What does protein have to do with muscles?

1. Protien is the  macronutrient that can help stimulate muscle growth.
2. By far the best way to increase strength and build muscle is through consistent practice of resistance exercise with reasonably high degree of effort. 
3. But if you're looking to you your diet to help you become stronger and build muscle mass, then eating enough protein can help. Unlike fat and carbohydrates, the body can't store protein. 
4. And protein is important for your muscles because outside of water, the macronutrient forms the biggest component of our muscles. 
5. In fact, if you were to break it down, 75% of the muscle is water. Most of the rest is protein followed by small amounts of fat and carbohydrate.
6. Foods that are high in protein content include meat and poultry, tofu, nuts like almonds, dairy food like yogurt, cheese and milk and pulses like lentils and chickpeas. 
7. Now to introduce a new term, muscle protein turnover, that term describes how the competing processes of muscle protein synthesis and protein breakdown work to ensure that the protein in our muscle is functioning well.
8. To visualize the process, think of a brick wall. At some point bricklayers were required to build the wall. In the muscles those bricklayers control the process of muscle protein synthesis, which is adding bricks to the wall. 
9.  And an opposite process is happening constantly in the muscle as well. That's muscle protein breakdown and that's a good thing, imagine that the wall is damaged by the wear and tear of contraction, breakdown is the way that we get rid of those damaged proteins and we need it to remove the damage to keep the muscle working well.
10. So on one side you have these bricklayers, the muscle protein synthesis building up the wall. And on the other, you have the repair team removing bricks and breaking down muscle protein.
11. So to build muscle, muscle protein synthesis has to happen at a greater rate than muscle protein breakdown. When we lose muscle, it's the opposite.After strength training, both processes get faster. 
12.  Muscle protein breakdown happens at a greater rate because the training has damaged the muscle tissue and we need to remove those damaged bricks. What increases the muscles' mass however is the fact that protein synthesis also increases. 
13. But it actually doesn't get any faster than break down until we consume protein. In the muscles, scientists refer to this as creating a state of positive net protein balance. And we do that by eating food that contains protein 
14. The next natural question is if consuming protein helps to spur the training adaptation, then exactly how much protein is enough and how much protein maximizes the training response? 
15. A review of all the studies showed that daily protein intakes that were higher than 1.6 grams of protein per kilo per day were not associated with greater gains in muscle mass than intakes below this level. 
16. It's because of something called the muscle full effect. According to the muscle full effect - there's a limit to how much protein your muscle can use and the limit for most people tends to be no more than about 1.6 grams per kilo per day. You can't put more protein into the muscle. 
17.  To sum up, we know what to eat to maximize protein synthesis, protein and we know how much 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. 
18. The last question is when, when is the best time to eat that protein? Studies would suggest that the best time to get your protein is in steady doses for about 24 hours after a hard workout. Now that doesn't mean that you have to get off the weight bench and sprint to the fridge to gobble up the chicken beef or tofu. Remember, your body can't store the protein. So after a hard workout, to aid muscle protein synthesis, you want to be taking doses at regular intervals for about 24 hours every 4 hours let's say, some weight lifters even take the protein right before bed. Try to make sure it all adds up to about one point six grams per kilo per day. For example, for some one 80 kilos,  to calculate how much protein is needed, multiply 80 kilos by 1.6 and you come up with 128 grams of protein per day. 
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