Hello, I just got certified as a personal trainer with ISSA and we where taught to base our protein requirements on Lean Body Mass and not total body weight, because over consumption of protein can lead to storage of bodyfat. It makes sense to me since you don’t want to be feeding fat. For clients trying to lose bodyfat I usually recommend .8 or .9grams per lean body mass and for people trying to bulk or add mass I use 1g per LMB or I use 1 to 1.25 per total body weight. Could someone please help me on this I’m confused. T-mag says one gram or more per bodyweight and ISSA says base it upon activity level and lean body mass. Thanks guys.
The key to clarifying this is that for most guys who have been active in bodybuilding for some period of time, or are athletes who are in reasonable shape… this group may vary between say 6% bf for the lean guys and 20% for guys who are pretty out of shape fat-wise, but you know what? Using bodyweight instead of LBM would vary the results by only 14% between the extremes, or plus or minus 7% from the middle.
This is more than “close enough for government work” in terms of precision, especially because it’s totally arguable and completely unprovable whether amount of protein per LBM should be 1 gram per day vs. 1.1 or 1.2.
As for activity level, again, we’re assuming typical for our readership, not sedentary.