“Brad,

I’m following your recommend information on how much protein to build muscle along with an “intense” enough work out program. It is working well for me, but a couple questions loom in my mind. I’ve read in articles on the internet that a person cannot “absorb” more than 30 grams of protein in one meal. Is this true? If it is true, does this mean if I ate the recommended daily intake of protein to build muscle in one meal, I wouldn’t be meeting your recommended requirement? I don’t consume that much protein in one meal, but I am curious to know if I eat a meal with 40g does the 10 grams go to “waste”?

Thanks, Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,

Scientific evidence shows that a body is able to adapt to the amount of protein it ingests. As an individual eats more or less protein, his or her digestive system learns to process that amount at a given time.

Your body will learn to use the amount of protein it is given, whether it is received over a 24-hour period or during one meal, as long as the amount of intake is consistent. This also means that your body will learn to oxidize surplus protein. Unfortunately, all that extra protein won’t simply turn into new muscle.

If you eat more, you‘ll gain weight, so if you eat more protein, you‘ll gain muscle. This theory seems correct on the surface. If we eat more calories, our fat mass expands – so if we eat more protein, our muscles should get bigger, right?

What’s described above – the relationship between calorie surplus and body weight – is a basic dose-response relationship. If our bodies ingest extra calories, we continuously gain weight until our bodies can no longer support the weight.

Body fat, or adipose tissue, is a storage house. Its function is to store excess energy. Fat can expand with an almost unlimited ability. Some morbidly obese individuals’ fat mass makes up more than 60 percent of their total body weight!

So should we also assume that the same dose-response relationship exists when it comes to protein and our muscle mass? Unfortunately, no. Healthy humans can’t gain ever-increasing amounts of muscle mass by eating increased amounts of protein.

Muscles don’t store protein in the same way that fat stores energy. They don’t expand to hold more proteins when we eat more proteins. In fact, only 20 percent of your muscle weight comes from protein – and only 50 percent of that amount is comprised of actual structural contractile proteins. (The rest is comprised of cellular proteins, such as enzymes, and fluid.) Most of the weight of your skeletal muscles is not from protein!

If a dose-response relationship actually did exist between dietary protein and organs that contain protein in our bodies, then a high protein diet would not only cause our muscles to grow, but it would also cause our heart and most of our other organs to grow with unlimited potential.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your muscles will expand and contract as a result of your calorie or protein intake. Fat tissue will react in that way when it receives extra calories, but muscles will not.

“Protein breakdown!” Sounds scary. The word “breakdown” make us think something is wrong. And if protein breakdown is a bad thing, anything that prevents protein breakdown must be good for us, right?

In fact, the folks at your local supplement shop will tell you that something that prevents protein breakdown is worth $49.99 or more and is the key to building rock-hard muscle!

What do we really know about protein breakdown, though?

The breakdown of proteins in our bodies plays a big role in keeping us healthy. Breaking down proteins helps us maintain functional, non-damaged proteins in our bodies. Protein breakdown also helps build muscles and make us stronger.

Our bodies “tag” damaged or non-functioning proteins in our muscles. Those proteins are recycled, or broken down, and valuable amino acids are provided in their place. This is an important first step toward building muscles.

The breakdown process also provides amino acids used to build proteins in our internal organs and other important parts of our bodies. As much as 80 percent of amino acids that come from protein breakdown are re-used in protein-building metabolism.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, protein breakdown makes up as much as 70 percent of our resting metabolic rates. The recycling of amino acids in our bodies is a normal, ongoing process which helps keep us healthy and which burns many of our daily calories.

That doesn’t sound so scary anymore, does it?

Not all protein breakdown occurs in your muscles. Some tissues break down faster than others, and, in fact, relative to the rest of our bodies, very little protein breakdown actually occurs in our muscles.

During a 7-day fast, a person’s liver will lose 40 percent of its nitrogen, and his or her gastrointestinal system will lose up to 28 percent. During the same fast, only about 8 percent of the nitrogen in a person’s muscle, skin and skeleton is lost.

Protein breakdown is an essential part of a body’s metabolism. It also repairs tissues and builds new, healthy proteins for the body. It fuels the amount of calories burned each day, and it plays an important role in a person’s ability to build muscle – but it doesn’t break down muscles at an accelerated rate.