#my body assumes the famine may have finally come to an end and allows me to eat 12 of my rations of wheat in one sitting

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Will a high-protein diet harm your health? The real story on the risks (and rewards) of eating more protein. http://bit.ly/2YjzXqa

Will protein help me lose weight? Should I eat it at every meal? Could too much damage my kidneys? At Precision Nutrition, our inbox is filled with questions about the pros and cons of eating more protein. In this article we’ll set the record straight, so you can finally separate the facts from the fiction.

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Maybe you’re a protein promoter.

You buy protein powder in “bucket with a handle” format. You know the protein counts of every food you eat.

After every workout, you jam those amino acids into your cells. You swear you can feel them getting swole.

Or maybe you’re a protein avoider.

Maybe you’ve heard bad things.

Like: Protein will damage your kidneys.

Or: Protein will give you cancer.

Or simply: We all eat too much protein.

Maybe you want to lose fat. Or gain muscle. Or be healthy.

You just want to do the right thing and eat better. But with conflicting information about protein, you don’t know what to think.

Or, if you’re a fitness and nutrition coach, you’re wondering how the heck to clear up the confusion about protein among your clients.

Let’s get into it. In this article, we’ll explore:

What are high-protein diets?

What does the evidence say about high-protein diets and health?

Does protein source matter?

How much protein is right for me?

How to read this article

If you’re just curious about high-protein diets:

Feel free to skim and learn whatever you like.

If you want to change your body and/or health:

You don’t need to know every detail. Just get the general idea.

Check out our advice at the end.

If you’re an athlete interested in performance:

Pay special attention to the section on athletic performance.

Check out our advice for athletes at the end.

If you’re a fitness pro, or interested in geeking out with nutritional science:

We’ve given you some “extra credit” material in sidebars throughout.

Check out our advice for fitness pros at the end.

Why protein?

A quick intro if you aren’t a nutrition pro:

Protein is one of the three main macronutrients that makes up the food we eat. (The other two are fat and carbohydrate.)

Protein itself is made up of amino acids.

Amino acids are the building blocks for most stuff in our bodies. They’re like Legos that can be broken down and re-assembled in different ways.

Unlike extra fat (which we can store very easily on our bums and bellies), we don’t store lots of extra amino acids. Protein is always getting used, recycled, and sometimes excreted.

If we don’t get enough protein, our body will start to plunder it from parts that we need, such as our muscles.

So we have to constantly replenish protein by eating it.

We need protein.

Protein is so important that without it, we die or become seriously malnourished.

(This protein-deficiency disease is known as kwashiorkor, and we often see it in people who have suffered famines or who are living on a low-protein diet.)

All your enzymes and cell transporters; all your blood transporters; all your cells’ scaffolding and structures; 100 percent of your hair and fingernails; much of your muscle, bone, and internal organs; and many hormones are made of mostly protein. Hence, protein enables most of our bodies’ functions.

Put simply, you are basically a pile of protein.

No protein, no you.

How much protein do we need?

Short answer: It depends.

Let’s look first at the current Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA).

The RDA for protein is  0.8 g/kg (0.36 g/lb) — the more you weigh, the more protein you need:

A 150-lb (68 kg) person would need 68 x 0.8, or about 54 grams of protein a day.

A 200-lb (91 kg) person would need 91 x 0.8, or about 73 grams of protein a day.

That generally works out to about 10 percent of daily calories coming from protein.

However.

RDAs were originally developed as a way to prevent malnutrition — to represent the minimum amount of a nutrient we need to not die (or get sick).

“You’re not dead” is not the same thing as “You’re kicking ass.” The RDA for surviving may be different than what we need to thrive.

The RDA is also a very general recommendation. It doesn’t take other things into account, such as:

How much total energy (i.e. calories) we eat or need

Our carbohydrate intake

When we eat the protein

Our biological sex

Our age

How active we are

What activities we do

How “eco-friendly” various protein sources are

The Institute of Medicine (US) suggests a huge range in individual protein requirements — from 0.375 g/kg to 1.625 g/kg body weight (0.17 to 0.74g/lb body weight).

In other words, our hypothetical 150-lb person might have protein needs ranging from 26 to 111 grams per day.

Well that narrows it down nicely, doesn’t it!?

Let’s take a deeper look: Amino acids

Protein in our food is made up of many different building blocks, or amino acids.

Most people focus on Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for total protein, but they don’t think about how much of each amino acid they might need.

If your diet isn’t varied enough, you may be eating enough total protein, but not enough of a specific essential amino acid.

Every day, you need this much of these essential amino acids:

14 mg/kg of histidine

19 mg/kg of isoleucine

42 mg/kg of leucine

38 mg/kg of lysine

19 mg/kg of methionine + cysteine

33 mg/kg of phenylalanine + tyrosine

20 mg/kg of threonine

5 mg/kg of tryptophan

24 mg/kg of valine

Of course, you don’t need to spend hours in your kitchen with an eyedropper of lysine solution, carefully calibrating your intake.

Just eat a variety of protein-rich foods and let nature do the rest.

What does a high-protein diet look like?

People often assume that “high protein” means “low carbohydrate”. In fact, you can eat more protein without making any drastic changes to other things in your diet.

Many types of diets can be considered high-protein. “High protein” is a bit of a relative concept; there’s no clear rule.

The average protein intake for adults in the US is about 15 percent of calories coming from protein.

The Institute of Medicine suggests that up to 35 percent of total calories is an OK proportion of protein for healthy adults.

And most researchers would say that once you get more than 25 percent of total calories from protein, you’re in “high protein” territory.

Here’s what high- and low-protein diets might look like for a given meal.

The upper tolerable limit (UL) of something tells you how much you can eat without having health problems.

Currently, there’s no established UL for protein.

Does that mean you can eat as much protein as you’d like without any negative side effects? No. It just means researchers haven’t figured it out yet.

But we do know that eating up to 4.4 g/kg (2 g/lb) body weight didn’t cause any short term health problems in clinical studies.

Let’s take a deeper look: Calculating maximum protein

The Institute of Medicine suggests that high protein intake, where about 35 percent of your calories comes from protein, is safe.

What does that mean in grams per kilogram body weight (or g/lb body weight)?

Say you’re 74.8 kg (165 lb) and reasonably active. You need about 2,475 calories per day to maintain your weight.

If you get 35 percent of your total energy intake from protein, you’d be eating about 866 calories from protein each day.

1 gram of protein has 4 calories. So 866 calories is around 217 grams of protein per day.

That’s about 1.3 grams per pound of body weight, or 2.9 g/kg.

Will eating a high-protein diet hurt me?

For years, people have been concerned with the safety of eating too much protein.

Will eating too much protein explode my kidneys?

How about my liver? My left femur?

The most common health concerns of eating more protein are:

kidney damage

liver damage

osteoporosis

heart disease

cancer

Let’s explore these.

Claim: High protein causes kidney damage.

This concern about high protein and kidneys began with a misunderstanding of why doctors tell people with poorly functioning kidneys (usually from pre-existing kidney disease) to a eat a low-protein diet.

But there’s a big difference between avoiding protein because your kidneys are already damaged and protein actively damaging healthy kidneys.

It’s the difference between jogging with a broken leg and jogging with a perfectly healthy leg.

Jogging with a broken leg is a bad idea. Doctors would probably tell you not to jog if your leg is broken. But does jogging cause legs to break? No.

That’s the same thing with protein and kidneys.

Eating more protein does increase how much your kidneys have to work (glomerular filtration rate and creatinine clearance), just like jogging increases how much your legs have to work.

But protein hasn’t been shown to cause kidney damage — again, just like jogging isn’t going to suddenly snap your leg like a twig.

High-protein diets do result in increased metabolic waste being excreted in the urine, though, so it’s particularly important to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause kidney damage in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes liver damage.

The liver, like the kidneys, is a major processing organ. Thus, it’s the same deal as with kidneys: People with liver damage (such as cirrhosis) are told to eat less protein.

Yes, if you have liver damage or disease you should eat less protein. But if your liver is healthy, then a high-protein diet will not cause liver damage.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high-protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause liver damage in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes osteoporosis.

Eating more protein without also upping your fruit and vegetable intake will increase the amount of calcium you’ll lose in your pee.

That finding made some people think that eating more protein will cause osteoporosis because you’re losing bone calcium.

But there is no evidence that high protein causes osteoporosis.

If anything, not eating enough protein has been shown to cause bone loss. Bones aren’t just inert sticks of minerals — a significant proportion of bone is also protein, mostly collagen-type proteins.

Like muscle, bone is an active tissue that is constantly being broken down and rebuilt. And like muscle, bone needs those Lego building blocks.

Women aged 55 to 92 who eat more protein have higher bone density. So eating more protein improves bone density in people most at risk of having osteoporosis.

(Eating more protein plus adding resistance training: Double win for bone density.)

Verdict: High protein diets do not cause osteoporosis, and actually may prevent osteoporosis.

Claim: High protein causes cancer

Unfortunately, we still don’t have conclusive human studies on the cause of cancer and the role of protein.

There are studies that asked people how much protein they ate over their lifetime, and then looked at how often people got cancer. The research shows a connection between protein intake and cancer rates.

But these studies are correlational studies and don’t prove that protein is the cause of cancers. Plus, some researchers have gone so far to say that studies relying on subjects to recall what they ate are basically worthless because human memory is so inaccurate.

A big part of the proposed cancer and protein link comes down to confounding factors, like:

where you get your protein from — plant or animal

how you cook your protein (i.e. carbonized grilled meat)

what types of protein you’re eating (e.g. grass-fed steak versus a hot dog)

And so on.

In other words, we can’t say that any particular amount of protein causes cancer.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes cancer; many other confounding factors.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein and cancer

A study from 2014 looked at protein and cancer risk. It was widely misinterpreted as proof that eating a lot of protein caused cancer.

First, it was actually two studies, one asking people questions and following them for years; and one that fed mice a high-protein diet and implanted them with cancer.

With the human study, researchers looked at people’s self-reported protein intake and their rates of cancer over the following 18 years.

They found that people aged 50-65 who ate diets high in animal protein (≥20% of total calories) had a 4-fold greater risk of dying of cancer over the next 18 years compared to people who ate a moderate amount of protein (10-20% of total calories).

(Just so you get an idea, smoking increases your risk of cancer by 20-fold.)

Then, it gets more interesting, because for people over 65, eating more protein decreased cancer risk by more than half. In summary:

Eating more protein from 50-65 years old was associated with a higher risk of death from cancer, but over 65 years old that association was reversed.

The second part of the study is where people really misunderstood what the study had proven.

Researchers fed mice a high-protein diet (18% of total calories), then implanted cancerous cells. They found that the high-protein diet increased tumor size. This is not a surprise, since protein increases IGF-1 (an anabolic protein) that stimulates growth in pretty much all tissues, including cancerous tissue.

Higher protein diets stimulated cancerous growth in mice.

So, while eating more protein might increase the size of existing tumors (depending on what treatment someone is undergoing), this study does not show that high-protein diets cause cancer.

Claim: High protein causes heart disease.

Eating animal-based protein daily is associated with an increased risk of fatal coronary heart disease (70 percent for men and 37 percent for women), whereas plant-based proteins aren’t linked to higher rates of heart disease.

This suggests that where you get your protein from may matter more than how much protein you eat.

However, just like cancer, the link between heart disease and high-protein diets is from questionnaires rather than a double-blind randomized study (the gold standard in research).

There are many confounding factors. For one, consider the type of animal — does seafood cause the same issues as red meat, for example?

We don’t yet know the whole story here.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes heart disease and the source of protein is a major confounding factor.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein source

A new study in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) looks not only at protein intake, but where people got their protein from.

More than 131,000 people were asked:

how much protein they ate; and

if it came from animals or plants.

This study took over 35 years to do (starting in the 1980s).

What they found:

Eating more animal protein was associated with a higher risk of death… if you were also doing something else that was a risk factor.

Such as:

smoking

being overweight

not exercising

drinking alcohol

history of high blood pressure

low intake of whole grains, fiber, and fruits and vegetables

Eating more plant protein was found to be associated with lower risk of early death.

What does this mean?

You might think at first glance that you should eat less animal protein, since this study seems to say that animal protein is bad for you.

But there’s more to it.

If you’re doing everything else “right”, then eating more animal protein doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Likely, it’s not the animal protein on its own but a lot of lifestyle things that come with eating more animal protein.

For instance, this study began in the 80s. At that time, nearly every doctor told their patients to eat less fat and meat, and to avoid eggs.

So if you were a somewhat health-conscious person, then you’d likely be eating less animal protein compared to someone who was less health-conscious (or if you went against your doctor’s advice) — but you’d also likely be engaging in a bunch of other health-supporting decisions and activities.

The problem with these types of studies, called correlational studies, is that you can never be sure whether the associations are caused by one onto the other or if they’re simply happening at the same time.

Protein quality matters

Most people think about how much protein, but they don’t think all that much about the quality of the protein they’re eating.

There are huge differences in the chemical makeup of a given protein source, and how valuable that protein is nutritionally. The higher a protein’s quality, the more easily it can give your body the amino acids it needs to grow, repair and maintain your body.

The two big factors that make a protein high or low quality are:

Digestibility:

How easy is it to digest?

How much do you digest — and absorb and use?

Amino acid composition:

What amino acids is it made of?

A high-quality protein has a good ratio of essential amino acids, and allows our body to use them effectively.

Amino acid composition is more important than digestibility.

You can have way more protein than you need, but if the protein you’re eating is low in an important amino acid (known as the limiting amino acid), it causes a bottleneck that stops everything else from working (or at least slows things down).

High-quality proteins have more limiting amino acids, which means the bottleneck is lessened and our bodies can use that protein source better.

Let’s take a deeper look: Measuring protein’s worth

Scientists use many ways to calculate protein quality, or how well we might digest, absorb, and use a given protein.

Here are a couple.

Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

PDCAAS is calculated using a ratio of limiting amino acids and a factor of true digestibility to give you a value that lets you know how much of a given protein is digestible.

The higher the score, the higher the quality of protein.

PDCAAS is the current gold standard for measuring protein quality, but there are a few other protein quality scoring methods that we cover in the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification program.

Indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO)

When we don’t have enough of a particular indispensable amino acid, then all the other amino acids, including that indispensable one, will be oxidized (i.e. essentially wasted) rather than used for stuff like repairing tissues.

It’s kind of like a team sport: You can’t play without the goalie, so all the players sit around twiddling their thumbs, even though they’re all great players in their own right.

But if we’re getting enough of that particular amino acid, then we won’t see all that oxidation. We have a goalie and the rest of the players can play.

So, you want the IAAO score to be low, indicating that all your amino acids are doing their jobs to rebuild you.

Thus far, the IAAO method seems like a very useful way to judge the metabolic availability of amino acids from different protein-containing foods, and to determine total protein requirements for all kinds of people.

New assessment techniques like IAAO are giving us a more precise idea of protein use, which means that we may see recommendations change in future.

Most likely, based on these recent findings, the RDA for protein will increase — i.e. doctors may tell us to eat more protein.

“Complete” and “incomplete” proteins

Back in the day, scientists used to talk about “complete” and “incomplete” proteins.

If you had a plant-based diet (i.e. vegetarian or vegan), you were told that you had to eat a mix of incomplete proteins (i.e. protein from a variety of plants) at each meal in order to meet your needs.

