165: More Than Muscle: The Protein Conversation

0:00Well, guys, we've done it. You've been asking for years. And over these last couple of months, we have been working on the product you've been asking for, which is a grass-fed whey protein isolate offered in two delicious flavors, fudge chocolate and vanilla, which goes live today, March 16th, 2026, 10 a.m. Central Standard Time at bpnsups.com.

0:38All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we're talking protein, everything about protein. And the working title of this episode is More Than Muscle, The Protein Conversation. Now, I'm a big fan, advocate, consumer, producer, all things of protein. Protein has been foundational for much of my life, for at least the last 18, almost 20 years now. But I think a lot of people get protein wrong and they think that it is just a muscle building supplement or macronutrient, but it is much greater. It is much more important. It is much larger than that. And that is my hopes in this protein conversation today.

1:42Now, in preparation for the podcast that I record, I do a lot of prep work. I do a lot of research. I'll listen to audio books. I'll read research papers. I'll listen to podcasts, read books, take notes, all of the things because I want to come into these episodes prepared to share accurate information, but also in a way that is easy to understand, consumable, and interesting. And I'll be honest, as I listen to a bunch of different podcast episodes and listen to some sections of audio books

2:26Nick Bare:from very educated individuals, very smart, they know their stuff, they've conducted research studies on their own. I found that a lot of the information about protein out there was almost just too much. It was overcomplicated, too much in certain parts of the science, and it lost me. And I just became uninterested because it wasn't applicable to me. and hopefully this podcast conversation discussion around protein is applicable to you. Now there's some key takeaways. We'll just like go really high level. One, protein is really important. I hope if you don't know that right now, by the end of this episode and this conversation, you realize protein is really important and we should try to get in a lot of protein, probably more protein than we are consuming on a regular basis right now on a daily basis.

3:39Nick Bare:So number one, protein's important. Protein is, it's really, I don't know how to drive that home any more meaningfully. It's really important. Number two, protein functions very differently in the body compared to carbohydrates and fats. Now, carbohydrates and dietary fat, these can normally act as fuel sources. Carbohydrates, which break down into glucose, are readily available energy sources. But both carbohydrates and fats can act as energy sources, short-term and long-term. Protein can be an energy source, but it is a very inefficient energy source. It is mainly used to build structures, maintain the integrity of muscle, of enzymes, hormones, many different things.

4:48So protein is important, number one. Number two, it functions very differently compared to the other primary macronutrients being carbohydrates and fats. And number three, if you don't take anything else away from this episode, hit your protein goals on a daily basis. Choose quality nutrient-dense sources and lift weights.

5:11Nick Bare:Incorporate resistance training into your regularly scheduled training program. You will build muscle, you will feel better, and you will set your life up for success, not just for performance and body composition goals, but for longevity. If you look at the people who are living long lives and not just years on their life, but quality of years, the later they get into their lifetime, the more they age. If you look at the people who are really, still getting after it. They prioritize protein. They work out. They move their bodies. They train. Resistance training. They have muscle. That will add not just years onto your life, but quality of years onto your life.

6:11Not just for you selfishly, but for the time and quality of time you can spend with other people, traveling, with your family, playing with your grandkids, all the things. And you might not be thinking of that right now if you are in your 20s or 30s or even 40s, but that time's coming and it's coming faster than any of us want it to. The best way we can set ourself up for success, hit our protein goals, choose quality nutrient-dense sources and lift your weights. Okay.

6:48Nick Bare:Okay, now protein. Protein is more than muscle. And I think when most people think protein, if you close your eyes and you say the word protein to yourself, what comes to mind? It might be one of those old school bodybuilding magazines. It might be just this jacked, pumped guy or girl in the gym. maybe the classic Venice Golds gym, golden era of bodybuilding, nostalgia. But protein is so much more than just building muscle. Protein on itself isn't going to build muscle. You require weight training, strength training, resistance training, and then protein, consuming protein on a regular basis is going to facilitate muscle protein synthesis.

7:51Nick Bare:The repair and building of muscle. That's only one of the functions of protein. Now, what are the other functions? Well, we talked about it builds and repairs tissue or structure. One of the quotes that I have here from Dr. Lane Norton, who I'm a huge fan of. We've had Dr. Lane Norton on the podcast before. I mean, he's been in this space ever since I can remember. When I first started getting into strength training and bodybuilding and when I was sitting in my college dorm room in Pennsylvania filing for bare performance nutrition to be an organization, I was watching Dr. Lane Norton YouTube videos.

