Let me state the obvious: All human bodies look roughly the same.

One can easily tell the difference between, say, a human, a gorilla, and a hippopotamus.

A description of a human male could easily be summed up by saying that they are usually about 5’10” tall, with approximately 148 pounds of lean mass. Their weight can vary greatly due to their ability to store energy in the form of fat mass.

A more detailed summary of a human male would explain that their height has a standard deviation of about three inches, meaning that 95 percent of all men are somewhere between 5’4” and 6’4” tall.

Their lean muscle mass also has a standard deviation of about seven pounds, so an athletic healthy male could have about 14 pounds more lean mass than average, and a sickly man could weigh about 14 pounds less than average before he is considered to be in a disease state.

Only about 2.5 percent of the population is comprised of “anomalies” – rare cases in which a person has much more muscle than everyone else or is much taller than the average.

You and I are fairly limited in how much muscle we can add to our bodies. We are, after all, only human beings, with checks and balances everywhere in our bodies. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The next time you hear about an exercise program which claims to be able to “add 60 pounds of muscle in six weeks,” consider this: Many things which cause your muscles to grow beyond their normal limits are connected to higher than average rates of cancer.

Chronic high testosterone, chronic high insulin, chronic high growth hormone, and chronic high IGF-1 – all are connected to an increase risk of cancer.

Remember, you’re only human. Be happy with the shape of your body. Make it your goal to increase muscle mass and decrease fat mass, but keep your expectations realistic.

I have found that an adult male can expect to gain about 14 pounds of muscle through strength training. Females can expect to gain about six pounds of muscle with the same technique. After that point, muscle growth slows considerably.

You can obtain more muscle with pharmaceutical supplements, but you should be aware of the fact that there could be long-term health side effects as a result of doing so.

You can gain more muscle without supplements, but you should expect progress to be slow and growth to be limited.

Remember to eat less and move more. Try to build muscle while you keep your body fat low, but remember that you’re human. Unless you are about 6’10” tall, you’re probably never going to reach 250 pounds with five percent body fat.

Research published in 2008 by Beelen et al [Beelen M, 2008] suggests that the effect that eating (or drinking) protein during a workout has on protein synthesis is no different then the effect that the workout alone has when you continue to measure after 9 hour of recovery.

Confused? Don’t worry…

I’m willing to bet that anyone who has spent anytime reading fitness magazines or bodybuilding websites has heard that eating protein causes an increase in protein synthesis, however it’s important to take a look and see where this ‘fact’ came from.

While research has shows that eating protein before, during or after your workout DOES effect protein synthesis, this research is limited by the fact that they only measure protein synthesis for a couple of hours (usually around two hours), then speculate that the difference stays significant for a long enough time to actually cause you to build extra muscle mass.

Sounds great, but unfortunately when this measurement is taken for 9 hours as it was in the trial published in the Journal of Nutrition, we realize that the effect essentially disappears with time.

The two hour period may represent a little bit of a quick start into the muscle building process, but by 9 hours, this quick start disappears, and everything becomes equal.

This is extremely interesting since in this study, the people in the placebo group didn’t eat for over 2 hours before the workout, then completed a 2 hour workout, then did not eat for another 9 hours, essentially meaning they were fasted for over 13 hours and they still had the same anabolic response to their workout as the people who drank a protein shake during their workout then had two more protein shakes once they were done their workout!

The bottom line is that 9 hours after your workout you will have build the same amount of muscle whether you ate a lot of protein, a little bit of protein, or even if you  ate nothing at all -  Leading to the conclusion that the muscle building effects after 9 hours were attributable to the workout alone, and NOT how much protein you eat.

On a positive side, this research does suggest that if you were working out multiple times per day (less than 9 hours per workout) then there may be a benefit to protein supplementation…however this is just a theory that would require more research.

“Hi Brad, When it comes to how much protein I should eat for muscle building I was wondering if you could tell me what the difference is between ‘whole body protein synthesis’ & ‘mean muscle protein synthesis’?

For instance, I am really interested in the benefits of drinking a protein shake during my workouts since the guy who I buy my protein from said this would help me build muscle.

However, I’m a little worried since I just read this following quote:

“During subsequent overnight recovery, whole-body protein synthesis was 19% greater in the protein group compared to the placebo group (P < 0.05).

However, mean muscle protein synthesis rates during 9 h of overnight recovery did not differ between groups and were 0.056 ± 0.004%/h in the protein group and 0.057 ± 0.004%/h in the placebo group (P = 0.89).

We conclude that, even in a fed state, protein and carbohydrate supplementation stimulates muscle protein synthesis during exercise.
Ingestion of protein with carbohydrate during and immediately after exercise improves whole-body protein synthesis but does not further augment muscle protein synthesis rates during 9 h of subsequent overnight recovery.”

Does this mean that the extra protein DIDN’T help these people build ANY extra muscle?”

ANSWER:

You need to remember that you are looking at two different measurements of protein synthesis.

“Whole body protein synthesis” measures the protein synthesis taking place in your entire body – including your liver, heart, lungs, brain, digestive system and muscles. The measurement won’t tell you where the process is happening, just that it’s happening.

“Muscle protein synthesis” specifically measures the amount of synthesis taking place in your skeletal muscle.

According to the quote you shared, the post workout protein shake increased whole-body protein synthesis, but didn’t increase muscle protein synthesis. The extra protein increased synthesis elsewhere in the body, but didn’t have a measurable effect on muscles.

If you’re trying to build muscle by taking protein before, during and after your workouts, the research you quote seems to indicate that doing so won’t help you accomplish that.

“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.