We now know this isn’t true.

As long as you eat a mix of different protein sources, you’ll get all the amino acids you need. No need for mealtime protein algebra to make sure you’re getting all your amino acids.

That being said, many plant-based sources are less protein-dense than animal sources. So if you choose not to eat animal products, you’ll have to work a little harder to get more protein from a wide variety of plant sources to make up the difference and meet your protein needs.

Animal vs. plant proteins

More and more, it seems that where you get your protein has a huge impact on your health.

Eating a high-protein plant-based diet improves health outcomes compared to low-protein diets and high-protein animal-based diets. Again, it comes down to the quality of your protein more than how much protein you’re eating.

If you’re a diehard carnivore, no worries — just add some more plant protein to your diet. Diversity is good. Hug some lentils today.

Why might you eat MORE protein?

Since we need protein to grow, maintain, and repair our tissues, hormones and immune system, there are times we need more protein.

The standard RDA of 0.8 g/kg is great if you’re sedentary and not building or repairing your tissue.

But you may need more protein if you are:

physically active, either through workouts or your job

injured or sick

not absorbing protein normally

pregnant / breastfeeding

younger (and growing)

older (and potentially losing lean mass)

Higher protein diets can also:

lower blood pressure;

improve glucose regulation;

improve blood cholesterol; and

improve other indicators of cardiometabolic health.

Win all around.

Here are some specific scenarios that might call for more protein.

Protein for athletes

Athletes and active people should eat more protein, but we don’t know exactly how much more.

The current recommendations vary from 1.2 to 2.2 g/ kg of body weight.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition says a range of 1.4-2.0 g/kg is safe and may help with recovering from exercise.

It looks like 2.2 g/kg (1g/lb of body weight) is the highest recommendation, but this shouldn’t be confused with the idea that more than 2.2 g/kg is unsafe.

More may not be necessary, but there is little evidence that more is unsafe.

Protein for aging

As you get older, you lose lean mass — both muscle and bone. This affects how long you live, as well as how functional and healthy that life is.

New research shows that most older people, particularly women over 65, need more protein than the current recommendations to slow down muscle loss.

Experts now recommend over 2.0 g/kg of body weight for people older than 65.

Protein for building muscle

The more protein in your muscles, the bigger and stronger your muscles can get.

Bodybuilders have long known that there is an “anabolic window” after a workout (24-48 hours) during which muscles are especially greedy for amino acids.

So, if you’d like to build muscle, make sure you eat a protein-rich meal within a few hours after training. Some advanced folks also like to add branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) or essential amino acids (EAAs) as a during-workout or after-workout supplement.

Here, it seems that a fast-digesting animal protein supplement (whey) is better at getting your body to make more muscle compared to plant-based protein (soy). Of course, you can also just eat “real food” after working out.

Protein for losing fat

Eating protein helps with losing fat, for a few reasons.

1. When you eat more protein, you tend to feel fuller longer.

Protein stimulates the release of satiety (stop-eating) hormones in the gut. So when you eat protein, you naturally tend to eat less, without feeling hungry.

(You can test this theory if you want. Go and try to eat an entire plain skinless chicken, or a few pounds of lean fish.)

2. Protein makes your body work to digest it.

Not all nutrients take the same energy to digest. Fat and carbohydrates are pretty easy for your body to digest and absorb, but protein takes more energy to digest and absorb.

If you eat 100 calories of protein, you’ll only use about 70 calories of it. (This thermic, or heat-producing, effect of protein is why you sometimes get the “meat sweats” after a big protein-heavy meal.) 3. Protein also helps you hang on to lean mass while you’re losing fat.

When you’re in a significant energy deficit (i.e. eating less than you burn), your body tries to throw out everything — fat, muscle, bone, hormones, etc. — all the stuff you need. It doesn’t tend to throw out just fat and keep muscle… unless you eat lots of protein.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein, lean mass, and energy restriction

A recent study at McMaster University in Canada explored what would happen if people who were on a very low-calorie diet (about 40 percent less than normal energy needs), ate a lot of protein, and worked out hard.

For 4 weeks, a group of young men in their 20s were basically starved, but on a high-protein diet — about 2.4 g/kg.

So, for instance, a 200 lb (91 kg), relatively active young man whose energy needs would normally be 3000 calories per day might get:

1800 calories per day (40 percent less than normal)

218 grams of protein per day (2.4 x 91 kg)

This means that out of those 1800 calories per day, about 48 percent of them were from protein.

The men trained hard — lifting weights and doing high-intensity intervals 6 days a week.

After 4 weeks, on average:

The men gained about 1.2 kg (2.6 lb) of lean body mass (LBM).

They lost about 4.8 kg (10.5 lb) of fat.

The fact that they lost fat isn’t surprising, though that amount of fat loss in 4 weeks is pretty impressive.

What is surprising is that they gained LBM.

There was a control group, who ate more of a normal-protein, low-energy diet — about 1.2 grams of protein per kg (so, for our 200 lb / 91 kg man, that would be around 109 grams per day). This group, on average:

Gained 0.1 kg (0.2 lb) of LBM

Lost 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) of fat

This study was only 4 weeks long, and on a specific population group under close supervision, but it’s a cool experiment that suggests protein might be able to do some nifty things even under difficult and demanding conditions.

It’s particularly useful because it’s a randomized controlled trial. In other words, it’s not a food questionnaire where you try to remember what you ate last year — it’s a direct comparison of two similar groups whose food parameters are being closely monitored.

We don’t recommend a highly restrictive, high-protein diet combined with a Spartan-style workout plan as a long-term strategy, but if you want to try something crazy for 4 weeks, see if you can replicate these results!

Why might you eat LESS protein?

Protein and longevity

Everybody is looking for the elixir of life; from 17th-century chemists to Monty Python.

And for years, living in a semi-starvation state has been shown to increase lifespan in nearly every animal from flatworms to rats to humans.

Looking into it more closely, it looks like restricting protein rather than calories, is the key to longevity.

Protein is anabolic: It triggers your body to build more tissues and other body bits. This is great if you want to build muscle, but there’s seems to be a downside: Eating protein triggers the body to release and make more IGF-1. In some people, this decreases longevity.

There’s a lot of work on lower IGF-1 and longer lifespan in animals (flatworms, rats and mice mostly) and some in people.

But it’s more complicated than saying that less protein leads to less IGF-1, which means living longer. There’s a genetic component. Some people do better with more IGF-1. In their case, more IGF-1 later in life actually increase lifespan.

And in terms of quality of life and functional longevity, a higher protein intake is probably still better. A semi-starved body may indeed live longer… but probably not better.

Age-related muscle loss alone could have serious consequences for metabolic health and mobility.

So: It’s difficult to say whether this is a good idea, despite interesting data. We probably need more research to say for sure.

What this means for you

If you’re a “regular person” who just wants to be healthy and fit:

Follow Precision Nutrition’s portion recommendations. We suggest a portion of lean protein at every meal, to keep that protein pool full and ready to help your body repair and rebuild.

Try different kinds of protein. Expand your repertoire and menu. This will help you get the best range of nutrients from real food.

If you’re over 65, eat more protein. This helps slow down age-related muscle loss, which improves long-term health and quality of life.

If you’re a plant-based eater: Plan your meals carefully. Without animal products, you’ll probably have to work a little harder to get enough protein. You might consider adding a plant-based protein powder to help yourself out.

If you’re an athlete:

Follow our PN portion recommendations. We suggest a portion of lean protein at every meal, to keep that protein pool full and ready to help your body repair and rebuild. You may need more than this if you are especially active.

Boost your protein intake around exercise. Eating protein around workouts may improve your body’s response to exercise. If you can tolerate whey protein, that’s one of the best options. Or, stick with real food.

Increase plant-based protein sources. The more the merrier.

If you’re a fitness professional / nutrition coach:

Understand the basics of a high-protein diet. Know when, how, and for whom high-protein diets might not be appropriate. If in doubt, learn more from trusted medical and research sources — which, as always, does not include random people of the Internets.

Help people understand as much as they need to understand in order to make an informed choice, with your guidance. Your clients will likely have questions. Prepare your answers in advance.

Refer out as needed. If you think a client might have an underlying health condition, work with their doctor to make sure they don’t have kidney or liver disease that a high-protein diet should be avoided.

Stay within your scope of practice. Remember: Unless you’re licensed for medical nutrition therapy, you’re not authorized to prescribe any type of diet for medical conditions. Don’t tell your client with kidney disease that they should go on a high or low diet to treat their disease.

If you’re a coach, or you want to be…

Learning how to coach clients, patients, friends, or family members through healthy eating and lifestyle changes—in a way that’s evidenced-based and personalized for their unique body, goals, and preferences—is both an art and a science.

If you’d like to learn more about both, consider the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. The next group kicks off shortly.

What’s it all about?

The Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification is the world’s most respected nutrition education program. It gives you the knowledge, systems, and tools you need to really understand how food influences a person’s health and fitness. Plus the ability to turn that knowledge into a thriving coaching practice.

Developed over 15 years, and proven with over 100,000 clients and patients, the Level 1 curriculum stands alone as the authority on the science of nutrition and the art of coaching.

Whether you’re already mid-career, or just starting out, the Level 1 Certification is your springboard to a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results.

[Of course, if you’re already a student or graduate of the Level 1 Certification, check out our Level 2 Certification Master Class. It’s an exclusive, year-long mentorship designed for elite professionals looking to master the art of coaching and be part of the top 1% of health and fitness coaches in the world.]

Interested? Add your name to the presale list. You’ll save up to 33% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following presale list, which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to boost their credentials and are ready to commit to getting the education they need. So we’re offering a discount of up to 33% off the general price when you sign up for the presale list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the certification program twice per year. Due to high demand, spots in the program are limited and have historically sold out in a matter of hours. But when you sign up for the presale list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready for a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results… this is your chance to see what the world’s top professional nutrition coaching system can do for you.

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References

Click here to view the information sources referenced in this article.

Dietary reference intakes for energy, carbohydrate, fiber, fat, fatty acids, cholesterol, protein, and amino acids. Chapter 10 Protein and Amino Acids (pp 589-768). 2005.National Academies Press.

Antonio J, Ellerbroek A, Silver T, Orris S, Scheiner M, Gonzalez A, Peacock CA.A high protein diet (3.4 g/kg/d) combined with a heavy resistance training program improves body composition in healthy trained men and women—a follow-up investigation. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2015 Oct 20;12:39.

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[sage-nebula]

@ryttu3k --- So the other night we were talking, and you asked me how Lusamine treats the twins in To Devour the Sun. I answered, but I felt I didn’t explain it very well---and then I was looking through my WIPs folder and found that I had actually written up a few scenes ages ago. This is unfinished, as you’ll see, but it still gives quite a solid idea of what Lusamine’s relationship with her children is like in this AU (and how it differs from canon, given the completely different circumstances, given that this AU was conceived and started before the games released).

Writing under the cut.

- - -

“By now you are both fully aware, thanks to Gladion’s little . . . incident,” their mother paused, and directed a pointed look at Gladion, who puckered his lips in a scowl and turned his eyes to his lap, “that you---that we---are not human.”

Lillie put her hand on Gladion’s arm, hoping to take his hand to provide a measure of comfort, but he didn’t move or meet her eyes. “But I . . . we . . . we put him---we fixed . . . him,” she said, and she looked back to their mother, who continued to gaze at them with a stare Lillie couldn’t read, but made her feel a little nervous. “He’s back now, he’s better now, so . . . everything’s better, right?”

“The incident was resolved, but I wouldn’t say that he was ‘fixed,’ because he was never ‘broken’ to begin with. Well.” Their mother sighed, and brushed her hair away from her face. It swept right back down to cover her eye again, and this time she didn’t bother to move it back. “He lost his humanoid form, but that is to be expected. Direct contact with pokémon causes a transmutation effect on our bodies. It can’t be helped. It’s why I explicitly told you to never touch them.”

“You didn’t tell us why---” Gladion muttered, and Lillie quickly took his hand and squeezed it. He closed his mouth, but their mother’s eyes narrowed.

“Backtalk is still backtalk even if it’s beneath your breath, Gladion,” she said sharply. “It’s unacceptable, and you know it. Do it again and your discipline won’t be verbal, understand?”

Gladion was silent, and so Lillie squeezed his hand again as a cue for him to answer. He worked his jaw, but ground out, “Yes, Mom.”

“‘Mother,’” their mother corrected, but she smiled all the same. “Good. Now, let’s return to the original topic of discussion. You both know, as I said, that we are not human.”

“But I---!” Lillie tried again, and this time it was Gladion’s turn to squeeze her hand in warning. She swallowed as her mother’s eyes flickered to her. “I . . . I don’t understand, Mother. How . . . why . . . we’ve always been human, haven’t we? And Gladion, he---he had a---there was an . . . an accident . . . but he’s all better now, he’s human again now, so---”

“He has regained his humanoid form, but that doesn’t make him human.” Their mother leaned back against the island counter, and folded her arms loosely across her chest. “The particular construct of this dimension has a desirable effect upon our genetic makeup, allowing us to assume two forms. One is a humanoid form, and the other is our beast form---or, as some schools of thought would have it, our true form, given that it is our default in most dimensions. Truthfully, it should have been our default in this one, but humans, simple beings that they are, would mistake us for pokémon if we stayed in our beast forms. They don’t have the intelligence to know the difference. As a result, I deemed it necessary for us to assume our humanoid forms around the clock, and genetically modified both of you when you were infants to ensure that this humanoid form would be your default. Provided you don’t come in contact with pokémon again, or experience any extreme distress, you both should be fine.”

Gladion’s hand had gone slack around Lillie’s, and Lillie couldn’t muster any strength for her own, either. No matter how many lessons and Science Days they had sat through---no matter many books Lillie had read, simply because she had wanted to---her mother’s words left her head feeling light and fuzzy, as if she had spun around in rapid circles with her eyes wide open.

“So we’re . . . we’re not human, but we’re not pokémon, either?” she asked.

“Correct,” their mother said. “Though pokémon are, genetically speaking, closer to us than humans are. We’re still superior beings even to them, of course, but I’m confident that . . .” She paused, and smiled. “Well. We can talk about that in a little bit.”

“What about everyone else?” Gladion asked, and he looked up at their mother for the first time since sitting down. “What about Aunt Wicke, and Faba?”

Their mother raised an eyebrow. “What about them?”

“Are they . . . whatever we are, too?”

Their mother laughed. “Oh, no. No, no, no. They’re human. We’re the only three of our kind in this world at present. All of the humans you’ve met are simply that---humans. Nothing more, nothing less.” She paused, and then said in a slightly cooler voice, “Speaking of which, I want you both to stop referring to her as ‘Aunt’ Wicke immediately. She is not your aunt. She is not family. She is human, and you need to regard her as such.”

“Won’t that hurt her feelings?” Lillie asked quietly.

Their mother scoffed, her lip curling. “She’s human. It doesn’t matter.”

An uncomfortable feeling, like her insides were trying to squeeze her heart to pieces, wormed in Lillie’s gut. Aunt Wicke had only ever been kind to Lillie and Gladion; she baked sweets for them, she taught them, and though she helped out their mother on Science Days she was always gentler and gave out colorful bandages with fun patterns instead of the plain ones whenever they had blood drawn. The thought of making Aunt Wicke sad made a cold sensation slide down Lillie’s back, but if Lillie had learned anything at all in the past eight years, it was that her mother could not be argued with.

