How Are All Of You Drinking All These Shakes?

[Ssilian 67]

I'm on a pre-op diet and two shakes is 53g Protein. I'm reading that ppl are having shakes every 2-3 hrs. Are we supposed to go over 60g of protein? My diet is self-imposed because I gained 20lbs during my 12 month waiting period. I don't want ins co to turn me down next month.

[RickM 1,747]

60g is the minimum quoted by most docs; you usually see recommendations on the order of 60-80g per day, and sometimes 80-100g for men, and is generally based upon the amount of Protein required to sustain ourselves (we don't store it, so if we're short on our intake, our bodies will break down our muscles to get what it needs, much like it will strip our bones if we don't consume enough Calcium.) My roughly 155 lb of lean mass (out of 185-190lb total) requires about 105g of Protein per day to maintain itself; if I was wanting to actually build muscle mass, that requirement would increase to maybe 140-150g per day

Our metabolic rate is fairly closely associated with our lean muscle mass rather than our overall weight, so if we lose lean mass, our metabolism drops, making it harder to lose the fat that we want to lose; conversely, building lean mass through strength/resisitance exercise increased our metabolism making it easier to lose fat and maintain our weight in the long run - unlike fat, those muscles take energy to support even when they're not working, so increased muscle mass literally helps you burn fat while you sleep, just like the infomercials say! Building muscles is hard work and few of us can actually build muscle mass while we lose weight, but we can minimize the muscle mass that we lose (we tend to lose some muscle mass as we lose weight simply because there is less weight for our muscles to support and move, so the body adjusts.) But this is why there is near universal emphasis put on gettin in a minimum amount of protein as a priority with any kind of severe calorie restriction.