This Is How Much Protein You Actually Need | Dr. Brad Schoenfeld

Question: If you are in a caloric deficit, but you are getting sufficient daily protein intake to prevent your body from pulling protein out of your muscle basically, can you not lose the lean mass or muscle mass? You’re not doing resistance training, say you’re doing aerobic, you are just getting protein, but you’re still in a caloric deficit.

Answer: If you’re not lifting weights, no. If you’re not lifting weights, the answer is protein will help you to preserve some lean mass but you’re still going to lose mass, and this has been shown in research over and over again.

“I always hate to talk in absolutes; because if you’re very obese, say a hundred pounds overweight, you can lose fat without losing muscle in a caloric deficit, because you have so much fat to lose that the body is gonna pull from the fat resources. But for people ‘just’ overweight, you will lose muscle if you do not resistance train. And I want to point out that even if you are lifting weights, if you’re getting insufficient protein, you’re gonna leach some muscle, so you still need to take in sufficient protein.”