How much protein?

Nutrition Discussion
1

Hello everyone, just looking for people’s thoughts and experiences on this. I’m trying to lose 50-60lbs, however the real goal is the sub-40" waist, not sure how much weight that will take to achieve.

Currently 5’10", 263lb, 45-46" waist. Scale was as high as 274lb a month ago. The first 5lb came down in 1 week of tracking, next 5 over 2-3 week span. Have worked from 2850cal/day to 2650/day currently.

I think I read somewhere that the chart for macros in TBAB gets wonky for those of us with lots of weight to lose. I believe it has a 200lb male at 250g protein in the fat loss category and suppose maybe I should bump to that, at 225g right now.

I think I’m in an ok starting place for carbs and fats, currently carbs(265), fats(80 and dropping each week or 2, started at 90 a few weeks ago) but am not sure where I should hold protein.

Protein being the most expensive part of the grocery bill I don’t want to overdo it. But at the same time think it helps feeling full longer and assume there’s some goal oriented benefit to keeping it at a certain level for reducing my waistline.

So, do I increase protein and take away from carbs and fat to make up the calories or do I keep it at 225 and let it ride?

2

You have an amazing opportunity to maintain lean body mass and lose fat. Sufficient protein and resistance training are the key levers in your control for optimizing that. I don’t expect there’s good evidence that 250 versus 225 will produce a different result in general but aside from cost, there’s no harm is seeing if 250g makes you feel more full. You may also want to experiment and see if reducing fat or cabs works better for your compliance. Most importantly you should be eating 30-40g of high quality protein 3-4 times per day which you’d easily be hitting at 225 if they’re roughly distributed over all meals. You don’t mention resistance training but you’re going to get much more impact from a few hours a week of resistance training that you will from 25g more protein.

I’d be much more concerned about finessing your protein if you were on an extremely low calorie diet (800-1400 calories) but at 2650 your current plan sounds like it’s right on track. Good luck!