean body mass (LBM) per day if you’re hoping to optimize your body recomposition effort. I like this approach because it accounts for people of varied amounts of body fat due to the use of the lean mass figure. I regularly consume toward the 0.7 multiplier of LBM and continue to see great progression in strength, performance, and muscle mass.

2. Remember that there is no magical amount of protein you should be consuming, but there are evidence-based ranges that are likely to optimize your progress toward your physique goal.

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew

Revealing My Exact Numbers for Summer Shredding 2020

I’m putting this blog out for one main reason.

When I was first getting interested in how to train and eat toward a physique goal, all I wanted was to know the exact calorie and macronutrient numbers of people who had walked the walked before.

But everyone I followed would say the same thing. “My numbers shouldn’t matter for you,” and - to be fair - that’s absolutely true. But, that wasn’t the point. I was curious, and I had all these questions running through my mind that only the granular details could truly satisfy.

So here we go. I’m taking you behind the curtain and giving you the exact numbers that I’ve used up until this point in my attempt to get relatively peeled by late summer 2020.

Where I Started

I’m a big fan of weekly averages, so my highest weekly average in February was 198.3 pounds. So we'll say I was 198.3 pounds on February 24, 2020 after working my calories up to about 3,450 per day over the course of months of steady yet intentional gaining for optimized muscle growth. If you want details on that, hit me up in the comments, but my guess is most of us are more interested in the fat loss portion. No one really needs any help gaining weight, do they?

Part I: My Primer Phase Before the “Diet Before the Diet”

My first move after that was to deload for one week and then move into a three-week primer phase (or maintenance phase) to lower training volumes in preparation for higher training volumes that would come once the cut had really begun. I dropped calories from 3,450 to roughly 2,900 in an attempt to identify my new maintenance calorie intake. As it turns out, I was essentially spot-on, and my weight stabilized around 196.5 during those three weeks while averaging 2,900 calories a day.

And that was that.

This happened from March 2-22 - just a quick (but helpful) three-week period to set myself up for better success in the next phase of the diet. As you’ll read in the following paragraphs, it worked like a charm.

Part II: My “Diet Before the Diet”

Now, if you’re wondering what in the world a “diet before the diet” is, it’s a term I’ve stolen from Steve Hall and the Revive Stronger brand, which is a major source of influence for me in terms of how I think about structuring my training and diet.

The “diet before the diet” is essentially that very first phase of your longer fat loss diet when - let’s just call it what it is - things don’t really “suck that much” yet. In other words, the fat comes off well because you’re coming off a high amount of calories. This is the honeymoon phase of the day.

The “diet before the diet” also allows you to approach a lower body fat percentage before really pressing into the more difficult aspects of the fat loss process.

For this phase, I dropped myself to 2,750 as an initial caloric target, and it actually worked better than I ever could have imagined.

On week two I adjusted slightly down to 2,700.

On week three I adjusted slightly down again to what I wrote in my spreadsheet as “sub 2,700.” But, I don’t think there was any magic in any of these adjustments. Truthfully, I was just experimenting with smaller reductions in calories on a week-to-week basis. In hindsight, I probably should have just kept them static around 2,700.

Basically, in five weeks eating between 2,650 and 2,750 calories per day, I went from 196.4 pounds down to 189.4 - a seven pound drop in five weeks, which put me at an average rate of loss of about 1.4 pounds per week. I can make another post about this later, but losing between 1-2 pounds per week at this stage of the diet is very much what I would consider the sweet spot for me personally. And this time period occurred between March 23 and April 26, 2020.

For the week of April 27, I deloaded and bumped calories slightly up to my new perceived maintenance of 2,800 to prepare for the actual diet, which officially started on May 4.

“But, What about your macros?”

If you’re curious about my macronutrient distribution, I generally only hold myself to eating between 180-200g of protein a day while staying within my overall caloric target. I personally bias more of my calories toward carbs due to preference, but I encourage everyone to do their own research and find what works best for their lifestyle and their own convictions about eating habits.

I don’t follow any labeled diet, but I do try to consume the majority of my calories from whole food sources while saving processed items for small treats and special occasions.

In other words, I’m not “paleo” or “vegan” or “keto” or doing Weight Watchers. I just eat within two very simple dietary parameters: calories and protein intake (assuming a minimal amount of healthy fats for hormonal health).

A very normal day of eating during this phase would be 190g of protein, 60-70g of fat, and around 300-350g of carbohydrates.

For an easier-to-read version of everything I’ve said up until this point, check out this screenshot from my nutrition log.

Part III: My “Actual Diet”

This is the phase of diet when the majority of the fat loss will occur.

Even though I’m still technically losing on 2,650 calories per day, 5 lifts per week, an average of 12,000 steps per day, and no formal cardio, I’m no longer losing quite as quickly as I would like. Because of that, I’m going to drop calories to 2,450, increase steps slightly, and ride that wave as far as it takes me.

Once my bodyweight plateaus for one to two weeks, I’ll adjust, but I’ll post about those specific changes when the time comes.

And that’s the plan for now: 2,450 calories as a per-day weekly average, 12,500 steps as a per-day weekly average, 4-5 hypertrophy-based workouts per week, and no formal cardio.

SUMMARY

As one last parting note, remember that blindly replicating these numbers for yourself will not work. This plan has been designed uniquely for me and no one else.

Everyone has a different goal, a different set of genetics, a different metabolism, and a different lifestyle, which means that no two plans should ever be the same.

The point of this blog is simply to reveal all of the non-sexy details to the approach that I am personally using - to expose the driving principles behind those details - and to remind (and encourage) our readers that fat loss can be systematic and intelligent.

If you have any question, don’t be bashful! Hit me up in the comments or send me a message on Instagram. I absolutely love talking shop and would love to hear from you.

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If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to someone you think might benefit from it as well! And, of course, we encourage you to take the time to flip through some of our other recent posts for additional content.

Finally, if this is your first time interacting with evidence-based fat loss and you’re thinking, “Wow, I didn’t know fat loss could be that simple”, we do have coaching slots open for the summer months and it’s not too late to apply. Josh and I really can guide you into a non-fad diet journey toward a leaner, more muscular version of yourself. You just have to be brave enough to send the first email.

Seriously, you’ll thank yourself later. Just do it.

Happy summer shredding, everyone!

-Andrew