Here’s a tip list through Men’s Fitness about things people should consider after their workout, including nutrition and hygiene.
Share on
Posts Tagged post workout
Share on
Branched chain amino acids, or BCAAs, are synonymous with the amino acids leucine, isoleucine, and valine. These are essential amino acids, of which there are 9. Essential amino acids are found in pretty much any source of protein or protein complement. This includes eggs, soy, animal flesh, dairy protein (casein and whey), beans, nuts, seeds, and grains (which tend to be low on lysine, they still have BCAAs). Essential means you must eat them every day for good nutrition.
I’m tired of seeing this scam promoted. If you eat protein, your blood has plenty of BCAAs. If you are worried about your BCAA level going down during exercise, eat dietary sources of protein sometime within 2-3 hours of your workout or a faster absorbing protein 30 min to 1 hour before your workout (whey) if you didn’t plan your day well enough to have dietary sources. That is a good time period to ensure BCAAs, or protein in general, will be in your blood.
If you supplement with BCAAs or protein and your body doesn’t need it, your liver deaminates (removes the nitrogen group) or transaminates (moves the nitrogen to a different keto acid, making a different amino acid) the amino acid to maintain homeostasis. The nitrogen group forms urea, which is filtered by the kidneys into your urine.
The carbon backbone of the amino acid is then integrated into either glucogenic pathways (pathways that synthesize glucose) or ketogenic pathways (pathways that synthesize fatty acids and ketones).
In other words, BCAAs become carbohydrate or fat calories, just like dietary carbohydrate and dietary fat do, and an insignificant amount of calories at that. Except you bought BCAAs, and your body isn’t using them like that. Consider the cost difference. Let me break it down for you:
If you bought a container of BCAAs with 40 servings of 10 calories each, you might get 400 Calories from that whole container, according to the label. That said, they apparently don’t count the protein from amino acids into the total calories on the label. This particular item actually has 12 Calories from carbohydrate (rounded down to 10, so that is legit), but 5 g of protein from amino acids leucine, isoleucine, and valine.
Add 20 calories to that serving size from the 5g of protein, so there are about 30 calories per serving total. So, 30 calories times 40 servings means the bottle has 1200 calories total, 3 times as much as reported on the label.
If that’s not enough to make you distrust this supplement, this bottle costs $26.39 at the time this post is written. For $26.39, you could have bought about 10 bags of rice and 10 bags of beans or lentils, or you could buy 5 bottles of olive oil or 2-3 large containers of nuts if you prefer to get your calories from fat. All of these are much more cost effective per calorie than buying a bottle of BCAAs.
People who tell you to buy BCAAs may be salesmen trying to make a living in the supplement industry or personal trainers who don’t have any human physiology or biochemistry education who work for gyms that tell you to push supplements or lose your job. These are not people you should take nutrition advice from.
Please comment, share, and subscribe to my newsletter for updates!
Share on
I see weight lifters, bodybuilders, and personal trainers promoting individual amino acid supplements, such as glutamine, leucine, or BCAAs. BCAAs are branched-chain amino acids, specifically leucine, isoleucine, and valine.
What I would like to know is if there is research that differentiates between having dietary protein and having specific amino acids. Because, frankly, it baffles me why people would buy individual amino acids when consuming high protein foods such as various animal flesh (chicken, beef, turkey, salmon, tuna), dairy, eggs, soy, or other higher protein foods like beans and seeds. Supplement companies obviously want you to buy more product and will tell you anything.
In my frank opinion, if you are consuming adequate amounts of protein for your physical activity, i.e. active people need 1.2-1.7 grams protein/kilogram (1 kg = 2.2. lbs) body weight, and you are spreading your meals out throughout the day to maintain the pool of amino acids in your blood, then you should have more than enough amino acids available for anything your body is doing. This is more than the RDA for protein for the general population that is not exercising, which is 0.8 grams protein/kilogram body weight.
Additionally, bodybuilding supplements could be contaminated with substances that improve your workouts that aren’t even amino acids, since as previous posts have mentioned, the supplement industry is not tightly regulated for quality, purity, and unadulterated ingredient listed on labels.
This post does not hold true for those who may be in the hospital or have a specific medical condition for which there is clear research on the efficacy of providing individual amino acids. These cases often involve situations where dietary protein intake is limited for various reasons. Often, your physician will order a specific amino acid in cases like these.
However, for working out? Save your money, and go buy someone a present or donate to a charity you believe in.
Share on
A number of studies released in the past year1,2,3 have investigated the effects of various processed milk proteins such as casein and whey on muscle protein synthesis after resistance training.
One of these studies (1) found that a combination of the three proteins, whey, soy, and casein is just as effective as whey at increasing amino acid transporter expression, transport, and myofibrillar protein synthesis, due to the varying rate of digestion of the proteins and their release into the blood stream, affecting the availability of the amino acids (building blocks of protein).
This would make it seem that you don’t have to go buy whey or bust; instead, you could just go cheaper with protein blends in supplements. Not so fast. The researchers were able to control the leucine content of the beverage more than anyone trying to mix the stuff up himself or herself probably would.
Whey and soy are both high in leucine, with whey slightly higher. Whey is a more expensive ingredient though. Soy is not as expensive. Milk protein is udderly (ha) 20% whey and 80% casein naturally out of the cow udder. Whey is considered a fast digesting protein, soy is considered almost as fast (medium), and casein is considered a slower protein to digest.
Since dietary supplements are not regulated until after they reach the market, often when someone experiences an adverse effect, it is unlikely that the supplement manufacturer is also rigorously testing the leucine content unless it is third party certified by ConsumerLab or NSF. Knowing this, what can you do if you don’t want to go spend money on supplements that aren’t regulated?
Make your own next-best post-workout smoothie! Try some chocolate soymilk, nonfat dry milk (NFDM) aka powdered milk, and stir it up.
Probably cheaper than that supplement, too.
A 1-cup serving of chocolate soymilk has 17g sugar and 5g protein while 1 serving of NFDM has 12g sugar and 8g protein. Total, you get 13 grams of protein and 29g of sugar, which is roughly a 1:2.2 ratio of protein to carbohydrate. Make it a smoothie by adding a serving of frozen berries and you’ll be closer to the optimal 1:3 ratio of protein to carbohydrate that is recommended post-workout. Only 200-250 Calories, depending on whether you use berries. Double or halve it depending on your calorie needs.
Now you have a homemade smoothie consisting of a protein blend of soy, whey, and casein! Sounds too good to be true, huh? Of course, we’re not controlling the leucine content either, nor likely are the manufacturers of the supplements.
Why, then, are researchers allowed to create such artificial situations that aren’t able to be transferred into practice? It may have something to do with the fact that supplement manufacturers want to make money by processing simple, cheaper ingredients into something that may be demonstrated to be marginally better in an artificial, unrealistic, quixotic lab test than the original foods for the largest profit margin. Or, just for the sake of SCIENCE!
Share on
