Aim absurdly high on protein — 600g/day, Olympia-prep style — and stop counting anything else.

noli's read

Strip away the show of the anecdote (a bodybuilding icon, the interviewer's disbelief) and the claim reduces to a number: 600g/day, roughly 4-6g per kg for a man Ronnie Coleman's size. The most rigorous trials on extreme intakes (Antonio et al., 2014 and 2015, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition) fed resistance-trained lifters 3.4-4.4g/kg/day for 8 weeks to 4 months: no extra fat gain, but also no extra muscle or strength beyond what more modest intakes deliver. The landmark dose-response meta-analysis on protein and muscle (Morton et al., 2018, British Journal of Sports Medicine, 1,863 participants) puts the point where added protein stops building extra lean mass at roughly 1.62g/kg/day, with a plausible range up to 2.2g/kg — nowhere near 600g. Past that, the extra nitrogen isn't dangerous for healthy kidneys, it's simply oxidized rather than turned into muscle. What 600g/day actually buys a competing bodybuilder is satiety during a brutal contest-prep diet and a simple mental rule to follow ('just count protein and carbs') — not a demonstrated muscle edge. Verdict: exaggerated.

the sources

1. 1Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, et al. 2018
2. 2Leidy HJ, Clifton PM, Astrup A, et al. 2015