I’ve been both of these guys. In unrelated news, I fucking hate Subway™
I did some manual labory jobs when I was younger. Most of my co-workers subsisted entirely on coffee and cigarettes. No one in those jobs was over thirty, though.
Virtually nobody in industrialized nations have protein deficiency, and when they do, it’s more of a symptom of general starvation.
By contrast, 97% of Americans do not meet even the minimum daily requirements for fiber, which is already considered too low of a bar.
We should not be asking where we get our protein - because seriously, if you are eating any reasonable balance of actual food, and getting enough calories, you are getting enough protein!*
We should be asking: Where are you getting your fiber?
* not counting fitness specialists whose diets have more specific needs.
As someone who works from home with an office job, and is also on a health journey, I’m firmly on the side of team protein. I’m working on losing weight, and am watching my protein and fiber intake closely so that my body doesn’t eat muscle instead of fat. Also protein and fiber keep you satiated longer, so you’re less likely to overeat at your sedentary desk job. While the protein craze IS a bit overboard, I think most office workers would be better off if they got more protein, especially from plant-based sources which also contain fiber. Most Americans at least aren’t getting enough fiber, and beans are fucking delicious, versatile and cheap!
As someone also losing weight despite my watch maybe (or not?) accurately saying I was walking about 10 miles a day at work…
bruh I know “family size” salad kits are supposed to feed 6 but that’s my food for a day why I fat still that like 800 calories wtf
Beverage of choice is water this makes no sense
OTOH, if everybody ate more unprocessed plant-based food, i.e., more fruits, vegetables and legumes, then they probably wouldn’t need to eat so much protein to feel satisfied and be healthy.
Eh. Somewhat yeah, but if I try to subsist off of fruits and veggies I stay extremely hungry. Protein is what helps stave off hunger for me.
Never said stop eating protein…
If everyone ate more plant-based food, they’d probably be getting their protein in anyway. Beans, legumes and lentils are all full of protein, and that’s without even considering processed plant-based products like tofu or even meat-like products (Beyond or Impossible products for example.)
That said, while I absolutely champion people eating more plants, I’m far from vegan or even vegetarian. My diet includes meat, cheese and eggs. Not every meal needs to include meat though. I just think most Americans at least would be better off with a more well rounded diet with less processed food and less sugar.
Its not just one’s job. Its also often one’s genetics. Some people seem to naturally gain muscle when they do those labor intensive jobs and some people tend to be very lean even when they try to buff up.
Muscle size is only somewhat of a predictor of muscle strength. It is very possible to be stronger than someone with bigger muscles if you are doing things that target maximal strength specifically.
You ever meet one of those MBA business bro guys who try to crush your hand in a handshake?
I grew up milking a cow morning and night by hand…
They were always fun.
I was working at a woodworking factory for a while, which involved strenuously tightening these tension screw things every day. One day I became frustrated with the apparent lack of quality in the plastic screw-lid for a bottle of shampoo I had just gotten, because I easily tightened it so far that the bottle snapped the top of the lid right off.
Then I realized what was really going on when I did the same thing to three other bottles of things. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Consumes 10 kg of protein
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Shits once per month
I think your co-worker might be an anaconda.
He’s gonna be presenting to the emergency room soon, regardless
Only if he don’t want none unless you got buns hun
Ladies, if your boyfriend…
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It makes sense. Sedentary lives encourage muscle loss so protein excess encourages retention. Labourers don’t grow a ton of muscle working once they peak and need more calories from fat and carbs.
That’s not how it works. You can’t eat your way out of muscle atrophy.
You kind of can. If you’re in calorie deficit and not excersizing you muscles will atrophy a lot faster than if you’re in surplus.
That atrophy would be induced by diet, not by sedentarism. It is no longer the case of the office worker population in general.
People need to stop thinking that excess protein intake when sedentary will develop muscle. The bottom line is that excess calories consumed beyond total daily energy expenditure will cause weight gain. And not the muscular kind of weight. Protein has 4 calories per gram so it’s not a freebie diet food that magically builds muscle. It only builds muscle if you exercise. Not sitting on yer arse.
