Episode 162 of the Institute of Performance Nutrition's "We Do Science" podcast! In this episode, I (Laurent Bannock) discuss "Protein and Weight Loss in Exercisers & Athletes" with Professor Kevin Tipton (The Institute of Performance Nutrition, UK).
Discussion Topics Include:
Podcast Episode Transcript: Download PDF Copy
Key Paper(s) Discussed / Referred to:
Related Podcast Episodes:
Check out our other podcasts, publications, events, and professional education programs for current and aspiring sports nutritionists at www.TheIOPN.com and follow our social media outputs via @TheIOPN
Episode 162 of the Institute of Performance Nutrition's "We Do Science" podcast! In this episode, I (Laurent Bannock) discuss "Protein and Weight Loss in Exercisers & Athletes" with Professor Kevin Tipton (The Institute of Performance Nutrition, UK).
Discussion Topics Include:
Podcast Episode Transcript: Download PDF Copy
Key Paper(s) Discussed / Referred to:
Related Podcast Episodes:
Check out our other podcasts, publications, events, and professional education programs for current and aspiring sports nutritionists at www.TheIOPN.com and follow our social media outputs via @TheIOPN
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We Do Science Podcast
EPISODE 162
June 8, 2021
"Protein and Weight Loss in Exercisers and Athletes"
with Professor Kevin Tipton PhD
EPISODE 162
[00:00:00] LB: Welcome to Episode 162 of the Institute of Performance Nutrition’s We Do Science podcast. I am Dr. Laurent Bannock. Today, I had my good colleague at The IOPN, director of science and research, Professor Kevin Tipton, one of our double act. I like to think it’s a double act. It’s more about Kevin than me of course.
In today’s session, we talked about protein. Of course, we did. This time, we talked about protein and weight loss, and particularly the role that protein can play, other nutritional strategy to support quality weight loss. What do we mean by quality weight loss? Well, of course, we’re not just talking about something as basic as weight-loss but body composition being the primary focus of the weight loss. That’s what I meant by quality, preserving lean muscle mass, preferably gaining fat mass and where relevant, no significant changes to hydration. What did we get into today?
Well, we talked about how consuming a higher protein diet during weight loss helps preserve lean mass across a range of stakeholders. In particular, what we’re interested in here is exercises and elite athletes. There’s a spectrum right there for you, which, does it actually require a different perspective, a different focus? There are different considerations beyond just calories when it comes to weight loss, an energy restriction, inducing calorie deficit and that’s where protein can come in as you hear us discuss today. But we don’t want to embark on a weight loss journey that effectively makes an athlete less functionally less good at being an optimum performing athlete. We got into that in great detail, so you can expect this conversation to be, considering more than just about energy balance and waking in a bunch of protein.
We talked about the evidence. We talked about context. It is a very nuanced era, and we get into the whole shebang on that topic. Yes, we’re going to talk about talk about the amount of protein and how that might vary based on training volume and how big the actual caloric deficit is. We’re going to explain why 2 to 2.4 grams per kilogram per day is a good target for protein intake across the spectrum of people that this will be of interest to, and why we just don’t just want to eat protein or just talk about calories. You all have heard me talk before about the importance a food-first approach, because we eat food, not just calories or protein. We talked about protein quality and nutrient-dense diet and so on.
But ultimately, we are going to remind you that the evidence still points to the overriding primary consideration in this being that the stimulus to retain lean mass, the strongest stimulus is going to be via resistive exercise. We talked about the importance of resistance exercises as part of this approach to quality weight loss and of course, particularly how protein plays a really powerful role in that.
Before we get into the discussion today, just do check out our website at www.theiopn.com, where you can get access not only this podcast but all the relevant podcast that we’ll connect to in our discussion. There are many related conversations I’ve had with Kevin or with other experts. You can get the transcript to this episode. Also, you can learn about our advanced level, post-graduate level diploma in performance nutrition, a practice-focused program, something that will take you form your existing knowledge and education, which might well be a degree or a master’s degree or even a PhD in sport and exercise science, sports nutrition, performance nutrition, dietetics, what have you. Specifically on how on to think and act and practice in the real world as an effective performance nutritionists.
That’s what we’re all about, so check out our diploma in performance nutrition at www.theiopn.com and where you can learn about us, our team. We are more than just me and Kev, we are a whole team of academics, researchers and practitioners. Together, we are the IOPN. Anyway, without further ado, I hope you enjoy our conversation today about protein and quality weight loss. Take care folks.
Oh! I almost forgot. This will be the last podcast I am able to produce for about six weeks. For those of you that are catching up months or years after, this won’t make an difference to you, but there will be a reasonable gap I’m afraid between now and the next series of podcasts, which I’ve already lined up because I’m off to do my other job, of course, which is being a nutritionist in this case with a Belgian national football team. Very, very exciting time to me and I want to get back I’ll hopefully have an opportunity to reflect upon those experiences too. Anyway, enough of that. Have fun with this podcast. I hope you get as much out of it as I did. Enjoy.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:05:29] LB: Hi, welcome back to the Institute of Performance Nutrition’s We Do Science podcast. I am Laurent Bannock and I’m back with our director of science and research, Professor Kevin Tipton. How are you Kev? How are you doing?
[00:05:43] KV: Fine. Thanks, Laurent. Great to be here. Great to get another pod going.
[00:05:47] LB: Yeah. We got to squeeze one in, because in a couple of days, I’m flying out to Belgium to join the Belgium National Men’s Football Team for a crazy five-week, hopefully five weeks of championship football at the Euros. Listen, this topic that we’re going to get into
today is going to be about protein recommendations for weight loss, primarily in recreational athletes, exercises if you like and elite athletes. The word “weight loss” is one of those terms that I think, personally it drives me nuts because there’s not enough context there. Was does weight loss even mean?
Of course, what we’re going to be talking about principally is body composition and performance across that spectrum of people. But Kev, let’s just dial back to why this topic is important for people to continue to be conducting original research, writing consensus statement and for us for example to have this conversation today. Because some people might feel, “Ah! Weight loss is just a simple case of your calories in, calories out. Put your athlete, put your player into an energy deficit and boom, you’re going to lose weight.” From your perspective Kev, why is it that not simple and why do we need to expand on that in today’s discussion?