“So if---if we aren’t---if I’m not a human or a pokémon either, does that mean that I’m the same as Gladie?” Lillie asked.

“Yes and no,” their mother said. “You’re one of the same beings as him and me, but your beast form is different. The two of you are fraternal twins, after all.”

“Oh.” Lillie looked over at Gladion, to see how he felt about this news, but he still had his eyes trained on their mother, his hand once again gripping Lillie’s tightly.

“If humans are so bad and stupid, then why do you have so many here?” he asked. “If Aunt Wicke---”

“‘Wicke.’ What did I just finish telling you?” their mother interrupted.

“---Faba, and the rest of them are so stupid, why have them here?”

The look their mother fixed on Gladion was cool and unamused, but when she spoke, her voice was even. “We may be superior beings, but particularly in our humanoid forms we each only have two hands. As inferior as humans are, they are still useful for something, and I’m not one to turn away an opportunity when it presents itself. Forming Aether Paradise and staffing it full of humans was the optimal way to ensure that our plan succeeds. As such, Wicke, Faba, and the others are here because they are necessary.” Their mother shrugged. “To a point, at least.”

“And do they know what we are?”

“They do on a need-to-know basis. Wicke and Faba are aware, as they both involved in our most intimate operations. Most of the staff, however, does not.” Their mother smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes, and Lillie squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. “Do make sure it stays that way.”

Gladion looked back down at his lap, and from what Lillie could see of his profile, she could tell he was biting back a response. For her part, Lillie said nothing, but rubbed her thumb along the side of his hand.

“Now that you’ve asked your questions,” their mother said, taking advantage of the silence that had fallen, “let us return, for once and for all, to the original topic of discussion. As I said previously, none of us are human, and we are not pokémon either. We are actually part of a superior race of beings that hail from a dimension ordinarily separate from this one. Unfortunately, as it happens, our true dimension has hit a bit of a . . .” She waved her hand. “. . . rough spell in the past several decades. Famine, war, and other such nonsense has done a number on our population. We need expansion. We need growth. And that is why we are here.”

“What do you mean?” Lillie asked.

“Have you wondered, at any point during this conversation or before it, why pokémon are superior to humans?” their mother asked. She began to pace before them, each step slow and deliberate, but her gaze never left their faces. “They’re still inferior to us, of course, but they’re closer to us than humans are. Have you wondered why that is?”

Lillie and Gladion glanced at each other for only a moment before they looked back and nodded. Their mother smiled.

“Humans are incapable of further evolution---or at least, they are incapable of spontaneous evolution,” she said. “For humans, evolution takes place over millions of years. They can trace their roots back to primates and other similar creatures, but as they are now they are the same at the start of their life cycle as they are at the end. Their growth is slow, and their evolution is even slower still. Even with the transmutations we can accomplish via alchemy, the genetic makeup of humans doesn’t allow for further transmutations. They could never become like us.

“But pokémon . . .” Their mother smiled broadly, and finally turned her eyes toward the large monitor positioned along the wall and all of the graphs and data upon it that Lillie didn’t understand. “Pokémon are a different story.

“You see, pokémon are capable of instantaneous evolution. When it is time for a pokémon to evolve, they simply do, changing size and shape before your very eyes. In most cases this is permanent, but there are others where it is not. Pokémon, extraordinary creatures that they are, can at times achieve temporary evolutions under the right conditions. Their genetic makeup allows for that. They are similar to us, and I’m confident---no, I’m certain that we could use alchemical transmutations to further alter their genetics in a permanent capacity so that they do ascend to the same level we exist on.” She turned back to them, beaming, her teeth visible between her parted lips. “We will transform every pokémon on this planet into one of us and bring them back to our dimension. That will help to alleviate the crisis, if not solve it altogether. My name will be honored above all else.”

[kobaltwolffiction]

The Beat of Your Heart

A/N: I’ve been super lazy and Overwatch has not helped me write any faster, so if I miss any prompts I’ll try to make them up later. Hope everyone is having a good start to Zelink week! Here is prompt #1

-----

A midnight wind tousled the hair of a numbed princess, sole ruler and solemn guardian of a blackened land. The War of Darkness has come and gone, leaving only whispers of Twilight behind, but a new, unpredicted war has come. Neighboring kingdoms outside of Hyrule have severed all trade agreements due to the previous war, frighted of the black shroud that consumed Zelda’s land, and tensions of sorting out fairer trading system to aid Hyrule’s recovery rose. On top of that, a merciless drought brought upon famine, driving back support from the Zora, Goron, and Ordonian villages as they struggled to keep their own alive. Lack of supplies from Hyrule led to more blames placed on Princess Zelda’s head until full-on war broke out.

But amidst the pain and unforgiving misfortune, there was one bond that Zelda clung to for dear life, never to be broken.

A tight, angry feeling scratched at the pit of Zelda’s stomach, but she refused to feed herself anything extra. No need for comfort any longer. Her slender legs dangled between the rails of her balcony, welcoming the chilling breeze that tried to bite her through her nightgown. Silver and kind, the thin slate of the moon cast a gentle light, bouncing off of her fair skin until she glowed like a blessed star upon the earth. However, no one was around to admire the sight that only the moon could see.

Her thoughts, as always when alone, were preoccupied with one soul that walked among the bravest of men. The news had been received at dawn that the general’s main faction had been struck down.

“Are you telling me they are all dead?” Zelda asked, calmer than she had expected from herself.

“Potentially… A large amount of bodies have been recovered, and with the fire that swept our camp, there is no telling how many more are left to piece together when we get a chance. A lot of our best men were stationed there. We have made the decision to fall back to just outside of Castletown to protect what we have left,” a scout reported. “We suspect they are plotting to raid town sometime tomorrow and are currently evacuating the citizens who are willing to follow a party to Kakariko. If you come with me I can--”

“No. I will stay here. Go, do the rest of your duties.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Zelda hesitated, but urged before the scout left, “You have no word on the location of the general.”

He swallowed. “No Your Highness, I’m afraid his tent was on the side of camp that was ambushed first. A lot of that was completely destroyed. If anything he was asleep and didn’t feel any--”

“Leave, please. Go back to your men,” she hissed.

Biting his tongue, the scout scurried away.

A soft rain shimmered the night air, but Zelda remained numb to its effects. Her thoughts wandered from the raid on her soldiers to the potential death that awaited her in the coming day. Her kingdom was shattering, her people were starving, and the last thing she had was to either surrender once more to save what she had left, or stand tall against the blade of whoever decided to end her and take her place. The royal bloodline would diminish, and Hyrule would be no more.

“You’re going to catch a cold out here.”

Zelda’s heart stopped. Too afraid to turn around and be disappointed in her mind playing games, she waited.

“Zelda?”

Breaking the spell, she stood and spun around, teary-eyed and unsure what to believe. She met the gaze of a battered man, covered in burnt, filthy, bloody clothing and unintentionally reaching for the sword slung across his back. A wild, dazed expression in his face struggled to make out the emotions of relief and happiness he began to feel through the pain.

“Link?” she sputtered, unsure if the rain or her tears clouded her vision. She ran to him, hooking her arms around his neck and sobbing shamelessly into his ear. “I heard the news of the ambush and assumed the worst,” she said after collecting a few words through her hysteria.

“It wasn’t good, Zel. I narrowly escaped and by the time I would have made it back to my men, they had already bailed from camp and regrouped somewhere outside of Castle Town. I finally made it back to them this evening but didn’t stay. I told them I would be back at dawn and if not, assume I’m not to return. I had to see you, make sure you were still here…” he trailed off, trailing his fingers down her neck and observing every feature of her face as if she were a ghost.

“I am here, waiting for whatever is to come tomorrow. This may be the end of my rule, Link. I can feel it. Hyrule is falling apart. If I was not the sole holder of our bloodline left I would be out on the lines next to you…”

“Nonsense. I would never allow that. My princess is not allowed on the battlefield while I’m still alive” he grumbled, somehow ignoring the more important half of her statement.

She smiled and puffed a small laugh at him.

“In all seriousness, I made a promise to you and I plan to uphold that.”

“Link, situations like this are impossible to completely control. You cannot promise me a victory when it is three hundred men against three thousand… We may have to accept this defeat and surrender to save what we have left. Huh. Surrendering. It seems to be what I do best,” she scoffed.

“Oh no. We’ve been over that a thousand times. You did what was right for Hyrule years ago and you are continuing to do that even now.”

Zelda smiled again and leaned back to get a good look at his face, just to take in a beautiful sight that had left months ago, but her smirk was wiped away when she saw the weathered, tired expression he held under the crusted blood on his face.

Noticing her realization, he waved it off, saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not all mine,” and bit back the rest of his words when he understood they didn’t sound any more comforting. “I’m okay, really.”

Saying nothing to avoid more tears, she gently took his hand and brought him off of the damp balcony, through her bed chambers, and into a washroom. “I need some supplies,” she stated. “Give me just a moment.”

A quarter of an hour later, she re entered the premise with bandages, stitching, different types of creams, and a jar of potion. Link jumped awake, sheepishly smiling after realizing he had dozed off sitting up. “Zel, no one knows I’m here. Despite everything going on, we are merely in a courtship. I don’t think your council would take me being alone with you in your quarters too kindly.”

“Of all things to worry about,” she muttered to herself, “he worries for my reputation.”

“What?”

“If you have not noticed already, the castle is nearly empty. A lot of people are evacuating before the war enters town,” she announced, knowing what was coming next.

“And you didn’t go with them?” he huffed.

“You know that would be ridiculous.”

“Not if you’re the last one in your family!”

“That does not matter if I have no kingdom to rule. I am more that just the last of my line. I cannot run from my fate, Link. My people would see me as a coward and I would be no more fit to rule than any old farmer! I have already faced scrutiny for my previous surrender and I am willing to do it again to save lives. Leaving would be the fool’s choice.”

He paused, avoiding her gaze, “Or leaving would give you the chance to fight another day. But I’m just any old ranch kid…”

“I did not mean it like that,” she said, regretting her words. “I apologize.”

“I know, I know. We are both under a lot of pressure is all.”

“All I have to say is I will try my best to stay alive and keep as many people alive along the way as I can,” Zelda stated solemnly.

Link smiled. “I know you will. I’ve always been proud to call you my ruler. This land doesn’t deserve you.”

“Only you would think such a thing. Now,” she swallowed, avoiding eye contact. “Everything off but your undershorts. I need to patch you up.” She began to run hot water in the bath.

“W-what?” he said, but obeyed, removing his stained Hero's clothes until he got to the tunic. Having a hard time bending his arms the way they should go, he muttered that he needed some assistance.

Zelda gently helped him pull off the rest, while having a difficult time looking at the pain in his face. His torso and arms we're riddled with small cuts and bruises, fortunately only one of them seem to be bleeding a little the rest just needed cleaning and some paste. It pained her to see him this way but he was alive and that's what was most important.

“You sure you're not worried about somebody finding us like this?” Link asked.

Zelda chuckled. “We both know our self control is too high to do anything by ourselves and like I said, there is barely anyone left here. They all expect me to be asleep. With whatever is to come, if we do get caught in the same room, I honestly do not care what people think of me right now.” Dipping a cloth into the hot water, she cleaned away the spot of the deepest cut and began to sew it shut. Link held still but his face betrayed his discomfort. Soon enough she was done stitching his wound and lowered him into the bath, taking care to clean each cut and wipe away the blood and dirt. Her heart beat so loudly under her fluster to work with him in this way that she was afraid he would hear her nerves, however he became so relaxed, he nearly dozed off in her care. Clean, he climbed out to let her bandage him up, finally noticing her blush even in the dim candlelight. He said nothing but smirked until he realized she was only wearing her nightclothes. No jewels, no dress. Just her own beauty that he had missed.

Finally breaking the awkward silence, he asked, “Since when have you become good at tending to wounds?”

“My mother was adamant at making sure I had some skills outside of my royal duties, including some basic doctoring. She even taught me about this formula that I am applying to your cuts to help them heal faster with less scarring than usual. I also want you the drink some of this potion please.”

Link drank about half and handed it back, visibly improved in many ways.

“How is the pain?” Zelda asked, trying her hardest not to look him up and down unnecessarily.

“Honest truth or a good answer?” he grinned sleepily.

She just shook her head and grabbed his hand.

“Where to now?”

“Sleep.”

“But I don't want to leave yet.”

“You do not have to.”

He went silent and followed her, curious. After she locked the door, he said, “I can sleep on the floor, no problem.”

“No! Just come lie down. We are not going to get caught cuddling, I promise,” she urged, getting a slight kick out of his nerves. “You have a lot of respect, you know? Not many men have that. Not many women do either.” Zelda lept into bed, a strange sense of giddiness worming it’s way into her jumble of emotions.

Link crawled under the covers, but asked, “What if I get your fancy poultice all over your nice sheets?”

Zelda sighed, leaning up to kiss him, silencing him.

He immediately relaxed, understanding her answer. Carefully wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her into him and kissed her in return, firm and longing. The general pulled the covers over them and sighed, finally home.

Zelda scooted down to rest her head on his bicep, making sure not to put pressure on any injured spots. “I have missed you so.”

“And I, you.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head, taking in her warm, familiar scent. “I wish this night could last forever.”

“I wish it would end, along with this war, so we can do this every night for the rest of our lives someday.”

“Now that is an even better wish.”

Zelda felt him sink further into relaxation, causing her to ease into a pre-sleep drift. Subconsciously, she pressed her face a little further into his chest, physically feeling his heart thud against her lips, the only thing audible besides his breathing.

I was afraid I had lost this, she thought.

A dreamless sleep overtook her, a mere gift following many sleepless nights. She awoke to an empty bed, the key on her dresser slightly moved from where she had put it. Link’s clothing and weapons were gone. A wave of sadness and pride washed over her, knowing he would never abandon his duty, but scared once more of what awaited him in the coming day. The first rays of sunlight peeked through the window, and Zelda began to prepare herself in whatever way possible, for the potential dawn of a new era stood in her wake.

