I am a HUGE fan of Dana Carpenter and always devour her newsletters and books, but I am wondering about her opinion on protein. She advises that one should never have a meal or snack containing more than 30g of protein, because more than that can cause an insulin release.

What do people think about this? Is there any truth to it? Does anyone follow this rule?

Hi Scarlet:

Yes, protein can be converted to glucose. It's discussed in most of the low carb books, but there is also a thread here that discussed it.

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...convert+glucose

However, I've never heard of the 30 g/meal limit. Not sure if it is right or wrong, but it is certainly interesting. I'm looking through my fitday journal and realizing that meals that caused "false hunger" involved larger amounts of meat. I assumed it was my carb intake coupled with not enough fat. I'm going to play around with these numbers and see how it affects me.

Stay tuned....

WC

It would be a bit crazy if my question finally answered your false hunger question too. Hope this works out for you!

You know...I test with my blood sugar meeter at least once a day, sometimes twice and I've never seen an increase from a protein and fat meal even if it was quite a bit of meat.
My average protein consumption is somewhere between 90 and 120 grams per day which is just over 30% of my daily calories from protein and would average out to roughly 30-40 grams of protein per meal. Since I eat less protein for breakfast than the other two meals, it probably looks more like 20 grams of protein for breakfast and 50 for both lunch and dinner.
Like Nat said in the link above, what constitutes "excess" protein varies from person to person and I'm not sure I'd follow a hard and fast rule that says you shouldn't eat more than 30 grams of protein at a meal, especially if you are doing any sort of weight resistance training.

Believe me there's no weight training going on, my diets about the only healthy thing I am doing !

In the chapter of the Atkins book dealing with induction there is a small segment dealing with ketosis strips that don't turn color. In that small segment he mentions in one line that excess quantities of protein may turn to glucose.

What exactly is an excess of protein. Four ounces of pre-cooked ground beef, one slice of cheese and two strips of bacon is thirty grams of protein. A steak that weighs six ounces before cooking is about 37 grams of protein. A lot of people probably eat more than that during induction, and its during induction that they experience their most significant weight loss, even factoring in the water loss.

The insulin release caused by excess protein whether at 30 grams per meal or 90 grams per meal, seems to be something to think about only if you are not going into ketosis or if your weight loss has stalled.

happy eating

and get some exercise. Even at my advanced weight and even more advanced age I've found it useful and even to my surprise very enjoyable to weight train and do the treadmill thing. The last time I was in Ireland they had sports and leisure complexes all over the place, which I really envied. If your county has one available you should take advantage of it.

slowday

Scarlet...

You may want to consider some weight resistance training. Building muscle helps you burn more fat, makes you look slimmer and more toned and increases your energy levels. Women don't have to worry about getting bulky from weight training because we lack the testosterone that does that in men. We just wind up looking toned and lean.
My DH and I gave each other a single stack pully weight machine for Christmas and I love using it. I can get a workout done in about 20 minutes and do it 3 times a week. Right now I'm targeting my triceps (trying to get rid of those flappy arms) and upper back and chest along with some ab excercises but will probably add some other muscle groups later.
You don't need a lot of expensive equipment to get a good workout, either. A couple of dumb bells with about 40 pounds of weight between the two would be more than enough.
Just some things to think about...

Gluconeogenesis...the nemesis of every low-carber. For those interested, here’s my version of “Gluconeogenesis Made Ridiculously Simple”

Some tissues (e.g. brain) need glucose, so there is a constant impetus for our liver to produce it. Without ingesting it, the body needs to make it. How it does it is quite complicated, but here’s the gist of it:

-glucose is a 6 carbon molecule.
-amino acids have a 2-carbon chain
-proteins are made of amino acids
-the carbon skeleton of amino acids can be separated from it’s amino group (deamination)
-those 2-carbon units can be used to make a 6-carbon glucose

So, most of this happens in the liver, but what controls it? Well, the two things that modulate this process are:

1) levels of glucagon versus insulin
2) availability of substrate, i.e. amino acid concentration in the blood

Okay…being a low carber, you have one strike against you. When in ketosis, glucagon is high and insulin is low. This favors mobilization of amino acids to provide the carbon skeletons for gluconeogenesis.

So…nothing you can do about that. However, you can control #2 in two ways. One is to simply decrease your protein intake. The other is to increase you protein requirement. As Lisa N. has suggested already, adding weight training to your program would accomplish this.

See, once you start weight training, muscle cells are going to start competing with the liver for those amino acids...since they'll need them to recover from your weight training workouts. Think of it as a tug-of-war: your LIVER wants amino acids for the purposes of making glucose, while your MUSCLES want amino acids to repair damage - they're both fighting over a limited amount of amino acids in your blood. The more you workout (i.e. "damage" your muscles) the more you'll favor your MUSCLES in this tug-of-war analogy.

I either really helped explain this or confused everyone (I have a habit of doing the latter, but I'm working on improving my communication skillz)

...it's always been my understanding that any glucose produced through gluconeogenesis would not be stored as fat due to the low levels of insulin production. The question then becomes, how much protein (or excess protein) would it take to produce enough glucose through gluconeogenesis to provoke an insulin response?
I base my minimum protein requirements on 0.6 grams per pound of lean body mass when not weight training and 1 gram protein per pound of lean body mass when actively weight training which gives me a range between 80 and 130 grams of protein per day minimum which I normally fall in eating until satisfied but not stuffed.
I'm diabetic and test my blood sugar regularly and would think that if I had protein being converted to excess glucose it would show up on my meeter as an elevated 2 hour post prandial reading, but haven't seen anything but normal readings for quite some time even if I have a high protein day.