[00:07:11] KT: Yeah. I think you can go from the continuum of sedentary people who are overweight or obese and need to lose weight for health, all the way through to elite athletes who might want to lose weight for various and sundry reasons, like making weight class or for aesthetic purposes if they’re in particular sports like gymnastics, or dance, etc. You got lots of different reasons for people wanting to lose weight and it’s obviously a very popular topic. Just every day, you’re going to see something about somebody talk about weight loss.
Now, I’ve always tried to maintain it from a health perspective for overweight and obese individuals that weight loss is the wrong concept that you should be looking at changes in body composition. That may include losing weight, but when you lose weight, when most people lose weight, they’re going to lose a combination of fat and lean body mass. There are various reasons why losing lean body mass is not a positive and in very rare circumstances, it could be something you don’t worry about or might even want. But for health reasons and for most athletes and exercises, you don’t want to lose much if any lean body mass. So what we’re going to try to talk about today are nutritional interventions and ways to minimize that loss lean body mass when you want to get your total body mass down.
[00:08:41] LB: Absolutely. It is almost forgivable, I guess for people to have sort of an oversimplified perspective of what weight loss is and how we approach it. Because of course, sort of the messaging that we get on that is very much from a public health perspective, in general population who are not, face it, active, not active at all. We are talking about much more specific portion of the general population. And yes, a fair number of people do exercise, they do go to the gym maybe two, three times a week. Some people take it further than that, who might be real serious, weekend warriors or — well now, during all these lockdowns, they are not just weekends, but they might go out for two, three-hour bike ride. They might hit the gym more often than normal for more of health or an aesthetic purpose, just to look great with your shirts off sort of thing.
But of course, at the other end of that spectrum is the elite athlete, and of course, there are many different types of elite athletes, from elite endurance athletes, ultra-endurance athletes to strength and power athletes, intimate and sport athletes like soccer, football of course, rugby and so on. There are just slightly different angles there. But when it comes to the athlete of course, they need to be functional and they need to be able to function at their absolute best. The way the human body functions is a culmination of things, it’s not just strength and power or power to velocity or power to weight ratios, however which way you want to look at this stuff. They’ve got to make decisions. They’ve got skills that they need to perform at their best, so on and so forth.
It gets pretty complicated when you start cutting their fuel supplies, because it’s not just calories that you cut, you cut some of these essential things that they need to perform at their best. There’s a lot to this area, Kevin. What I want to do is kind of sort of control the direction just slightly. I guess, one of the first things that we hear about is, calories. Calories in, calories out. Maybe we could just focus on that just first as to what does that even mean and why is that an oversimplification, particularly for exercises in athlete.
[00:11:00] KT: Yeah. When you say you want to control the direction of this, you do know who you’re talking to, right?
[00:11:05] LB: Yeah. I want the illusion of controlling the direction, Kev.
[00:11:10] KT: Yeah. People tell me, they try to keep me online is like [inaudible 00:11:12]. Of course, when people talk about calories in, calories out, if you want, you can get all sorts of avenues down conversations with that big argument about whether it’s real or not, and everything and it’s a model. All that’s true to some extent, but I think what the confusion is to me is, at the end of the day, physics is physics. Calories in and calories out when you talk about energy. A calorie is a unit of energy. At the end of the day, that’s absolutely true.
But what people don’t think about is, when they think calories in, calories out, what they think about is the number of calories that are on a box of cereal or a pot of yogurt and that’s how much they eat. Then how many calories they expend based on their iWatch, or their Fitbit, or heart rate or whatever it is that they do. Then, sometimes it doesn’t add up and that’s because there are lots of metabolic changes going on in response to the nutrition and to the stimulus of the exercise and all this kind of thing.
Those manipulators or the amount of energy that’s expended, and stored, etc., all has to come in to account when you ultimately get to that ultimate point of calories in, calories out. I think that’s where the real confusion is. Is that, it ultimately is physics, energy in and energy out, but that’s not the way we perceive in real life how it works. I hope that made some sense.
[00:12:43] LB: Of course, it does, because the theory is of course, bang on. It’s just the reality is more nuanced because of the situation that involves a human being that is not — there are so many different aspects to this all the way from like you said, the different foods and the way in which the body interacts with that, and digestion, absorption and the thermic effect of feeding and all this stuff. But also, the drivers that influence the person to eat less or to eat more is not simple. But also, the illusion that we’re able to somehow calculate a person’s specific calorie needs based on some calculations we get from a book or from a spreadsheet. The difference between that and what we might measure in a lab using RMR testing for example is one thing or whether it’s a 24-hour chamber study as well is completely different. We need to be mindful that these numbers, because the numbers sound specific. Don’t they, Kev?
I know we’re going to get into this with protein and we’ll get to recommendations for how much protein we should be getting. But it sounds very specific when you say, for example 2 to 2.4 grams per day or this person needs to eat 3,500 calories a day, this is what I’ve worked. Or maybe with athletes for example, we might use GPS data for example to asses how much these guys are running around and the distance they cover. Then we put that through some formulas and work it out. But there’s a big difference between the theory and actually reality. Maybe just briefly, you could maybe discuss that and why it’s important that we put that in mind when we’re reading the literature, we’re looking at the science. What happened in the lab is what happened in the lab and we got to be careful with how we translate this stuff.
[00:14:38] KT: Yeah. It occurs to me that — I’m might be able to get death threats now for saying calories in and calories out is actually real. The difference is trying to measure these things and trying to get exactly the right amount in gives the illusion that this energy in and energy out is not real. But all these ware ways to manipulate that. The metabolism is real and unmeasurable in many ways. When you’re storing glycogen, that’s synergy being stored. You brought that energy in, but it’s not going out anywhere, right? There are all these various factors, it’s so complex.
I saw on Twitter not long ago, I can’t remember who. I think it might have been [inaudible 00:15:19] put it up. It was just really complex and it was, “Here’s your energy balance equation for people.” Like yeah, that’s about right. There are just arrows, and word salad and all that kind of stuff. I think we try to oversimplify it, which is — I understand why it’s necessary, because when you’re speaking to people, whether athletes or somebody want to lose weight or somebody in the gym, you want to try to simplify it so it makes it more approachable. You are more approachable for them to come and try to get some help. If you start trying to get too complex, they’re going to get glassy eyed.
