Supplements

Got a few questions regarding timing/recommended supplements. Until now I've been going supplement free besides whey (which I'm dropping because of allergic reactions), so I'm going to see the difference for supplements. Right now I'm taking creatine and arginine. Creatine 20-30 mins before training and pwo, arginine pwo. My questions are this:

What would the best replacement be for whey pwo?

Is dextrose worth buying to have pwo with the other supplements?

Are there any other supplements worth buying? I'm not trying to spend 300$ on this stuff, I just need to know the best combination for the money being paid.

Last would be the timing for the supplements in question, I've read about the transport of specific supplements and don't want to be making one useless from bad timing.

Looking forward to hearing about this, thanks in advance.

EDIT:

Forgot 1 thing, I do several training sessions in a day, split up 2-5 hours depending on what I'm doing. Should I be taking everything with the same timing each workout?

I think arginine is precursor of NO, so it would be better to take it pre-work out

Best replacement for whey post work out could be a home-made milkshake (0.2 gr protein per lb bodyweight, 0.5 gr of carbohydrates per lb bodyweight)

Why buying dextrose when you can get fructose or glucose from bananas, honey or grapes and they are tasty?

What should I put in the pwo shake for protein? Dairy is cut out. Yea I was just wondering about the dextrose, wasn't for sure and I haven't bought it. How many servings of fruit is good for the day/pwo? Keep reading too much fructose isn't good, I'm also trying to lean out and keep the strength/mass gains coming. I'm assuming 1 piece of fruit after each workout.

Protein post-work out home made shakesource: cooked egg white (3 or 4) + 1 banana + 1 little spoon of honey or cacao powder + semiskimmed milked (200 ml) + 50-60 gr oat flakes

Alright the first one sounds about right for me, the only difference from what I'm having now is the protein coming from a lactose-free shake that I was trying out to see if I had any reactions to it, and I put one or the other when it came to bananas and honey. If adding both is alright then I'll start doing that, but I also have honey mustard with different meats so I'm not always eating everything dry which is why I only put a banana in my shake.

Any other comments on that is appreciated, but going back to the main point, are there any other supplements worth throwing in? I want to try and get the most from this to see the difference in my progress/performance.

Brutus said:

I think arginine is precursor of NO, so it would be better to take it pre-work out

Best replacement for whey post work out could be a home-made milkshake (0.2 gr protein per lb bodyweight, 0.5 gr of carbohydrates per lb bodyweight)

Why buying dextrose when you can get fructose or glucose from bananas, honey or grapes and they are tasty?

Why buy dextrose? Try it and see. Fructose won't help during the workout at all, and will not go towards replenishing muscle glycogen to any significant degree. Even in fully depleted marathon runners there's only a 10% difference in total time to glycogen replenishment, which works out to a few hours and that's from basically 0. The remaining glucose will be the primary source, but absorption is slower from mixed sources so straight glucose does work better. I would use whole fruit sources over honey, at least for the bulk of the carbs, if you go with fruit. The fruit and honey is, quite honestly, much more expensive as well. Grapes and raisins are probably the best fruit sources for during the workout with raisins being the cheapest, most space efficient and for some reason much more alkaline choice.

My friends and I have also personally found that large quantities of sucrose or honey are uncomfortable. Sometimes it's ok for a day or two but in the long run it doesn't feel good. You'd be better off with white bread or short chain maltodextrins (which are pretty close to glucose but are not sweet at ALL. Kind of grainy or chalky, but not bad). In the end, straight glucose is just as cheap as maltodextrin if you get it from a local brewing shop. I pay $1.50 per pound.

A critique: What you are suggesting isn't directly harmful, I mean it will work, but your proposed shake is WAY out of balance, too little protein and too much carb. I know you're probably basing things off of the whole 4:1 thing but that only applies to a post endurance event like a half marathon or greater. For strength training that is too much for one single shake. You could keep the carbs and add something like 40-50g of egg protein total, which would be great, and then split it into two shakes, but even that would really only be wise if it was a really long workout with fairly long sets. Glycogen isn't used heavily to replenish the CP/ATP system, that's done aerobically and primarily with fats. For most strength training you shouldn't need more than .7-1.2g carbs per gram protein, with 1:1 usually being just about right. Even if you are doing a workout with higher reps you won't usually benefit from more than a 2:1 ratio of carbs to protein. Resistance training does not impact glycogen stores the same way long aerobic events do. Pretty good sources of carbs, but too many carbs. For that amount of egg 1 tablespoon of honey and 1 medium banana would be just right, as would 30g of oat flakes, but not both together and certainly not the fruit, honey, AND 40-60g of oats! Unless, of course, the OP just ran a marathon or had a 3-4 hour intense training session. Even then, he'd be FAR better off consuming a liquid shake that was more 1:1 to 2:1 in nature, mostly glucose for carbs, steadily throughout the workout.

OP: You may need to buy slightly more expensive protein like Isopure, a true 100% whey protein isolate. That won't aggravate your lactose allergy. 1 piece of fruit isn't enough for true recovery alone, you will want a pure glucose source (the oat flakes are fine, as is rice or sweet potatoes or whatever else) to bring you the rest of the way up to whatever you think you need. Trying to go too low on your carbs will just rob your body of protein.

FLeXi said:

but going back to the main point, are there any other supplements worth throwing in? I want to try and get the most from this to see the difference in my progress/performance.

You are already taking creatine, which I truly believe to be one of the most effective supplements.

