Top all-time · #5066
Menno Henselmans
Personal blog · mennohenselmans.comhealthscience
Menno Henselmans's personal blog at mennohenselmans.com covers health and science. Since 2013, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “The myth of 1 g/lb: Optimal protein intake for bodybuilders”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his evidence-based fitness writing, especially the article arguing that about 1g per lb of body weight is a myth for protein needs. Commenters cite it on protein intake and muscle growth.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The myth of 1 g/lb: Optimal protein intake for bodybuilders6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-04-03
- /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-02-19
- Is protein more satiating than carbs and fats?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-06
What Hacker News says?
Probably relevant for the HN crowd: there's a bunch of very geeky next gen fitness guys that keep up with the cutting edge of fitness research, and occasionally expand it themselves. If you're reading them, this kind of thing is being discussed for years, with new studies just moving the odds a bit in favor of the current hypothesis. Yes, they're very Bayesian, explicitly so. A few names/links, pick and mix as you w…
Comment linking /high-resistance-training-frequency-enhances-muscle-thickness-resistance-trained-men/
on “A little exercise each day improves muscles more than one big weekly workout”Submitted The myth of 1 g/lb: Optimal protein intake for bodybuilders as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> Definitely not near the extra protein serious gym people attempt to consume. Plenty of people exist who aim for >200g of protein daily - but that’s objectively overkill. There’s very little benefit, if any, to going over a half gram of protein per pound of body weight. https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein...
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “Engineer eats efficiently for $2.50 a day (2016)”Submitted Why the conventional wisdom on how to grow muscles is wrong as a story · 2 points
HN discussionEven 1/g per pound is too much. A perfectly optimal level for bodybuilders is around .82g per pound. One can extrapolate from there for those not seeking hypertrophy. - http://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-...
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “What Does 200 Calories Look Like?”Submitted Is protein more satiating than carbs and fats? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWho's recommendation? I've seen recommendations all over the map. The ones I often see are somewhere between .6g and 1g per lb of body weight, with 1g being the most common recommended on body building forums. This article ( http://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-... ) calls the 1g/lb recommendation a total myth. Another important question is whether the ratio is against total or lean body weigh…
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “What Does 200 Calories Look Like?”Submitted The natural muscular potential of women as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWhich guidelines? FDA guidelines? (Covered in the article.) Other countries? (some GP linked) Guidelines for muscle growth? Henselmen’s review is a good start for muscle growth: https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein...
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “How Protein Took over the World”It's funny that protein everything is taking off just as more data seems to come out that you really don't need as much protein as previously thought, even for vigorous weightlifting (~0.82g/lb of lean body mass seems to be a sufficient number), which isn't really all that hard to get from regular old high protein food. There's no good reason to infuse it in everything. I've been lifting for many years now, and have…
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “How Protein Took over the World”I'm someone who's been seriously active in powerlifting for years and I was getting ready to argue, but you seem to be correct. Not only was I not able to find research supporting CNS fatigue, Menno Henselmans himself(quoted in the article) agrees https://mennohenselmans.com/cns-fatigue/ . What I have anecdotally observed is that regularly lifting closely to your maximum (particularly at higher levels) will inevitab…
Comment linking /cns-fatigue/
on “Metis and Bodybuilders”You probably don't need 40% of protein for building muscle. The known evidence points to 1.5g per kg of body mass (~=.75g/lb) being more than enough. In my case that works out to about 20%. I doubt that it would reach 40% unless you have a very unusual diet. http://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-...
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “Soylent reaches $1M in pre-orders”What are you basing your protein requirements on? Even a gram per pound of protein is overkill [0] (Menno knows his stuff), and the protein you get from other sources besides meat (rice, beans, dairy) counts as well. There are plenty of vegans that lift that prove that. That clean eating is a diet of nothing but lean meats, rice, and broccoli is a myth. There's lots of flexibility in your macros once your basic requ…
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “The meathead margin: how lifting weights might have saved my life”I was reading https://mennohenselmans.com/protein-is-not-more-satiating-th... yesterday, trying to understand the role of protein in satiation. It makes the case that roughly 15% of calories is what we should be eating, which is the proportion in the average diet. The basis for this is the protein leverage hypothesis, which states that when protein falls below roughly 15% of our diet, we overeat to compensate. 15% o…
Comment linking /protein-is-not-more-satiating-than-carbs-and-fats/
on “We don’t need nearly as much protein as we consume”https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein... Yep it’s the most broscience myth that simply won’t go away.
Comment linking /the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
on “Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy”Imhv the bodybuilding/powerlifting community is pretty open about it once you immerse yourself there. But, yeah, the non-initiated get a pretty skewed picture about how muscular one can get, naturally. That's a whole another discussion about body perception/dismorphia and societal idealizations. It is also fairly easy to give an accurate estimation (esp. if fat percentage <10%) via FFMI.[0] In some natural bodybuild…
Comment linking /ffmi-calculator/
on “Why the conventional wisdom on how to grow muscles is wrong”