In fact, yesterday, I was walking in the sun yesterday, crossing a bridge over the river and stopped to talk to these two women who were out. Because of my accent, in the North East, I don’t sound like a Jordy or anybody from County Durham. People always ask me why I’m here. Of course, as soon as you say nutrition, they want me to design their diet form. I was like, “Look, just eat less.” Of course, they don’t want to hear that, but you got to simplify it down because there’s so many variable that if you start trying to get to all of them, your head is going to explode and that’s real.
As scientists, when we talk about it, we have to think about all those various components to what’s really happening to as to whether you gain or lose total mass, or fat mass or lean mass. That’s sort of what we want to try to touch on a little bit today. When I say that, I mean it, we’re only going to scratch the surface, really.
[00:16:55] LB: That’s why I think protein in particular is a great one, because that is something that is a little bit easier for us to understand and apply some good evidence-based strategies that relate to proteins rolling this whole thing, which we’ll get into in a minute. Because of course as you said, caloric, the whole caloric thing is deeply complicated. Carbohydrate needs particularly for athletes is pretty complicated too. But the fact is, for one reason or another, people want to lose weight. They even need to lose weight from a health perspective, which is going to be lesser approach today. But what they do want from a body composition perspective is to lose in the right components of their body composition, body fat preferably. They want to maintain if not gain their lean components, their muscle mass specifically.
Even if you do initially at least undershoot the calorie intake and or the carbohydrate intake as it relates to this body composition. Maybe not performance, maybe not how you feel, but specifically from a body composition perspective, which is going to be our prime focus here. Protein is that sort of tool, that main tool that we’re going to use.
Like you said, we can only scratch the surface on this, but I guess, probably one of the first angles I think we should get into is, we’re going to agree, we’re talking about weight loss. Somebody for one reason or other is in a caloric deficit, a caloric restriction, a process of caloric restriction, which is another conversation, I guess. But in this situation, specifically whether that person’s an exerciser, or an elite athlete, they still need to have some sort of understanding, “Well, how much protein? How much protein should I even be consuming? Why is that necessary and not just fur out the protein with the bath water so to speak?
[00:19:02] KT: Well, I think if we start from the standpoint of we want to maintain or gain lean body mass during losing total mass for various reasons that we’ve sort of touched on. Then protein is going to be — nutritionally, protein is probably the most important component of this diet. That stems from the metabolic changes that happen during a calorie deficit. Like I said, over the years, it’s been very apparent that if someone loses weight, loses total body mass that a good portion of that is going to be lean body mass. The proportion of lean versus fat mass that’s lost can be manipulated based on diet.
The ultimate standpoint of it tends to be what’s the ration of lean mass to fat mass that you start with. If you start with a great deal of fat mass, not as much as lean mass, then you tend to lose more fat mass. A very lean athlete is probably going to lose more lean mass initially if there’s no other sort of manipulation to try to prevent that. But you can in any situation, in any of those populations anyway, you can manipulate that based on protein intake. That stems from the metabolic changes that happen during caloric deficit, which is, you have a reduction in muscle protein census. You have it in sort of two ways. One is, the basal rate of muscle protein census is decreased. There are several studies that have shown, Matt Pasiako’s was ne of them years ago and Jose Areta when he was working with John Holly and Stew Phillips showed this.
You get a decrease in muscle protein census, but you also get this anabolic resistance that we’ve mentioned many times before, that the response of protein or of the muscle protein census, that system to the anabolic stimulation from ingested protein, from the amino acids, from ingested protein is reduced. Several have shown that as well. Amy Hector and Stew showed that very nicely. Probably one of the ones that I would think of first.
You get that sort of typical response to a stressful situation. You get this decrease in protein census. You get a decrease in the response to protein so you end up losing muscle. That is very common and you see that very commonly. That’s where you want to have protein intake, because now, you want to shift that curve to the right, where you’re saying, “Hey! I’m going to need more protein to get the stimulation that I would have gotten from less protein in an energy balance if that makes sense.”
We don’t have a study like the one that Ally did a few years ago where we see those response to protein in healthy individuals in energy balance in lifting weights and at rest. But we do have some indications that that shift that you do need more protein to get the same stimulation of muscle protein census. We also know that that — we’ll get into resistance exercise, I’m sure later but that’s a big part of it as well to try to maintain muscle mass during energy deficit. I think I’ve answered your question for the most part.
[00:22:10] LB: Yep. I just want t hang around the importance of — we’re differentiating weight loss from the various compartments that I just mentioned. I know the bulk of our listeners are highly educated in the are of things like body composition, and metabolism and so on. Just from a practical perspective, why does it matter that we want to preserve lean mass? I don’t’ mean that just from an aesthetic perspective. Why is this such an important area for us anyway?
[00:22:43] KT: Well, I mean, again, touch a little bit on the various populations. In an overweight obese population or in older people, you don’t want to lose muscle because muscle is an important metabolic organ. You have lots going on, glucose uptake is great from muscle and lean body tissue. Again, I would argue that physical activity for those populations is incredibly important, so losing muscle is going to hinder locomotion and ability to lift things. Then if you go to athletes, or exerciser and athletes, the more lean mass you lose, the more likely it is that you’re going to lose muscle function, muscle strength, although it’s not a one-to-one relationship as far at that goes, but there are some indications. Also, again, metabolically, you want to maintain that tissue.
In order to avoid any possibilities of decreased performance or decreased activity, then you want to keep that muscle. Now, I would say that if we don’t touch on it later, I do want to sort of bring up something I always try to remember, which is, not every athlete that wants to lose weight is going to worry about losing muscle or should worry about losing muscle. For example, if you’re — I use an example of light weight rowers and I do this because when I was in Birmingham, I had two light weight rowers come to me and say, “Hey! We need to lose some weight, because we got a race coming up, that we need to get down.” I said, “Okay! What have you been doing?” and they talked about their coach had been reading stuff. This is back before we published our paper in 2010 with Sam Mettler. We actually had the data but hadn’t published it yet.
Their coach have been getting them to eat lots of protein, and they said, “Yeah.” I said, “Let me ask you this. Did you lose weight fairly quickly, and then sort of tapered off?” They said, “Yeah, that was pretty much how it went.” I said, “Did you get to a point where you are kind of tiring out in your training?” They said, “Yeah.” I said, “You were substituting protein. You’re eating protein instead if carbohydrates, right?” They said, “Yeah. That’s what we’re doing.” I said, “Well, your training is was getting impaired because you’re probably starting to get low on glycogen and you probably stopped losing weight because you’ve lost all the fat you can lose and you’re probably not going to lose a whole lot more muscle because you’re eating all that protein. You get to a point where it can’t. Maybe its better to lose an extra kilo of muscle and be slightly slower if that does happen, which is controversial, than sitting on the bank watching everybody else row, because you’re too heavy, so you can’t compete.”
