Whey Too Much Protein — Maybe the Bros Were Onto Something
A study review breaking down the effects of 2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, in trained individuals.
Key Points:
The general protein intake recommendation for improving body composition is about 0.7–1.1 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
In this study, trained subjects ate 2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for 8 weeks & saw no significant benefit in terms improving body composition compared to the control group eating 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
When overfeeding, if the excess calories are from protein, you may not expect the same amount fat mass gain that you would from carbohydrate or dietary fat overfeeding.
With that being said, extra protein is not “free calories” in terms of fat gain. This study on free living subjects showed an increase of 800 cals per day of protein yielded no extra fat gain, but more tightly controlled protein overfeeding studies do not show similar results.
Have you ever met Chad in the locker room of your local gym? Or seen him around the gym floor giving out unsolicited fitness advice?
I know I have. In fact, I’ve been Chad. Perhaps in some regards, I still am Chad.
If your name is actually Chad I do apologize and hope this is recieved in good fun, but I’m sure you’ve received no shortage of jokes of this nature during your life.
If you’re not picking up the joke, I’m referring to Gym Bros. In which case, I will always be one of.
Growing up in gym culture, what we call “broscience” was thrown around recklessly, which was chock full of “scientific claims,” with little to no evidence behind them.
Or more appropriately, there may have been some underlying mechanisms at play, but the practical applications of them were nothing to stress about.
The first thing that comes to mind is the fear of losing all your gains due to not getting protein in, immediately after your workout. In doing so, you would end up missing the anabolic window — a cardinal sin in the lifting world at the time.
Now we know that as long as you’re intaking adequate protein throughout the day, this doesn’t matter too much. With that being said, protein timing may have a slight benefit in this context, but it’s nothing to get neurotic about.
This is a prime example of broscience. The data does show some benefit, but the narrative was one that perpetuated the idea of this effect being critical to your gains. Which just isn’t very accurate.
Another common idea is that you need to eat one gram of protein per-pound of bodyweight per day. Hard stop.
This is another example where the Bros weren’t far off. Within physique sports, researchers give a recommended range of 0.7–1.1 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day in their offseason. Additionally, this recommendation may be increased during intentional fat loss in order to maintain more lean mass.
Once again, the Bros weren’t far off. The main criticism here is that the one gram per-pound rule only makes sense for folks within more “normal” ranges of body fat, or even bodyweight.
If you’re 300lbs with a very high percentage of that from body fat, you sure as hell don’t need 300 grams of protein per day. In this context, scaling based on fat free mass makes a lot more sense — even sticking to the low end, or the lower end of the scale mentioned above.
Now, with all of that in mind, let’s take a look at a paper that investigated the effects of what I will call (for lack of a better term), super high protein intakes. Or better yet, whey too much Brotein.
This paper had two groups of resistance trained folks who had a training history on average of 8.9 years with an average of training 8.5 hours per week — making this a more trained group than we typically see in the average study.
Both groups were instructed to keep their training and dietary habits the same during the 8 week study with only one change: the high protein group was instructed to eat 2 grams of protein per-pound of bodyweight, per day, via whey or casein protein powder.
As you can see above, nutrition values stayed similar within the control group during the trial, but obviously protein and total calories were significantly increased in the high protein group.
In fact, the average calorie increase in the high protein group was 793 calories. Total carb and fat intakes also slightly increased in the high protein group, but it wasn’t statistically significant. As you can see the average protein intake increased by 47%. This overwhelmingly accounted for the increased calorie intake.
There is one big caveat here though— these folks were free living. Meaning they were not in a tightly controlled feeding environment where all energy intake was supervised and provided to subjects to ensure dietary compliance.
Regardless, if the numbers above were completely accurate, this would like an examination of protein overfeeding.
Let’s see what how this panned out.
Results
Interestingly enough, there were no changes across the board for any body composition measurements. Even with such a large increase in calorie intake within the high protein group.
