Whist mooching around the interwebs about nutrition I came across ‘protein cycling’. Basically you have lower protein on some days and higher protein on other days, a bit like carb or calorie cycling. However I thought the body couldn’t store protein (like it can with carbs/calories in the form of fat). So is this complete BS?
You actually store protein in your muscles. When your diet is lacking in protein, your body harvests protein from your muscles so it has amino acids to use for building proteins that perform essential cellular functions.
You can come across a bunch of nonsense on the internet.
No you shouldn’t protein cycle. Your body needs protein to maintain or gain muscle mass and it needs a minimum of it daily. So your protein should be set up as a minimum. As long as you hit that minimum you are fine.
To go below that minimum on a day isn’t helpful.
Now I will also say being set to go above your protein minimums on lift days and barely minimum on rest days, and same thing with carbs and fats, isn’t really “cycling” I hate that term because it’s a fad term. It’s just setting up your nutrition for that daily activity.
When someone uses the term “cycling” to me that means someone thinks there is some added benefit to actually changing macronutrient profiles and that in and of itself will produce special results. It doesn’t.