Plus excess protein is bad for you. Your body just has to work harder to filter anything you don’t use out.
Yeah the current marketing obsession with protein just screams fad diet. Remember “super foods” where you try to throw certain nutrient dense ingredients into all of your food? Whatever happened to that?
The SuperFood fad is timeless wisdom. People who stick with that are golden.
Almonds, blueberries, quinoa, avocado, bone broth, walnuts, salmon, kale, spinach etc 💕
They didn’t say it would cause muscle gain, they said prevents muscle loss. Those are two very different claims
True, I did notice that & apologize for not acknowledging that part. But they also said “excess” protein consumption. Excess protein intake will cause fat gain because that’s what excess calories from any source will do. Another commenter said that excess protein will be pooped out as long as the person is getting enough calories & nutrients from other sources, so that’s something I’ve never heard before, but the bottom line is that excess calories equals fat gain.
Depends on how you are defining excess. Excess of 2000 calories yes. Excess of the daily reccomended amount of protein no not necessarily. It just depends on how the rest of their diet is portioned. You can eat 200g of protien a day and not exceed daily calorie allotments.
Really depends on their definition of excess
A cousin of mine who games all day started chugging protein for 3 years from 15-18. Dude became really bulky, like big, but not really muscular. Sometimes I genuinely can’t tell if he’s fat or 50.
I think a more correct term would be mass-growth, not muscle growth.
He’s fat he just has it evenly distributed. Evenly distributed fat is genetic not what he’s eating
He’s cultivating mass.
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Protein has 4 calories per gram
Protein is only used as fuel in extremis, it’s a dirty fuel and the body will poop what it doesn’t need for repair if there’s enough other calories coming in. Also only some amino acids are biochemically amenable to conversion to energy, whereas the 4cal/g figure is from burning it all in air. Protein does not turn into cake, you can however argue the excess is wasted, but how much is excess for a given individual is a hard question.
You’re quite right about needing stimulus to grow, but the statement was about maintenance.
You can turn protein into cake I’ve done it
Haha yes fat ass joke
But on a serious note
That reminds me of one lady a few years ago who came to realize that her protein shakes were actually literally cake batter repackaged & labeled as a lie. Big scandal she uncovered and she outed that company until they stopped their crimes.
Not crimes to do that here but wasteful why not use cat litter
I do it about twice a week as I don’t eat enough fiber.
Fair cop.
The didn’t say that. They say it encourages retention as opposed to muscle loss. It’s true. Get off your weird soapbox, your fact while true wasn’t relevant here.
I got four hours of exercise today sitting on my arse
Flex yer glutes while sitting. Pump em up, do 20 sets of 20 repetitions, and get some amusement out of people’s reactions as they walk by seeing you riding your invisible horse on your chair.
Or ride a bicycle.
Oh! You weren’t being facetious 😄 you really DO get 4 hours of exercise sitting on your arse.
I have an “Elliptigo SUB (stand-up bike)” It’s got no seat. I love it so much.
I made a protein comment like this earlier too and people thought I was making a joke buy protein powder is mostly wheat protein and men can get weird and meat has lots of fat and men can get real weird and I’ve gwd some strange cakes requested by straight friends back when I had those
Perhaps, but nobody in this thread argued it built muscle, only helps retain it if you’re sedentary.
This right here. I would eat 3500-4000 Cals a day and LOSE 5 to 10 lbs over the course of field season.
When I worked a physical job outside in cold weather (sub-freezing temps) it was closer to 7-8,000 calories per day and I would still lose 5-10 lbs in 3 months.
I put it back on in the spring.
Then lost it again in the summer as the heat suppressed my appetite.
Then gained it back in the fall as the temperatures were more pleasant.
And repeat…
What kind of work? 8k calories is fucking insane. I can’t even visualize that. That’s like 8 big mac meals or something. how do you even fit that in you?