Or another example would be a climber, a cyclist who’s a climber. Maybe they are losing some, especially upper body muscle. It ain’t going to hurt them. In fact, they might like it better because it’s not contributing anything to their performance. You have to think of the situation. But for probably the majority of athletes that’s losing lean body mass, at least minimizing that lost is probably a worthy goal to maintain the power to mass ratio that might be important for them.
[00:25:35] LB: Yeah, absolutely. I think you made a very important point, which is why we are always stressing the need to think, think first. You can do whatever strategy, but is that really what you want to do. What are the impacts? Like you say, with muscle, more muscle maybe surplus to me — and then of course, muscle also is like you just mentioned, with the glycogen situation, because glycogen is also holding on some water, which in itself adds to the weight. Then you throw in the supplementing with creating, want to hydrate hopefully and there’s a bit more weight gain there too. You’re right. Do they even need to be doing these things? All food for thought. No pun intended if course.
Let’s just go back because we see recommendations that are made for protein in say exercises with general population just for weight loss of course, sedentary a lot of them. But protein recommendations, you got the RDA if we want to use that phrase. We’ve got the athletes, we’ve got endurance, strength and so on. That number is not a fixed number, is it or is it? What is your view on what the current recommendations are since we’re on the total amount —
[00:26:55] KT: You started with the RDA, which I suppose by definition, it is the recommended daily allowance. Recommended is in the title, or what I would argue that that amount of protein shouldn’t be recommended for anybody. I mean, I think it’s got to be more than that for almost everybody. Since this podcast isn’t about the protein requirements and RDA, I won’t get into the details. But 0.8 grams per kilo or something near that in most countries that have determined it, and that’s on the very low side I would say. For sure for anybody who’s exercising, it’s clear it needs to be higher than that. Generally, nowadays, the recommendations are coming in for most people who are interested in energy balance, and weight maintenance or maybe gaining a little muscle or
something working out. It would be somewhere in the range of 1- and 1.6-grams protein per day per kilogram body mass. Maybe up into closer to 2 for some people and of course, I know a lot of people want to eat more. But there’s really no evidence that you need much more than 2 to 2.2 grams per kilo. There’s just no evidence for that.
Now, if you’re interested in losing weight but maintaining muscle, then probably higher protein intakes. The evidence suggest that higher protein intakes are important. We want to get up into the 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 grams per kilo range for people who want to lose weight. We did a study, I alluded to it earlier, Sam Mettler study, where we fed 2.3, it turned out grams per kilo and maintain muscle long due to study with Stew. Our study was in weight lifters, so trained guys who went to the gym and they maintained during the weight loss period. Stew did one with Jonathan — is it Jonathan Longland? Not athletes, but put people on a training program and they trained and did resistance exercise and hit integral training. Both situations, we maintain muscle on average. On average, they actually gained a little bit of muscle and that was probably due to the difference in the population.
But it’s very clear that — it’s a perfect example of my mantra, which is, be skeptical but openminded. Because before we did that study with Sam Mettler’s study, when Nigel Mitchell came to me and said, “Hey! I’ve got guys gaining muscle, but losing weight” and I was like, “No, no way.” This is sort of 15, 16 years ago. I said, “No.” Because that wasn’t what people thought could happen. I said, “Well, let’s do the study” and he managed to fund us some money because he can talk people in anything. He’s a great guy, Nigel. We’ve got some money. We did that study and here came the results. I went, “Well, I’m wrong.” The guys maintained muscle in that study, despite losing weight.” Stew’s study in the Longland study, they gained muscle in that study a little bit and there’s been some others as well. Now, these are studies in makes and we can get on to females later, which might be slightly different.
[00:29:57] LB: Yeah, we will. I’m a nutritionist so I’m involved with the day-to-day application of this stuff where, I’m wanting them to eat food, not just protein. They need more than just that. That why we use the term food first, and we’re athletes, we’re trying to get into them in this context. Not just enough protein to mitigate the issues with not just weight loss, but the loss of lean mass. We’ve talked about what that’s important, but also, these athletes need to be in fuel for example. Another nutrient that helps support their immune system and so on, particularly during these very acute phases of sort of like championship, like I’m about to go into with my players, soccer players, same with rugby and across many different types of sports.
The impact of shoveling in more protein that is needed, the consequence of that actually could be that the satiating effect of that, the sort of the filling them up might be at the detriment of them getting enough fuel in throughout the day. Which is why I think it is important that we look at that with a little bit more of a, like you say, a skeptical and open-minded mindset, because you do here, Kev, a lot of people are talking about, look, eating enough protein is one perspective, but actually, there’s no problem with eating more protein. The more the better actually. Let’s just throw some more in. Protein supplements, let’s just get it all in there. Because there’s no perceived harm in healthy people for the most part. Do you have any further thoughts on that, Kev?
[00:31:37] KT: Well, I mean I think especially if you’re in a situation where someone is trying to lose body mass, you’ve got to drop the energy intake. Again, if we go with the population, the exercising in athlete population where increasing exercise energy expenditures, you’re up at the top of that range, where you can’t really do that. We’re reducing energy intake and reducing energy intake will be part of it almost certainly anyway in any situation.
Well, you have to decide what energy you’re going to reduce. In very many cases, you see people reducing carbohydrates, especially nowadays when carbohydrates is a curse word to many people. But that could end up being an issue of reducing carbohydrates too much because you’re substituting protein for the carbohydrate in the diet. That’s aside from the satiety that you are talking about, which is, if you eat too much protein or eat a lot of protein, then you might not feel as hungry all the time, so you’re eating less. You could argue whether that’s good or bad thing depending on the situation. But just substituting, some macronutrients have to be substituted to get more protein and if that’s what you want to do.
You got to be careful about the carbohydrate, because as you say, if an athlete is participating at high intensity training, whether that’s in the gym or on the pitch or whatever, then carbohydrates are going to be the main fuel. I don’t care what anybody says, that’s very clear. I’m sure you’ve done podcast on that, but you can’t just completely drop the carbohydrates. Like in Sam’s study, we were very cognizant of that. We maintain. We clamped the carbohydrate intake so that it didn’t drop. It was the same percentage of calories anyway in the two groups. We did that because we didn’t want there to be a difference into — have the group on higher protein and
if they were on lower carbohydrates, maybe they were struggling to maintain their training. We wanted to maintain the training throughout.
