A summary of my own looking into it is “don’t worry too much about it”.
For the average gym goer the most important thing is working out consistently to failure and periodically reevaluating your training so that it’s safe and optimal based on the latest research. How much protein you can shove in your face is rarely a concern, westerners get enough. Getting a bigger chest or shoulders when what you are doing isn’t working requires looking at your body mechanics and how to activate those muscle groups. As an example, I couldn’t squat for shit until I learned that I require a different stance than most people, due to how my hip sockets are angled (my feet naturally come to rest when standing at about a 80 degree angle, extremely wide compared to most)
Everything I’ve read seems to indicate that it’s probably ideal to eat something within a few hours after a heavy workout, but you don’t need to immediately rush down 2 scoops of protein shake or waste away. Excess protein doesn’t really hurt you either. Protein eaten is gradually absorbed throughout a surprisingly long time as it travels through the gut (the time of which varies greatly between people, I digest extremely slowly), which in practice can act like a “store” of amino acids despite the body not really having something dedicated for that purpose like fatty acids and carbohydrates. I haven’t seen studies on this, but I personally also suspect some amount protein is “stored” and released via gut bacteria, much like what happens with soil bacteria and nitrogen fertilizer. And that’s ignoring all the recycling of amino acids the body does anyways.
Likewise, muscle repair is a progressive demand over days, not an instant demand. Photos of muscle cells over time after a workout are illustrative of this.
Basically you don’t need to treat protein like a diabetic treats blood sugar.
For those people at an advanced enough level where they need to find optimizations to obtain more results, then yes, individual amino acids have metabolic effects that can likely be exploited. In fact, some amino acids (like leucine) can likely be a contributor of not just muscle gain, but also obesity because of how they work. Some people can benefit from restricting “protein” in order to lose weight, because they start burning body fat for fuel again. Likewise, fat isn’t just fat, but each fatty acid has its own complex waterfall of metabolic impacts (beware omega-6’s, which are very high in western raised pork and chicken fat).
Food can be thought of as a load of chemical signals for your body. So the above study isn’t surprising.
For anyone reading this in the future, please be aware the working out "to failure" is this posters' opinion. From my research, I'd tend to say it's actually not favoured in the current state of the art.
From what I understand, achieving (example) 80% of failure can achieve most of the same level of gains while avoiding a disproprionately significant amount of fatigue resulting from achieving full failure.
For the average gym goer the most important thing is working out consistently to failure and periodically reevaluating your training so that it’s safe and optimal based on the latest research. How much protein you can shove in your face is rarely a concern, westerners get enough. Getting a bigger chest or shoulders when what you are doing isn’t working requires looking at your body mechanics and how to activate those muscle groups. As an example, I couldn’t squat for shit until I learned that I require a different stance than most people, due to how my hip sockets are angled (my feet naturally come to rest when standing at about a 80 degree angle, extremely wide compared to most)
Everything I’ve read seems to indicate that it’s probably ideal to eat something within a few hours after a heavy workout, but you don’t need to immediately rush down 2 scoops of protein shake or waste away. Excess protein doesn’t really hurt you either. Protein eaten is gradually absorbed throughout a surprisingly long time as it travels through the gut (the time of which varies greatly between people, I digest extremely slowly), which in practice can act like a “store” of amino acids despite the body not really having something dedicated for that purpose like fatty acids and carbohydrates. I haven’t seen studies on this, but I personally also suspect some amount protein is “stored” and released via gut bacteria, much like what happens with soil bacteria and nitrogen fertilizer. And that’s ignoring all the recycling of amino acids the body does anyways.
Likewise, muscle repair is a progressive demand over days, not an instant demand. Photos of muscle cells over time after a workout are illustrative of this.
Basically you don’t need to treat protein like a diabetic treats blood sugar.
For those people at an advanced enough level where they need to find optimizations to obtain more results, then yes, individual amino acids have metabolic effects that can likely be exploited. In fact, some amino acids (like leucine) can likely be a contributor of not just muscle gain, but also obesity because of how they work. Some people can benefit from restricting “protein” in order to lose weight, because they start burning body fat for fuel again. Likewise, fat isn’t just fat, but each fatty acid has its own complex waterfall of metabolic impacts (beware omega-6’s, which are very high in western raised pork and chicken fat).
Food can be thought of as a load of chemical signals for your body. So the above study isn’t surprising.