Philip Pape: 0:00

Hey everybody, enjoy this bonus Q&A which is from our Ask Philip Live in the Wits and Weights Facebook group. If you want to join the group and get your questions answered for free on these lives, just use the link in our show notes or look up Wits and Weights on Facebook. Enjoy the Q&A. So Wyatt's first question is when I'm setting a goal or program in Macrofactor and that's the food logging app that I recommend people use because it dynamically calculates your metabolism and gives you accurate targets. When I set a goal using small caloric surplus and configuring protein, I typically do the high end of the optimal range of protein and it gives me about 180, 190 grams. The medium range would give me 150 to 160 grams and, of course, shift those calories to carbs. So what he's saying here is the fat tends to stay the same. If you kind of tweak the protein, you offset the carbs. Vice versa, and it's mainly a one for one in terms of grams, because both carbs and protein have roughly four calories per gram, except for fiber. Put that onto the side, okay, but if you drop 10 grams of protein, you will increase 10 grams of fat. I mean, sorry, 10 grams of carbs, or roughly half that in terms of fat, so like if you wanted to give it to fat, it would be maybe four or five grams of fat. Anyway, he continues what kind of differences can I expect in my training or my physique results by choosing medium or high protein? Either way, I'm at least allotted 250 plus grams of carbs per day. So he's saying, whether the protein is medium or high, he's in a surplus, he's got lots of calories, he's at least 250 grams of carbs, so he's not like in anywhere in low carb or keto territory regardless, and as well a minimum of 150 grams protein, which is about 0.7 grams per pound of his body weight. And then he asked another question about creatine. We'll table that and address that separately. So, wyatt, let's talk about this is a really good question because I've also thought about it a lot and, given that I deal with clients where you know people simplify and they think it's just about macros and there are just strict formulas that we follow and that's the end of it. It is highly individualized and so I want to lay out the considerations for this and then what you specifically can do to figure out what you need, because, again, if you were working with me, we would look at a lot of data and biofeedback and performance information and I'm going to ask you to do that for yourself in this process.

Philip Pape: 2:34

So first let's just talk about why you're taking protein in general. Muscle protein synthesis right, you're building muscle, you're strength training. In this case you are in a calorie surplus plenty of calories. We are not talking about fat loss people. If we're in fat loss, the protein, you want it at least the 0.7 up to maybe the one gram per pound, and then the fats and carbs or whatever's left, and in that case the carbs stay pretty low and there's very little room to offset them. In Wyatt's case, he's got a lot more calories to work with and he's wondering if it makes a difference. It's a great question because you're trying to optimize at this point. So muscle protein synthesis when you consume more and more protein, it increases your muscle protein synthesis, which is just the rate or the percentage of your day that your body is net building new muscle tissue versus breaking it down. That's really what we're concerned about. It's always doing both. It's just how much are you pushing the synthesis side? And if you are trying to optimize everything and you're in a calorie surplus, higher protein generally means more muscle protein synthesis. But and this is the big caveat that's going to get into nuance the medium level intake you're talking about, of about 150, 160 grams for your weight, still is comfortably in the minimum recommendations for achieving that of 0.7 grams per pound of body weight, and between that and about one gram per pound it's, I want to say, like a 5% difference, right? So that leads us then to further considerations, because that could be enough for you.

Philip Pape: 4:13

But let's look at the other considerations. The second consideration is satiety and then even recovery. So I'm kind of lumping those together. But we know that the more protein we eat, the more full we are, and that's awesome for hunger levels. However, when you're trying to consume a lot of calories, it may actually harm you, in that you are so full all the time you can't quite get in the calories or you have to manipulate your timing or force yourself to eat. This is not a place we want to be. Phase don't have much of a problem with hunger at this point, and so you don't need it for that. It does provide a slight edge in muscle recovery, but so do carbs, right? So if you're already eating high quality protein sources more or less spread throughout the day, kind of around your workout as well. You're probably recovering fine from the minimum amount of protein, the medium amount.

Philip Pape: 5:08

So then we say, okay, well, what about the carbs? Like I get protein, it maybe doesn't make that big of a difference. Diminishing returns, yada, yada. What about carbs? Well, I just did a whole episode about carbs you can listen to as well as the one I did called more carbs, more muscle, last year, I believe. But by having a lower level of protein it allows for more carbs, and we know that carbs enhance your training performance. They replenish your glycogen stores, they can help you have more intense and effective workouts, they can improve your energy during the workout and that can indirectly lead to better ability to train hard and stimulate that muscle growth. And that might be more proportionally more impactful than the extra benefit of going from medium to high protein.

Philip Pape: 5:59

And so, in conclusion then, physique differences here and muscle building differences. High protein intake may lead to slightly more muscle gain, but the difference is marginal. The extra carbs might give you more performance. That outweighs that difference from protein. This is all may, may, may, and so, really, what am I going to ask you to do? Well, I test it out. At the end of the day, it comes down to testing it out which is the point of my carb episode that got all the hate from the YouTube trolls is testing it out by changing one variable.

