There was a piece in the LA Times a couple of weeks back called "Protein Supplements Give Athletes a Handy Boost" that says, among other things, that

"Almost everyone agrees that the RDA for protein isn't sufficient for athletes or anyone exercising for more than one hour a day."

Well, hallelujah.  Someone's admitting that the RDA's protein recommendation is low!  Sure, they're just saying it's low for people exercising for more than an hour a day, but it's a start!

More:

The official recommended dietary allowance for protein for healthy adults is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. For a person weighing 68 kilograms (150 pounds), that would mean about 54 grams of protein each day, about what you'd get from an egg, a chicken breast and a glass of milk. In a 2007 report in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, Kreider and other researchers concluded that athletes should aim for a daily quota of 1.4 grams to 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, or 175% to 250% of the RDA. The low end of the range is intended for endurance athletes, and the high end is for weight lifters and strength trainers.

Don't get me started on this .8 g/kg thing:  it's barely enough protein for a person in a coma.  Everything else is music to my ears, even though since the dawn of time most strength athletes have shot for a slightly-higher 1 gram protein per pound of bodyweight., probably due to acute FOTMS (Fear Of The Metric System) syndrome. 

In my experience, having a full tank of protein most of the day has a measurable impact on muscle growth and strength increases.  This has also been the experience of most people I train, who tend to notice marked improvements when they begin supplementing with protein powder regularly.  I even had a client go off of protein supplementation recently because he felt he was getting "too broad."  

True, there's nothing magical about protein you can scoop and mix.  You could--and maybe should-- eat nothing but whole, natural food day in and day out.  But convenience will almost always trump good intentions.  Strapped for time, it's easier to resist an empty-calorie bagel by mixing up a quic shake than it is to whip up a steak on the grill.  Try to do it all with whole foods and you're bound to screw it up from time to time, leaving your body with less fuel than it needs for optimal recovery.

Here's the only part of the article with which I take issue:

Athletes can easily reach these goals without supplements, Miller says. By simple math, a runner or weight lifter who eats 4,000 calories a day is likely to get twice as much protein as a person who gets by on just 2,000 calories. No powder or pill required.

I'd argue the point that 4,000 kcal a day necessarily nets you the appropriate amount of protein.  A 4000 kcal diet of 10% protein would net you about 100 g of protein a day--not nearly enough for any athlete except a pipsqueak gymnast.  The fact is that most people, even health-conscious, athletic people, eat what's handy and fast, which in our culture is fatty carbs.  Make protein just a smidgen easier to whip up and you're that much closer to ensuring that your muscles are sufficiently nourished on a regular basis.  

As a weirdo hybrid between weight trainer and endurance athlete, I actually find that my body does well with protein supplementation even when my exercise regimen consists mainly of swimming, biking, and running.  The general consensus among the researchers appears to be that catabolism (muscle breakdown) can be higher following endurance exercise than following resistance training, after which anabolism (muscle growth) is dominant.  Both processes require loads of protein--the one to prevent tissue breakdown, the other to build additional tissue--but either way, it pays to have plenty of the stuff available.  

The key to making progress is to do the right thing as often as possible.  The best way to do that is to make doing the right thing as EASY as possible--so easy, in fact, that it's more effort to do the wrong thing.  Weight loss success stories are loaded with simple techniques like "I started packing my lunch," and "I put the snack food on a high shelf," and "I joined a gym that was closer to my house," simple habits that make the right thing easier and the wrong thing harder. 

On that score, protein powder is a no-brainer.

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Vis-a-vis yesterday's post about the elite vs. everyone else, I like this little homespun video, which shows you what Olympic events look like in the hands of average athletic types.  As someone who loses interest in American Idol once the trembling tone-deaf ones running on hope and nerves have shipped back to their meat-packing jobs, I almost prefer watching these two guys make their best effort over the real thing.

I'm going to be online only sporadically through September 6th--we're taking a little family trip and I'm not sure we'll have access to those famous World Wide Interwebs till we get back.  But everyone have a safe and happy Labor Day, and I'll see you when the leaves start to turn, 'kay?  --Andrew