KNIFE, FORK, MUSCLE_ Book I_ DI - Brooks D. Kubik (1)

Q. But some people say you only need 40 or 50 grams of protein a day! Are
they wrong?
A. They’re definitely wrong if we’re talking about someone who does
extremely demanding strength training. Go back to what I said earlier about
how a hard workout destroys muscle fibers. It would be foolish to train hard
and heavy, and try to support the rebuilding and recovery process (let alone
any additional muscular growth) on a diet containing such a low amount of
protein.
Here’s another way to look at it. One gram of protein contains 400 calories. If
you eat 50 grams of protein per day, that’s 200 calories from protein. So if
you consume 2000 calories per day, and only 50 grams of protein, protein
makes up only 10% of your diet. That’s a very low percentage of your total
calories from protein – and it probably means that the vast majority of your
calories will come from refined carbohydrates and processed vegetable oils,
which is one of the least healthy diets in the history of the human race.
Now look at a higher amount of protein and calculate the percentage of total
calories from protein. If you’re involved in regular training, you need more
calories than someone who doesn’t train, so let’s assume that you consume
3,200 calories per day. (It may well be more than that for many of you, but
these numbers are just for purposes of illustration.) If you weigh 200 pounds
and you consume 200 grams of protein per day, that’s 800 calories from
protein. That means that 25% of your daily calories come from protein. A
daily intake of 200 grams of protein may sound like a lot of protein, but it’s
not a high percentage of a 3200-calorie per day diet.