8:45I was reading his articles on bodybuilding.com.

8:49Nick Bare:And one of the things I heard him say recently is that lean tissue is metabolically expensive. Another reason it's important to have, build and maintain muscle. Because when you have muscle, you have lean tissue, more lean tissue, as opposed to fat, it is metabolically expensive. Your body has to work harder to maintain that muscle, build and maintain that muscle. It's going to work harder. It's going to burn more calories. It's going to require more food, more calories. That's a good thing. Metabolically expensive means that your body is functioning very efficient and optimally, and it's consuming and burning, consuming and burning, maintaining and building.

9:42That's what you want. That's what lean tissue does. Having more lean tissue has that pro, has that advantage. Protein, dietary protein also helps form enzymes that are needed for many bodily processes and functions. It plays a significant role in hormone signaling. It supports healthy immune function and also supports bone health, stronger bones,

10:15Nick Bare:and in many other things that dietary protein does. But let's go into this conversation of accepting the fact that protein is more, it's much more than just building muscle and getting jacked. And protein alone is not going to get you jacked. It is a combination of a few things. One, resistance training. Two, consuming dietary protein to facilitate and initiate muscle protein synthesis. It's sleep, it's low stress, it's quality, nutrition overall, carbohydrates, dietary fat. But protein is an ingredient in those outcomes and results. that many of us desire. Like I want to build more lean tissue.

11:12Nick Bare:I want to build more muscle. I want to get stronger. I love training, but I also love eating healthy and I love seeing the results from the training and the diet. Now, what is protein? Protein is one of the main macronutrients. So we can think of the three main macronutrients being protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Protein and carbohydrates both yield four calories per gram. Dietary fat yields nine calories per gram. And if we want to include alcohol, alcohol yields seven calories per gram. So dietary fat is the most calorically dense by weight and both protein and carbohydrates yield four calories per gram.

12:11Nick Bare:There are complete and incomplete proteins. Now this is important. Foods that contain all nine essential amino acids are known as complete proteins and foods that don't contain all nine essential amino acids are considered incomplete proteins. Now we want to opt for more complete proteins because our body can utilize those in a more effective and efficient way. And a lot of the complete proteins come from animal sources, which we'll get into here a little later. talking about one of the potential consequences or downfalls of a vegan-based diet. Because a lot of the protein sources that are popular on a vegan diet, if you're not intentional with all of the food choices that you're making, you can find yourself consuming a lot of incomplete proteins.

13:15Now they're called essential amino acids because those nine essential amino acids you have to get from your diet, from foods you're consuming or supplements.

13:26Nick Bare:Your body can't make them on their own. So there's nine amino acids that are essential. Histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, balene. the branch chain amino acids, if you're familiar with BCAAs, so essential amino acids, you might see marketed as EAAs, and there's branch chain amino acids. There's three. It's leucine, isoleucine, and balein. Branch chain amino acid supplements used to be really popular, and now essential amino acid supplements are more popular, which I'll talk about here in a little bit. What's really interesting and we need to know about proteins compared to carbohydrates and fats.

14:30Nick Bare:Our bodies can store excess carbohydrates and fats. We store fat, like excess dietary fat. When we consume dietary fat, our body will use some of it for necessary function and bodily processes, but the excess we can and will store as fat, body fat. When it comes to carbohydrates, we can store excess carbohydrates in the form of glycogen. So when we consume carbohydrates, our body will break that down into glucose. It'll use certain amounts of glucose, but the excess can be stored in the muscle and liver as glycogen. And then when our body needs to tap into those stored carbohydrate or fat sources, it can break it down and utilize it.

15:30Nick Bare:When it comes to protein, our body actually can't store protein or amino acids in excess. And we'll talk about that here a little bit. And that's what makes protein so different and why we have to get in our protein every single day. It's why it's important. When it comes to carbohydrates and fats, we can store, we can break it down and utilize if we're not consuming enough. But when it comes to protein, because we don't store protein or amino acids, we have to make sure we're consuming our protein consistently every day. We're hitting our goals. That's something I really want to drive home. Protein is the one macronutrient we can't break down and store.

