How To Fix Loose Skin After GLP-1 Weight Loss, How Much Protein To Eat In A Calorie Deficit & 8 Bodybuilding Myths Busted

I probably think it's not a secret that most people now realize that protein is important.

but i was recently reading because i don't have a life and i do things like this for fun the strength and congestion the strength and conditioning journal the strength and conditioning journal uh as a cscs that means certified strength conditioning coach and certified personal trainer through the national strength and conditioning association I still receive that journal.

I've received it for 20 years.

And I actually read it, usually in the bathtub.

And this article was pretty cool.

It was basically a look at what happens to fat-free mass, meaning all the mass that is in you that is not fat, in energy-restricted, meaning people who were eating below their actual number of calories that they needed, resistance-trained individuals, right? So these are trained people eating eating an energy-restricted diet.

And what they wanted to look at was is there a certain ceiling or a certain amount of protein that can mitigate muscle loss and surprisingly even lead to muscle gain or fat-free mass gain even during significant calorie restriction, I realize that that seems to defy the laws of physics because calories in equals calories out.

Yet multiple studies leading up to this point have shown that even if you are restricting calories, and in many cases, if you are like dieting, bedridden, not exercising, that protein intake can influence muscle protein synthesis in such a way that there's almost like this conservation of calories that allows for muscle maintenance and in some cases, muscle gain.

So this is a new paper out in, like I mentioned, the Strength Conditioning Journal of August 2026 at the time that I'm recording this.

And it kind of updates, I think, some of the more cited protein recommendations in sports nutrition.

So here's the background.

In 2014, this researcher named Eric Helms and his colleagues put out this systematic review suggesting that lean – I'm lean.

I fit into this category, which is why I was interested – Resistance-trained, like people who weightlift, people who are in a calorie deficit actually need more protein than the general population.

And they suggested something like 2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of protein per day.

Grams per kilogram of your actual fat-free mass, not your total body weight.

And don't worry, for those of you who prefer freedom units, I will express that in grams per pound later on as I go along.

So that number has been repeated all over the place, 2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of fat-free mass per day.

So in freedom units, that's about one to one and a half grams per pound of protein, grams per pound of protein or grams per pound of protein based on what your fat-free mass is.

So let's say you step on a body fat calculator or you do a DEXA scan or whatever, and you find out that you are, I don't know let's just use a rough number because i suck at math you're 100 pounds of fat-free mass that would mean you're not a very big person but you're 100 pounds of fat-free mass well based on general recommendations leading up to this point 1 to 1.5 grams per pound would mean that you would have 100 to 150 grams of protein per day that would be the recommendation So this new paper goes back and looks at 29 different studies over several hundred individuals, about 729 to be exact.

And what they did was they pulled every study that exists out there that they could find at least on people who lifted weights and people who were lean or at least non-obese, ranging from about 18 to 50 years old.

and people who had gone through a period of calorie restriction that actually produced fat loss.

And then they looked at what actually happened to their fat-free mass.

Now it's important here that when I say lean, it's all relative.

Non-obese here means under about 28% body fat for men, underneath about 40% body fat for women.

So they wanted people who didn't fit into the obese category at least, I wouldn't classify like.