As far as I can tell all fitness blogs say you have to eat lots of protein to build muscle (with exercise). But why protein specifically? If excess calories from any macro can be converted to fat by the body, why do we need protein to build muscle? Couldn’t the body just use excess from any macro combined with weight lifting exercises to build muscle ?
In: Biology
Muscles are mostly protein. But your body can not make all the different amino acids that make up muscle proteins, and of those the body can make it can not make all of them as fast as your muscles can grow. This means that if you do not have enough protein in your diet the muscles may not have enough to build as much as they would have after exercise. Too much protein does not matter as excess protein is metabolized in the body and used as energy. So the fitness blogs say you should make sure to eat enough protein, and since it is hard to know how much is enough and it is hard to hit the upper limit of the amount of protein in your diet you should just eat as much protein as possible.
Muscles are made of proteins. You need to consume proteins, break them down into simple units, to then build up new proteins in your body.
Your body can create fat molecules to store energy in. It can do that with the energy extracted from breaking down proteins. That doesn’t mean your body can go in the other direction and turn fat energy into whatever.
You might have heard the term “essential amino acids”. Those are the amino acids that are essential to have in your diet, because your body can’t make them. Protein structures tend to need all the amino acids in varying quantities, so you need to consume enough decent quality protein that contains those specific amino acids.
Your body does not use the same resources for using muscles and building muscles. The former can be obtained from fat storage. The latter needs specialized resources (proteins).
It aids in the recovery of repairing broken muscle tissue and strengthens it and reduces soreness.
Yes and no. The body requires some protein, but not an exceptionally large amount of protein from a standard diet. Most of the fitness blogs are wrong, in part as a way of promoting whey proteins to sell to fitness junkies. https://youtu.be/D0ETy2bQHA8
The TLDR is that we can, mostly.
Proteins are actually broken down into amino acids before we absorb them as protins are incredibly complex structures. There is, however, a few amino acids we can’t make in our bodies, but plants and first order consumers (think herbivores) can. We eat them, we get the amio acids, we can turn those into proteins, proteins build muscle cells, we build muscle.
The reason that we require a calorie surplus is that the protein is first used to fuel the body and fulfil various functions before more cells are made. The body takes care of what exists before it makes more.
Bonus info, while theres only a few dozen amino acids, there’s thousands of different protein structures.
Elephants, Gorillas, Bison — ***All vegans.*** All a hell of a lot more muscular than any gym rat.
Anyone who says you “need to eat protein to build muscle” is full of shit.
To build muscle, you need to work your muscles. That’s it.
You get plenty of amino acids to build *human* proteins from whole food vegetables (skip the breads, pastas, etc.) and beans. The more research you do, the more true this will prove to be. You don’t need any animal proteins at all. There’s no such thing a protein deficiency in anyone who gets sufficient calories. Vegans included.
Regarding vitamin B12 — there are only three ways to get B12. 1. Eat dirt. 2. Eat the animal that ate the dirt. 3. Take a supplement. ANimal sdo not make B12. It’s only made by soil bacteria. Since our animals are fed corn and soy in feed lots these days, *they have to get B12 supplements*! So skip the middleman and take a supplement.
You could think of it as building a house. Protein would be long boards that can be cut up to build what you need. Sugars and fats are more like small blocks or firewood. You can burn all of them as calories but it’s a lot easier to build with the long stuff that can be cut to fit.
It’s about raw materials. Your body needs the building blocks, but it’s easier to get them from some things than others, and some of them can’t be produced locally at all, they have to be imported. It’s also about volume, you need to make sure you have enough available to satisfy the demand.
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