How Much Protein Per Meal?

How much protein can you absorb per meal? 20g? 30g? 100g?

All of it. Your body uses all of it.

What isn’t used for “protein things” like muscle growth is converted to glucose via a process known as gluconeogenesis for energy. What the body doesn’t use as energy is stored as energy, or fat.

While the maximum amount of protein per meal shown in studies to be useful for “protein things” is around 20g-50g, how much you can use depends on a lot of factors.

-Size: Obviously I can absorb more as a trained male at 220lbs vs an untrained female at 120lbs.
-Time between meals.
-Other macronutrients: Fat and carbs can be protein sparing since your body won’t need to protein for other bodily processes.

My take home:

This is too much thinking. Just do this:

-Eat 3-6x per day, or about every 3-4 hours. If you go longer, it’s no big deal. Optimal and “it’s okay” aren’t that different.
-Aim to include ~20g or more in every meal.
-Aim to consumer 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily.

Think less, act more, and nobody is perfect. Train hard, eat mostly awesome and you’ll crush it.

And if you need a coach, you can hire me at marclobliner.com