Body composition measurements were done via the Bod Pod
If you look up at the table, even though nothing significant occurred, fat mass actually dropped a negligible amount (which could be due to machine error, since no machine is perfect) in the high protein group.
Fat free mass also increased in both groups, but none to a statistically significant degree.
So for all intents and purposes, there were no body composition changes — even within the group that had an average increase of 793 calories per day. The key piece of context being that virtually all of those additional calories were from protein.
Changes in total calorie intake and total protein intake between groups from pre to post intervention. As you can see, the post intervention high protein group ate significantly more protein and total calories than they did pre intervention and then the control group did at any point.
Even though the high protein group did eat over double the amount of protein than the control group, it resulted in no significant increase in fat free mass. With that being said, they also ate significantly more calories per day than the control group and gained no more extra fat mass for it either (but we’ll get to that.)
Takeaways
This does challenge the idea that a calorie is a calorie. But I wouldn’t be so quick to say this “debunks” it.
A calorie is a calorie in the same way a kilometer is a kilometer.
They’re both units of measurement: one of energy and one of distance. However, the amount of energy or distance alone never tells the entire story.
100 calories of pure processed fat or pure processed sugar will be metabolized differently within the body than 100 calories of whey protein. Just like 1km of a smooth highway will be travelled differently (and more efficiently) than 1km of bumpy terrain.
In this context, when it comes to converting excess energy into stored fat, dietary fat is the most efficient way to do so. After that, converting excess carbohydrate into fat which can occur via a mechanism called de novo lipogenesis is another option.
Regardless, whether your overfeeding comes in the form of excess fat intake or carb intake, weight gain seems to be similar as long as the surplus above TDEE is equal.
TDEE = total daily energy expenditure
This paper brings forth evidence (albeit, lower quality evidence) that protein overfeeding doesn’t seem to impact fat mass gain to the same degree as say a low protein overfeeding diet would.
Additionally, protein doesn’t seem to have the same level of efficiency in terms of storing excess calories as fat. One option would be converting amino acids into glucose (gluconeogenesis) and then perhaps having said glucose convert to fatty acids to store as fat (de novo lipogenesis). Which you can see, is a hell of a ride — similar to travelling the bumpiest and least efficient path to your 1km destination.
Another takeaway of note, is that the increase of protein intake beyond the higher end of the aforementioned range did not yield better gains in muscle mass.
The high protein group habitually ate about 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight per-day. This would be at the high end of the beneficial dose seen in previous studies.
This example took that number and went HAM on it just to see what happens. As it turns out, when it comes to protein intake for muscle mass gain, more is better, but only to a certain point.
Consuming more than 1.1 gram of protein per pound of BW per day, on average, doesn’t seem to be giving you more muscle growth than simply hovering around that high end of the 0.7–1.1 range.
That being said, it may not hurt to go even higher than that range — especially if that increase in protein is helping you stay even more satisfied with your diet. To put it simply, don’t expect higher intakes to get you more jacked, but it also may not increase your fat mass to the same degree as if you overfed on a high carb or high fat diet.
Caveats
There is a couple big caveats here, but I’ll start by bringing up the biggest one again— this was not a tightly controlled overfeeding intervention.
I was a little baffled by these findings and Eric Trexler pointed me to some valuable other research to contextualize these findings better. He also spoke about it more on this episode of the stronger by science podcast.
In short, I took a look at two papers where overfeeding with various protein intakes was tightly controlled within in a metabolic ward. This meant all subjects were housed and fed all their meals during their time.
In the first study, 3 separate groups ate about 40% above their energy maintenance. One group with 5% of their diet coming from protein, one at 15% and one at 25%. All groups gained similar fat mass, but the normal and high protein groups gained significantly more lean body mass.
With that being said, energy total and resting energy expenditure did increase in the normal and high protein groups though. So this does somewhat align with the paper I covered here. But as you’ll see, even if overfeeding at higher protein intakes, you cannot expect no fat gain to occur. This tightly controlled study showed very similar gains in fat mass as long as subjects were in a calorie surplus— regardless of protein intake. With higher protein intake, you’ll just probably be able to eat a bit more calories. This does make sense considering protein does have the highest thermic effect of food compared to fats and carbs.
