How to Lose Fat & Gain Muscle With Nutrition | Alan Aragon

Post-workout protein: 0.4-0.6g per kg per meal, and 100g in one sitting still beats 25g

The old 20g protein cap is debunked. A 2016 study showed 40g beat 20g after full-body training. A newer study showed 100g beat 25g. Aim for 0.4-0.6g per kg bodyweight per meal for maximal muscle protein synthesis.

"2016, when McNaughton and colleagues compared 20 grams of protein versus 40 grams of protein, but instead of doing what previous researchers did with the training bouts being very low volume, like eight to 12 sets, a couple different leg exercises, leg extensions, leg presses, eight to 12 sets total, and then you assess the muscle protein synthetic response to the protein dose. What McNaughton and colleagues did, they hit the subjects with a 24-ish set regimen full body. So it was a little bit more ecologically valid in the sense that they tried to mirror what goes on in the real world with training regimens with people who are trying to build muscle and really elicit this anabolic response. So when they ran this experiment and they compared 20 versus 40 grams of protein, the 40 grams of protein actually had a greater muscle protein synthesis response than the 20 grams. And it took us all the way to 2016 to figure that out. And then a series of studies just kind of progressed from there and proceeded to kind of debunk this idea that muscle protein synthesis plateaus at 20, 25 grams. But now, and there's some interesting recent studies on that as well. Up to 100 grams, as I recall. That's exactly the study I was going to bring up. That's by Joran Tromelin and colleagues where they compared a 25-gram dose with 100-gram dose post-exercise. They used a slow digesting protein. They used milk protein, which is 80% casein, which is a slow digesting 20% whey, which is fast. So mostly a slow digesting protein. And there was significantly greater muscle protein synthesis with the 100 gram dose compared to the 25 gram dose. But my big issue with that study is they really, really needed to include an intermediate dose to see whether there would have been a plateau in MPS with something like, let's say, 40 or 50 grams. And that's because there's a lot of other research seeing that plateau somewhere between 30 and 50 grams. So I wish Jorn et al. included an intermediate dose with that. Maybe a future study. Let me just pause you for a second and ask a couple questions. Sure. If you can give an across-the-board recommendation of how much protein people should consume post-resistance training, let's just leave cardiovascular training separately for the moment, post-resistance training, what would that number be? Would it be 20, 30, 50, or 100? Should it scale with body weight? And how long after training should one consume that protein if the goal is muscle protein synthesis?"

Vegans matched omnivores for muscle gains at 1.6g/kg protein — even with less leucine

A first-of-its-kind study compared totally vegan vs omnivore diets with matched protein at 1.6g/kg. No significant differences in muscle size or strength gains over 12 weeks, despite vegans having less essential amino acids.

"The vegan diet overall had significantly less essential amino acid content, but apparently the resistance training stimulus in conjunction with sufficient total protein equalized the muscle building between groups."

Body recomposition is real: at least 12 studies show simultaneous muscle gain and fat loss

At least 12 studies demonstrate gaining muscle while losing fat simultaneously. Most show it happens in a slight caloric surplus (~10% above maintenance) with very high protein intake and hard resistance training.

"Great. Thank you. off, is it possible to, quote unquote, gain muscle while at the same time losing fat? Yes. Great. That will be reassuring to people. Does it require a caloric deficit? This is the weird part. No, no. And just super interesting, man. My friend and colleague, Chris Barakat, he collected all the studies that witnessed this recomposition phenomenon with a recomposition. We call it recomp. You know, it's simultaneous gain in lean mass and loss in fat mass. So he collected all the studies. He collected 10 studies. And this review was put out five years ago. So you can imagine there's probably a few more studies that have shown Recomp now. So we can say at least a dozen studies have shown this phenomenon, which we didn't necessarily think was possible like 10 years ago. We thought, okay, you need a caloric surplus to gain muscle and you need a caloric deficit to lose fat. But what happened in these studies is the recomposition phenomenon is I think seven out of the 10 studies was a lean mass gain dominant recomposition. So in other words, more lean mass was gained than fat was lost. So there were net gains in body mass by the end of these trials, which would at least very strongly imply that fat was lost in a caloric surplus. If you were going to suggest to somebody the best way to approach this, let's say somebody, loosely speaking, this is not a competitive athlete. This could be man or woman, assuming that the same advice would pertain to both, is willing to do resistance training three to four times per week. Let's say three times per week. Do some cardio three times per week for about an hour each session for those. And they are willing to eat maintenance calories or slightly over, and their goal is to gain some muscle and lose some fat, where would you set the calories relative to their needs? Would it be an extra two to 500 calories? I realize that's hard to say because we should talk in percentages, but let's just keep it broad for sake of a broad audience. How much more than maintenance should somebody ingest? And let's assume that when they go in the gym, they know what they're doing. They warm up for 5, 10 minutes, and then they train hard. They take the sets close to failure. They're doing, you know, three to six sets per body part. They're training with meaningful effort. and when they do their cardio they're somewhere between zone two and maybe they a, you know, a max heart rate workout once a week. They do some sprints in the middle of their zone two and go back to, you know, this I think is pretty typical of what a lot of people are willing to do or currently doing. I would say sort of the simple and direct answer is to try to keep the caloric surplus pretty judicious. So 10%-ish above maintenance conditions, which could be for somewhere between 200, possibly 300 calories above what you see as maintenance."