[bravo7251]

The Emerald King

WARNINGS: blood, self harm SPECIAL POV: Jane Doe      Jane was dressed in all her silks and finery for this special occasion. The king had invited every noble in the nation for a grand masquerade. His Majesty hadn’t yet revealed what the occasion was, but being invited to court was a great honor no matter what the reason. Her joy was almost overcoming her, but she kept her composure. After all, one must act like like a lady, especially in front of the king.      Jane took a deep breath, in and out. “I’m ready,” she nodded to the palace servants. The massive mahogany doors opened inwards to the Great Hall and a fanfare of trumpets announced her arrival. A few heads turned, but the banquet hall was already filled with noblemen and their wives, so most of them paid no attention to a new arrival. She approached the king, back straight as a lance, chin up, but eyes on the ground in front of her. She was as excited as she was terrified. When the polished oak of the royal table appeared in front of her, she dropped into a deep curtsy.       “Thank you for the invitation, Your Majesty,” Jane said, trying to keep her voice from trembling, “It is an honor.”      The king chuckled and beckoned her to rise. “No need for such formalities,” he laughed, “Eat, drink, enjoy the festivities!”      She lifted her eyes to look at the king and what she saw surprised her. Jane had expected a round-bellied man covered in gold and finery, but instead he was lean and dressed simply and cleanly. His only jewel was an emerald the size of a quail’s egg, run through with rivulets of black which hung about his next on a tarnished silver chain.      She bobbed another curtsy and stepped away from the royal table, attempting to hide her expression of surprise in a goblet of wine. That’s the jewel of legend! I saw it with my own eyes! Every child is told its story. When the king was but a prince, her mind recited automatically, he went hunting big game. He came upon  a sickly buck with black horns, pelt a vile shade of green, and empty grey eyes that crackled and buzzed. Killing the vessel infuriated the demon inside and the young prince would have been taken were it not for a witch who was hunting that very demon. She locked it away in the prince’s emerald, which at the time shone a pure, brilliant green, and placed a powerful seal on it. The witch told him rivers of black would spread through the gem as the demon slowly ate away at the seal and when it finally did break, the thing would take the body of its carrier. Rumor has it His Majesty hasn’t let the jewel leave his breast since that day, not even to sleep nor to have the silver be cleaned. She chuckled to herself. Mother always used to tell me if I misbehaved the demon would break free of the seal and come for me. Jane had always thought these to be children’s tales, but seeing the emerald for herself gave her doubts. An enthusiastic entertainer broke her from her thoughts.      “Why the long face, my lady?” he cheered. The magician produced a vibrant purple iris from seemingly nowhere and presented it to Jane with a bow. This brought a smile to her face as she accepted it with equal flair. She wasn’t aware the servants were participating in the masquerade, but the spectacle brought her joy. This one’s mask was a cat with the suits of cards etched onto its forehead. “Have a lovely evening, madam,” he chirped. Jane tucked the flower behind her ear as the nice man skipped of to entertain another guest.      Now that she was alone for a moment, she had time to observe the guests of the royal table. The first one she noticed was a man sitting beside His Majesty who appeared to be a king himself. He wore fiery red velvets and had a squirrel embroidered in gold on his heavy, fur-trimmed cape. His mask was the face of a bear. The second was Sir Jason. Jane had been summoned last year for his ceremony in which he was named the bravest knight in the kingdom and official protector of the people. His attitude was bubbly and excitable, quite in contrast with the grisly, war-torn man you would expect to have that kind of title. His mask bore resemblance to the face markings of a raccoon. Whatever the occasion is, it must be momentous to warrant the presence of another king and the people’s protector resting from his work.      The royal ensemble prepared their instruments as the announcer declared that dancing would soon commence. A blush came to Jane’s cheeks as she realized she had not come with anybody and therefore had no one to dance with, how embarrassing. Just as the musicians were about to put their bows to the strings, a man approached her.      “May I have this first dance m’lady?” he asked in a funny drawl. His mustache is pink. Jane stifled her laughter and, after a moment of consideration, accepted his offer. He has a pistol at his hip and is obviously hiding a dagger in the jacket of his suit, but alas, an odd partner is better than no partner. He placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her to the floor. Jane began to worry why he did not have a partner of his own. Is he a man not to be seen with? Her eyes darted around, but nobody seemed to be paying them much attention.      “Anything wrong, my dear?” he asked with a hint of concern in his voice.      “No, nothing at all, sir,” she responded politely. Jane stopped glancing  around the room and focused on the steps of the dance she had been performing automatically thus far. “What brings you to this celebration?” she asked, trying to make small talk.      “Why I’m here?” he said in what she had come to assume was his people’s accent, “Well, I almost wasn’t invited, something about ‘You’re not supposed to stab the luggage boy’, but the bastard squirrel king seems to like me so here I am anyways. I do love parties, though this one could use a little more groove, if you know what I mean.” Jane became instantly uncomfortable at the comment on the luggage boy. She looked at him quizzically about that last statement.      “Ah, right, we haven’t gotten there quite yet,” the strange man realized, his waxed, pink mustache dancing peculiarly on his upper lip as he spoke. Jane spent the rest of the dance listening to him ramble about idle violence and many other things she did not understand, though she did enjoy his story about service as a Colonel in the king’s army. When the dance ended, the gentlemen bowed and the ladies curtsied, hers perhaps more brisk than others. She escaped to wine and hors d’oueveres before he had a chance to start another thought.      “I apologize for my friend. He is considered our most eccentric nobleman,” a voice came from behind her. Jane turned to face the man who spoke after patting her lips with a linen lace napkin.      “Oh, it’s quite alright,” she laughed nervously. He was handsome. His pressed black suit held a bruiseless white rose on its lapel and a speckless silken kerchief lay neatly folded in his breast pocket. His sleek, black hair was combed back to display his prominent widow’s peak and he held an elegant cane topped with a silver knob. Jane was so terribly curious, she indulged in a question.      “Do you think the legend of His Majesty’s jewel is true?” she asked in a hushed voice. She knew it was wildly improper to ask, but she was simply too curious.      “I guarantee it to be true,” he pronounced matter-of-factly, gesturing with his hands as he spoke, “In fact, my sister was the one to seal the vile thing away. Sadly, she was lynched only a year later for witchcraft.” The man had a sorrowful look in his eyes.      “Oh. I’m sorry for your loss,” Jane said in what she hoped was a comforting and respectful tone.      “All is well,” he sighed, a smile returning to his face, “It was many, many years ago.”      For the first time in her life, Jane looked at her king in pity. He lives every day is fear of a demon. It thrashes in a fragile cage that rests next to his soul and he has no way of knowing when it may escape. That is no way to live. Though he laughs and smiles for his people, he must be the most tired man in the world with both the weight of a demon and a nation on his shoulders.      The announcer declared a second dance as the musicians began to play a waltz. Her partner in conversation became her partner in dance and she admitted to enjoying this one far more than her last. More dancing, chatter, and wine went by as shadows grew longer and longer. The guests did not pause from their entertainment until the sky glowed brilliant hues of orange and pink.      Once all the nobles were seated for supper, a whole-roast boar with gilded tusks was brought to the royal table along with a large knife. Both kings rose from their seats. The entire room went silent.      “Ladies and gentlemen from lands near and far,” the red king bellowed, “His Majesty and I would like to announce the cause for this wondrous gathering that he has so graciously hosted.” He bowed his head and stepped back to allow the owner of the palace to complete the announcement.      “From this day forward, our two great kingdoms shall be in alliance,” the emerald king declared. Gasps and murmurs of excitement rippled through the banquet hall. “Through famine, war, and plague we shall aid one another. In bounty and glory we will share our spoils.” Together, the two kings held the knife aloft.      “Long live the union!” they bellowed in unison, “Long live the kings!”      “Long live the union!” the crowd echoed, “Long live the kings! Long live the kings!” The gathered nobles clapped and cheered as the ceremonial boar was carved. Laughter and merriment was abundant.      Then the emerald broke.      The hall went silent as the grave. Tendrils of black slithered out of the emerald and into the king’s chest. He was frozen in fear. His once regal face now a visage of horror and despair. A single tear trickled down his cheek, leaving an ugly, smoldering scar it its wake. Pitch black oozed through the king’s eyes as the color of his prized gem bled through his irises and hair. His only movement was to pull the knife from the boar’s flesh and press the blade into his own throat. He drew a clean line across his neck, the sound of splitting flesh deafening in the silence of the room. The mutilated king slumped forward onto the table as the crown fell from his head, making a metallic thud on the blood stained tablecloth. His limp hand still clutched the glistening, scarlet knife as a sickening chuckle echoed through the hall. The demon slowly lifted his stolen body from the table as the chuckling grew to maniacal laughter.      “NOTHING gets RID OF ME,” he laughed, a twisted grin on his face, “I AM ETERNAL.” His eyes, glowing green rings in a sea of black, were wide with insanity. His pointed ears and canines made what was once a man look like a feral beast. “His body was WEAK,” the demon growled. The mangled body emitted a broken scream as his ambient din of a crackling buzz intensified. “It’s all your fault,” he seethed with fury, pointing his knife at the horror struck guests. “You just watched as THIS HAPPENED.” He chuckled in his echoing, distorted voice. “Now he’s gone forever.”      Apparitions of the demon screaming, stabbing, and laughing flashed as he grasped the crown lying on the table and placed it on his own head. The demon reveled in the crown, the throne, and the horror he had wrought before uttering four simple words:      "Long live the king."

[yeshua2019sblog]

PASSAGES TAKEN FROM MY VARIOUS READINGS

Switch your attention to the Highest Goal-God the Father.

Do not fear the flesh, nor love it.

If you fear it, it will become your master.

If you love it, it devours and subjugate you.

Rise in the highest eons. If you cannot succeed in this world you will be found outside of God’s love eventually where the real badness is. It is perdition there. That’s why it is good to live that world having not committing sins. We must acquire the resurrection while we live in this world. So that when we strip off the flesh, we may be found in calm, but not walk outside of love. Yet many go astray from the Path.

The Bridal Chamber is neither for animals, nor for men-slaves of passions, nor for women driven by passion. It is for pure women and men who gained spiritual freedom. Then one must learn to enter this Highest Eon by one’s own efforts and stay in it. It is called the birth in it as a Holy Spirit. And one comes to Mergence with the Consciousness dwelling in God. Once you are there, once you feel the peace and calm in there you will never miss anything else again. You will become the Son.

The purified souls become the user of the Divine Energies. The user can absorb divine energy and power directly into their body and use it in various ways.

The true purified soul’s mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. Their souls always yield to purifying light.

One passion includes all others. Purification requires the soul to be pure and clean from our own passions and lusts. The more we purify ourselves, the more we allow for Divine grace to function. When a soul is completely clean from its passion and is totally humbled, then it can experience the grace of God and the fulfillment of all His promises.

If a man thinks only of his own profit and tries to benefit himself at the expense of others, he will incur the hatred of Heaven.

Communism was a gigantic facade, and the reality concealed behind it was the sheer drive for power, for total power as an end in itself. The rest was merely instrumental -- a matter of tactics and some necessary self-restrictions to achieve the desired end. Thus, rationalism was transformed under communism into the idea of slavery.

There’s an increasing sense in our political life that in both party’s politicians call themselves public servants but act like bosses who think that voters work for them. Politicians who jerk around doctors, nurses and health systems call themselves servants, when of course they look more like little kings and queens instructing the grudging peasants in how to arrange their affairs. But in Governments, where the Legislative is in one lasting Assembly always in being, or in one Man, as in Absolute Monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest, from the rest of the Community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking, what they think fit, from the People. Our rulers are theoretically “our” representatives, but they are busy turning us into instruments of projects they keep dreaming up.

Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess or may assume. The public money and public liberty... will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them; distinguished, too, by this tempting circumstance, that they are the instrument, as well as the object of acquisition. With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money.

It is not enough that honest men are appointed Judges. All know the influence of interest on the mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgment is warped by that influence.

Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians, and most sensible governments in the past left moral faults alone. Instead, democratic citizenship in the twenty-first century means receiving a steam of improving “messages” from authority. Some may forgive these intrusions because they are so well intentioned. Who would defend prejudice, debt, or excessive drinking? The point, however, is that our rulers have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in their exercise of authority. They are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. We should never doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step toward totalitarianism.

In fact, it appears that those who have the most unquestioning belief in their own virtue, from the Capitalists to Commununists, are often those who feel entitled to commit, and do commit, the most abhorant acts against those who oppose them or who have different values.

Yeshua was not a rabbi. Yeshua took Maria Magdelena under His marriage certificate for the sole purpose of protecting her life. They never had sexual intercourse nor stayed under the same roof.

Yeshua had no intention of making his name know worldwide as the one who came after him did. He did not want to establish a new religion or a new flow. He was a Juden and wanted to correct the mıstakes his peoples were makıng under the name of religion.

Spiritual truth is eternal and universal: no particular religion or sect can have a monopoly on it. So, never get bigotted on one religion or other. Yeshua did not bring a new religion. He

reminds you the universal truth which is unity and the way to achiving it which is love.

MESSAGES FROM YESHUA

Yeshua told me that: He shouldn’t had taken her (Mary Magdelena) under his name through marrige. He admits he must have sort of weakness for her. But they had never been together as husband and wife. God wouldn’t had allowed that. But, because they had been officially married he had to pay for her penalties there as well. This is valid for every marrige. Men take the responsibly for their wives.

Yeshua said that he had never been to France or to Tibet. He was a Divine Soul among us to show us the straighest and the most illimunated way to Divineness.

He said that His body was not left on Earth.

Yeshua said, ‘’The shroud of turin is fake. The real cotton that had been used faded away and dissolved in time. It is now nowhere.’’

There will be no second coming. I have come and gone many times spiritually and I still come and go when & where it is necessary. But as Yeshua Messiah I will not come again.

There is no end time as you think. There is no devil. There is no armagedon. That will be against the act of free will.

There will be huge natural disasters and the World will change. There will be famine, plaques and floods worldwide. The world population will decrease voliminously. Life styles will change completely.

Do not loose faith. Keep calm till the end. You, humans have acceletated this situation by your greeds. Do not be afraid of dying. Your feelings are very important in your final hours. This affects your passing procedure to the afterlife. Whether you can realize you have died or not. Do not loose your faith at the last minutes. That is very important. I am always with the faithful.

You don’t need a religion to reach me.

All you need is love.

Only with Love in your hearts like little children, you can reach me and God.

These are the steps of stairs.

Love, Me and God.

With Love in your hearts you can reach me.

If you reach me you can reach to God.

I couldn’t teach that to human beings.

You can directly reach me by love.

Declare that to all people.

They don’t need any mediator.

Love God with all you soul, heart and mind and love people as yourself.

All you need is a pure heart full of love.

The germs of true religion originate in the domain of man’s moral consciousness, and they are revealed in the growth of man’s spiritual insight.

Yeshua says: “Do not be a warrior.”

But religions say: “Fight till the end untill the law is fulfilled.”

Follow Yeshua not the religions.

SWEARING

Do not forget, if bad words are coming out of someone's mounth that is because there are malice feelings in that person. Words comes from hearts(souls) originally and, if your heart is pure no bad words can come out of it. If somebody is swearing that means their souls are full of evil and it is pouring out of their mouths. Thus, be alert and if some says bad words and afterwards declares that he or she talked without thinking, know that no bad words come from a pure heart and nobody talks without previous thinking. Everybody talks after thinking and bad words comes only from a bad heart. From a good heart comes only good words.

Yeshua.

WAKE UP

I am holding the key of love, my brother. You know that God is love. So, how can they enter the Kingdom of God before reaching to full love in their hearts. That’s why I have said that I was the path. I represent the love God created. I am illuminating that path, that’s why I have said that I was the light. And that path leads all to the Kingdom. To the Eternal Life. So, that’s why I have said I was the life. That’s why I have said that I came to World so that you could have life in abundance.

I hope most of you will awake before death and be taken.

Do not be a warrior. Drop your shields. Leave your passion. Leave all your addictions, fear, nervousness. Let love be your path and light be your comrade on this path. Fill your heart with love for God and do not allow anything to violate this love. Do not put anything before your love for God. Keep calm. Do not allow nerviousness control your mind and do not let fear and infidelity fill in your heart.

Turn your face to light and let the light illimunate your face. You are neither your emotions nor your mind. You are a being above them. Be aware of your reactions. Watch them as a third person and criticize. Put them down when they are short tempered. When your mind become like a clear water reflecting all who looks at you and your emotions positive, full of love then you are eligible for becoming a part of the Holy Spirit.

