Protein for overweight athelete recommendations

Nutrition
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I always see a recommended protein intake of 1.4 to 1.8 g/kg body weight.

The problem is this: If I am to eat 200+ grams of protein every day there is very little room for anything else given the calorie restrictions I have.

Here is my situation

  • I am overweight with a BMI of 38; no it is NOT muscles!
  • I am 50 years old, and that indicates that I need even more protein
  • I am trying to lose weight, balancing recovery, calories/day and fueling the workouts as best I know to.
  • I have been training using Wahoo SYSTM (January - April) and TR (April - Now, LV plans) , and I completed a 200 km Audax in May. The goal is to complete a Super Randonneur series next year.
  • My weight has not moved since January. I only have muscle mass data since September, it has not changed in that period

Are there some recommendations for protein per kg muscle instead of body weight? I have a Garmin Index S2 scale that report muscle mass. I just assume the recommendation is for a “normal” person with a “normal” amount of body fat, and not an obese one…

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But this is only ~800 kcal?

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The protein powder I use has about 100 kcal/ 19g protein, so we are talking 1000 kcal for the powder alone, add a banana and some honey to each portion, so I can stand to consume it, we are talking roughly 2000 kcal/day. On a non training day that leaves me 300-500 kcal that is not a protein smoothie.

On training days I try to fuel the workout 100%.

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You can go by lean body mass instead of total, or for simplicity a reasonable goal body weight. So my bmi is 30 at 87kg I might use 80kg for my calculations.

As an aside I would be careful that you don’t go too far on carb or calorie restriction when training, or focus on weight loss first and start training later. If you are doing a workout without glycogen stores at a reasonable level, your body won’t magically/instantly convert fat into glycogen, it will make you feel lethargic and not want to do the workout at all. This in turn makes you feel like a failure and discourages you further…then eat late into the night.

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This is just speculation on my part, but I wonder whether the protein gm/kg might be scaled to the healthy target body mass rather than to the current body mass. As an example of what I mean, lets take someone who is 175 cm tall and weighs 116 kgs (BMI of 38), and they are aiming to get to a BMI of 25 over the next 2 years. Their target body mass would be 76 kgs, and thus a 1.4 g/KG would be 106 gms of protein. That might be more manageable, particularly if one or two servings worth is from protein shakes or Greek yogurt without sugar. If you were trying to have a daily 500 calorie deficit, that would still seem to leave a reasonable amount for vegetables, fruit, healthy fats.

My thought process is that muscle is primarily what requires protein, and that someone who is overweight needs primarily to provide sufficient protein for current muscle and to allow for the formation of a bit more muscle mass. I’m sure that it’s not that simple, and perhaps it’s worth consulting a dietitian or doctor for a more-informed take, but that is how I might approach it.

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Chicken breasts, sweet potatoes and green veggies are your new best friends.

Depending on what the workout is, and how it fits into the context of total workload, on-bike fuelling can be minimal to zero. How many hours per week are you riding over how many days and how many kJ are you doing?

And set your protein requirements at the low end of the range.

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It’s been covered a few times before

And

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So, you have a normal healthy diet up to your healthy ranges of macro nutrients, then you top up with additional protein and carb sources.

A normal healthy diet might have 60-80g of protein in so you’re looking at adding a large chicken breast to dinner, some eggs to your breakfast and maybe a protein shake after your workout.

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Just take 150 grams +/- 115 on average and you’ll be fine. I don’t know how tall you are, but if you are obese/overweight at 200 lbs, then you’d probably be pretty lean at 150-170. So, use an “ideal” weight or goal weight for your goals. 200 grams would be over doing.

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No. If your goal is to lose weight then you should absolutely not be adding honey or a banana to your shake for “taste.” That’s probably 300+ calories that you don’t need for “taste” - do that every day and that’s an extra 9000 calories or approx 1 kg/2.5 lbs of fat each month.

My optimum nutrition chocolate protein is 130 calories per serving, which has 24g protein. It tastes plenty fine mixed with water (for anyone trying to lose weight).

If your goal is to lose weight, your workouts should not be fueled 100% calorie-wise. You may have a little carbs before to get you through your high intensity or longer workouts. You could structure your meals that after a hard workout is your planned larger meal.

People also way overestimate how many calories they even burn in most workouts. My heavy strength training workouts with 25-30 total sets burn 300-350 calories for an hour (there’s your banana and a small amount of honey). My Z2 cardio rides are around 500-550 calories and high intensity are around 650-750 calories per hour.

I generally find that protein should be around 1g/lb of a low weight. I.e. I’m 160 lbs and around 8% BF and shoot for around 160g protein per day.

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I am having trouble finding exact details, but my recollection is that Dr. Eric Trexler has agreed with your thought: it makes more sense to target protein based on lean body mass instead of total body mass when you’re dealing with a lot of adipose tissue. I think his estimate was around 0.8g/kg LBM, but I can’t find a citation or even podcast link at the moment.

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Find a form of protein that you can consume without adding the same amount of calories in carbs.