Other studies haven’t done that. Other studies have substituted protein for the carbohydrate and left the fat intake up a little bit or maybe some combination of the two, but still drop the carbohydrates. There are problems with that. Like I say, A, you got to fuel the training if that’s part of the deal and that’s again going to be variable, depending on the particular situation that particular athlete or exerciser.
But also, there are other reasons too. In fact, well, we’ll get into it later, but there’s a big argument that once you get to past about 40% energy deficit, that protein or any anabolic stimulus can no longer maintain muscle. That’s been advocated here recently in some review papers and stuff. I can just say that that could very well be true, but I don’t believe the solid evidence for that and carbohydrates might be part of the story of why that might be in those studies that have suggest it.
[00:34:44] LB: Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, there’s all sorts of problems with overconsuming carbohydrates, particularly as it relates to causing problems with an individual’s ability to lose quality weight loss, which is the whole-body composition thing. But if you are very much thinking about working with athletes and for whatever reason there, they’re trying to make weight or you’re trying to prevent wright loss due to inactivity, etc. from period of injury. Those carbohydrates are relevant. Not just because they are source of fuel, but also, those carbohydrates do influence the metabolic machinery’s ability to process that fuel when it is actually required.
We’ve got other issues like carbohydrate-rich foods comes from certain kind of foods that the gut can have problems with if you don’t interact with those foods, strictly fiber-rich foods, which is the whole train in the gut concept for [inaudible 00:35:42] diets come into play to certain extent. Then the microbiome of course are heavily influenced by fiber that comes from carbohydrate source food primarily. But anyway, we’re not talking about carbohydrates. It’s just, people love to throw carbohydrates into the cage with the lions like you said, Kev. So it is important we factor that in.
Let’s move forward a bit with this protein conversation and I’d like to just quickly differentiate our requirements for protein, depending on factors like training volume and the types of exercise, as in resistance, strength, power versus maybe just endurance. The more elite athletes might be doing a combination of the two in their periodized training, but your recreational athletes tend to maybe focus on one or the other a bit more. Of course, there is the size of the energy deficit itself, which may also be of interest, which I know you have mentioned just a bit before. But the training volume and the types of training, what’s the impact there?
[00:36:49] KT: As far as how much protein?
[00:36:51] LB: Yeah.
[00:36:53] KT: Well, I don’t know that studies have been done to — that I can say definitely based on data, solid numbers for those. Again, the higher the training volume, the more — well, I mean, the bigger the struggle is going to be to maintain that training volume if you’re cutting calories. There has to be some sort of balance there as to what you’re trying to do. If you’re going to fuel that training, you’re probably going to need carbohydrates to some extent. Now again, you’re going to cut carbohydrates for sure, but how much really is the question if you’re trying to lose mass without losing lean body mass, without losing muscle.
Different types of exercise, again, the same thing. The primary fuel for resistance exercise is carbohydrate. If someone does an hour and a half worth of a heavy resistance exercise routine, there’s going to be a significant amount of carbohydrate oxidized during that for fuel. Now, whether that’s equivalent to a hard interval session, I probably know. There are various studies showing glycogen use for example with resistance exercise and you get — it depends on how the exercise is done, et cetera. It doesn’t seem to be as much as endurance exercise, but that’s higher intensity endurance exercise. But it’s huge, it is huge and it’s got to be replaced and carbohydrates has to come from somewhere.
I think what we keep coming back to is that, in a weight loss situation, you got to be at least cognizant of the fuel that’s going to be used if you’re still exercising or training if you’re an elite athlete. I think that’s an important factor, that I think nowadays, it’s probably much more — at the higher level anyway, it’s much more — people are much more aware of that, but maybe sort of the exerciser level, the recreational people who are exercising for health or a park run or something that maybe it’s not quite so clear and got to be careful about that balance.
I suppose, the opposite could be true where basically, you just say, “I’m going to keep the carbohydrate.” This is what we did in Sam’s study. We maintained the carbohydrate at least on a percentage basis and drop the fat. We replaced the protein, we got rid of the fat to put in the protein. At the extreme, there is going to be a point where you’re going to be too low on fat as well. That is more difficult to do, and depending on how long. In that study, it was only two weeks, so it really wasn’t going to be an issue. But maybe if you’re trying to do this for months, then you might be into — of course, you wouldn’t want to do a 40% calorie deficit for months, that would be very, I think, anybody trying that, that would be very difficult.
Anyway, you have to take into account that when you’re adding protein to the diet, especially if you’re dropping energy intake, you’re trying to get the protein higher, then something’s got to give. You’ve got to decide where that line is as to how much it’s carbohydrate and how much it’s fat. Certainly, the first thing you can do is get rid of alcohol if that’s part of the equation at all. But for sure, that would be the first thing. After that, you got to decide where carbohydrate and fat come in, and you need to have enough carbohydrate to support what the training is that you’re trying to do within the context of that.
[00:40:15] LB: I’m glad you mentioned that, Kev. Because the obsession is with weight loss, it’s cutting the calories, inducing the energy deficit, getting the right amount of protein. What about exercise itself? The role of the exercise stimulus. What about the types of exercise? What’s more relevant for this situation anyway?
[00:40:40] KT: I think it’s pretty clear that if you do want to maintain or gain lean mass, muscle mass during energy restricted period, then you really want to do some sort of resistance exercise. I don’t think that’s arguable. If you look at the studies and you try to put them all together, I think that that’s pretty clear. In fact, I think that that explains at least some of the variability in that, what I mentioned earlier, which is where people are trying to argue that at a certain point, past say 40% that you can no longer maintain muscle. I’m not convinced that that’s true because the studies that in which that was tried probably didn’t do as much resistance exercise, the studies where it did work. We have two variables going on there that’s difficult to separate, or three really if you count carbohydrates.
But I think resistance exercise, especially if you’re talking about people who are recreational athletes, or overweight individuals who are trying to lose weight, I would argue, you want to get in the gym or at least do something that’s considered resistance exercise, whatever that is. It doesn’t have to be in the gym as we all know now. But resistance exercise is critical for maintaining muscle mass, and that stimulus is really important. That protein in and of itself is only going to go so far for maintaining that muscle.
