Can You Build Muscle Without Lots of Protein?

A lot of people think they need masses of protein in order to gain muscle.

The figure that’s normally bandied about is one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. 

That is, if you weigh 200 pounds, the amount of protein you should be eating each day is 200 grams.

That’s a lot of protein.

Most people will find it very difficult to eat that much protein without the use of protein supplements.

In truth, while maximising muscle growth is going to require eating more protein than the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), the amount your body needs isn’t as high as one gram per pound.

How Much Protein is Enough?

You can’t build muscle without any protein at all. But the amount you need isn’t as high as many people believe.

A meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which pooled the results of 49 studies covering a total of 1,863 people, reports that roughly 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day is enough protein to maximize your gains [1].

That is, someone weighing 200 pounds would eat around 140 grams of protein per day.

Still a sizeable amount of protein, but a lot less than the 200 grams they’d need on the “one gram per pound of bodyweight” rule.

A follow-up study from a team of US researchers shows that increasing protein intake from 0.6 to 0.9 grams per pound of body weight had no effect on muscle growth in a group of untrained men [2].

The men trained three days a week on alternate days, using the squat, bench press, deadlift, and bent-over-row.

They varied their sets and reps from one workout to the next, doing 4 sets of 10 reps on day one (Monday or Tuesday), 6 sets of 4 reps on day two (Wednesday or Thursday), and 5 sets of 6 reps on day three (Friday or Sunday).

After 12 weeks, subjects using whey or soy protein shakes to bump up their protein intake to around 160 grams per day gained no more muscle than subjects eating an average of 106 grams of protein per day.

It’s worth mentioning that the placebo group did eat more carbs than subjects taking protein shakes, which could have affected the results via changes in glycogen/water levels.

What’s more, the combination of whey protein powder and resistance training did lead to an increase in satellite cell number, an effect that wasn’t seen in the other groups.

Why does that matter?

Satellite cells surround your muscle fibers, and play a key role in the synthesis of new muscle tissue. Over a longer period, those additional satellite cells may well have led to bigger, stronger muscles.

Another study, this time in a group of resistance-trained men, compared the effects of three different protein supplements – whey protein concentrate, a whey protein concentrate high in lactoferrin, and hydrolyzed whey [3].

There was also a control group that didn’t take any protein.

Protein intake in the three supplement groups was around 0.9 grams per pound of bodyweight. In the placebo group, it was 0.7 grams per pound of bodyweight.

For eight weeks, lifters in all four groups trained four days a week, using a 4-day upper/lower split workout routine.

The researchers thought that subjects given whey protein would gain the most muscle.

But, they didn’t.

Whey protein, irrespective of whether it was a concentrate or a hydrolysate, was no more effective than a placebo for increasing muscle mass in previously trained young men.

Here’s how the researchers sum up their findings.

“Contrary to our hypotheses, we report that 8 weeks of heavy resistance training plus supplementation with whey protein twice daily, regardless of whey protein form or molecular weight distribution, was no more effective than placebo at increasing total body skeletal muscle mass in previously trained young men when total protein intake is removed as a potential confounding variable.”

Can You Build Muscle Without Protein Shakes?

Protein supplements aren’t necessary for building muscle. They do make hitting your protein targets for the day convenient and easy, which is why I use them myself.

But think of them as an optional extra, rather than a strict requirement.

Norwegian researchers report that whether you get your protein from milk or whey, the muscle-building results are much the same [4].

Subjects received two daily servings of either milk or whey containing 20 grams of protein, during a 12-week strength training program. 

But even with the use of various sophisticated methods – including DEXA, MRI and ultrasound scans – to assess muscle growth, the researchers could find no differences between the milk and whey groups.

They say:

“Despite considerable gains in muscle mass, we were not able to show any differences in terms of muscle hypertrophy between milk and native whey supplementation.”

Does Incomplete Protein Count Towards Your Daily Total?

Back in the day, proteins used to be classed as either complete or incomplete.

A “complete” protein is a food that supplies all nine essential amino acids (amino acids are the building blocks of protein) in sufficient amounts to maintain tissue and support growth.

With few exceptions, single foods containing complete proteins come from animal sources such as milk, meat, poultry, fish, and eggs.

An “incomplete” protein – usually found in plant sources such as grains and vegetables – is low in one or more of the essential amino acids.

The term “complete” protein is something of a misnomer. That’s because almost every source of dietary protein contains all of the essential amino acids. Some foods are just lower in certain amino acids than others.

From The Protein Book by Lyle McDonald:

Rather than thinking in terms of ‘complete’ or ‘incomplete’, it then becomes more valuable to talk about dietary proteins in terms of having a limiting amino acid.

This is defined as the amino acid that is found in the lowest proportion to what is required by the body. The amount of this limiting amino acid will determine, to a great degree, how well that protein is used by the body.

A common example is that grains are low (relative to human requirements) in the amino acid lysine but high in methionine while beans (legumes) are low in methionine and high in lysine. So the limiting amino acid in grains is found in ample supply in legumes and vice versa.”

It was once believed that all essential amino acids needed to be eaten at the same time in the same meal, and that vegans needed to eat certain foods together in order to make a “complete” protein.

But that’s not entirely true.

Strictly speaking, it’s not necessary to combine certain foods so that you eat a complete protein with every single meal.

That’s because your body has a “protein pool” known as the free amino acid pool. This pool comes from the food you eat, as well as from the breakdown of proteins (including muscle protein breakdown) in the body.

Amino acids from your diet enter the pool from one side, while amino acids that come from protein breakdown enter the pool from the other direction. If the meal you eat is low in a particular amino acid, your body can pull it from the free amino acid pool to make up the difference.

However, the fact that this pool exists doesn’t mean that the source of protein in your diet doesn’t matter, because it does.

Specifically, there is research to show an increased rate of both muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth with a diet containing foods that are high in BCAAs (i.e. chicken breasts, eggs and dairy products) compared with lower quality protein sources (soy) [5, 6] .

Muscle protein synthesis refers to the creation of new muscle protein. And it’s the gradual accumulation of this new muscle protein that makes your muscles bigger.

But it’s not like foods containing an “incomplete” source of protein make zero contribution to muscle growth. They just don’t seem to do quite as good a job at stimulating muscle protein synthesis compared to foods containing higher quality protein.

All of which is my rather long-winded way of saying that your body can still use “incomplete” protein sources to build muscle, and that both complete and incomplete sources of protein count towards your daily total.

Can You Build Muscle Without Protein After a Workout?

It is possible to build muscle without taking protein immediately after a workout.

Hitting your protein, carbohydrate and fat targets for the day is a lot more important than the timing of those nutrients relative to exercise.

Research shows that resistance training to the point of fatigue makes muscle tissue more sensitive to protein for at least 24 hours, rather than solely in the hours after exercise [7, 8].

This means that the post-training “anabolic window” stays open to protein for a lot longer than was once believed.

The importance of post-training protein and carbohydrate will depend on what you’ve eaten in the 2-3 hours before training and what you plan to eat in the 2-3 hours afterwards.

A meal eaten several hours before training will still be releasing nutrients into the bloodstream during the workout itself.

If you’re training at any time other than first thing in the morning before breakfast and eating adequate amounts of high-quality protein throughout the day, chances are you’re going to have elevated levels of amino acids in the blood before and after your workout anyway.

This is going to make post-workout nutrition a lot less important than it otherwise would be.

However, if you’re hitting the gym first thing in the morning after an overnight fast, or you train before lunch or after work, where the previous meal was finished 4-6 hours before starting the workout, then it makes sense to eat something that contains a significant amount of protein (at least 20 grams), either before and/or after your workout [9].