True, glucose produced through gluconeogenesis would not be stored as fat, UNLESS gluconeogenesis kicks you out of ketosis. Once you're out of ketosis, our ugly friend insulin is back and now all that glucose can hitch a ride into adipocytes.

I think most peoples' concern with too much protein is that it will knock them out of ketosis. Unfortunately, there is no set amount of protein...only guidelines...from there you have to tweak your intake until you strike a happy balance.

From personal experience (warning: anecdotal evidence ahead), I think that once your PRO intake gets >30%, you start running the risk of gluconeogenesis kicking you out of ketosis.

...my $0.02

I agree that it's an individual level which is why I get concerned when I see things insinuating that nobody should go over 30 grams of protein per meal. Obviously that guideline can't apply to everyone.
It's a fine line between getting enough protein to keep your body from cannibalizing it's own muscle tissue to get the amino acids it needs and getting so much protein that you knock yourself out of ketosis although IMHO, it would take more than 30% of your calories from protein to do that. If it came down to chosing between slower weight loss due to excess protein and losing lean body mass due to insufficient protein, I'd probably go with erring on the high side.
I wish I had my Protein Power book handy as I think the Eades' address the issue of "how much protein is too much?" in their book, but it's currently on loan to my step-mom.

I agree with you on the 30g/meal, not on the 30% issue.

Say we use your 30g per meal...at 4 meals a day...on a 2500kcal/day diet...

...that would be (protein) <20% of total caloric intake....which I think would be fine for most people.

But you said that "it would take more than 30% of your calories from protein to (knock yourself out of ketosis)." For the same scenerio, if you increased from 20% to 30% (a 50% increase), that would put you at 45g PRO/meal, which you admitted would be too high.

Listen, 30% PRO diet is too high for most people. For example, take a 2500kcal/day intake....30% of that is 750kcal (from protein), which is equivalent to 187g/day! That is HIGH, HIGH, HIGH! (For a 80kg person, that would be 2.3g/kg). For most people, that intake WOULD be too much protein and likely keep them from ketosis.

Just my opinion.

Well...to be honest, 45 grams of protein per meal (and I usually have 3 meals per day, not 4) might be too much for me (although I read back through the post and don't see where I said that it would be too much), although at lunch and dinner I probably hit closer to 50 grams of protein with less for breakfast, but not for someone with a higher lean body mass or who is actively weight training. As I said above, I base my minimum protein requirements on my lean body mass and trying to preserve as much of that as I can while losing weight, not on the total percentage of calories. The more lean body mass you have, the more protein it will take to maintain it, let alone build more. It just works out to roughly 30% of my daily calories from protein because I try to stay between 1,500 and 1,800 calories a day. There are a lot of others on this board who probably eat more than that on any given day and are losing weight without a problem. So again, what would be too much protein for me, would most likely not be too much protein for my husband who has a higher lean body mass and is actively trying to build muscle.

Lisa, here's the info from PP:

How do you calculate protein requirements?

The minimum protein requirement ranges from 0.6 to 1 gram per pound of lean body mass depending on the level of physical activity. It is calculated like this:

Sedentary. A person who gets no physical activity needs 0.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Moderately Active. Someone who exercises 20-30 minutes two or three times per week needs 0.6 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Active. Someone who exercises 30 minutes or more three to five times per week needs 0.7 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Very Active. A person who exercises an hour or more at least five times per week needs 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Athlete. A competitive athlete who trains twice a day for an hour or more needs 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.

We also recommend that if someone is more that 40% overweight they should increase their protein requirement one level.

Is it all right to eat more protein than my recommended amount?

Yes. You can eat more protein if you still are hungry, providing you do not have any existing kidney problems. We would monitor your intake more closely in that situation.

FWIW, I'm one of those people who do much better when following protein requirements a la Protein Power. That's how I started low-carbing and that's where I'm back to now. 4-5 oz. of protein, 3-4 times a day seems to work best. When I overeat protein, I crave something sweet which sets off a chain reaction of overeating. Go figure!

Karen

Karen:

I think you are the first person I've read about who craves sweets from too much protein?

I'm doing a lot of experimenting right now to find out how my body works best. I'm using fitday, weighing myself everyday, drinking the same amount of water each day (14 cups), and measuring ketones. I'm not usually this obsessed (in fact, I try not to weigh myself very often), but I want all this data right now to find out why I get false hunger. Usually it is 45 minutes after my evening meal, which happens to be my highest protein meal. I hadn't thought about overconsuming protein, I was fiddling with my fat intake instead.

Based on PP, I should get 69 grams of protein/day. I far exceed this amount. It's often over 100 grams, about 45 grams coming from dinner. However, my impression from the previous posts is that too much protein will knock you out of ketosis. This hasn't happened to me, but I am getting false hungers on the days, I've noted, where my dinner protein consumption is high.

So here is my question. You say you get cravings after overconsuming protein. Does this overconsumption knock you out of ketosis as well? Or just make you crave sweets?

This is a very interesting thread. Another reason this forum is so great.

TIA,
Wanda