I mean, as long ago as — I think it was in the early 2000s, maybe late ’90s even, Don Layman did some studies with overweight women. He did it with and without exercise, with higher protein and very clear difference with the exercise. So yeah, absolutely, resistance exercise is the main thing and protein is supporting that.
[00:42:18] LB: Great. I think that’s pretty clear with regards to how much protein but not at the expense of — there’s other nutrients, particularly macronutrients for reasons that we’ve thoroughly covered, I think. But what about things like timing of protein care. Is there any relevance there? If you get the right amount of total protein within a day, how important is the timing? I guess that, again, maybe something that needs to differentiate between somebody sedentary recreational and an elite athlete. But what are your views on that and what does the evidence tells us?
[00:42:54] KT: Yeah. I mean, I think there is some evidence that timing is important. But the way that those studies were done sort of isolate that as you do in the lab. So where that comes in a real situation is not clear. I think that if you’re in an energy-balanced situation, that the timing is probably not that important, that it’s much more important to get that 1.6 to 1.8 or 2. Then once you’re in that range that you’re probably fine no matter what the timing is. There’s evidence for that, I’m not just making that up.
Once you start getting into an energy-balanced or energy deficit situation, then probably every trick that you can think of might be important to try. So then, sort of spreading out the meals for example might be worth doing, because you’re really trying to get as much out of a situation as you can, a challenging situation. Then of course, once you get up into the higher, the competitive and elite athlete level, then you’ve got to start to start balancing that between that training demands, when the training is, etc. That’s where it really becomes a challenge to try to get everything in.
The first goal though should be the amount of protein. In an energy deficit, if you want to maintain or gain lean mass, then you want to get up in that sort of 2 or 2.4 range. That should be the first goal. That goal is easier if you spread out the meals. Spreading out the meals might have a metabolic advantage. There are some arguments for that. Now, in these studies, in these weight loss studies, that hasn’t been tested directly. I doubt that you would see big difference if you did do that just because of all the other variables that go on in these studies. But yeah, I would say probably not make it a life-or-death kind of thought in your head, but it wouldn’t hurt to spread out the meals. Certainly, to have some protein after you’ve trained is probably a good thing, although it’s not going to kill you if it happens an hour later or two hours later. But then again, if you’re trying to get that much protein and you’re probably going to want to do it right afterwards because that’s — otherwise, you ran out of time.
[00:44:58] LB: Yeah. That for me is the key particularly with the sorts of athletes that I work with, there are many things that can get in the way, a practical opportunity to have a feeding that includes adequate protein, because of things like travel and so on and so forth. I think yeah, like you say, I think if there’s an opportunity to get it in so that you can ensure that you’re hitting the total requirement per day, then that’s possibly a bigger argument for the timing thing.
Beyond the timing, that type of protein is something that we’ve discussed in previous podcast. But as it relates to these specific issues of protein and weight loss, how important is the actual quality of the protein? What do we even mean by quality anyway, Kev?
[00:45:55] KT: Well, that’s a whole podcast in itself, really. Typically, people are talking about the quality being, it depends on whether you talk if you go with the official sort nutrition dietetics quality where you talk about biological value, etc. Or what we tend to talk about in the exercise nutrition field, which is the essential amino acid content. The argument is that animal proteins typically have greater quality and that you can get a better response to muscle protein census, or even whole-body protein census with animal proteins than equivalent amount of plant proteins. That might become important. You could argue that that could become important in a weight loss situation, because then, you’re really trying to get the most out of everything.
But again, probably at those higher levels of protein, once you’re getting up in there, then it probably doesn’t matter whether it’s animal or plant. As you said earlier, that food is the important thing, so you want to make sure that that athlete gets the food that they will eat and can enjoy as much as they can if they’re on a 40% energy deficit, which is high and no fun. Then you don’t want them to be eating stuff that they don’t like anymore than they have to, for any longer than they have to anyway.
Now, there is some evidence and again, Stew Phillips did a study, [Andrea Jost 00:47:14] did this, gosh, a while ago now. Ten years at least. I mean, it’s in overweight women, but suggested that dairy products actually were better than non-dairy in a higher protein intake situation. The argument there was sort of the quality of the protein type thing. Now, that’s been disputed by subsequent, not necessarily solid studies but people are making arguments. Especially, the vegans athletes don’t like that study. But I think it needs to be investigated more. There are some hints that possibly animal, in particular dairy might be advantageous. I’m not convinced that that’s absolutely necessary.
If you’ve got an athlete who is vegan or vegetarian or plant-based if you want to call that, I don’t think there’s any reason to force dairy on just because you’ve got one or two studies which suggest that that might be advantageous. Again, I think the quality of the protein is probably important at the high end of the spectrum. But the most important thing is to get the higher amount of protein in first, then think about what proteins you can use to get to that level. The risk of ruining the environment and possibly dairy might — there at least are some data suggest that dairy might be a factor, but I’m not convinced that that’s the only way to go. I certainly would do that if I work with athletes. I wouldn’t make them have diary if they didn’t want it.
[00:48:42] LB: Yeah. Look, if we come back to that phrase, food first. There’s a reason for that. and that’s because food or protein-rich foods is more than just protein. There are other stuff there. There are vitamins, minerals, plant-based compounds that we haven’t identified yet that have some sort of health-giving, health supporting mechanism within the body. I did a podcast, it’s a while ago now, with Nick Bird. We talked about the food matrix, particularly with protein. You start looking at those studies that differentiates things like egg protein, dairy, and these isolates. We talked about dairy sources of protein.
There is a difference between way in casing and there are various versions of those as well that exist. But when you compare that to say milk for example, there is quite a big difference in terms of the spectrum of nutrients there. I think that’s why we do need to think about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Of course, the needs and preferences of our athletes to include, what’s just practical. They can their hands on and is it really worth the money they’re going to spend on it. Because face it, some of these protein supplements are pretty expensive, relative to a food, which may not cost as much.
In fact, while we’re on that, what are your thoughts about that? With regard to supplemental sources of protein versus food. Because there are going to be a reason or a rationale for consuming say a way or a casing protein supplement as oppose to some chicken, or fish, or soy or tofu, or whatever. What were your sort of thoughts on that in this context of weight loss?
