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Transcript here:
Good morning everyone, Dr. Wells here from Nutritional Physical Therapy. Hope you're having a great day. It's a beautiful day here in St. Augustine Beach and I got a new research update for everyone.

This one is published by Canaan et al. in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2025. It's titled The Effects of High Protein Intakes During Energy Restriction on Body Composition, Energy Metabolism, and Physical Performance in Recreational Athletes.

So why are the studies important? Well, as physical therapists, exercise scientists, personal trainers, we're always trying to help our recreational athletes not only stay in the game but also sometimes shed some pounds. Particularly if they're former athletes, they're not playing as much, they may have gained some weight, right? And so in this particular study what they looked at is can we put these recreational athletes on a slightly hypocaloric diet to help them lose weight without impacting their muscle protein synthesis. So if you don't know this, as you reduce calorie intake you actually reduce muscle protein synthesis.

Muscle protein synthesis is important for building muscle mass, lean mass, right? And so by reducing that muscle protein synthesis individuals can lose weight but they also can lose fat mass. They can also lose muscle mass and so one way to counteract this through several studies is by actually increasing the consumption of dietary protein. Obviously the other way of increasing muscle protein synthesis is by lifting.

So interestingly this group of authors, they took 13 males, eight females, put them on a 25% hypocaloric diet and then altered their protein levels at different groups. So one group, the low group was at 1.2 grams per kilogram per day, the moderate group was at 1.6 and the high group was at 2.2. Those are all above the USDA's RDA of 0.8 grams per kilogram of protein per day. At the end of the study they found there was no body composition changes.

However, like when you further dig into the numbers that turned out that the athletes or the recreational athletes weren't really on a hypocaloric diet. They actually were only at about 12% deficit. So as a result some of them lost a little bit of weight, some of them gained a little bit of lean muscle mass, but at the end of the day the amount of calorie deficit wasn't significant enough to impact muscle protein synthesis.

So as a consequence with no body rule, body composition changes that were statistically significant, the authors kind of concluded maybe there isn't an impact on protein. However, we know from other studies, there's one military study in particular where they did a more aggressive hypochloric intervention. I think it was 40%.

They could see an impact of protein and adding protein into that muscle or adding protein in and how it helped muscle protein synthesis. Another good study looked at about 1.6 gram per kilogram seemed to be sort of the sweet spot for helping MPS while also not impacting calorie restriction because obviously as you increase protein consumption you're adding calories in so you have to be mindful of that and kind of trade off. Lastly, for any PTs out there looking at trying to help my client lose weight, at that 500 kilocalorie per day deficit, that's when you start really seeing that impact on muscle protein synthesis and you need to be cognizant of it while they're losing that weight that they're not losing so much lean muscle mass.

We got more information on weight loss, obesity interventions, and other diets like this on our three-course board-approved continuing education program online. Check it out down below, sign up today, and have a great one!