Alan Aragon's daily stack: creatine, vitamin D, fish oil, magnesium, collagen + vitamin C

Aragon takes 5g creatine, vitamin D, fish oil, vitamin C, magnesium, multivitamin, and 15g collagen with vitamin C for skin. He trains 4-5 days per week with short rests, making resistance training his cardio.

"I touch on what works for me, but this is what works for you. And you're able to kind of merge cardio and resistance training in a way that sounds very time efficient well i i don't always do the cluster set thing i love doing supersets so if i'm you know if i'm at at a station where i can superset chest and back work i'll i'll superset with rest. Also very time efficient. And, or, you know, bicep versus tricep work or anything that you can do sort of supersetting antagonistic muscles. I take advantage of that. I don't necessarily always do the cluster set thing. You mentioned that your wife is a trainer. Does she train her female clients this way? And do you train your female clients this way? The reason I ask is that in my experience, I realize this is a generalization, but I've had female training partners before. Some of the best training partners I've had, by the way, female training partners, they worked hard and they were also great athletes. Um, they tended to view resistance training, at least at, at first as something to limit the rest periods between sets. Like they, they felt like if their heart rate wasn't up continuously, it wasn't exercise. Um, those people often were pleasantly surprised by doing lower, lower repetition, longer rest work. But in general, do you recommend what you just described more for your male or female training clients? You know, being perfectly honest, it's just what I enjoy doing and it is probably not the most efficient way to make muscle gains, but I just find it fun and I enjoy it. When I was training folks for the specific goal of hypertrophy, I would put them through kind of the standard, you know, let's rest between sets, move the maximum amount of load. Let's cover a spectrum of loading zones. I don't, you know, I'm sort of with Brad Schoenfeld. I think Brad has done the best work in the hypertrophy realm. And training for hypertrophy is one of the best ways to train for, I guess, optimizing metabolic health. So there should be some hypertrophy training included in in any program, in my opinion. So, yeah, it's just what I enjoy, man. And I realize it does go against a lot of the typical consensus. Well, thank you for sharing that. I think it highlights, if nothing else, that doing what one enjoys in the realm of fitness and nutrition is equally important to what's best because if you don't enjoy it, you're unlikely to stick to things. So find what you enjoy. Listen, I want to extend a huge thank you for coming here today. This was a long time coming. I always knew from our first in-person meeting that we would do this at some point. And I'm so glad we're doing this now. I must say you have an absolutely staggeringly impressive command of the literature. Anyone that's listened to this realizes that you don't just say stuff. You always precede your statements with the origin of the information you're about to convey, whether or not it's your own personal experience and preference, whether it's from a meta-analysis, whether or not it's from a particular study. And as an academic, I especially appreciate you always credit the authors of the study. I mean, I know people heard this, but I want to underscore the scholarly nature with which you present evidence and attribution to the original authors of the work. And it's so clear that you've got your mind wrapped around these massive topics that are of immense confusion to the general public and importance. And to take us back to something I said at the beginning, you know, when I think of Alan Aragon, I think of immense amounts of knowledge shared and this immense property of clarifying things for people. Today, you've taught us that protein is extremely important. What qualities of protein exist in different domains of the different food groups, timing of a protein intake, timing relative to exercise, timing of exercise, type of exercise. Talked about collagen. We talked about calorie surplus, deficit. Yes, you can gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously. And you make this information not just clear, but extremely practical. So thank you, thank you, thank you for the immense amount of information you provided us today and that you continue to provide online and elsewhere. Of course, we'll provide links to where people can learn more about you and from you. And I just want to say, keep going. I value you as a colleague and a friend. And I'm so grateful that you came out here today and that I said the wrong thing on social media so that we had the opportunity to meet. Goes right back to you, Andrew. It is an honor and a pleasure to be here. And I really, really think this will bring a lot of value. And just thank you for everything. Well, you're most welcome. It's been a true pleasure. We'll have you back again. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Alan Aragon. To learn more about Alan's work and to find links to his articles and various other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. 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