[00:50:26] KT: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s probably the same as any other time, which is, I think it’s perfectly fine for an athlete or an exerciser to go their whole life and never have a liquid protein supplement, an isolated way or isolated egg protein or whatever. I don’t think anybody ever really needs to do that from a nutritional standpoint. But from a convenience standpoint or how to work it into your schedule standpoint, then I think that there are clear reasons to do that. If someone is really busy, and they’re doing training sessions, and then they’ve got to go do something else, whether it’s — if they’re a university athlete, they’re going to a lecture or if they’re — maybe they got a press conference if they’re an elite athlete or something.
Well then, to have a protein shake or a protein supplement is a way to get the protein near the exercise and to get enough protein in during the day, then I think that that’s fine. I don’t think from a pure nutrition standpoint that it’s necessary, but it can be very helpful and a very important, as you like to say, tool in the toolbox. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any reason to do that. The downside to the supplements would be as you suggested, is that — Nick has done a lot of good writing on it, and Stephan van Vliet has done a lot of this. Jorn Trommelen wrote a nice paper on meals. Of course, our paper in 2006 was one of the first ones where we came up with the notion that there’s something going on in a whole milk that was enhancing the ability of the muscle to utilize the protein that wasn’t in skimmed milk. There’s some combination here that we’re missing or that people are thinking about.
It does seem like there’s something to this notion of the food matrix that there’s an interaction with the nutrients that helps you utilize that protein. Nick’s egg study shows that as well. What that is, of course, I’m sure Nick said on the podcast — well, I remember him saying it, that we don’t know exactly what it is right now. There is some evidence that it could be something to do with the fat, but nobody knows for sure. It hasn’t been systematically investigated. There is an argument for food from a nutritional standpoint. But I think, in the grand scheme of things, that a supplement is not a bad thing. It just shouldn’t be the end all to be all, which of course a lot of people do. You see that all the time, people relying too much on supplements when probably food is better from all sorts of reasons, not just protein reasons.
[00:53:04] LB: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, the title is in itself, the description, isn’t it? It’s a supplement, not an instead of. It’s there to support.
[00:53:13] KT: Well, it often becomes a substitute, not supplement, right? That’s where I think it can be an issue.
[00:53:20] LB: There I go into this next bit. We talked about protein, but of course, protein is in itself constructed from its own basic building blocks and that would be amino acids and these various amino acids and branched-chain amino acids, which some people will argue is a reason to supplement. You’re worried about additional calories, when actually you don’t need to eat all that protein when you could just take these supplements. What are your thoughts on amino acid supplements and branched-chain amino acids supplements? And I’ll say this with tongue and cheek, but —
[00:53:58] KT: I mean, we’ve gone through the brand. We did a whole podcast on branched-chain amino acids and there is no solid evidence that I can see where isolated branched-chain amino acids would be a valuable addition to anyone’s repertoire, a tool in their toolbox, throw it out, throw that tool out. We just published a paper with Brad Schoenfeld. Daniel Plotkin was the first author, where he did a really nice job getting through the literature and we wrote this paper. There’s just no solid evidence and we’re not the first store and probably won’t be the last to suggest this.
Now, essential amino acids, that might be a different story. A lot of the more recent studies on energy deficits had been done in sort of military-type populations. Again, Stefan Pasiakos and his crew at USARIEM have been instrumental in that and they’ve been working a lot with Arny Ferrando and Bob Wolfe in Arkansas. Although Bob is literally physically in New Zealand, he got stock down there with the pandemic, now, he didn’t to leave. He’s the opposite of a hobbit. Anyway, they’ve been doing work together in some really nice studies with — it’s probably not hard for people to imagine. That is an athletic population, especially these higher-end military units that do sustained operations, these special forces people and they’ve been doing these studies.
Now, they’re really difficult studies to do because there’s only so much you can control on these populations. That’s one of the problems with the body of literature that they developed, which is, they’ve got all these various situations, each of them has several different variables that are being manipulated. It’s hard to get sort of general consensus on what’s going on, but they’ve done some of these stuff with the essential amino acids. The idea there is that, metabolically, you can get — if you have an essential amino acid supplement or source that you don’t need the non-essential amino acids to get the same metabolic response. So you can carry less mass around and still get the same food, which might be important for a lot of these missions.
I was on a panel back in, just before I left the states in the mid-2000s. I’m a panel for the Institute of Nutrition in the US. We were trying to look into military rations for these special force’s guys, because they go out on these missions that last, say three, four, five days up to a week or ten days even. They can only eat what they carry, so they don’t carry that much food. They need to get the best bang for their buck so to speak. Our idea was, that we proposed was to carry just essential amino acids rather than protein, because you can get the same metabolic response.
Now, they go into this, expending anywhere from 4,000 up to 7,000, 8,000 calories per day and only eating 1,500 to 2,000. They’re in this big calorie deficit with a lot of stress because they don’t sleep much because they’re moving around a lot. It’s not a great deal of high-intensity exercise but it’s constant movement and a lot of hiding from people that are shooting at them. You can imagine that there’s a stress component as well.
[00:57:13] LB: They still need to be able to move fast when it’s necessary, of course.
[00:57:17] KT: That’s right, absolutely. One of the guys that we were talking to about this, he said, one of the panel members quizzed him and said — because what they would do is they cherry pick their MREs and they only put a certain amount of them into the pack. They would go, “Why do you cherry pick?” He’s a good, old, long-term, veteran solider said, “Ma’am, it’s because I ain’t going to die from starvation in five days, but I might die in lead poison.” Of course, he meant getting shot by lead poison. They would sacrifice the extra food and put extra bullets in. The point is, is there is an argument for essential amino acids in a situation like that where you’re trying to really limit, in this case mass, is how much was being carried not so much as mass, losing mass or whatever. But the idea was to try to minimize the muscle loss and metabolic prohibitions by providing the essential amino acids, but you didn’t need all the protein. In some very specialized situations, you might need that. I would argue that for most exercises and athletes, that that’s not going to be important. It still hasn’t been exactly, although they did come up with a couple of brand-new studies in the last year or two. It’s still not completely established that that is going to be what you absolutely want to do. But for sure, it’s going to be in a specialized military situation.
Those are the situations in which this concept of after 40%. If you great greater than 40% energy deficit, that you no longer can get this proper anabolic response from protein or whatever. The studies that have been done are in the context to that, those high-end military situations. Some of the studies were actually done in like training, some of these army-ranger training and that kind of thing. I think one of them was a study in marines training in the Artic. They come with all these extra stress variables that wouldn’t necessarily apply to even an elite athlete in a training camp. They’re not getting shot at and they’re not out in the Artic carrying a big pack around.