The souls who are awakened while still living on Earth and has reached the state of emiting God’s pure energy also pulls the negative energies of unawakends and turns it into pure energy and send it back to God. Had they not been doing this energy healing; the World would have turned upside down long ago. That is what Yeshua did on a global measure once.

All of the life energy which has intellect derivates from God. God gave us everything but, alas, fewer of us believes in Him in Spirit. Most of us believes in a mighty merchant king. If pleased, gives every sort of lust fullfilling toys othervise burns forever.

Most of us believes in a false god in allignment with their egos for richness, virgins, wealth of no boundries, flesh and gold. All sort of wordly lusts. They are unable to perceive Spirit and the peace when filled up with that Spirit.

Eternal life and Holy Spirit does not mean anything to them. They worship gold, flesh and the power giver but, not the Spirit.

If your children had loved you just for the money you gave them, how would you feel? Aren’t we the children of God? How God feels? Let’s think.

For the past 2,000 years Yeshua has maintained a line of communication through those who have been willing to serve as messengers for His Living Word and who have pursued an understanding of His true message instead of settling for fake official religious doctrines which disturb Him continiously.

Once you admit that mainstream religious traditions have not answered your questions about life, you are very close in getting contact with the divine truth.

If you use a perverted version of Yesua’s teachings as a justification for closing your mind to His real teachings, you are not one of His modern-day disciples.

God’s judgement regarding gender condition is final. Those who are perverted such as transgender; gays, lesbiens, bisexual, intersex, and like perversions, even those who accept this incidents as normal, those who make friendships with them, marries to them, perform their marriage ceromony, who confirms and legalize this perversion, and who blesses them, anyone who feels affinity with them are going to be annihilated by God and they shall not see the eternal life.

So-called gays and lesbians are mentally ill and morally pervert people.

Same as fornication these should not be accepted as normal in communities. This kind of sickness will in tima rot natural relationships. They should enter under a remedy treatment.

Those sexual perversions are a rebellion against the God.

THE ONE BEING

There is only One Being in the Universe. And, there are beings in that One Being. Human beings first know themselves. Learn their essence first and then they can connect to God. When you connect to God you are like a hawk. You start living multidimensional and multifaceted.

Those who are in agony are suffering from a side product of their ego. Not seeing the miracles around and see the misery only is egoism.

Do not become a voice among other voices. Be still, keep calm and be silent then you can become a witness of your surrounding. Yeshua 27th, August 2017

THE WAYS WE ARE FREE TO CHOSE

There are two ways for souls.

One goes to life and the other goes to death. Faith is very important. Whatever you believe, while you live in a physical body is what you are going to face after death. The soul does not die with body and whatever you have loaded to him/her will go with the soul.

So, don’t load weakness and wrong beliefs to your soul. In addition to that your conscience knows everything and by every wrong doing of yourselves realizes that he/she shall have to face the consequences.

As for the crimes the divine justice will be working.

The unseen enemies of mankind are th ose who are preventing humans from learning and changing.

If you shut the truth and the Life(God) out then you miss the mark. If you give prioity to other things by giving more emphasis to desires rather than truth, it is the only way you can commit a sin.

God is the spring of kindness, goodness and cleanness. From this clean spring, is it possible to drink dirty water? One can drink only clean water. But, if the mouths of drinkers are dirty than the water gets dirty as well in their mouths. As such only goodness can be prayed from God. Badness cannot be prayed from Him. Badness for somebody else or curse cannot be wished from that pure Spring. Those who do this vile wish are punished by God.

Think of God and His light. Do not put any other love in between your love for God and yourselves. Love God first and before everything and everybody. Do not be a warrior. Drop your shields. Leave your passion. Leave all your addictions, fear, nerviousness. Let love be your path and light be your comrade on this path. Fill your heart with love for God and do not allow anything to violate this love. Keep calm. Do not allow nerviousness control your mind and do not let fear and infidelity fill in your heart

Never deny God, Almighty. Do not even argue about His oneness and divininity. He is the Source of light. He is Love. He is in and out of everything seen and unseen. Our bodies are to be the temple of The Holy Spirit. Our souls are to be the part of His Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the active force of God so, our souls must be the home for God. All the praises and all the glory are belonging to Him, to our God, to our Love. His will be done forever.

The truth requires a much deeper understanding. Spirituality requires that you ask questions of yourself, whilst religions requires you to rely on books to move forward. And, by doing so millions of soul’s minds have been locked down.

The physical realm is the world of time between the beginnings and endings, creation and destruction. Matter and energy change forms as ceaselessly as the ocean’s surface rises and falls from frothy wave to wave. Trees, mountains, buildings, and human bodies are all temporary. They’re just the scenery, and when a drama is finished, the scenery is torn down to make room for another set that can contain another play. Only we, the players, are real and eternal—our consciouses are spiritual, and our consciouses are entirely separate from the brain, mind and physical realm.

“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made from what was visible”.

Never forget, spirituality is what you are, it is not what you do. The total of what you have loaded to yourselves while living on earth.

Spiritual adultery includes any form of idolatry and is a major theme throughout the Old Testament. Yeshua reminds us just how deadly this form of adultery can be. Yeshua said, “Nobody can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other”. It’s important as believers that we leave the worldly attachements and lusts behind us, put the God before us first. There is no turning back.

Knowing God is the purpose of human existence. When you get this, you’re at peace. The search is over. Ego-driven expectations disappear. Life begins to be genuinely celebrated.

We show up for one reason and one reason only: to walk with God, or union with Divine.

“The word ‘enlightenment’ conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment. No, that is not the case at all. It is really just your natural state of felt oneness with Being.”

SPIRITUAL ADULTARY

“God sent His son as a ransom to be sacrified so that with his blood our sins are washed.”

They claim this sadistic knowledge from the Bible and really believe in it. I reject to believe in such a cruel and sadistic god… What would you say to that my brother?

Yeshua said: “There are a lot of false understandings in bible. You are right. This is wrong. God is love. God is the God of all universe, not only the World’s. I didn’t come to World as ransom. I had come as the love of the Father, but I was not welcomed and was tried to be killed. Even now 2/3 of the people on Earth are still wicked. They are enemies of God who is Love and Light. The Source of every goodness and beauty. Untill now I used to pray: My God they don’t know what they are doing. Forgive them… but now I don’t say ‘forgive them’ anymore. “

I asked to Yeshua in my lucid dream, Christian belief is as such that those who believe in You and get babtised, the Holy Spirit will be cast down upon them. Is it so?

Yeshua answered, ‘’Holy Spirit is neither cast down nor descend but humans must rise up cognitively to become a Holy Spirit.’’

All people – Christians or not – receive this help through the spiritual love that Yeshua hold. “Ask and you will be answered”.

PROPHECY

Any kind of prophecy, prediction or clairvoyance regarding future events are not wellcomed by the God. God detastes interference with His doings. God gets disturbed about the foretellings of any kind regarding what He is going to do.

Those in the past, your socalled prophets, had said many things. If one says so many things regarding future events, some of them might be used to sitimulate people according to the policies of the rulers. That doesn’t mean that they know the future. Nobody can and may know the future. To know the future, one must be superior the One, The Almighty who makes the future every moment anew, The Almighty God. That is, to think that you are superior to Him even unknowingly, a very disgraceful mistake one can do.

Nobody can know what God will do. Nobody can talk about the future. That is to poke your nose in God’s bussiness which is an impertinent action. God is superior and can not be forecasted. Also, this impertinent action, trying to forecast God’s affairs disturbs God.

Stay with righteouness. Never bring evil thoughts into action. Do not give them life.

Yeshua.

CALMNESS

Keep calm. Keep calm. Keep calm.

If your mind is not calm enough, you can not receive the energies flowing from the Source. That's why keeping calm is vital. Without receiving the continious flowing of the God's Life energies one cannot stay healty. Both physically and mentally. So, keep away anxiety. Never lose your temper. Praying is a great help to keep calm. When praying, it is better to stand up and be clean. You can sit if you are ill or if disabled you can pray according to your health conditions. Also, being in nature and grounding helps a lot. To be in touch with clean soil and water especially sea water is very helpful.

Yeshua.

THE LAST SEVEN MINUTES

The last seven minutes before dying biologically you shall be completely free to travel to everywhere and to all times in the past with your conscious. This includes the ancient times.

Along with the new generations coming, the old are replaced and, with this replacement, will come the new perceptions. As the new generations replace the old generations, believes will also be replaced. In fact, new generations will be cleverer but more mechanical. More energetic, more perceptive, but, more egoistic as well. Religions will be left, and people will believe in a sort of Source but will be living more mechanical, more isolated lives. They shall get lonely.

Finally, I advice you to focus on God and His Light only at this last minutes. Accept death and do not pay attention to earthly affairs or remains any more. In the very last minute, you will be shown the place, you are going after death.

Yeshua.

SR. LUCIA OF FATIMA

The so called "Fatima" incident in Portugal at early nineteenth century is not true. She (Mother Mary) is not entitled to give such messages. All the news regarding these three shepherd's girls are completely absurd stuff.

Yeshua.

SEPERATION

As for the truth, there is only one. The God. Source of Light and Love. When souls were created they were seeing and talking with the Source Almighty. However due to the free will which had been given to souls, they devoloped ego and made the one into two. Seperation had began. All we are struggling to achive now is to return back to oneness again, the original state of us at the beginning. Unfortunately not all will succeed. In God we trust.

The ability to enter the inner realm of souls, has nothing in common with an Out of Body Experience, and a journey into the astral realms. The inner Kingdom can only be entered by those who are permitted therein.

In many times Yeshua has entered back into the earth as a pure soul , and assisted those telephatically who were True Seekers of TheWay. The vast majority of immature prodigal sons and daughters could not be taken, because they have yet to reach the necessary level of maturity that would permit them to return to the Gate.

This world is God’s School House and in the true reality of our existence, there are no shortcuts — no group social promotions — and there are no school dropouts — only the few who are worthy to enter within the Holy of Holies of the Living Body Temple, are permitted into the Inner Kingdom and Yeshua is the key holder of this gate.

ANGER AND HATE

“You shall not murder” but Yeshua says that anger, hatred, insult, and public humiliation are tantamount to murder. There are the forgotten sayings of Yeshua further illustrate his teaching.

He warned His disciples that murder begins with anger in the heart. Do not be an angry person, for anger leads to murder; nor be envious, nor adversarial, nor hot-tempered, for from all these things murder results.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Since a word of hatred incurs the wrath of God and quarrels separate us from God, the disciple cannot have joy so long as he holds unloving or hateful thoughts against his brother.

The sages regarded publicly shaming or embarrassing a person as a grievous sin. In the no-longer extant Gospel of the Hebrews, Yeshua says that one of the most serious sins a man can commit is that of vexing his brother: Among the worst crimes is set he who has distressed the spirit of his brother.

Anger, quarreling, and public insults may be punished in a court of law on earth such as the local court, but ultimately, if not in a court on earth, a person who publicly shames and insults another commits crime spiritually.

Whoever hates is among those who shed blood. He who publicly shames is as though he shed blood.

CRUCIFIXATION

I had seen Yeshua in my dream in late 1980's. He had been crucified on the cross. I looked up and saw the nail in His right palm than I saw His holy face. He looked at me and said, "Must I be crucified again so that you believe?"

That incident had taken place almost thirty years ago. At those times I was thinking whether He was crucified or not because according to Islam religion he had not been crucified but another person who looks like himhad been. So, this was the answer to my hesitation. I cannot forget that forged black quadrangular shaped big nail driven in the middle of His holy right palm. I hadn't look at the left side.

Alpaslan/Brother of Yeshua.

FINAL WARNING

Time is closing. Sideways were all closed. There is no sideways any more. Either one reaches to God or to the second death after the physical death. “All or nothing.” That is the word and the deed now to reach God. You must focus on God only to achive this goal. Those who shall not succeed this goal will lose everything. Tell this to everyone.

Yeshua, 1st of March 2018.

IN GOD WE TRUST…

[currenthealtheventsblog-blog]

Will a high-protein diet harm your health? The real story on the risks (and rewards) of eating more protein.

New Post has been published on https://currenthealthevents.net/awesome/will-a-high-protein-diet-harm-your-health-the-real-story-on-the-risks-and-rewards-of-eating-more-protein/

Will a high-protein diet harm your health? The real story on the risks (and rewards) of eating more protein.

Will protein help me lose weight? Should I eat it at every meal? Could too much damage my kidneys? At Precision Nutrition, our inbox is filled with questions about the pros and cons of feeing more protein. In this article we’ll set the record straight, so you can finally separate the facts from the fiction.

++++

Maybe you’re a protein promoter.

You buy protein powder in “bucket with a handle” format. You are aware of the protein countings of every food you eat.

After every workout, you jam those amino acids into your cells. You swear you can feel them getting swole.

Or maybe you’re a protein avoider.

Maybe you’ve heard bad things.

Like: Protein will damage your kidneys.

Or: Protein will give you cancer.

Or simply: We all feed too much protein.

Maybe you want to lose fat. Or gain muscle. Or be healthy.

You only want to do the right thing and feed better. But with strife information about protein, you don’t know what to think.

Or, if you’re a fitness and nutrition coach-and-four, you’re wondering how the heck to clear up the disarray about protein among your clients.

Let’s get into it. In this article, we’ll explore :P TAGEND

What are high-protein diets? What does the evidence say about high-protein diets and health? Do protein source matter? How much protein is right for me?

How to read this article

If you’re just curious about high-protein diets:

Feel free to skim and learn whatever you like.

If you want to change your body and/ or health:

You don’t need to know every detail. Just get the general idea. Check out our advice at the end.

If you’re an athlete interested in performance:

Pay special attention to the section on athletic performance. Check out our advice for athletes at the end.

If you’re a fitness pro, or interested in geeking out with nutritional science :P TAGEND

We’ve given you some “extra credit” material in sidebars throughout. Check out our advice for fitness pros at the end.

Why protein?

A quick intro if you aren’t a nutrition pro :P TAGEND

Protein is one of the three main macronutrients that makes up the food we feed.( The other two are fat and carbohydrate .)

Protein itself is made up of amino acids.

Amino acids are the building blocks for most stuff in our bodies. They’re like Legos that can be broken down and re-assembled in different ways.

Unlike extra fat( which we can store very easily on our bums and bellies ), we don’t store lots of extra amino acids. Protein is always getting employed, recycled, and sometimes excreted.

If we don’t get enough protein, our body will start to plunder it from components that we need, such as our muscles. So we have to constantly replenish protein by eating it.

We need protein.

Protein is so important that without it, we die or become seriously malnourished.

( This protein-deficiency cancer is known as kwashiorkor, and we often see it in people who have suffered famines or who are living on a low-protein diet .)

All your enzymes and cell transporters; all your blood transporters; all your cells’ scaffolding and structures; 100 percentage of your hair and fingernails; much of your muscle, bone, and internal organs; and many hormones are made of mostly protein. Hence, protein enables most of our bodies’ functions.

Put simply, you are basically a heap of protein.

No protein , no you.

How much protein do we need?

Short answer: It depends.

Let’s look first at the current Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA).

