NnF#2: Understand about Protein

“You need to have more protein in your diet if you want build muscle.” My buddy said this to me when I was just entered into workouts. But the question is why? I believe people learn about the term protein, I’ve encounter it in science subject whenever I approach the nutrition chapter. And after study science for years, can you recall the functions or at least basic info about protein?

We know that the sources of protein are daily products like milk, eggs, meats especially beef and poultry, fish, legumes and even nuts. As for the function, in short, protein is the one that responsible for maintain, repairing and building the tissues in body. Hence, resistance training and weight training that made use of muscle actually break the muscle. By intake enough protein, the muscle is now “repaired” and more packed than before. Beside muscle, our body use protein to create specialised protein molecules for specific function. Our body enzymes are example of protein. Another example will be haemoglobin, the red blood cells that transport oxygen around the body.

How protein actually works? Protein is actually a long chain made up of small units call amino acid. When we consume foods contain protein, enzymes in the stomach and intestine will break the protein into their basic units, amino acids. The amino acids can form thousands of different proteins. There are different amino acids found in protein, 22 of them are found important to human health. There are 13 non-essential amino acids that our body can create. But others that we can’t create is call essential amino acid that only obtain from food. 


Animal sources of protein are known as complete because they provide all 9 essential amino acids; most vegetable can’t provide you all 9 but doing a combination in vegetarian diet for example peanut butter with bread, rice and red bean soup. We get the all essential amino acids. And we don’t have to have all of them in one meal, as long as we have them throughout a day; our body is able to make full use of them.

So what’s the amount of protein we need in a day? You can roughly know it when you know your weight. Protein intake is normally calculated in gram per body weight. A kid or average person with light amount exercise, they need 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight (i.e 70kg need 70g protein a day); Athlete or person involve in heavy training with resistance, weight or sports training will need 2 gram protein per kilogram of body weight (i.e 70kg need 140g protein); Hardcore trainers with heavy loads of training will need 2.5g of protein per kg (i.e 70kg 175g protein). The differences are in term of how much you damage your muscle/tissue and the amount you need to replace them.

You can know the amount of protein in food label. For average person, normally one would have all protein he need through normal meals. Meats, vegetables, nuts and rice all contain protein. For trainers and athletes, they may have restriction as some protein source like milk and poultry are rich in fat, so they replace in with some supplement. You can easily find some protein powder in store. For people like me, I don’t take supplement. I depend more on milk and side with some snack like peanut or cheese whole meal sandwich. Well, about the fats, yes, it’s in quite some amount, but they are not bad fat, this fat can be use as good fuel to burn off more stored fat. Some cardio will do. And of course I watch my calorie. There is no point you eat 4000Calorie just to get 100g of protein. Efficient is a great key when it comes to nutrition, diet and workout.

You should always have a basic understanding of the food you eat, the drink you drink and the work you work. Everyone has a unique body, nothing is best solution for everyone, learn and try up combination and get one that suit you and provide you the best growth.