I think that there are some of these concepts, and then let me just finish on this or carry on with this energy deficit thing because there’s one study, a nice study done by Stefan Pasiakos and it was done almost 10 years ago now. They published three papers out of it. This is sort of basis of where David Church wrote a nice review article recently on it, on military. They argue that this — once you get past 40%, you no longer can get an anabolic response.
Now, the problem with that I think is — I wouldn’t doubt if that’s true, but I don’t think it’s been established. The problem is, in the study that they did, they did RDA, two times the RDA or 1.6 grams per kilo or three times the RDA, which is 2.4 grams per kilo. That’s up in the range where we did our study with Sam and Stew did with Longland. Where we did see an anabolic response and they did. Now, our was about 40%. Now, in this study, what they did was they substituted as I was talking about earlier, they gave protein and took out carbohydrate to get up to that three times the RDA to get to 2.4. The carbohydrate intake dropped a great deal. What happens is, that protein oxidation goes up, so they saw a protein oxidation go way up without lean mass being preserved in that three times the RDA. It’s about the same as the 1.6. The 2.4 and the 1.6 were about the same.
Their argument was, “Well, you’re getting there, it’s no longer any good. You can’t do this at higher weight.” I would argue that maybe that’s not true, that if you would have just maintained that carb intake in that situation, that you might have been able to reduce that protein oxidation. We do know that there is a relationship there and Dan more showeds this recently that if you cut the carbohydrate during a heavy activity situation or training situation, that protein oxidation is going to be increased. I think again, that’s another argument that I alluded to you earlier of why carbohydrates, if you’re going to be training are important. That will not only support the training per se, which will help you maintain muscle, because you get the training stimulus. But also, reduce the protein oxidation, so that protein that you’re eating not as much of it would be oxidized and therefore, it’s available for turning in to muscle. That would be the theory.
Now again, these things need to be systematically investigated and that’s why I think that I sort of pushed back a bit against this notion of, at the higher energy deficits that we can’t get, we can’t maintain muscle. I’m not sure that that’s been established yet. I spoke to David Church about it and he did agree that we need to look into this more.
[01:02:20] LB: Brilliant, Kev. Listen, I think we better draw this one to some sort of a conclusion, because like you say, you’ve only scratched the surface of this, which means that we could actually use that entire conversation so far as just the intro to another five-hour podcast, don’t you? I don’t think we can do. Let’s just — and by let’s, I mean you. Can you please summarize then this concept of the sort of the role and relevance of protein in quality weight loss? What are the main sort of key points then you want to summarize for us, Kev?
[01:02:57] KT: Okay. Before I say that, I’ll just interject one more final thing, which is about females. Most of the studies as usual are done in males, and we did a study recently and it was published last year. Alice Pearson was the first author and Lee Alexander did a lot of the work on those study. We did train females, we tried to replicate Sam Mettler’s study, but in female athletes. The results were not exactly the same. I don’t want to get into the details, but it suggest that there could be a difference in A, the metabolism, which I kind of think is probably not necessarily true. But B, the way that practitioners should be handling male and female athletes with weight loss.
The gist of it is that probably, you don’t want to think about it in terms of percentage of calories when you’re advising how much protein, especially the female athletes. I recommend people read Alice’s paper, Alice Pearson. It’s published in European Journal of Applied Physiology last year.
But yeah, as far as points to go for protein, I would say that if maintenance of muscle mass is the main goal, that you want to keep your protein intake high, somewhere in the 2 to 2.4 grams per kilo range. Again, back to the females, that becomes difficult when you’re dropping. That’s what happened in our study was, their total energy intake to begin with was not that great, not that high, I mean. So then when we dropped it by 40%, that you got really low-calorie intake, so that becomes difficult to get that much protein in. That becomes a challenge for the practitioners, the listeners now is to try to do that.
You got to figure out how to get that much protein in and still get enough carbohydrate, because I think it’s important if you’re training. If you want to get the stimulus to maintain the muscle, then you need enough carbohydrate. What that is? I can’t give you a magic number, because I think it varies depending on the training and the athlete.
I think the first choice should be to substitute if you’re going to drop calories, drop fat first down to the point where fat becomes a problem. Then that depends on how long you want to keep this weight loss situation going. But drop the fat before the carbohydrate. Obviously, like I said, as much as I enjoy a beer, I think dropping the alcohol will probably the first choice in any of these situations. Now again, with the caveat of not every athlete wants to keep muscle mass when they lose total mass, so that should be a factor as well in whether or not you want to keep that protein intake high.
Then as you say, we’ve got a lot more to learn and I think we need to do, especially in athletes, and especially in female athletes, more studies to try to. Then in females, the combination with the menstrual cycle and what that might entail as far as this goes is really open, I think.
[01:05:49] LB: Brilliant. Thank you, Kev. There was a lot there, which is why it’s so great that we record these things and folks can listen to it again and again as much as they wish, and we will have a transcript for this podcast. I know you love it when you do podcast, and get to do your own podcast transcript for your sessions. But they are useful, so we will have that. All the other episodes that we’ve briefly touched on some of the other experts that I’ve done podcast with or we’ve jointly spoken to, I’ll link to those on the podcast notes, as well as some of the relevant papers and reviews on the topic. Which you can get access to our podcast section of our website at www.theiopn.com, where we also have our advanced, our post-graduate level practice focused diploma in performance nutrition, where a lot of our graduates can now be found in many professional and elite sports teams around the world, which is something we’re very proud about.
Kev, our upcoming research, I’ll put soon enough, hopefully will also be accessible via our website and all the other bits and bobs we do. Of course, it’s not just me and Kev at the IOPN, we have an awesome team of tutors, and practitioners and researchers who contribute to our many activities, but in particular, the deliver of our online diploma. Anyway, check all of that out at www.theiopn.com. Thank you once again, Kev. It’s been a pleasure. We look forward to bringing another podcast back to you.
It will be a little bit of a break as I said at the beginning of this podcast. I’m going to be off at the UA for Euro football soccer championship for out international audience. For the next six weeks or so, I’m going to be working with football players, but we will bring our whole series and new podcast back when I get back. Take care everyone and once again, Kev, thanks for your time today. It’s been great.
[01:07:51] KT: My pleasure. Bye, buddy.
[01:07:52] LB: Take care.
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