The RDA for protein is 0.8 g/ kg( 0.36 g/ lb) — the more you weigh, the more protein you need :P TAGEND

A 150 -lb( 68 kg) person would need 68 x 0.8, or about 54 grams of protein a day.

A 200 -lb( 91 kg) person would need 91 x 0.8, or about 73 grams of protein a day.

That generally works out to about 10 percent of daily calories coming from protein.

However.

RDAs were originally developed as a way to avoid malnutrition — to represent the minimum quantity of a nutrient we required to not die( or get sick ).

“You’re not dead” is not the same thing as “You’re kicking ass.” The RDA for surviving may be different than what is necessary thrive.

The RDA is also a very general recommendation. It doesn’t take other things into account, such as :P TAGEND

How much total energy( i.e. calories) we feed or need Our carbohydrate uptake When we feed the protein Our biological sexuality Our age How active “we ii” What activities we do How “eco-friendly” various protein sources are

The Institute of Medicine( US) indicates a huge range in individual protein requirements — from 0.375 g/ kg to 1.625 g/ kg body weight( 0.17 to 0.74 g/ lb body weight ).

In other terms, our hypothetical 150 -lb person might have protein needs ranging from 26 to 111 grams per day.

Well that narrows it down nicely, doesn’t it !?

Let’s take a deeper look: Amino acids

Protein in our food is made up of many different building blocks, or amino acids.

Most people focus on Recommended Daily Allowance( RDA) for total protein, but they don’t think about how much of each amino acid they might need.

If your diet isn’t varied enough, you may be eating enough total protein, but not enough of a specific essential amino acid.

Every day, you need this much of these essential amino acids:

14 mg/ kg of histidine 19 mg/ kg of isoleucine 42 mg/ kg of leucine 38 mg/ kg of lysine 19 mg/ kg of methionine+ cysteine 33 mg/ kg of phenylalanine+ tyrosine 20 mg/ kg of threonine 5 mg/ kg of tryptophan 24 mg/ kg of valine

Of course, you don’t need to spend hours in your kitchen with an eyedropper of lysine answer, carefully calibrating your intake.

Just eat a variety of protein-rich foods and let nature do the rest.

What does a high-protein diet look like?

People often assume that “high protein” entails “low carbohydrate”. In fact, you can eat more protein without stimulating any drastic changes to other things in your diet.

Many types of diets can be considered high-protein. “High protein” is a bit of a relative concept; there’s no clear rule.

The average protein intake for adults in the US is about 15 percent of calories coming from protein.

The Institute of Medicine suggests that up to 35 percent of total calories is an OK proportion of protein for healthy adults.

And most researchers would say that once you get more than 25 percent of total calories from protein, you’re in “high protein” territory.

Here’s what high- and low-protein diets might look like for a given meal.

The upper tolerable limit( UL) of something tells you how much you can eat without having health problems.

Currently, there’s no established UL for protein.

Does that mean you can eat as much protein as you’d like without any negative side effects? No. It simply means researchers haven’t figured it out yet.

But we do know that eating up to 4.4 g/ kg( 2 g/ lb) body weight didn’t cause any short term health problems in clinical studies.

Let’s take a deeper look: Calculating maximum protein

The Institute of Medicine suggests that high protein intake, where about 35 percent of your calories comes from protein, is safe.

What does that mean in grams per kilogram body weight( or g/ lb body weight )?

Say you’re 74.8 kg( 165 lb) and reasonably active. You need about 2,475 calories per day to maintain your weight.

If you get 35 percent of your total energy intake from protein, you’d be feeing about 866 calories from protein each day.

1 gram of protein has 4 calories. So 866 calories is around 217 grams of protein per day.

That’s about 1.3 grams per pound of body weight, or 2.9 g/kg.

Will eating a high-protein diet hurt me?

For years, people have been concerned with the safety of eating too much protein.

Will eating too much protein explode my kidneys?

How about my liver? My left femur?

The most common health concerns of feeing more protein are :P TAGEND

kidney injury liver damage osteoporosis heart disease cancer

Let’s explore these.

Claim: High protein causes kidney injury.

This concern about high protein and kidneys began with a misunderstanding of why physicians tell people with poorly functioning kidneys( usually from pre-existing kidney disease) to a feed a low-protein diet.

But there’s a big difference between avoiding protein because your kidneys are already injury and protein actively injury healthy kidneys.

It’s the difference between jogging with a broken leg and jogging with a perfectly healthy leg.

Jogging with a broken leg is a bad idea. Doctors would probably tell you not to jog if your leg is broken. But does jogging cause legs to break? No.

That’s the same thing with protein and kidneys.

Eating more protein does increase how much your kidneys have to work( glomerular filtration rate and creatinine clearance ), only like jogging increases how much your legs have to work.

But protein hasn’t been shown to cause kidney damage — again, just like jogging isn’t going to abruptly snap your leg like a twig.

High-protein diets do to be translated into increased metabolic garbage being excreted in the urine, though, so it’s particularly important to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause kidney damage in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes liver damage.

The liver, like the kidneys, is a major processing organ. Thus, it’s the same deal as with kidneys: People with liver damage (such as cirrhosis) are told to eat less protein.

Yes, if you have liver damage or disease you should eat less protein. But if your liver is healthy, then a high-protein diet will not cause liver damage.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high-protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause liver damage in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes osteoporosis.

Eating more protein without also upping your fruit and vegetable uptake will increase the amount of calcium you’ll lose in your pee.

That finding made some people think that eating more protein will cause osteoporosis because you’re losing bone calcium.

But there is no evidence that high protein causes osteoporosis.

If anything , not eating enough protein has been shown to cause bone loss. Bones aren’t simply inert sticks of minerals — a significant proportion of bone is also protein, mostly collagen-type proteins.

Like muscle, bone is an active tissue that is constantly being broken down and rebuilt. And like muscle, bone needs those Lego building blocks.

Women aged 55 to 92 who feed more protein have higher bone density. So eating more protein improves bone density in people most in danger of having osteoporosis.

( Eating more protein plus adding resistance training: Double win for bone density .)

Verdict: High protein diets do not cause osteoporosis, and actually may avoid osteoporosis.

Claim: High protein causes cancer

Unfortunately, we still don’t have conclusive human analyzes on the sources of cancer and the role of protein.

There are surveys that asked people how much protein they eat over their lifetime, and then looked at how often people got cancer. The research proves a connection between protein intake and cancer rates.

But these studies are correlational examines and don’t demonstrate that protein is the cause of cancers. Plus, some researchers have gone so far to say that analyses “il rely on” topics to recall what they feed are basically worthless because human memory is so inaccurate.

A big part of the proposed cancer and protein connection comes down to confounding factors, like :P TAGEND

where you get your protein from — plant or animal how you cook your protein( i.e. carbonized grilled meat) what types of protein you’re eating( e.g. grass-fed steak versus a hot dog)

And so on.

In other terms, we can’t say that any particular amount of protein causes cancer.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes cancer; many other confounding factors.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein and cancer

A study from 2014 looked at protein and cancer risk. It was widely misinterpreted as proof that eating a lot of protein caused cancer.

First, it was actually two examines, one asking people questions and following them for years; and one that fed mice a high-protein diet and implanted them with cancer.

With the human study, researchers looked at people’s self-reported protein intake and their rates of cancer over the following 18 years.

They found that people aged 50 -6 5 who ate diets high in animal protein (>= 20% of total calories) had a 4-fold greater danger of dying of cancer over the next 18 years compared to people who ate a moderate amount of protein( 10 -2 0% of total calories ).

( Just so you get an idea, smoking increases your risk of cancer by 20 -fold .)

Then, it gets more interesting, because for people over 65, eating more protein decreased cancer hazard by more than half. In summary:

Eating more protein from 50 -6 5 years old was associated with a higher danger of death from cancer, but over 65 years old that association was reversed.

The second part of the study is where people genuinely misunderstood what the study had proven.

Researchers fed mice a high-protein diet( 18% of total calories), then implanted cancerous cells. They found that the high-protein diet increased tumor sizing. This is not a surprise, since protein increases IGF-1( an anabolic protein) that induces growth in pretty much all tissues, including cancerous tissue.

Higher protein diets induced cancerous growth in mice.

So, while eating more protein might increase the size of existing tumors( depending on what therapy someone is undergoing), this study does not show that high-protein diets cause cancer.

Claim: High protein causes heart disease.

Eating animal-based protein daily is associated with an increased risk of fatal coronary heart disease( 70 percent for men and 37 percent for women ), whereas plant-based proteins aren’t linked to higher rates of heart disease.

This suggests that where you get your protein from may matter more than how much protein you eat.

However, just like cancer, the link between heart disease and high-protein diets is from questionnaires rather than a double-blind randomized analyze( the gold standard in research ).

There are many confounding factors. For one, consider the type of animal — does seafood cause the same issues as red meat, for example?

We don’t yet know the whole story here.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes heart disease and the source of protein is a major confounding factor.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein source

A new examine in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) appears not only at protein intake, but where people got their protein from.

More than 131,000 people were asked :P TAGEND

how much protein they ate; and if it came from animals or plants.

This study took over 35 years to do( starting in the 1980 s ).

What they found :P TAGEND

Eating more animal protein was associated with a higher risk of demise … if you were also doing something else that was a risk factor.

Such as :P TAGEND

smoking being overweight not exerting drinking alcohol history of high blood pressure low uptake of whole grains, fiber, and fruits and vegetables

Eating more plant protein was found to be associated with lower risk of early death.

What does this entail?

You might think at first glance that you should eat less animal protein, since this study seems to say that animal protein is bad for you.

But there’s more to it.

If you’re doing everything else “right”, then eating more animal protein doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Likely, it’s not the animal protein on its own but a lot of lifestyle things that “re coming with” eating more animal protein.

For instance, this study began in the 80 s. At that time, virtually every doctor told their patients to eat less fat and meat, and to avoid eggs.

So if you were a somewhat health-conscious person, then you’d likely be feeing less animal protein compared to someone who was less health-conscious( or if you ran against your doctor’s advice) — but you’d also likely be engaging in a bunch of other health-supporting decisions and activities.

The problem with these types of studies, called correlational studies, is that you can never be sure whether the associations are caused by one onto the other or if they’re simply happening at the same time.

Protein quality matters

Most people think about how much protein, but they don’t believe all that much about the quality of the protein they’re eating.

There are huge differences in the chemical makeup of a given protein source, and how valuable that protein is nutritionally. The higher a protein’s quality, the more easily it can give your body the amino acids it needs to grow, repair and maintain your body.

The two big factors that make a protein high or low quality are:

Digestibility:

How easy is it to digest? How much do you digest — and absorb and use?

Amino acid composition:

What amino acids is it made of?

A high-quality protein has a good ratio of essential amino acids, and allows our body to use them effectively.

Amino acid composition is more important than digestibility.

You can have way more protein than you need, but if the protein you’re eating is low in an important amino acid( known as the limiting amino acid ), it causes a bottleneck that stops everything else from running( or at the least slackens things down ).

High-quality proteins have more limiting amino acids, which means the bottleneck is lessened and our bodies can use that protein source better.

Let’s take a deeper look: Measuring protein’s worth

Scientists use many ways to calculate protein quality, or how well we might digest, assimilate, and use a given protein.

Here are a couple.

Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

PDCAAS is calculated on a ratio of limiting amino acids and a factor of true digestibility to give you a value that lets you know how much of a devoted protein is digestible.

The higher the score, the higher the quality of protein.

PDCAAS is the current gold standard for evaluate protein quality, but there are a few other protein quality scoring techniques that we cover in the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification program.

Indicator amino acid oxidation( IAAO)

When we don’t have enough of a particular indispensable amino acid, then all the other amino acids, including that indispensable one, will be oxidized( i.e. essentially wasted) rather than employed for stuff like repairing tissues.

It’s kind of like a squad sport: You can’t play without the goalie, so all the players sit around twiddling their thumbs, even though they’re all great players in their own right.

But if we’re getting enough of that particular amino acid, then we won’t ensure all that oxidation. We have a goalie and the rest of the players can play.

So, you want the IAAO score to be low, indicating that all your amino acids are doing their jobs to rebuild you.

Thus far, the IAAO method seems like a very useful way to judge the metabolic availability of amino acids from different protein-containing foods, and to determine total protein requirements for all kinds of people.

New assessment techniques like IAAO are giving us a more precise idea of protein use, which means that we may see recommendations change in future.

Most likely, based on these recent findings, the RDA for protein will increase — i.e. physicians may tell us to eat more protein.

“Complete” and “incomplete” proteins

Back in the day, scientists used to talk about “complete” and “incomplete” proteins.

If you had a plant-based diet( i.e. vegetarian or vegan ), you were told that you had to eat a mixture of incomplete proteins( i.e. protein from a variety of plants) at each dinner in order to meet your needs.

We now know this isn’t true.

As long as you eat a mix of different protein sources, you’ll get all the amino acids you need. No is required for mealtime protein algebra to make sure you’re getting all your amino acids.

That being said, many plant-based sources are less protein-dense than animal sources. So if you choose not to eat animal products, you’ll have to work a little harder to get more protein from a wide variety of plant sources to make up the difference and satisfy your protein needs.

Read more: precisionnutrition.com

[fitnessexpert00-blog]

Will a high-protein diet harm your health? The real story on the risks (and rewards) of eating more protein.

New Post has been published on https://fitnessqia.com/awesome/will-a-high-protein-diet-harm-your-health-the-real-story-on-the-risks-and-rewards-of-eating-more-protein/

Will a high-protein diet harm your health? The real story on the risks (and rewards) of eating more protein.

Will protein help me lose weight? Should I eat it at every meal? Could too much injury my kidneys? At Precision Nutrition, our inbox is filled with questions about the pros and cons of feeing more protein. In this article we’ll defined the record straight, so you can finally separate the facts from the fiction.

++++

Maybe you’re a protein promoter.

You buy protein powder in “bucket with a handle” format. You know the protein counts of every food you eat.

After every workout, you jam those amino acids into your cells. You swear you can feel them get swole.

Or perhaps you’re a protein avoider.

Maybe you’ve heard bad things.

Like: Protein will damage your kidneys.

Or: Protein will give you cancer.

Or simply: We all eat too much protein.

Perhap you want to lose fat. Or gain muscle. Or be healthy.

You only want to do the right thing and eat better. But with strife information about protein, you don’t know what to think.

Or, if you’re a fitness and nutrition coach, you’re wondering how the heck to clear up the disarray about protein among your clients.

Let’s get into it. In this article, we’ll explore :P TAGEND

What are high-protein diets? What does the evidence say about high-protein diets and health? Does protein source matter? How much protein is right for me?

How to read this article

If you’re just curious about high-protein diets:

Feel free to skim and learn what it is you like.

If you want to change your body and/ or health:

You don’t need to know every detail. Just get the general idea. Check out our advice at the end.

If you’re an athlete interested in performance:

Pay special attention to the section on athletic performance. Check out our advice for athletes at the end.

If you’re a fitness pro, or interested in geeking out with nutritional science :P TAGEND

We’ve given you some “extra credit” material in sidebars throughout. Check out our advice for fitness pros at the end.

Why protein?

A quick intro if you aren’t a nutrition pro :P TAGEND

Protein is one of the three major macronutrients that induces up the food we eat.( The other two are fat and carbohydrate .)

Protein itself is made up of amino acids.