1000 calories of protein shouldn’t require 1000 calories of carbs just for your taste preferences

Doesn’t entirely solve your problem but goes a really long way

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Just to add to the good advice posted above:

My powder ( bulk foods whey) has 26g at 120 calories. What I do to make it more palatable is use some “0” calorie monk fruit powder to make it sweet. For flavor in the am, either cinnamon or cardamom spice. Evening it’s 2 drops of rum extract.
As for the amount, I would look at reducing the amount you are consuming per day. The body processes excess into fat storage. Cut it by 50% and see how you feel after 2 weeks.
As for 100% fueling your workouts I found that forcing my body to burn some fat stores I can lose weight. Might take a bit of time for your body to get into this routine.
Cheers and best of luck

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100% this. Do you want to be fast and healthy or do you want your protein to taste good? It can’t really be both.

I recently upped my protein intake to include a nighttime dose of protein powder mixed with just enough water to make a pudding (otherwise I’ll have to pee too much at night). And it SUCKS. IT TASTES GROSS. But I got over it because I get up the next day feeling like a superhero.

Just wait until you start needing to fuel with 90g of carbs per hour. It’s going to be too sweet, but you’re going to have to suck it up there too.

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I’m generally not one for that but it’s true that training and nutrition…it’s not all happiness and light.

You guys have reminded me to get back on top of my nutrition, so naturally I went at it hard this morning:
Cup of milk
Two thin bagels
4 eggs
2 thick bacon
1 can baked beans
Coffee
Shortbread biscuit

= 86g protein

I hope I do my workouts today…too full…!

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Yep. I’ve often wondered why my excess fat needs protein.

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Quote from article
“ It is therefore a relatively simple and elegant solution to consume protein at a target intake of 0.4 g/kg/meal across a minimum of four meals in order to reach a minimum of 1.6 g/kg/day – if indeed the primary goal is to build muscle.”

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Search for the Zoe podcast on wherever you get your podcasts from. The episode you’re looking for is entitled “Protein: are you getting enough?”

It’s an interesting listen, with plenty of coverage given to athletes and physically active people, as well as some good general advice. You may - or may not - find it useful.

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There’s been some good information posted here, imho. I’m about your age, had trouble shedding some weight even though I was cycling a lot, active etc. So I’ll tell you what worked for me, some of it others have posted.

The caveat to any of this, is I’m not saying it’s an optimal diet, optimal for cycling performance etc. I’m only talking about losing weight in a manageable way without feeling like crap so that afterward you can focus on cycling performance at a lower bodyweight.

I targeted about 200 grams of protein a day. Breakfast and lunch were focused on helping me hit that target, eating a little fat as well. Protein shakes, cheeses with a decent protein level, greek yogurt, eggs etc.

Tried to keep carbs around 100 grams per day, maybe less. I didn’t include anything I ate on the bike in any of this. However, while I was focused on losing weight I only took in water for shorter rides and if I was going out longer I’d have gatorade or something like that but that’s it, no table sugar, energy chews etc. I carried a gel with me most of the time just in case I bonked but only for that reason.

So what about “feed your training”? As others have touched on, focus on weight loss, not training. It’s not easy but it makes it so much easier to lose weight. Easy rides 1-2 hours, walking, jogging are doable and I ate enough to be able to do that because I feel better if I exercise. But the weight will come off. If you try for a few weeks, keeping the intensity down and then add in a bit of tempo or sweetspot it’s easy to see how much harder it is to maintain the diet if you’re doing that type of work. At least that’s how it was for me, but if you want to focus on weight loss, focus on that knowing you can add the higher level stuff back later with a lighter faster body.

So I am not saying “don’t feed your training”, I am however suggesting that when focused on weight loss don’t do training that needs feeding.

I don’t like not being able to ride hard, I found it easier to do one or two harder efforts once in awhile just for my sanity, 2-3 minutes or a sprint here and there but that was about the limit. Anything more than that affects the diet and the diet is where you lose the weight.

Focus on the diet and getting the weight loss started, eventually I added back in my long ride for a decent amount of time like I am used to doing. And I let myself take in a bit more energy during that ride but only on that ride. I guess when you reach that point has to do with your personal goals. But other than that ride I stuck with what I said earlier.

You mentioned the protein shakes, I was usually having two a day. One at breakfast and one right after my exercise for the day. There are some decent tasting ones and things you can do to make them palatable, but keeping the carbs down overall seemed to help me a lot. If I’m making the protein shake myself I like to use a blender, add a bit of ice. I don’t like the ones made with water, I’d rather use something like Fairlife Skim milk, more protein, better taste. I usually use some flavor of vanilla protein powder, if I add anything else for taste it’s a bit of coffee grounds or a half spoon of peanut butter, it doesn’t take much, you don’t want to over do it. I also drank a fair number of store bought protein shakes, preferably also from Fairlife, I just like the taste and macros work out for the goals I’d set.

Because I’ve seen this recommendation many times and violated it daily while losing quite a bit of weight, I’ll add that I drank a lot of my calories. Between two protein shakes, a can of V8, gatorade while riding and so on I was drinking quite a bit of mine and it worked fine for me. But I also believe I could have eaten some other protein sources and gotten similar results with less protein shakes…

I used Cronometer to track my intake, it helps to get an idea of what you’re taking in and how different things affect your totals day to day. I ate a lot of the same meals over and over once I found out what worked and what wasn’t as helpful for hitting my around 200 grams of protein and about 100 grams of carbs a day goal. Breakfast and lunch didn’t vary much but I tried to have a few different dinner options. I didn’t really have a goal for grams of fat but also didn’t avoid it. I tracked calories and ran a deficit but focused more on the hitting the 200/100 than I did anything else.

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