Protein Cycling

Q: Well, I went ahead and bought your first 4 books to save on the shipping. I am through with the first one and [found] some really great concepts in there. Like I said before I am trying to lose body fat while building my muscle mass.

I have a problem: I only get to train at like 10 pm and later. What do I do for postworkout? I mean it is too late to really eat. And how much protein should I take in?

My stats are 5 ’10- 210 lbs. Not sure of the body fat %.

Thank You,
Derek T.S.


My Answer: If you train late at night, then I suggest a good post workout drink like Surge Recovery from Biotest or something similar. After the workout your body should suck up the carbs and amino acids without depositing them into your fat stores. Then get ready for bed and go to sleep afterwards. No need for a solid meal at such a late time, since you're looking to lose fat. I don't suggest any pre-workout drinks, since you'll end up peeing all night.

As far as protein intake, you typically shoot for 1 gram per pound of bodyweight for the whole day. So for 210 pounds, you should be shooting for 150-200 grams of protein per day. I say 150 to 200, because your body will adapt to ingesting whatever amount of protein you eat.

So if you eat 210 grams of protein everyday, then you'll make some good gains in weight at first, but your body will get used to eating that much protein and your gains will slow down. Then you have to eat more protein to jumpstart growth, which becomes a vicious cycle, because now you're eating more and more protein just to maintain size.

The way to get around this is to fluctuate your protein intake. So you may eat 200 grams of protein Monday to Friday, but suddenly drop your protein intake to 100 grams on the weekends. Your body will welcome the break from all of the protein, and in fact it go into panic mode and start utilizing the protein much better once you go back to a high protein diet.