Amino acids are the building blocks for most stuff in our bodies. They’re like Legos that can be broken down and re-assembled in different ways.

Unlike extra fat( which we can store very easily on our hoboes and bellies ), we don’t store lots of extra amino acids. Protein is always get employed, recycled, and sometimes excreted.

If we don’t get enough protein, our body will begin to plunder it from proportions that we need, such as our muscles. So we have to constantly replenish protein by eating it.

We need protein.

Protein is so important that without it, we die or become seriously malnourished.

( This protein-deficiency disease is known as kwashiorkor, and we often see it in people who have suffered famines or who lives on a low-protein diet .)

All your enzymes and cell transporters; all your blood transporters; all your cells’ scaffolding and structures; 100 percent of your hair and fingernails; much of your muscle, bone, and internal organs; and many hormones are made of mostly protein. Hence, protein enables most of our bodies’ functions.

Put simply, you are basically a piling of protein.

No protein , no you.

How much protein do we need?

Short answer: It depends.

Let’s look first at the current Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA).

The RDA for protein is 0.8 g/ kg( 0.36 g/ lb) — the more you weigh, the more protein you need :P TAGEND

A 150 -lb( 68 kg) person would need 68 x 0.8, or about 54 grams of protein a day.

A 200 -lb( 91 kg) person would need 91 x 0.8, or about 73 grams of protein a day.

That generally works out to about 10 percentage of daily calories coming from protein.

However.

RDAs were originally developed as a way to avoid malnutrition — to represent the minimum amount of a nutrient we need to not die( or get sick ).

“You’re not dead” is not the same thing as “You’re kicking ass.” The RDA for surviving may be different than what is necessary thrive.

The RDA is also a very general recommendation. It doesn’t take other things into account, such as :P TAGEND

How much total energy( i.e. calories) we feed or need Our carbohydrate uptake When we eat the protein Our biological sex Our age How active we are What activities we do How “eco-friendly” various protein sources are

The Institute of Medicine( US) indicates a huge range in individual protein requirements — from 0.375 g/ kg to 1.625 g/ kg body weight( 0.17 to 0.74 g/ lb body weight ).

In other terms, our hypothetical 150 -lb person might have protein needs ranging from 26 to 111 grams per day.

Well that narrows it down nicely, doesn’t it !?

Let’s take a deeper look: Amino acids

Protein in our food is made up of many different building blocks, or amino acids.

Most people focus on Recommended Daily Allowance( RDA) for total protein, but they don’t think about how much of each amino acid they might need.

If your diet isn’t differed enough, you may be eating enough total protein, but not enough of a specific essential amino acid.

Every day, you need this much of these essential amino acids:

14 mg/ kg of histidine 19 mg/ kg of isoleucine 42 mg/ kg of leucine 38 mg/ kg of lysine 19 mg/ kg of methionine+ cysteine 33 mg/ kg of phenylalanine+ tyrosine 20 mg/ kg of threonine 5 mg/ kg of tryptophan 24 mg/ kg of valine

Of course, you don’t need to spend hours in your kitchen with an eyedropper of lysine solution, carefully calibrating your intake.

Just eat a variety of protein-rich foods and let nature do the rest.

What does a high-protein diet look like?

People often assume that “high protein” entails “low carbohydrate”. In fact, you can eat more protein without making any drastic changes to other things in your diet.

Many types of diets can be considered high-protein. “High protein” is a bit of a relative concept; there’s no clear rule.

The average protein intake for adults in the US is about 15 percentage of calories coming from protein.

The Institute of Medicine suggests that up to 35 percent of total calories is an OK proportion of protein for healthy adults.

And most researchers would say that once you get more than 25 percent of total calories from protein, you’re in “high protein” territory.

Here’s what high- and low-protein diets might look like for a given meal.

The upper tolerable limit( UL) of something tells you how much you can eat without having health problems.

Currently, there’s no established UL for protein.

Does that mean you can eat as much protein as you’d like without any negative side effects? No. It just entails researchers haven’t figured it out yet.

But we do know that feeing up to 4.4 g/ kg( 2 g/ lb) body weight didn’t cause any short term health problems in clinical studies.

Let’s take a deeper look: Calculating maximum protein

The Institute of Medicine suggests that high protein uptake, where about 35 percent of your calories comes from protein, is safe.

What does that mean in grams per kilogram body weight( or g/ lb body weight )?

Say you’re 74.8 kg( 165 lb) and reasonably active. You need about 2,475 calories per day to maintain your weight.

If you get 35 percent of your total energy intake from protein, you’d be feeing about 866 calories from protein each day.

1 gram of protein has 4 calories. So 866 calories is around 217 grams of protein per day.

That’s about 1.3 grams per pound of body weight, or 2.9 g/kg.

Will eating a high-protein diet hurt me?

For years, people have been concerned with the safety of eating too much protein.

Will eating too much protein explode my kidneys?

How about my liver? My left femur?

The most common health concerns of feeing more protein are :P TAGEND

kidney injury liver damage osteoporosis heart disease cancer

Let’s explore these.

Claim: High protein causes kidney damage.

This concern about high protein and kidneys began with a misunderstanding of why doctors tell people with poorly functioning kidneys( usually from pre-existing kidney disease) to a eat a low-protein diet.

But there’s a big difference between avoiding protein because your kidneys are already injury and protein actively injury healthy kidneys.

It’s the difference between jogging with a violated leg and jogging with a perfectly healthy leg.

Jogging with a transgressed leg is a bad idea. Doctors would probably tell you not to jog if your leg is broken. But does jogging cause legs to break? No.

That’s the same thing with protein and kidneys.

Eating more protein does increase how much your kidneys have to work( glomerular filtration rate and creatinine clearance ), only like jogging increases how much your legs have to work.

But protein hasn’t been shown to cause kidney damage — again, just like jogging isn’t going to suddenly snap your leg like a twig.

High-protein diets do result in increased metabolic waste being excreted in the urine, though, so it’s particularly important to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause kidney injury in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes liver damage.

The liver, like the kidneys, is a major processing organ. Thus, it’s the same deal as with kidneys: People with liver injury (such as cirrhosis) are told to eat less protein.

Yes, if you have liver damage or disease you should eat less protein. But if your liver is healthy, then a high-protein diet will not cause liver damage.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high-protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause liver damage in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes osteoporosis.

Eating more protein without also upping your fruit and vegetable intake will increase the amount of calcium you’ll lose in your pee.

That finding made some people think that eating more protein will cause osteoporosis because you’re losing bone calcium.

But there is no evidence that high protein causes osteoporosis.

If anything , not eating enough protein has been shown to cause bone loss. Bones aren’t merely inert sticks of minerals — a significant proportion of bone is also protein, largely collagen-type proteins.

Like muscle, bone is an active tissue that is constantly being broken down and rebuilt. And like muscle, bone needs those Lego building blocks.

Women aged 55 to 92 who eat more protein have higher bone density. So feeing more protein improves bone density in people most at risk of having osteoporosis.

( Eating more protein plus adding resistance training: Doubled win for bone density .)

Verdict: High protein diets do not cause osteoporosis, and actually may avoid osteoporosis.

Claim: High protein causes cancer

Unfortunately, we still don’t have conclusive human examines on the cause of cancer and the role of protein.

There are surveys that asked people how much protein they ate over their lifetime, and then looked at how often people got cancer. The research depicts a connection between protein intake and cancer rates.

But these studies are correlational surveys and don’t demonstrate that protein is the cause of cancers. Plus, some researchers have gone so far to say that analyses “il rely on” subjects to recall what they ate are basically worthless because human memory is so inaccurate.

A big part of the proposed cancer and protein link comes down to confounding factors, like :P TAGEND

where you get your protein from — plant or animal how you cook your protein( i.e. carbonized grilled meat) what types of protein you’re eating( e.g. grass-fed steak versus a hot dog)

And so on.

In other terms, we can’t say that any particular amount of protein causes cancer.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes cancer; many other confounding factors.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein and cancer

A study from 2014 looked at protein and cancer risk. It was widely misinterpreted as proof that eating a lot of protein caused cancer.

First, it was actually two studies, one asking people questions and following them for years; and one that fed mouse a high-protein diet and implanted them with cancer.

With the human study, researchers looked at people’s self-reported protein intake and their rates of cancer over the following 18 years.

They found that people aged 50 -6 5 who ate diets high in animal protein (>= 20% of total calories) had a 4-fold greater hazard of dying of cancer over the next 18 years compared to people who ate a moderate amount of protein( 10 -2 0% of total calories ).

( Just so you get an idea, smoking increases your risk of cancer by 20 -fold .)

Then, it gets more interesting, because for people over 65, eating more protein lessened cancer danger by more than half. In summary:

Eating more protein from 50 -6 5 years old was associated with a higher risk of death from cancer, but over 65 years old that association was reversed.

The second part of the study is where people truly misunderstood what the study had proven.

Researchers fed mouse a high-protein diet( 18% of total calories), then implanted cancerous cells. They found that the high-protein diet increased tumor sizing. This is not a amaze, since protein increases IGF-1( an anabolic protein) that stimulates growth in pretty much all tissues, including cancerous tissue.

Higher protein diets stimulated cancerous growth in mice.

So, while eating more protein might increase the size of existing tumors( depending on what treatment someone is undergoing), this study does not show that high-protein diets cause cancer.

Claim: High protein causes heart disease.

Eating animal-based protein daily is associated with an increased risk of fatal coronary heart disease( 70 percent for men and 37 percent for women ), whereas plant-based proteins aren’t linked to higher rates of heart disease.

This suggests that where you get your protein from may matter more than how much protein you eat.

However, just like cancer, the link between heart disease and high-protein diets is from questionnaires rather than a double-blind randomized analyze( the gold standard in research ).

There are many confounding factors. For one, consider the type of animal — does seafood cause the same issues as red meat, for example?

We don’t yet know the whole story here.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes heart disease and the source of protein is a major confounding factor.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein source

A new study in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) looks not only at protein intake, but where people got their protein from.

More than 131,000 people were asked :P TAGEND

how much protein they feed; and if it came from animals or plants.

This study took over 35 years to do( starting in the 1980 s ).

What they found :P TAGEND

Eating more animal protein was associated with a higher risk of demise … if you were also doing something else that was a risk factor.

Such as :P TAGEND

smoking being overweight not exercising drinking alcohol history of high blood pressure low intake of whole grains, fiber, and fruits and vegetables

Eating more plant protein was found to be associated with lower risk of early death.

What does this entail?

You might believe at first glance that you should eat less animal protein, since this study seems to say that animal protein is bad for you.

But there’s more to it.

If you’re doing everything else “right”, then eating more animal protein doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Likely, it’s not the animal protein on its own but a lot of lifestyle things that come with feeing more animal protein.

For instance, this study began in the 80 s. At that time, nearly every doctor told their patients to eat less fat and meat, and to avoid eggs.

So if you were a somewhat health-conscious person, then you’d likely be feeing less animal protein compared to someone who was less health-conscious( or if you ran against your doctor’s advice) — but you’d also likely be engaging in a bunch of other health-supporting decisions and activities.

The problem with these types of studies, called correlational studies, is that you can never be sure whether the associations are caused by one onto the other or if they’re simply happening at the same time.

Protein quality matters

Most people to be considered how much protein, but they don’t believe all that much about the high quality of its protein they’re eating.

There are huge differences in the chemical makeup of a given protein source, and how valuable that protein is nutritionally. The higher a protein’s quality, the more easily it can give your body the amino acids it needs to grow, mend and maintain your body.

The two big factors that make a protein high or low quality are:

Digestibility:

How easy is it to digest? How much do you digest — and absorb and use?

Amino acid composition:

What amino acids is it made of?

A high-quality protein has a good ratio of essential amino acids, and allows our body to use them effectively.

Amino acid composition is more important than digestibility.

You can have way more protein than you need, but if the protein you’re eating is low in an important amino acid( known as the limiting amino acid ), it causes a bottleneck that stops everything else from working( or at the least slows things down ).

High-quality proteins have more limiting amino acids, which means the bottleneck is lessened and our bodies can use that protein source better.

Let’s take a deeper look: Measuring protein’s worth

Scientists use many ways to calculate protein quality, or how well we might digest, assimilate, and use a devoted protein.

Here are a couple.

Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

PDCAAS is calculated on a ratio of limiting amino acids and a factor of true digestibility to give you a value that lets you know how much of a devoted protein is digestible.

The higher the score, the higher the quality of protein.

PDCAAS is the current gold standard for quantify protein quality, but there are a few other protein quality scoring techniques that we cover in the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification program.

Indicator amino acid oxidation( IAAO)

When we don’t have enough of a particular indispensable amino acid, then all the other amino acids, including that indispensable one, will be oxidized( i.e. basically wasted) rather than used for stuff like repairing tissues.

It’s kind of like a team athletic: You can’t play without the goalie, so all the players sit around twiddling their thumbs, even though they’re all great players in their own right.

But if we’re getting enough of that particular amino acid, then we won’t find all that oxidation. We have a goalie and the rest of the players can play.

So, you want the IAAO score to be low, indicating that all your amino acids are doing their jobs to rebuild you.

Thus far, the IAAO method seems like a very useful way to judge the metabolic availability of amino acids from different protein-containing foods, and to determine total protein requirements for all kinds of people.

New assessment techniques like IAAO are giving us a more precise idea of protein use, which means that we may insure recommendations change in future.

Most likely, based on these recent findings, the RDA for protein will increase — i.e. physicians may tell us to eat more protein.

“Complete” and “incomplete” proteins

Back in the day, scientists used to talk about “complete” and “incomplete” proteins.

If you had a plant-based diet( i.e. vegetarian or vegan ), you were told that you had to eat a mixture of incomplete proteins( i.e. protein from a variety of plants) at each snack in order to meet your needs.

We now know this isn’t true.

As long as you eat a mix of different protein sources, you’ll get all the amino acids you need. No need for mealtime protein algebra to make sure you’re getting all your amino acids.

That being said, many plant-based sources are less protein-dense than animal sources. So if you choose not to eat animal products, you’ll have to work a little harder to get more protein from a wide variety of plant sources to make up the difference and satisfy your protein needs.

Read more: precisionnutrition.com

[healthyeating43-blog]

Will a high-protein diet harm your health? The real story on the risks (and rewards) of eating more protein.

New Post has been published on https://dietguideto.com/awesome/will-a-high-protein-diet-harm-your-health-the-real-story-on-the-risks-and-rewards-of-eating-more-protein/

Will a high-protein diet harm your health? The real story on the risks (and rewards) of eating more protein.

Will protein help me lose weight? Should I eat it at every meal? Could too much damage my kidneys? At Precision Nutrition, our inbox is filled with questions about the pros and cons of feeing more protein. In this article we’ll defined the record straight, so you can finally separate the facts from the fiction.

++++

Maybe you’re a protein promoter.

You buy protein powder in “bucket with a handle” format. You are aware of the protein countings of every food you eat.

After every workout, you jam those amino acids into your cells. You swear you can feel them getting swole.

Or perhaps you’re a protein avoider.

Maybe you’ve hear bad things.

Like: Protein will damage your kidneys.

Or: Protein will give you cancer.

Or simply: We all eat too much protein.

Perhap you want to lose fat. Or gain muscle. Or be healthy.

You simply want to do the right thing and feed better. But with strife information about protein, you don’t know what to think.

