How much muscle you carry did not change your per-meal dose
Thirty trained men split by lean mass were given 20 g or 40 g of whey after a whole-body session. Lean mass made no difference to how much the muscle could use.
What the study found
Bigger men did not need more protein per meal than smaller ones
Thirty trained men were split into higher and lower lean-mass groups, given 20 g or 40 g of whey after a whole-body session, and measured through recovery. How much lean mass a man carried made no difference to how much protein his muscle could use.
The caveat · Only 20 g and 40 g were compared
One acute recovery period with a tracer, not muscle measured over a training block. Thirty resistance-trained men, no women and no older adults. Only 20 g and 40 g were compared, so this shows the per-meal ceiling is above 20 g without showing where it is. The advantage of 40 g over 20 g was real but small, 0.059 against 0.049 percent per hour.