Any thoughts on protein intake for those of you that intermittent fast and have one meal a day?
*raises hand*
I don't really count grams of protein, though. I know I'm getting between 60 and 100 grams per day, about half of that coming from the cacao+gelatin powder I mix into my hot tea. Similar to how a bodybuilder might eat protein all through the day, though I've never tried to max out those grams per day.
Digestibility is ignored, unfortunately. You can eat 200 grams of protein in a day, but it doesn't matter if you shit most of it back out, going unused. A neglected aspect of the "protein per day" conversation is how much of it is being digested, the quality of the protein, etc.
I've gone up in muscle mass and tone over the last year since I started working out in March. I've definitely gotten stronger. I've fasted consistently, and the loss appears to have been fat and skin tissue. I'm being pretty regimented about it, though, and I'm eating high quality food. If I was focused more on putting on a lot of muscle quickly (I'm not) I might move to the 6 small meals per day, but so far I have gone up in muscle mass and gone down in fat.
Will your body start to cannibalize muscle if it has to wait so long for protein?
This issue is sadly misunderstood. Your body has a type of tissue that it uses when it needs calories. It's called fat. If your body isn't pulling from fat stores, you have a metabolic issue (whether it's just high sugar intake, or diabetes, or something like that).
Your daily protein needs are fairly low to maintain homeostasis, but if your muscles are undergoing a lot of damage repair and/or growth, you will need more protein to keep that up. So I guess from that perspective, if you are abusing your muscles and pushing them into hypertrophy for days at a time without providing protein, your body will begin to re-shuffle protein from muscle groups to other muscle groups. This itself isn't even bad. "Autophagy" is a desirable process as long as you are aware of how it works and how to control it.
But to be fair, I want to limit how much "damage" I'm doing to my muscles each day. Damage = hypertrophy. That's a penalty to my protein intake. Protein that could've been used to build new muscle tissue is instead of repairing older damaged tissue. It is absolutely correct that with rigorous conditioning and structure, you can abuse hypertrophy to go up in muscle bulk as long as your protein intake is high enough.
Your muscles will still gradually grow larger even if you do not hit them with maximum hypertrophy. I can't remember the last time I woke up "sore", even though I workout every day. I avoid hypertrophy as much as I can. Yet, I'm getting stronger. There's nothing magic or formula-breaking, that's just how the body works. If I ate more and fasted less, I'd probably go up in more muscle mass. But like I said, I'm not in a hurry, and I'm interested in losing more bodyfat anyway. Less-than-maximum muscle gain but also some bodyfat and skin loss is an acceptable tradeoff to me.
Ya gotta constantly tweak though, and treat fasting with respect. Stay pudgy for a week longer instead of passing out on the floor, if you have to choose between the two. Binging and fasting is unhealthy, and the fitness lifestyle can encourage people to take tools like fasting to the extreme because there's encouragement to cut fat but also to put on muscle.
Anyway, I'm rambling. I've read various papers on hypertrophy, muscle repair, muscle loss, protein digestibility, how much protein-per-day can actually be used by the body, etc and I think there's a lotta bunk out there. There are no tricks, just patience and hard work. Fasting is the same way. it's a powerful tool but people need to learn how it works to avoid pitfalls.