Or, if you’re a fitness and nutrition coach, you’re wondering how the heck to clear up the confusion about protein among your clients.

Let’s get into it. In this article, we’ll explore :P TAGEND

What are high-protein diets? What does the evidence say about high-protein diets and health? Does protein source matter? How much protein is right for me?

How to read this article

If you’re just curious about high-protein diets:

Feel free to skim and learn whatever you like.

If you want to change your body and/ or health:

You don’t need to know every detail. Just get the general idea. Check out our advice at the end.

If you’re an athlete interested in performance:

Pay special attention to the section on athletic performance. Check out our advice for athletes at the end.

If you’re a fitness pro, or interested in geeking out with nutritional science :P TAGEND

We’ve given you some “extra credit” material in sidebars throughout. Check out our advice for fitness pros at the end.

Why protein?

A quick intro if you aren’t a nutrition pro :P TAGEND

Protein is one of the three main macronutrients that builds up the food we feed.( The other two are fat and carbohydrate .)

Protein itself is made up of amino acids.

Amino acids are the building blocks for most stuff in our bodies. They’re like Legos that can be broken down and re-assembled in different ways.

Unlike extra fat( which we can store very easily on our hoboes and bellies ), we don’t store lots of extra amino acids. Protein is always get use, recycled, and sometimes excreted.

If we don’t get enough protein, our body will start to plunder it from components that we need, such as our muscles. So we have to constantly replenish protein by eating it.

We need protein.

Protein is so important that without it, we die or become seriously malnourished.

( This protein-deficiency illnes is known as kwashiorkor, and we often see it in people who have suffered famines or who lives on a low-protein diet .)

All your enzymes and cell transporters; all your blood transporters; all your cells’ scaffolding and structures; 100 percentage of your hair and fingernails; much of your muscle, bone, and internal organs; and many hormones are made of largely protein. Hence, protein enables most of our bodies’ functions.

Put simply, you are basically a heap of protein.

No protein , no you.

How much protein do we need?

Short answer: It depends.

Let’s look first at the present Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA).

The RDA for protein is 0.8 g/ kg( 0.36 g/ lb) — the more you weigh, the more protein you need :P TAGEND

A 150 -lb( 68 kg) person would need 68 x 0.8, or about 54 grams of protein a day.

A 200 -lb( 91 kg) person would need 91 x 0.8, or about 73 grams of protein a day.

That generally works out to about 10 percentage of daily calories coming from protein.

However.

RDAs were originally developed as a route to avoid malnutrition — to represent the minimum quantity of a nutrient we required to not die( or get sick ).

“You’re not dead” is not the same thing as “You’re kicking ass.” The RDA for surviving may be different than what is necessary thrive.

The RDA is also a very general recommendation. It doesn’t take other things into account, such as :P TAGEND

How much total energy( i.e. calories) we eat or need Our carbohydrate intake When we feed the protein Our biological sex Our age How active we are What activities we do How “eco-friendly” various protein sources are

The Institute of Medicine( US) suggests a huge range in individual protein requirements — from 0.375 g/ kg to 1.625 g/ kg body weight( 0.17 to 0.74 g/ lb body weight ).

In other terms, our hypothetical 150 -lb person might have protein needs ranging from 26 to 111 grams per day.

Well that constricts it down nicely, doesn’t it !?

Let’s take a deeper look: Amino acids

Protein in our food is made up of many different building blocks, or amino acids.

Most people focus on Recommended Daily Allowance( RDA) for total protein, but they don’t think about how much of each amino acid they might need.

If your diet isn’t differed enough, you may be eating enough total protein, but not enough of a specific essential amino acid.

Every day, you need this much of these essential amino acids:

14 mg/ kg of histidine 19 mg/ kg of isoleucine 42 mg/ kg of leucine 38 mg/ kg of lysine 19 mg/ kg of methionine+ cysteine 33 mg/ kg of phenylalanine+ tyrosine 20 mg/ kg of threonine 5 mg/ kg of tryptophan 24 mg/ kg of valine

Of course, you don’t need to spend hours in your kitchen with an eyedropper of lysine answer, carefully calibrating your intake.

Just eat a variety of protein-rich foods and let nature do the rest.

What does a high-protein diet look like?

People often assume that “high protein” means “low carbohydrate”. In fact, you can eat more protein without building any drastic changes to other things in your diet.

Many types of diets can be considered high-protein. “High protein” is a bit of a relative concept; there’s no clear rule.

The average protein intake for adults in the US is about 15 percentage of calories coming from protein.

The Institute of Medicine suggests that up to 35 percent of total calories is an OK proportion of protein for healthy adults.

And most researchers would say that once you get more than 25 percent of total calories from protein, you’re in “high protein” territory.

Here’s what high- and low-protein diets might look like for a given meal.

The upper tolerable limit( UL) of something tells you how much you can eat without having health problems.

Currently, there’s no established UL for protein.

Does that mean you can eat as much protein as you’d like without any negative side effects? No. It just entails researchers haven’t figured it out yet.

But we do know that eating up to 4.4 g/ kg( 2 g/ lb) body weight didn’t cause any short term health problems in clinical studies.

Let’s take a deeper look: Calculating maximum protein

The Institute of Medicine suggests that high protein uptake, where about 35 percent of your calories comes from protein, is safe.

What does that mean in grams per kilogram body weight( or g/ lb body weight )?

Say you’re 74.8 kg( 165 lb) and reasonably active. You need about 2,475 calories per day to maintain your weight.

If you get 35 percent of your total energy intake from protein, you’d be eating about 866 calories from protein each day.

1 gram of protein has 4 calories. So 866 calories is around 217 grams of protein per day.

That’s about 1.3 grams per pound of body weight, or 2.9 g/kg.

Will eating a high-protein diet hurt me?

For years, people have been concerned with the safety of eating too much protein.

Will eating too much protein explode my kidneys?

How about my liver? My left femur?

The most common health concerns of feeing more protein are :P TAGEND

kidney injury liver injury osteoporosis heart disease cancer

Let’s explore these.

Claim: High protein causes kidney damage.

This concern about high protein and kidneys began with a misunderstanding of why physicians tell people with poorly functioning kidneys( usually from pre-existing kidney disease) to a eat a low-protein diet.

But there’s a big difference between avoiding protein because your kidneys are already damaged and protein actively injury healthy kidneys.

It’s the difference between jogging with a violated leg and jogging with a perfectly healthy leg.

Jogging with a broken leg is a bad idea. Doctors would probably tell you not to jog if your leg is broken. But does jogging cause legs to break? No.

That’s the same thing with protein and kidneys.

Eating more protein does increase how much your kidneys have to work( glomerular filtration rate and creatinine clearance ), simply like jogging increases how much your legs have to work.

But protein hasn’t been shown to cause kidney damage — again, just like jogging isn’t going to suddenly snap your leg like a twig.

High-protein diets do result in increased metabolic trash being excreted in the urine, though, so it’s particularly important to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause kidney injury in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes liver damage.

The liver, like the kidneys, is a major processing organ. Thus, it’s the same deal as with kidneys: People with liver injury (such as cirrhosis) are told to eat less protein.

Yes, if you have liver damage or disease you should eat less protein. But if your liver is healthy, then a high-protein diet will not cause liver damage.

Verdict: There’s no evidence that high-protein diets (2.2g/kg body weight) cause liver injury in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein causes osteoporosis.

Eating more protein without also upping your fruit and vegetable intake will increase the amount of calcium you’ll lose in your pee.

That finding made some people think that eating more protein will cause osteoporosis because you’re losing bone calcium.

But there is no evidence that high protein causes osteoporosis.

If anything , not feeing enough protein has been shown to cause bone loss. Bones aren’t just inert sticks of minerals — a significant proportion of bone is also protein, mostly collagen-type proteins.

Like muscle, bone is an active tissue that is constantly being broken down and rebuilt. And like muscle, bone needs those Lego building blocks.

Women aged 55 to 92 who feed more protein have higher bone density. So eating more protein improves bone density in people most at risk of having osteoporosis.

( Eating more protein plus adding resistance training: Double win for bone density .)

Verdict: High protein diets do not cause osteoporosis, and actually may prevent osteoporosis.

Claim: High protein causes cancer

Unfortunately, we still don’t have conclusive human surveys on the sources of cancer and the role of protein.

There are studies that asked people how much protein they ate over their lifetime, and then looked at how often people got cancer. The research proves a connection between protein intake and cancer rates.

But these studies are correlational analyzes and don’t prove that protein is the cause of cancers. Plus, some researchers have gone so far to say that surveys relying on topics to recall what they eat are basically worthless because human memory is so inaccurate.

A big part of the proposed cancer and protein connect comes down to confounding factors, like :P TAGEND

where you get your protein from — plant or animal how you cook your protein( i.e. carbonized grilled meat) what types of protein you’re eating( e.g. grass-fed steak versus a hot dog)

And so on.

In other words, we can’t say that any particular amount of protein causes cancer.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes cancer; many other confounding factors.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein and cancer

A study from 2014 looked at protein and cancer hazard. It was widely misinterpreted as proof that eating a lot of protein caused cancer.

First, it was actually two analyses, one asking people questions and following them for years; and one that fed mouse a high-protein diet and implanted them with cancer.

With the human study, researchers looked at people’s self-reported protein intake and their rates of cancer over the following 18 years.

They found that people aged 50 -6 5 who ate diets high in animal protein (>= 20% of total calories) had a 4-fold greater danger of dying of cancer over the next 18 years compared to people who ate a moderate quantity of protein( 10 -2 0% of total calories ).

( Just so you get an idea, smoking increases your risk of cancer by 20 -fold .)

Then, it gets more interesting, because for people over 65, eating more protein lessened cancer danger by more than half. In summary:

Eating more protein from 50 -6 5 years old was associated with a higher danger of demise from cancer, but over 65 years old that association was reversed.

The second part of the study is where people genuinely misunderstood what the study had proven.

Researchers fed mouse a high-protein diet( 18% of total calories), then implanted cancerous cells. They found that the high-protein diet increased tumor sizing. This is not a astonish, since protein increases IGF-1( an anabolic protein) that stimulates growth in pretty much all tissues, including cancerous tissue.

Higher protein diets stimulated cancerous growth in mice.

So, while feeing more protein might increase the size of existing tumors( depending on what treatment someone is undergoing), this study does not show that high-protein diets cause cancer.

Claim: High protein causes heart disease.

Eating animal-based protein daily is associated with an increased risk of fatal coronary heart disease( 70 percent for men and 37 percent for women ), whereas plant-based proteins aren’t linked to higher rates of heart disease.

This suggests that where you get your protein from may matter more than how much protein you eat.

However, just like cancer, the link between heart disease and high-protein diets is from questionnaires rather than a double-blind randomized examine( the gold standard in research ).

There are many confounding factors. For one, consider the type of animal — does seafood cause the same issues as red meat, for example?

We don’t yet know the whole story here.

Verdict: Limited evidence that protein causes heart disease and the source of protein is a major confounding factor.

Let’s take a deeper look: Protein source

A new analyze in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) appears not only at protein uptake, but where people got their protein from.

More than 131,000 people were asked :P TAGEND

how much protein they eat; and if it came from animals or plants.

This study took over 35 years to do( starting in the 1980 s ).

What they found :P TAGEND

Eating more animal protein was associated with a higher risk of death … if you were also doing something else that was a risk factor.

Such as :P TAGEND

smoking being overweight not exercising drinking alcohol history of high blood pressure low intake of whole grains, fiber, and fruits and vegetables

Eating more plant protein was found to be associated with lower risk of early death.

What does this entail?

You might guess at first glance that you should eat less animal protein, since this study seems to say that animal protein is bad for you.

But there’s more to it.

If you’re doing everything else “right”, then eating more animal protein doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Likely, it’s not the animal protein on its own but a lot of lifestyle things that come with eating more animal protein.

For instance, this study began in the 80 s. At that time, virtually every physician told their patients to eat less fat and meat, and to avoid eggs.

So if you were a somewhat health-conscious person, then you’d likely be feeing less animal protein compared to someone who was less health-conscious( or if you ran against your doctor’s advice) — but you’d also likely be engaging in a bunch of other health-supporting decisions and activities.

The problem with these types of studies, called correlational studies, is that you can never be sure whether the associations are caused by one onto the other or if they’re simply happening at the same time.

Protein quality matters

Most people to be considered how much protein, but they don’t suppose all that much about the quality of the protein they’re eating.

There are huge differences in the chemical makeup of a dedicated protein source, and how valuable that protein is nutritionally. The higher a protein’s quality, the more easily it can give your body the amino acids it needs to grow, mend and maintain your body.

The two big factors that make a protein high or low quality are:

Digestibility:

How easy is it to digest? How much do you digest — and absorb and use?

Amino acid composition:

What amino acids is it made of?

A high-quality protein has a good ratio of essential amino acids, and allows our body to use them effectively.

Amino acid composition is more important than digestibility.

You can have way more protein than you need, but if the protein you’re eating is low in an important amino acid( known as the limiting amino acid ), it causes a bottleneck that stops everything else from running( or at least slackens things down ).

High-quality proteins have more limiting amino acids, which means the bottleneck is lessened and our bodies can use that protein source better.

Let’s take a deeper look: Measuring protein’s worth

Scientists use many ways to calculate protein quality, or how well we might digest, assimilate, and use a devoted protein.

Here are a couple.

Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

PDCAAS is calculated using a ratio of limiting amino acids and a factor of true digestibility to give you a value that lets you know how much of a given protein is digestible.

The higher the score, the higher the quality of protein.

PDCAAS is the current gold standard for evaluate protein quality, but there are a few other protein quality scoring methods that we cover in the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification program.

Indicator amino acid oxidation( IAAO)

When we don’t have enough of a particular indispensable amino acid, then all the other amino acids, including that indispensable one, will be oxidized( i.e. essentially wasted) rather than utilized for stuff like repairing tissues.

It’s kind of like a squad athletic: You can’t play without the goalie, so all the players sit around twiddling their thumbs, even though they’re all great players in their own right.

But if we’re getting enough of that particular amino acid, then we won’t assure all that oxidation. We have a goalie and the rest of the players can play.

So, you want the IAAO score to be low, indicating that all your amino acids are doing their jobs to rebuild you.

Thus far, the IAAO method seems like a very useful way to judge the metabolic availability of amino acids from various protein-containing foods, and to determine total protein requirements for all kinds of people.

New assessment techniques like IAAO are giving us a more precise idea of protein use, which means that we may see recommendations change in future.

Most likely, on the basis of these recent findings, the RDA for protein will increase — i.e. physicians may tell us to eat more protein.

“Complete” and “incomplete” proteins

Back in the day, scientists used to talk about “complete” and “incomplete” proteins.

If you had a plant-based diet( i.e. vegetarian or vegan ), you were told that you had to eat a mixture of incomplete proteins( i.e. protein from a variety of plants) at each dinner in order to meet your needs.

We now know this isn’t true.

As long as you eat a mix of different protein sources, you’ll get all the amino acids you need. No need for mealtime protein algebra to make sure you’re getting all your amino acids.

That being said, many plant-based sources are less protein-dense than animal sources. So if you choose not to eat animal products, you’ll have to work a little harder to get more protein from a wide variety of plant sources to make up the difference and meet your protein needs.

Read more: precisionnutrition.com