In the second study, similar findings were seen as when eating about 40% above maintenance, fat mass gain was similar between groups and fat free mass once again was significantly greater in normal and high protein groups.
In both of these studies, the highest protein intake was 25% of total energy intake. This is quite a bit less than the paper above where about 43% of calories in the high protein group came from protein. But I think it would be a stretch to say that upping protein intake from 25% to 43% of the diet during overfeeding would eliminate all fat mass gain. What is more likely is that the subjects in the 2 grams of protein per gram of BW intervention misreported their intakes. Not to their fault, humans are generally not great at tracking calorie intake with accuracy. And if we’re comparing the accuracy of everyday lifters using MyFitnessPal and the rigorous control taken in a tightly controlled feeding study, I’ll take the accuracy of the controlled feeding study.
I’ll end that caveat by saying protein overfeeding seems to not be a free pass to eat way more calories (only from protein) without gaining any fat. More accurately, I’d say you’ll probably be able to eat a bit more if you do eat a higher protein diet. Which could still be helpful— especially if that extra food is satiating and protein is known to be quite satiating.
Secondly, this paper did admit they did not measure any outcomes related to kidney and liver function. Normally, a higher protein intake is generally safe (unless you are personally advised against it via your physician), but this paper did experiment with potentially the highest protein intake per-pound of bodyweight recorded in the literature. At this current point in time, we don’t actually know if any problems may arise over the long term.
Lastly, there is also a practicality issue at play: the way these subjects were able to intake such high protein was because they were supplementing with whey protein shakes.The reality is, eating extra protein is not always fun.
You might be getting all excited thinking of pounding steaks and chicken thighs. If that is you, I’d pump the breaks. Achieving protein overfeeding usually means eating the most boring protein dense foods.
Your favourite protein dense foods are most likely a combination of fat and protein.
Examples: Red meat, bacon or ham, chicken thighs/wings, eggs, ribs, salmon, tofu etc.
In reality, each of these options has a decent percentage of calories from fat, too. This isn’t inherently bad, but as per this study, if that overfeeding is coming from fat or carbs, then you should expect more weight gain.
The way you would overeat protein is to keep your fat/carb intake the same, while increasing your intake of super protein dense sources.
Examples: chicken breast, egg whites, 0% unsweetened greek yogurt, whey protein, vegan protein powders (assuming it’s mostly all protein) etc.
These options are far less delicious — making protein overfeeding less appealing than you may have previously thought.
If you are feeling hungrier on your current diet, but don’t want to minimize excess fat gain, focusing on increasing calories through solely upping your protein intake is a decent idea to play with. This is especially something I’d recommend if your current protein intake is near the low range or even below that 0.7–1.1 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
All in all, Whey Too Much Brotein might be impractical, but it is an option for those who want to increase their calorie intake or dietary satiation while potentially reducing the amount of fat mass gained.
Cheers,
Coach Dylan 🍻
References:
1. The effect of protein timing on muscle strength and hypertrophy: a meta-analysis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24299050/
2. Nutrition Recommendations for Bodybuilders in the Off-Season: A Narrative Review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6680710/
3. The effects of consuming a high protein diet (4.4 g/kg/d) on body composition in resistance-trained individuals
https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-11-19
4. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects
https://www.nature.com/articles/1600744.pdf?origin=ppub
5. Effects of isoenergetic overfeeding of either carbohydrate or fat in young men
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11029975/
6. Stronger By Science Podcast - Q&A: Protein Overfeeding, Individualizing Training, and Strength Changes During Weight Loss
7. Effect of dietary protein content on weight gain, energy expenditure, and body composition during overeating: a randomized controlled trial
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22215165/
8. Diet induced thermogenesis
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC524030/
9. Effect of Overeating Dietary Protein at Different Levels on Circulating Lipids and Liver Lipid: The PROOF Study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7763540/