Too many endurance athletes think they can function optimally by only supplementing with carbohydrates, forgetting the fact that most of the processes in the human body relies completely on the availability of proteins to work. And that does not even take into account that protein from muscle cells gets damaged through strenuous training, and thus needs replacing. If you drained all the water out of a lean athletic body, more than 50% of what is left will be protein. Even the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood is protein. The structure of your genes and your brain cells are totally protein. All bodily functions, from the twitch of your toe to the creation of new muscle, are in total controlled by enzymes, and all enzymes are protein.
Protein goes far beyond lying around in muscle cells waiting for the odd occurrence of physical action. If you have aspirations of becoming a champion in a physical sport, or just live life to the fullest and be the best you can be, then you need to place much more emphasis on protein. Mistakes made through the intake of carbs and fats, are easily reversed and corrected, but mistakes made with protein, build right into your structure, and will hamper the reaction, and performance of the body for a long time. Radioisotope experiments have shown that 98% of the molecules in the body are replaced every year. And as we stated earlier, more than half of your dry weight is protein, which means that that has to be replaced periodically, allowing nothing yet for improvement on your old body, only maintenance.
So the body you have today is almost completely built of what you ate over the last six months. If the proteins you consumed were poor quality, then all the structures in your body, muscles, bones, blood, teeth and so on will be poor quality. A junk food diet would produce a junkyard body. Old rule of thumb: What you put in, is what you get out.
Use the following formula to determine the source your calories should consist of:
Calories:
70% Carbohydrates (of which 80% must be complex)
20% Protein
10% Fat
Example: A woman weighing 57kg with 18% body fat has determined that she needs 1,828 calories daily. Based on the above formula, she would derive her calories from the following sources:
1,828 calories:
Carbohydrates 1277 calories = 319.3g
Protein 369 calories = 92.3g
Fat 182 calories = 20.0g
Do not make the mistake of thinking that if 60% of your diet should be carbohydrates, that 60% of the volume of what you eat must be carbs, it works in terms of calories, not weight or volume.
RDA You may think that the RDA for protein is 0.75g per kg body weight. And that is a fact that has stood for the past 50 years. Sure, but those tests were conducted on sedentary individuals that do not represent an active population with the urge to excel in physical activity. Also, they never allowed for protein losses in skin, sweat, or hemolysis (blood loss). Also no allowances were made for exercise and muscle growth. For example, loss of protein through sweat and the death of blood cells correlate directly with the amount of strenuous activity a person does. If a strenuous workout session consumes all available glycogen, the body will also eat away at its muscle tissue for fuel.
Later research done in various countries has indicated that when different levels of endurance activity occurs, the RDA for protein increases to 1.8g / kg body weight. That's already almost 2.5 times the RDA. When strength training is involved, like short-event athletes or body building (recreational or professional), the need for protein increases to about 3g / kg. Studies in San Francisco have indicated that the lean muscle gains in a group consuming 2.8g / kg / day was a whopping 271% that of a group consuming only 1.4g/kg / day, while they followed the same training routine for 40 days. When Romanian weightlifters that were already near the top of their potential, increased their protein intake from 2.2g to 3.5 g / kg / day, they still gained a staggering 6% in muscle mass, and 5% in strength. They were eating protein at a level of about 450% of the RDA! So much for the RDA and active people then! For active people, we generally stick to 2g protein / kg of lean body mass.