16:25Nick Bare:And that's why it's so essential that we consume it and prioritize it in our diet daily, consistently. So how does our body break down protein and use the amino acids? Proteins are made up of strands of amino acids. So we consume protein sources. Say you eat a steak or protein powder or chicken or fish or eggs or beans or any of these things. You will consume the protein and then the protein begins to break down, become denatured into individual amino acids in the stomach and the small intestine. So protein starts breaking down after consumption, being denatured into amino acids. These amino acids, individual amino acids, Each amino acid has a very specific function in the body.

17:27Your body will use histidine in a certain way, lysine in a certain way, valine in a certain way, isoleucine, leucine for specific functions and purposes. The amino acids are then absorbed through the intestinal wall. they enter the bloodstream and travel to the liver where they are regulated and distributed to the rest of the body where the body needs those specific amino acids. Amino acids that are not used initially for bodily processes can enter an amino acid pool. And this pool just has amino acids in circulation that it can use as needed, but it's not this massive storage space like glycogen.

18:20Nick Bare:I mean, our bodies can store, depending on the size of the individual and the muscle mass, 400 to 800 grams of carbohydrates in the form of muscle, primarily muscle and liver glycogen. Our bodies are not storing 400 to 800 grams of proteins broken down into amino acids in this free amino acid pool. So there's some amino acids that are stored in this pool, not much. The amino acids that aren't used and are broken down, now this is important to understand because we're going to talk about this when we start talking about some of the myths of protein. So the amino acids that aren't used, they are broken down and they have a nitrogen attached to them.

19:21So the nitrogen has to be removed first before the amino acids can be excreted. So you consume protein, your body will use it as needed. The excess has to be excreted. The way that this excess protein and amino acids are excreted, one, the nitrogen molecule is removed from the amino acids. The liver converts the remaining into urea and the urea is filtered by the kidneys and excreted in the urine.

19:55Nick Bare:So both the liver and the kidneys play a significant role in being able to excrete additional, unused, unnecessary amino acids, liver and kidneys. Put a bookmark in that right there because we're going to come back to it. So as I've mentioned, there are the essential amino acids, the EAAs. We at BPN, we actually have an essential amino acid product. Um, our amino acids are sourced from one of our favorite suppliers, compound solutions. Uh, we utilize amino nine, which is the nine essential amino acids in this product. This product right now is called recover by BPN in June. We're actually going to be rebranding it to post.

20:57so I've shared this briefly but we're relaunching our strength collection through BPN in June so right now we have a pre-workout called Flight Flight was the first product we ever developed in 2012 we used to have a pump supplement called Endopump which we discontinued and then we have an essential amino acid that has additional leucine and ingredients for recovery called Recover right now. I sip on Recover during every one of my strength training workouts. It is my intro workout slash post-workout supplement. Well, we're relaunching our strength collection with BPN in June. So Flight is being rebranded to Pre.

21:48We're bringing back a pump supplement and we're rebranding Recover as Post. So it's going to be pre, pump, and post. There will be three supplements within our strength collection that we're promoting to be used as a system. Use pre and pump 30 to 45 minutes before your workout starts. And you either sip on post, during, or after your workout, which is going to provide you the essential amino acids, the nine essential amino acids with added leucine. we'll get into why we added more leucine because leucine is known as the anabolic trigger that triggers muscle protein synthesis. But if you've never used that product of ours, it's a great amino acid supplement.

22:38Like I said, I sip on it during every strength training workout and love it. It's great for initiating muscle protein synthesis, but also helping to facilitate just optimized recovery

22:53Nick Bare:while you're breaking down the muscles as you're training. Now, protein has a significant thermic effect of food compared to the other macronutrients. So the thermic effect of food refers to the energy or calories your body burns by digesting and absorbing food. So when you consume nutrition, You put food in your mouth, you break it down, you consume it. Your body has to work to break it down further, right? So your body's going to have to do some sort of work to break down dietary fats. Your body's going to have to do some work to break down carbohydrates into glucose. And your body's going to have to do some work to break proteins down into amino acids.

23:43And this work that is required actually burns energy. It burns calories. it is not super significant, but it is significant. There is a reason that we talk about the thermic effect of food, the thermic effect of certain macronutrients, because there's a big difference. So protein has the highest thermic effect of all macronutrients, which means your body burns more calories digesting and processing protein than it does carbohydrates and fat. Protein is actually an inefficient macronutrient for energy production. And the body prioritizes protein for structural repair. Like I said, it lacks dedicated storage and it requires a high amount of energy to metabolize protein.

24:41So in order to metabolize protein, to break protein down into amino acids that your body can then utilize. It requires significant energy.