Philip Pape: 6:29

So what I would suggest you do I don't know what you've been doing so far, if you've been at the 180, 90, I think you have is is make a huge step change in both the protein and carbs. So drop that protein, increase the carbs by the exact same amount, by by that massive, like 40, not massive, but like that 40 grams, and directly track the things you want to measure on the process based goals, process-based outcomes. What do I mean? Not your physique, which is going to change over many months, but the recovery, the soreness, the performance and the progression in the gym. So you probably have a good idea, wyatt of and anybody listening of okay, I've been able to go up by this amount of weight over time every session, or by these many reps on these movements. When you do this step change, does that type of progression feel like it accelerates right, it's a little bit faster or you just feel a little peppier in the gym and you know when you get out of bed the next day you're a little bit less.

Philip Pape: 7:30

You know, beat up things like that. You really have to track them and see. You may not notice much of a difference. You may notice a clear difference and at the end of the day, that's what you're going to have to do. If your question was, should I even do it at all? I say, yeah, give the experiment a shot because you really people think we need a lot more protein than we do, and we don't. But most people are getting far less than you need In your case. You're in the population that that I speak to, who they're learning this and they kind of understand okay, I need to have more protein, but you don't have to jack it up so high that it limits your carbs, all right. So hopefully it answers the question of if you need protein. You can experiment between medium 0.7 grams per pound or high one, 1.2 grams per pound, and offset it with carbs and see what the difference is in things like performance and recovery. That's where you're going to notice it, all right.

Philip Pape: 8:18

So then there was a second part to your question. You said how much does creatine actually matter if all the other training and recovery variables are at least 80% on point. Short answer probably one to 5%, if I were just to put a number on it. Longer answer is two parts. First, related to what you are asking about, which is performance. The second related to the many, many, many benefits of creating that we are discovering quite frequently in the literature. That might make you rethink ever coming off of it.

Philip Pape: 8:51

Okay, so the performance side we know that creatine what it does is increases the availability of phosphocreatine in your muscles. Now the episode I just released Wednesday about energy systems, I talked about the ATP-CP. So the adenosine triphosphate, creatine phosphate pathway, which is very important for lifters. It's very important for that maximum load, intense, squat deadlift, whatever. Important for that maximum load, intense, you know, squat deadlift, whatever. And if you have creatine it just slightly bumps that availability up and that improves your strength and power output during that. We know that. We know that that happens for sure. So then it can help you perform. You know the higher load and get all the reps, or perform more reps at a given weight, and now you get more training volume and now you could potentially accelerate your growth in your performance and maybe even recover better from that. So that's the second piece is well?

Philip Pape: 9:46

I guess there's three cause. I should talk about muscle growth specifically. Creatine draws water into your muscle cells and that actually can help the muscle growth as well. It is why you gain a few pounds when you first start taking creatine and why you might look a little fuller, have that fuller appearance, and then again, with more performance, comes more muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth, just like when we talked about carbs. And then recovery. It could aid in faster recovery, both between your sets and between your training sessions.

Philip Pape: 10:15

Some people aren't responders Like 20% of people aren't responders to creatine. Some people aren't responders Like 20% of people aren't responders to creatine. And then there's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of a percent that may have some adverse allergy to it, which is so infinitesimal, but I do know one person that had that. Other than that, from a performance perspective, I do think it's worth it just to be on it, and I'll tell you why. Because it also has a lot of other potential benefits that we're learning about, with no downsides, and I want to address those real quick because, even if the training benefit is minimal, I think everyone should probably take creatine, and I'm going to be taking it probably for the rest of my life. I've encouraged my wife to take it, my mother-in-law, my mom, like a whole bunch of people. So there's a whole list of things. I should probably do an entire episode, a deep dive about this.

Philip Pape: 10:59

The first one is cognitive enhancement, right, memory intelligence. Now, this may only be in people who have low creatine to begin with because they're, say, vegetarians or vegans, but again, I mean, that is a big amount of the population who also is low in protein when they're not vegetarians and vegans, and so it could help with that, reduce mental fatigue, enhance brain function, all of that. There's neuroprotective effects. Again, this is all potential. We've seen correlations. As best as I can say it, we're talking Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. It might support your cellular energy production, which then protects different types of cells, like nerve cells. It might increase your bone mineral density, mainly as a result of it, helping you with resistance training, and then that helps with osteoporosis. We've seen it could be correlated with improved insulin sensitivity, glucose tolerance, mood, mental health, cardiovascular, like heart, muscle, energy, metabolism.

Philip Pape: 11:58

I mean there's so many things we're discovering which is pretty cool, right, like I hope they deep dive into each of these areas and see, is it simply because people who take creatine have a different lifestyle. That enhances these things, right? Or is there a direct improvement because of the creatine? So there's a lot of things. There's antioxidant hydration, thermal regulation I have a whole list here. I didn't want to bore people to death, even skin health, I mean. I don't want to make any of these claims just to say that I would take creatine. I do not just for performance, but for a lot of other potential benefits. Again, that was a Q and a from our ask. Philip, live in our wits and weights Facebook group. If you want to ask your own questions and get deep dive answers for you personally, for you and your context, just use the link of my show notes or look up wits and weights on Facebook and I will approve you into the group totally free and we'll see you there.