Mix of different physically demanding jobs while I was building up money to pay for college. Farmwork, construction etc during the day. Unloading package trucks for UPS was probably the most energy intensive in the evening. Hand unloading 2,100 packages per hour an emptying 3-4 trailers in 4-5 hours was one hell of an aerobic workout. On a normal day I was burning 4-4500K calories in the spring and fall from the high level of activity working 12-14 hours per day. I had strongly defined abs and built a lot of muscle mass.
Winter however was something else. It was a very cold, -10F to 10 for most of the winter. It takes a lot of food to just keep warm when you are in those temps all day. I was outside enough I had to keep my house cooler (50-55F) as my metabolism shifted into high gear.
Eating 4,500-5,000 calories is pretty easy. Larger portions at meals plus a few calorie dense snacks easily gets you there.
That extra 2000-3000 calories is hard. Half a package of oreos or a dozen donuts when I woke up starving at 2am was what I resorted too. Lots of carbs and fat.
Visible muscles vs usable muscles
or something, idk
I don’t understand where the muscle mass goes or what it does I guess. I can typically curl the same weight or sometimes more than someone with biceps twice my size. What is all that mass doing?
A huge component of strength is mind-muscle connection. Large muscles give you the capacity for strength but don’t inherently make you stronger than someone with smaller muscles who does a lot of strength training. This is where a lot of the initial gains come from when starting to strength train.
fast-twitch muscle vs slow-twitch muscle. they train fast twitch because aestetics and you trained slow because of usability.
Yeah I worked an extremely labor intensive job from my teens into my early twentys. I wouldn’t have anything left in the tank for the gym after those 10-14 hour days.
Is slow vs fast twitch just a way to describe muscle density?
I don’t think it describes density, though someone more informed than I might illuminate us. Any given (skeletal) muscle group (e.g. quadriceps, biceps, pectorals, etc) consists of both slow and fast twitch muscle fibers. Different muscle groups have different proportions of slow vs fast twitch, depending on the purpose of that group. For example, the average person’s quads are have a roughly even distribution of slow vs fast twitch, but the muscles which we use to blink are almost entirely fast twitch.
There’s a pretty good comparison table on Wikipedia if you’re still curious, but once I see the ATP cycle coming up in a given article, I know I’ve reached the limits of my amateur understanding. Here, there be dragons.
Visible muscles vs stamina maybe
I’m a scrawny guy and i work the trades. I pulled some old equipment up some guys stairs alone and left it outside for him to dispose of. The guy had arms the size of my thighs. He genuinely asked me if I thought he’d have a hard time moving it into his trailer.
Id ask that sort of question to learn whether there are any considerations I wouldn’t offhandedly know about. We had an air compressor that DID NOT like being stored tilted. It would tolerate being tilted while moving, but would loudly complain for a few minutes after it started. I think we settled on a gasket being loose
Don’t compressor motors have a lubricant oil sump at the bottom and rely on being upright to work properly? It kind of sounds like you were running it dry, before the oil had a chance to get back where it was supposed to be.
Yeah, pretty much all of them are built that way, and if they get tilted you’re supposed to wait an hour at the absolute barest minimum, preferably 4-6, and ideally 24 hours, because the oil can work its way into the bits that actually compress and if you turn it on with barely compressable oil in the parts that are meant to compress gas it can just die
These sorts of things are why I ask open ended questions now. You could be right about the actual cause
He is. The general rule of thumb is that any device with a compressor should remain off for twice as long as it was tilted.
i ate way more at a desk job than a construction job.
It’s amazing what being able to afford food does to your diet /s
i made more in construction honestly
I made the comment assuming that was the case tbh 😅
Don’t give the corporate shills any more ideas.
WFH means more opportunity to go to the gym.
Manual laborers still waiting for OSHA required gear or paperwork signoffs or union negotiations or whatever. Idk, not blue collar.
And to add on, manual labor typically needs a lot of calories in order to perform their work while office workers don’t.
Office workers have to be more sensitive of their calories because there is less physical amount of food for them to get their nutrients even if they go to the gym.