24:54Nick Bare:So check this out. The thermic effect of food for protein, carbohydrates, and fats. So your body uses about 20 to 30 % of the energy of protein to digest and process it. 20 to 30 % of the energy consumed is utilized to digest and process protein. That's a third, between a quarter and a third of the calories from protein are burned to digest and process it. 5 to 10 % of the calories from carbohydrates are used to digest and process. And only 0 to 3 % of the calories from fats are used to digest and process it. So when we think of protein, 20 to 30 % compared to the 5 to 10 from carbs and 0 to 3 from fats, it does significantly have a greater thermic effect of food, which means that if we consume more protein compared to carbohydrates and fats, we are going to have a greater thermic effect from the calories we are consuming.

26:24We're going to burn more of the calories we are consuming. Now, protein is also a high satiety food group.

26:34Nick Bare:I heard someone mention this. I think it was Dr. Lane Norton as well. But it's harder to overfeed protein than any other macronutrients. So think of it this way. If you put a bowl of a sweet, salty, maybe savory carbohydrate-based food item in front of you. For some people, chips, like Doritos. You put Doritos in front of someone or Chex Mix or cookies. It's really easy to overfeed on these things. You grab a little bit here, consume it. It's dense in carbohydrates. It's dense in calories. And you keep going back. for more and more and more and more. It's really easy to overfeed on carbohydrates and fats.

27:42Nick Bare:But it's hard to overfeed on protein. And if you have a plate in front of you that's loaded up with chicken and steak, you're going to eat until you're full and then you're going to be like, I'm done. I don't want to keep consuming chicken and steak. It is very satiating. It makes you feel full and content. That's why when you're building out your plate, I always build out my plate protein first, then carbs, and then fat sources. Sometimes the fat is built into the protein or I'll add avocado, nuts, seeds, olives, oils, and then veggies and fruits on part of the plate. I like to start by eating the protein first because that is the highest satiety, satiating food on the plate.

28:44And by the time you get to the other things, maybe you want to eat your your veggies and fruits next and then save those dense carbs for last. But did you ever go to a barbecue joint? I mean, down here in Central Texas, we have barbecue joints everywhere. And you're going through the line, at least this happens to me. I'll be taking friends who aren't from Texas to Terry Black's barbecue, for example, downtown Austin. We'll go through the line and we're starving. Our stomachs are growling and we over order every time. We'll take a pound of brisket.

29:23Nick Bare:We'll take a pound of turkey. We'll take a pound of ribs. We'll take pulled pork, sausage, just load our order up with all these meats. And then we start eating and our eyes are always so much larger than our stomach. There are times we don't even put a dent in some of the meats. So when we go to barbecue, I'm not really getting the sides. I'm going for all the meats. And I'm always surprised and kind of disappointed, to be honest, how fast I fill up. And when I fill up on the meats, I'm done. I'm tapped. I'm not like, I could keep going back for a few more bites here and there. No, I'm done. The protein is a high satiety food, which for many reasons, a high protein diet, for so many reasons, can build great body composition, can maintain a level of leanness, not because it is very satiating when you consume it, but also when incorporated and paired with resistance training, you put yourself in a position to maximize muscle protein synthesis.

30:44And when you build more muscle and lean tissue, like Dr. Lane Norton said, it is metabolically expensive. And because protein has a greater thermic effect of food, you're burning more of the calories you're consuming. I mean, all of these reasons, all of these things are pointing back to why protein is so important. for longevity, for building lean tissue, for bodily processes, but also just for overall health, for staying lean, for staying healthy, for not over-consuming and over-indulging. There's so many reasons that a high protein diet or protein first, protein prioritized diet is so valuable and important.

31:36Nick Bare:Now, some common myths about protein. One, these have been debunked as well, but scientifically debunked. You often hear, you don't want to consume too much protein because too much protein is bad for your kidneys. False. Unless you have a pre-existing damaged kidney condition. This may be accurate. But if you have healthy kidney function, a moderate to high protein diet has no negative consequences for your kidneys. Where a lot of this misinformation, these myths have started is because if we go back to how your body processes protein amino acids to get rid of the amino acids, the excess, like we've talked about, the nitrogen molecule has to be removed.

32:36The liver converts the remaining into urea and urea is filtered by the kidneys and excreted in the urine. So people used to think back in the day, well, if you consume too much protein, your body has to excrete it. It has to remove the nitrogen, convert it into urea and it has to be filtered by the kidneys. And if you're consuming too much protein,