Had a talk today with a guy who was sort of offended for some reason about me not eating animal products and lifting weight. He said I’d never get enough protein (never heard that one before!!!). Because lentils aren’t a thing in a world of steaks.
Anyway he said that you need at least 200 grams of protein each day when you lift but that’s of course nonsense. Not saying you shouldn’t do it, but you don’t need to either.
I’m averaging around 110-140 grams a day and I’m doing fine at ±80kg body weight.
Most experts I have seen actually say around only 0.8g/lbs (assuming animal based) is necessary to gain muscle mass. The more important factor once you have above 0.8 is total calories. There also isn’t particularly any dangerous about 1-1.5 g/ lbs either. 1.0 is definitely a nice safe target though for sure.
None of this controls for type of athlete nor what stage of training.
The most common thought is to increase protein when you are cutting calories to maintain muscle mass in a cut. A recomp diet would be similar.
Type of protein does matter but if you have increased your protein intake when plant based above 0.8 or 1.0 or whatever, it ends up not mattering very much. This is key because there are people who cannot because of their genes maintain cholesterol levels healthily eating much animal based products. I.e. there isn’t anything necessarily “inferior” about plant based protein sources.
You need to control how much calories go in, and it can become an issue if you want to keep diet trimmed. The more particularly important issue is how do you get your 20-30 grams of high bioavailable protein post workout. Whey isolate cannot be an answer for everyone, as it has lactose, and long term usage of it creates kidney stones.
There is also an issue with plant foods not just having less bioavailability, but also incomplete in terms of 9 amino acids that make the full protein. So you need to do some protein mixing to proportionately balance deficient amino acids of whatever different plant foods you consume.
The inferior part is most plant sources have protein bioavailability well below 60%, which gives you less room for diet adjustment, and denser protein meals.
All this can just be accounted for with a bit of extra effort to read about where to get the best plant based sources of protein. It’s not particularly hard. Most vegan body builders end up getting pretty interested in the different sources and combinations of proteins. It’s all great knowledge to have in general.
Protein mixing is the technique used for this, to account for pairing up foods to create complete protein meals. Its not hard, but from how much nutrition and diet stuff I have learnt, it becomes an issue if you want to have denser post workout protein. As an example, it is common practice to pair up peas or lentils or beans with rice, for a good carb-protein meal. Whole wheat works excellently in India and wherever it is eaten daily. Vegans (and myself) use whey isolate-peanut butter mixtures with milk as another example.
For those with no problems against lactose, whey isolate becomes very easy to use. But for those with lactose intolerance or vegans that avoid dairy, it becomes an issue. Even though I am not vegan, I do cater to helping build diets for friends and family (my dad as doctor rarely has suggestions, and corrections are unneeded), and I like to have this knowledge.