Presenting All the Pieces of the Protein Puzzle

After Paying Homage to My Racing Mentor

By Kevin Kolodziejski

My best racing buddy — and certainly the best racing mentor anyone could ever ask for — once won a crit by at least three bike lengths in a four-up sprint from an early breakaway that was never more than 15 or 20 seconds ahead of the chase group. While I did what I could to slow that chase, it was an absolutely awe-inspiring performance to watch.

But one, I acknowledge, when recounted in print may not inspire the same amount of awe. Especially if you also read that my buddy had been a pro before becoming a doctor and would hold the world masters hour record for 40-to-44 year olds by the end of the next season. Your degree of awe may diminish even more if you learn my buddy was so on form that season he won about every third race he entered.

So here’s some backstory to restore your awe and add some. But it’s not the part where my buddy realizes he didn’t pack bibs, finds a badly torn pair in the trunk of his car, and somehow safety pins the tear together well enough to avoid an indecent exposure citation.  It’s what happened — and didn’t happen — in the week before.

Scuba Diving Does Not Lead to Better Pedaling

My good old buddy hadn’t been in the good old USA until the night before the crit. For eight days, he had been vacationing in the Caribbean. And here’s what the cycling junkie in me finds especially awe-inspiring.

During that eight-day vacay, he did some scuba diving but never rode a bicycle.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking — and it’s not that scuba diving leads to better pedaling. It’s that this guy’s a genetic freak.  But don’t ever tell my buddy that. You’ll get his best race-day scowl and then be told in no uncertain terms that his cycling success comes from working his ass off. Which he still does, by the way, at the age of 62 and after a heart transplant (a story perhaps for another day) except, that is, when he’s vacationing.

While I know both of you to some extent are right, no less a factor in my buddy’s victory is also the real reason why I’ll be in awe of it for eternity.

Feeling Awe For Eternity

It comes not from the race result, but having the mental wherewithal and audacity to produce it. To believe you can jump into a breakaway that will need to stay away for more than 20 laps, be the driving force behind it, and then win the sprint — after being off the bike and enjoying the good life for more than 200 hours — is well beyond me. Yet when I said as much to my buddy, he did that Do-I-have-to-teach-you-everything? shake of the head and said something like, “A week off the bike wouldn’t kill you, you know.”

I disagreed at that time and still do. But he was my mentor and I trusted him unconditionally during races, so his words planted a seed. It sprouted a few years later after I bombed out of a mid-season time trial from a clear case of what I call “dead legs,” and you’d probably diagnose as overtraining. After that disaster, I took three days off, began riding five days a week instead of six during the racing season, and won the state time trial in my age group about a month later.

Staying Open to All Possibilities

While my buddy’s words did not lead me to immediate action, they did something I see as oh-so important in our evolution as cyclists and human beings. Staying open to all possibilities. Which is why I’ve given serious consideration to an article written by Eileen Bailey for Medical News Today: “Eating this much protein can be bad for your heart health.”

Long story short, it’s planted a seed. But it’s in a field that, for the foreseeable future, will lie fallow.

That’s because if you’re a cyclist striving for optimal athletic performance and general overall health, I feel a far more likely problem than consuming too much protein is ingesting too little and have written just that in my columns on occasion. (It occurred here on December 12, 2022 in “Is Protein the Key Piece to the Obesity Puzzle?”) And since some of top docs in sports nutrition and life extension now stress the benefits of going well above the current recommended RDA for protein of 0.36 grams per pound of body weight per day, I’m confident my practice of consuming about 240 grams of protein per day (my average the week I wrote this) at the weight of about 150 pounds doesn’t hurt my heart. That it ultimately aids my overall health and also reduces recovery time in between hard workouts.

Dr. Peter Attia tells his patients to consume nearly triple the RDA. Dr. Layne Norton stresses on podcasts that you at least need to double and possibly even triple the RDA to “optimize” body composition and muscle building. But in the name of open-mindedness, let’s review the study highlighted in Eileen Bailey’s article.

In the Name of Open-Mindedness

Performed at the University of Pittsburgh and published in the February 2024 issue of Nature Metabolism, it features two human trials.

In them, participants consumed two different liquid meals at least a week apart. In one trial, the percentage of fat by calories remained the same in each meal, but the percentages of protein and carbohydrates differed dramatically. One liquid meal contained 10 percent protein and 73 percent carbs; the other, 50 percent protein and 33 percent carbs. To create a “real-world” scenario in trial number two, one meal consisted of 35 percent fat, 15 percent protein, and 50 percent carbs; the other, 30 percent fat, 22 percent protein, and 48 percent carbs.

The cut-to-the-chase result, according to a University of Pittsburgh press release, is that consuming over 22 percent of dietary calories from protein “can lead to increased activation of immune cells that play a role in atherosclerotic plaque formation, driving [heart] disease risk.”

Could there be something to this? Could my current eating habits supported by docs I trust be incorrect and dangerous in the long term? Maybe. I’m willing to remain open to that possibility. But for now, I’m sticking to my guns and the belief that it’s the saturated fats in animal proteins that increase the risk of atherosclerotic plaque formation and thereby make consuming too much animal protein — but not other types of protein — a possibility.

Sticking to My Guns, For Now

The medicos who stick my finger to draw blood usually give me kudos along with the results afterwards, so I plan to keep consuming generous amounts of egg whites, fat-free dairy products, plant-based proteins.  But won’t forget what I just read.

And if my blood work ever “bomb outs” the way I did in that TT, I’ll go looking for a new gun that fits my holster, for sure.

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.