I have heard that it is good to lower your protein intake after being on a high-protein diet for an extended period of time. My understanding is that taking large amounts of protein can make the system “too efficient” at processing the protein, resulting in wasting some of the protein without using it. Temporarily lowering protein-intake is supposed to counteract this effect. Plus, I heard that when you return to a high-protein diet, it will give you a substantial muscle-growth spike.
Here are my questions:
The recommendation I was given was to lower the total % protein down to 20-30% of my calorie intake. If that’s the case, should I replace the calories I would have gotten from the protein with carbs/fat?
OR
Should I just keep my diet the same and only my protein intake in half?
How long should I cycle out the protein for?
(Note: I’m about to go back onto a mass gaining routine, tomorrow is my last day on my fat loss routine (40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fat, calories: 10x bodyweight). Normally my mass gaining routine, would be 40/30/30 with 18x my body weight for daily calorie count.)
[quote]mertz109 wrote:
I have heard that it is good to lower your protein intake after being on a high-protein diet for an extended period of time.[/quote]
That’s one theory, but I doubt it’s ever been proven. Like most nutritional strategies, you’ll just need to experiment to find what works best for you. There’s no guarantee that what works for me will work equally well for you.
You also need to quantify what you consider to be a “high-protein” diet as many people around here don’t consider 30 to 40-percent of one’s caloric intake as protein to be “high.”
Not that this is necessarily the same thing, but as far as I’m aware some people lower their protein intake quite a bit on the weekends on the Anabolic Diet. This seems a bit less drastic.
For what you’re talking about, I’d suggest doing it on maintenance calories. It seems to me that it would be suboptimal or even dangerous for bulking or cutting.
[quote]wfifer wrote:
Not that this is necessarily the same thing, but as far as I’m aware some people lower their protein intake quite a bit on the weekends on the Anabolic Diet. This seems a bit less drastic. [/quote]
Yes, I was thinking the same thing. I’m hoping that this will kick in that effect.
Agreed - I calculated out my meal plan. If I cut my protein in half for my mass gaining diet, I’ll be at around 2800, which is about 200 calories above the standard maintenance calories for my height and weight. Granted, I’ll be lifting heavy weights, but I think I’ll be fine.
[quote]Brendan Ryan wrote:
On a cutting diet would be the worst time to experiment with this. [/quote]
Definitely agree with you there. I’m doing everything I can to hang onto the muscle that I’ve got, so I’m not going to go below my maintenance level for calories.
the only time protein intake should be adjusted downward is during dieting so that it does not contribute more than 40% of total kcal.
otherwise there is no compelling reason to cut protein whatsoever.
the 30-40% range is the optimal. i also would like to point out that in this case the OP could cut almost half his protein out before slipping into moderate protein intake.
as for protein cycling itself working, i doubt it. within the range of healthy athletic intake, there is not going to be a significant loss in muscle, but the overall protein turnover will drop, thus the rate at which you recover and rebuild exercised muscle will slow.
you will not see a higher rate of protein synthesis after for long enough to make a significant difference.
for your size if you are looking to gain, i would consider upping the fat and or carbs so to increase total kcals and decrease protein% without seriously decreasing intake.
regardless what you do, success will come from exploiting proven principles consistently over time. Significantly reducing protein without concomitant kcal reduction is not a proven principle, rather someone’s logical fancy.
if anything, i think the benefit is mostly psychological, you get a break from cramming all that food down your piehole.