How much protein do you need for maximum muscle building?

How much protein do you need for maximum muscle building? Have you ever asked yourself this question?

According to some "fitness experts", you can never eat too much protein a day if you want to build as much muscle as possible.

However, there are numerous studies that disprove this myth. So how much protein is actually needed for muscle building?

You'll often hear that athletes need between 0.8 g and 2.0 g of protein per kg of body weight. This figure isn't completely wrong, but it's unfortunately very imprecise. It doesn't say anything about when this amount should be consumed. Unfortunately, you can't just get up in the morning as a 75 kg person, have a 125 g portion of protein, and think you've taken in enough protein for the whole day. That's because your muscle protein synthesis rate fluctuates on a 3 - 5 hour cycle. The muscle protein synthesis rate rises to a certain maximum and then falls back to its baseline level. This happens every 3 - 5 hours. So you should split your protein intake into individual portions.

The amount of protein you should consume for maximum stimulation of the muscle-building processes depends strongly on your muscle mass. As a rule, men should take in about 0.25 g of protein per kg of body weight per portion. For women, it's about 0.23 g per kg of body weight per portion. The lower value for women is due to their, on average, lower muscle mass.

Around 1.5 g to 1.7g of protein per kg of body mass, split across 5 to 6 portions, therefore seems to be a good approach. You can easily reach this amount of protein with a varied diet, or top it up with protein powder.

A higher protein intake doesn't lead to more muscle building. Any excess protein is used as an energy source or excreted in the urine.

If you don't want to do a lot of calculating, I recommend taking in about 20 g of high-quality protein every 3 - 4 h. If you can't reach this amount through your diet, you can top up your protein dosage with a high-quality protein powder.

Source: Atherton PJ, Smith K. Muscle protein synthesis in response to nutrition and exercise. J Physiol 590:1049–57, 2012.