The Dynamic Effects of Protein

by on August 25, 2014

Introduction

Let’s face it, not consuming protein is almost as bad as not depositing some money into your savings account. Think of it as your trying to save money to buy a house. If you don’t build that savings account over a period of time for a down payment, how will you ever buy a house?

Now let’s use this analogy towards not consuming protein. You are wasting away critical benefits your body can be getting from protein. All of the hard training is gone to waste if you aren’t consuming an optimal amount of protein. Let’s say you aren’t training, you’re still robbing your body of all the benefits protein has to offer. In this article we will be discussing the dynamic effects of protein and how this can be a huge game changer for you.

What’s so dynamic about protein you ask?

Well, when an individual consumes a meal high in quality protein it ends up being energetically costly. Your body has to use more energy and work twice as hard to assimilate this macronutrient. The energy cost of digesting, absorbing, and metabolizing proteins (23%) is greater than that of either carbohydrates (6%) or fat (3%) (1).

(2) When you eat a high protein meal, it is so powerful that you activate muscle protein synthesis (percentage of muscle tissue protein renewed each day) from leucine content. A great analogy we heard from Professor Stu Phillips regarding muscle protein synthesis is:

“Imagine your muscles as a brick wall, when new bricks get delivered these are the amino acids from proteins, on one end of the wall there’s a process to put bricks in which is muscle protein accretion (building) and on the other end of the wall you take bricks out which is muscle protein breakdown. Protein synthesis is the bricks in the wall and protein breakdown are the bricks out of the wall. The net difference between the two are net muscle protein balance and this would be the rate at which your making things and subtracting at which the rate your breaking them down. If that’s in a positive direction the wall gets bigger (i.e., muscle growth) or if it’s in the negative direction your muscle shrinks. Protein ingestion and resistance training is a potent stimulus to make the brick wall bigger and stronger (i.e., stimulate the protein synthetic process).”- Professor Stu Phillips

The other thing that happens is when muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is activated, it is so powerful that it depletes ATP (quick burst of energy) and after a few hours into the MPS phase you activate AMP kinase to make more ATP available because MPS is so powerful. That depletion of ATP from MPS (from protein ingestion) is going to cause significant body compositional changes.

Why activate AMP kinase? Activating AMP kinase is very important because once ATP is depleted; AMP kinase comes in and initiates a signaling cascade that makes more ATP available. Having more ATP available means an increase in your muscle’s oxidative capacity, your muscles have these energy producing units called mitochondria and this is where ATP are made and fats are burned. The more mitochondria you have and the more active they are, the greater oxidative capacity you have for fat loss. So, in a perfect world, we want AMP kinase activated to initiate a signaling cascade to produce more ATP so our bodies can become more efficient at burning fat.

Leucine is the light switch for MPS.

(3) MPS is the way you synthesize new muscle in muscle. There’s ten’s and thousands of different kinds of proteins you synthesize in muscle. Specifically in muscle tissue where your turning over myofibril and fibrous proteins by increasing MPS. You’re going to increase the amount of muscle that you’re gaining. Over amounts of time you want elevated levels of MPS.

The best way to get elevated levels of MPS is through the essential amino acid (EAA) “Leucine.” You can only get EAA’s through diet or supplementation, your body does not produce these amino acids. There have been countless studies showing that leucine is the key stimulator for MPS.

Think of jumper cables transferring current from one battery to another, leucine is responsible for jump starting MPS. So when you hear people saying that it doesn’t matter what kind of protein you eat, as long as it’s a clean protein. Well the quality actually does matter and the type of protein you consume makes a difference and we’ll discuss this more in the latter part of this article.

You’re better off eating animal sources because of the high leucine content. Leucine is actually a strong indicator of the quality of the protein you’re consuming as it relates to its ability to raise muscle anabolism. When you raise muscle anabolism, your body is in a great position to induce muscle tissue. The more muscle tissue one has, the higher their metabolic rate is going to be and this will lead to fat loss.

(4) A study by Acheson et al. shows that different protein sources can be used to modulate metabolism and subsequently energy balance.

They took twenty-three sedentary, lean, healthy men and women on separate occasions, before and 5.5 hours after consumption of four isocaloric meals (same calories). Three of the meals consisted of 50% protein (whey, casein, or soy), 40% carbohydrate, and 10% fat and a fourth meal consisting of 95.5% carbohydrate. The results showed that the thermic effect (think energy costly) was greater after the whey than after the casein and soy meals and was greater after the whey, casein, and soy meals (all 3 proteins) than after the high carbohydrate meal. Total fat oxidation tended to be greater after the whey meal than after the soy meal and was greater after the whey and soy meals than after the high carbohydrate meal.

The reason they lost more fat in the whey protein meal was because of the high leucine content and that activated MPS in the subjects and was more energetically costly. This is a prime example of why consuming different types of proteins matter. Leucine drives MPS and has a signaling effect. Leucine threshold is 2-3g to maximize MPS (5).

So you really want to consume proteins high in leucine such as:

  • Beef
  • Chicken
  • Eggs
  • Pork
  • Fish
  • Whey
  • Casein
  • Milk

Depending on the amount your consuming from these proteins will get you over the leucine threshold and activate MPS. But it seems as if whey protein is going to elicit a greater thermic response than does protein composed of either casein or soy. But let’s not get this twisted, if for some reason your body can’t tolerate whey, then the research shows that soy and casein still have a thermic effect.

(6) A study published in the Journal of American Medical Association showed that a higher protein diet contributed to the changes in energy expenditure (Think metabolic rate) and lean body mass.

