I've noticed a lot of people talking about lower requirements for protein recently. The mainstream bro advice is 1g per lb of bodyweight. Ray always recommended over 100g but towards the end I've heard clips of him referencing as low as 50g, I've heard this could be because he thought it was less important at older age and with a more sedentary lifestyle.

There's a few people now saying around 0.8g per lb or even as low as 0.6g per lb is optimal and there's no benefit beyond that.

But when you look at the monster bodybuilders, Mr Olympias like Phil Heath, Jay Cutler etc. they seem to promote huge amounts of protein 400-500g per day, hitting 1.6-2g per lb of bodyweight. They all seem to swear by it and feel it's important and beneficial.

Is there benefit to these super high numbers, if you wanted to build as much muscle as possible across a 12 week bulk, would you benefit from going to 2g per lb for that time and then coming back down during maintenance or would it be better to just dump all of those calories into carbs.

Has anyone experiment with these kinds of numbers and have you seen any benefits?

Thanks for the replies, appreciate everyone's thoughts/help here. I'll try to answer everything mentioned.

I rarely feel cold at all, my body always feels hot my girl often comments that heat is just radiating from me. I've had other people make comments too. I'm often in shorts and a t shirt while other people are in coats and hoodies. But it's not a pleasant warmth like I always hear people talk about when correcting metabolism, this is an uncomfortable and agitating feeling that feels more like a stress reaction

For the details mentioned above, man stool varies so much sometimes it's 2-3 times a day, sometimes it's 3-5+ and other days it's 1 or 0. Sometimes perfectly formed and no smell, other times more messy and a bad small.

Small portions seem to be better but I can still have a mild reaction and I then struggle getting enough calories as I already eat 5-6x per day.

Energy levels are pretty poor, I feel tried most of the day most days and even caffeine (multiple cups of coffee and red bulls) has little effect. Yawning a lot and just generally struggle with drive.

My sleep is fairly consistent, 6-8 hours every night. Rarely wake in the night, occasionally get a numb tingling arm that wakes me up. Rarely need to pee during he night but often wake up needing to. I rarely wake up feeling refreshed and always feel like I could sleep for longer even after a solid 8 hours.

Regarding mood I used to struggle with bad depression and anxiety. Through diet, exercise and lifestyle changes I've managed to completely rid myself of both. With that being said I don't feel much happiness or joy generally in life and can be fairly easily agitated too.

I did try betaine HCl a few years back but it was just off the back of a recommendation and I didn't have much understanding at the time, I kept ending up with heartburn and stopped. I also heard something about them down regulating natural enzyme production and this put me off trying betaine and other enzymes again. Do you think they could be worth trying?

@Serotoninskeptic

My current macro split comes out around 20% protein, 55% carbs, 25% fat. Most of my meals are around this kind of split.

I've tried going lower fat higher carb but didn't feel as good generally or as strong in the gym.

I'm having issues with overheating when I eat. It's not the nice warm feeling people discuss. This is an uncomfortable agitation accompanied by sweating.

I'm generally warm or too hot. I can get this same feeling from pushing too hard with exercise. Starch seems to make it worse but it's not only starch that can cause me too feel like this. Even a cup of coffee with plenty milk and sugar can have me sweating and feeling uncomfortable and agitated.

Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone have any idea what might remedy it?

I've tried cyproheptadine up to 4mg as I thought it may be a histamine reaction but that didn't stop it. 1g - 1.5g thiamine HCl didn't help it either.

Thanks.

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look into the DC programme I've heard of it before but never tried it.

It's a good point about the concentric, I'm going to try speeding it up to 2-3s and just keep the eccentric phase slower.

I've read people say it should be harder on the joints but I get no joint pain at all when I do this very slow and controlled method and it always comes back it I start going faster and more explosive, even with good form.

Reckon I'll stick with the slower tempo to keep my joints feeling good and just focus on everything else nutrition and lifestyle wise to make sure I'm minimizing any negative impact from it.

I've been following Mike Mentzer style high intensity training. It's the older heavy duty based on a 3 day split with 1 set to failure for each exercise and a 50-70% warm up set. The tempo is 5s concentric 1s pause and 5s eccentric. I find this style of training works perfectly for my joints I have no pain in my knees or elbows which I used to get regularly once I started BJJ alongside the gym.

Since reading some of RPs work and digging about on the forums I've found various quotes and discussions about how concentric training is very beneficial for health, muscle growth and wellbeing and how eccentric is damaging for the body and raises stress levels.

My question is how detrimental is it and do people consider it damaging enough to drop it? I'm currently struggling as I tried changing back to a 3s-1s-1s tempo to focus on more explosive concentric and less eccentric movement but within a couple of weeks joint pain started coming back. I am willing to continue exploring training with a concentric focus just wanted to know if people think the benefits (and avoiding damage from eccentric training) is enough to make this worth while or if I should just stick with this split as if it is working for me and keeping my joints pain free.

Thanks.