Twenty-five healthy, weight stable males and females aged 18-35 years were randomized to diets containing 5% energy from protein (low protein), 15% (normal protein), or 25% (high protein), which they were overfed during the last eight weeks of their 10-12 week stay in the in-patient unit.

The results showed that the normal and higher protein diets contributed to changes in energy expenditure and lean body mass. The interesting part to this diet was the low protein group gained the least amount of weight during the overeating period and this was due to no increase in lean body mass. They also stored 90% of the extra calories as fat and this was because they didn’t gain muscle. Lean body mass improved in the normal and high protein group and improved energy expenditure and only about 50% of the extra calories were stored as fat.

This is just another reason that goes to show you that when you consume a meal high in protein, it is energetically costly and will stimulate MPS and when MPS is stimulated it can increase lean body mass and decrease excess fat gain. The bright side to this is even a sedentary person can start adding protein to their diets and get some of these benefits.

(7) In another study by Loenneke et al. found that quality and distribution of protein may play an important role in regulating central abdominal fat. The quality and distribution of protein are of particular interest to those who are energy restricted, who might benefit from the consumption of a higher quality protein source (e.g. Milk, beef, egg), resulting in a higher essential amino acid content per gram of protein. Neither carbohydrate nor dietary fat intake was associated with percent central abdominal fat, which highlights the importance of protein intake.

Again, this shows that the quality of protein does matter because the protein sources were high in leucine and it stimulated MPS and it decreased central abdominal fat through increased resting metabolic rate from increased lean mass. Eating a high quality protein source can play a huge role in regulating central abdominal fat, which is a strong independent marker for disease and mortality.

Overfeeding on protein doesn’t get you fat.

(8) A new study by Antonio et al. Found the results of his lab’s study do not support the notion that consuming protein in excess of purported needs results in a gain in fat mass. This dispels the notion that “a calorie is a calorie.” That is, protein calories in excess of requirements are not metabolized by the body in a manner similar to carbs.

(9) This is supported by Bray et al. who demonstrated that a relatively higher amount of protein does not contribute to an additional gain in fat mass. Eating extra calories will result in a gain in body fat, however also overeating on protein will result in a gain in lean body mass perhaps due to an increase in MPS.

The high TEF (thermic effect of food) of over consuming protein may have made it harder to gain excess fat and the fact that 4.4g of protein was consumed throughout the day, whey protein, which is a high quality protein with a high leucine content induced MPS and muscle mass.

These studies could support the issue of controlling appetite and overeating and not storing body fat. If you’re going to overeat and care about storing excess fat, then make sure extra calories come from protein rich sources. This makes it less likely to store fat due to the high TEF, energetically expensive cost of elevations in MPS, constant protein turn over that induces thermogenesis, appetite suppressant (protein is satiating), NEAT, training, and the combination of it all working synergistically together. But keep in mind once protein requirements have been met, there are no more benefits to over consuming protein throughout the day, so eating more protein just for the sake of eating it is foolish.

Conclusions

Hopefully now you can see the dynamic effects of consuming protein and why negating protein is just not smart. Your body has to use more energy and work twice as hard to assimilate this macronutrient as opposed to carbohydrates and fats. You absolutely want your body to have to work hard when digesting, absorbing, and metabolizing proteins.

The activation of MPS is so crucial when it comes to increasing lean mass or decreasing fat. It would be foolish to overlook the energetically costly process of protein consumption because on a low-protein diet, the body has to get protein from somewhere else and it gets it from lean body mass. Losing lean body mass is never a good thing.

As you can see above with the research studies, what they all have in common is with a high quality protein diet, the subject’s metabolisms are stimulated and this changed their body composition through muscle gain and fat loss. So, the big picture is to make sure to add in higher quality proteins to your diet (e.g. Beef, chicken, eggs, pork, fish, whey, casein, and milk) and reap the dynamic benefits they have to offer, whether you are an athlete or couch potato.

References

  1. Flatt JP. The biochemistry of energy expenditure. In: Bray GA, ed. Recent advances on obesity research. London, United Kingdom: Newman publishing, 1978: 211-28
  2. Wilson GJ, Layman DK, Moulton CJ, Norton LE, Anthony TG. Leucine or carbohydrate supplementation reduces AMPK and eEF2 phosphorylation and extends postprandial muscle protein synthesis in rats. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 301: E1236-E1242, 2011.
  3. Layne E. Norton
  4. Acheson KJ, Blondel-Lubrano A, Oguey-Araymon S, Beaumont M. Protein choices targeting thermogenesis and metabolism. Am J Clin Nutr 2011; 93:525-34
  5. Jacob M. Wilson
  6. Bray GA, Smith SR, De Jonge L, Xie H, Rood J, Martin CK, Most M. Effect of dietary protein content on weight gain, energy expenditure, and body composition during overeating. J Am Med Ass JAMA. 2011. Vol 307, No 1
  7. Loenneke JP, Wilson JM, Manninen AH, Wray ME, Barnes JT, Pujol TJ. Quality protein intake is inversely associated with abdominal fat. Nutrition & metabolism. 2012. 9:5
  8. Antonio et al. The effects of consuming a high protein diet on body composition in resistance trained athletes. JISSN. 2014
  9. Bray et al. Effect of dietary protein content on weight gain, energy expenditure, and body composition during overeating. JAMA. 2012

About The Authors:

Chris and Eric Martinez, CISSN, CSCS, CPT, BA, also known as the “Dynamic Duo” operate a world class online training and nutrition consulting business “Dynamic Duo Training.” They’re also fitness and nutrition writers, Diet Doc permanent weight loss coaches, current ISSN Diploma Post Grad Degree Students, and exclusive Team K Peaking Directors that love helping people reach their goals. Their philosophy is “No excuses, only solutions.”

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