Glutamine or BCAAs can also be heplful as pre work out specially if you do fasting training

Nice long response with lots of information as usual from slizz Love it. In response to all of this:

A good shake would be 1:1 to 2:1 carb to protein, and suggested to drink it throughout each session. (Consisting of whey and dextrose) After this is finished, continue with the usual meals right after the session? Or should there be a certain time before the meal and shake? My after workout meal almost always consists of 1/2 of a sweet potato along with some sort of meat (since the potatoes are so huge I feel too stuffed if I finish a whole one). The sessions are generally 1-1.5 hours each, and I end up training twice a day for the most part. All this leading to the question: How do I determine the right amount of carbs for each session? Is the shake suggested (whey+dextrose) + my usual pwo meal enough to replenish?

Glutamine and BCAAs were the other 2 I was debating on actually. I'll be checking it out at a few places to see if I'll be able to afford everything.

Thanks for all the help/info guys. Great stuff, I'm definitely behind when it gets to specifics for this stuff so I need all the help I can get :oops:

FLeXi said:

Nice long response with lots of information as usual from slizz Love it. In response to all of this:

A good shake would be 1:1 to 2:1 carb to protein, and suggested to drink it throughout each session. (Consisting of whey and dextrose) After this is finished, continue with the usual meals right after the session? Or should there be a certain time before the meal and shake? My after workout meal almost always consists of 1/2 of a sweet potato along with some sort of meat (since the potatoes are so huge I feel too stuffed if I finish a whole one). The sessions are generally 1-1.5 hours each, and I end up training twice a day for the most part. All this leading to the question: How do I determine the right amount of carbs for each session? Is the shake suggested (whey+dextrose) + my usual pwo meal enough to replenish?

Glutamine and BCAAs were the other 2 I was debating on actually. I'll be checking it out at a few places to see if I'll be able to afford everything.

Thanks for all the help/info guys. Great stuff, I'm definitely behind when it gets to specifics for this stuff so I need all the help I can get :oops:

Creatine is absolutely the only supplement that should 100% be on the shopping list of anyone looking to get the most out of their body. BCAA is more important than glutamine, unless for some reason you are insistent on being unnecessarily low carb, which some people are and they are plenty happy with that. It is not the most efficient way but sometimes that is either what works for that person or what they like to do the most. What I write below is in reference to minimalist carb consumption. My examples are for my weight, you will have to plug in your own numbers to get the appropriate amount of carbs for your body. Keep in mind I'm a pretty big guy with low body fat. My numbers will not be your numbers, will probably be 50% higher than your numbers (assuming you're 2/3 of my weight). In that case your numbers would be ~ 33% lower than my numbers. 300-370g carbs would become 200-250g carbs for someone 2/3 my weight with the same body fat % (about 10% let's say). Higher bf% will lead to lower carb requirement.

The major issue is to not have too many carbs at any one meal. Like the protein, smaller but more frequent doses create an absorption pattern that is more efficient and leads to less fat storage, at least in non-sedentary individuals like you and me. I won't ever suggest having less than 100-150g of carbs per day, but that was a great question so let me make 3 generalizations regarding human metabolism. These are fairly immutable, meaning they apply to everyone on the planet:

1) 37-ish% of ingested protein is turned to carbs, particularly when the protein is consumed without sufficient carbohydrates at the same time.

2) your body is running on 30% carbs when you're not working out

3) your brain consumes 50g of carbs per day.

#3 should tell you your absolute lower limit right away, but that's not enough. take 30% of your resting (NOT basal, BMR doesn't matter unless you are laying in bed all day, literally) metabolism and that is the minimum amount of calories you need to get from carbs. Add that to #3 and you should have an effective lower limit.

EXAMPLE: I am 215 lbs right now, as an example, so my RMR is about 3300 calories. 30% of that is about 1000 calories(990), which is 250g of carbs. That is the absolute lower limit that I should hit. Add in the 50g my brain consumes, just to be safe, and I get 300g. That's on a day of rest, in other words not including how many calories I burn during exercise. If we say that I am consuming 190g of protein a day, which is a hell of a lot for me, I need to be consuming around 70g(that's 37%) of glucose along with the whey that I sip (or slower carbs along with casein) to try and minimize the protein loss. The glucose consumption will most likely be much, much more efficient at limiting protein conversion to carbs because glucose is what it's turned into. That would put me up to 370g of carbs in one day, not including what I burn during exercise, though 300 may well be fine if I include the 70g of glucose as part of the 300 and not on top of it. However, the extra 70g of carbs will NOT cause any problems. One, it isn't even close to creating a calorie surplus; Two, those 70g are consumed evenly across 16-18 hours. That's like 4.3g carbs per hour, 12 calories, not enough to cause a hormonal response worth noting. Guys, do some math. 370g of carbs is 1480 calories or so. Not even half of what I need on a rest day. That protein is about 800 calories so we can round up and say that is 2300 calories total. That's barely 2/3 of what I need. If you think that's going to make me fat or cause problems with fat loss, you're crazy and mis-informed.

You can then use a "rate of perceived exertion" approximation, from 6 to 20, to sort of guestimate your carb utilization during exercise. This is correlated fairly closely to both respiratory exchange ratio and % of VO2Max. Instead of getting nitty gritty, let's say that if you are really kicking your own butt you are probably running on 70-80% carbs overall. I'm talking about doing the dynamic WODs exactly as described in terms of rest times, because that's pretty tough work. If it's a maximal strength day you are probably below 50% but 50% is an easy number to use and being slightly over your actual "requirement" is NOT going to cause problems. Generally speaking 50% is the right number to go with as your workout expenditure.

Use an activity calculator to determine the approximate caloric expenditure of your workout (will be a ball park figure but good enough) and then use the above.

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/help_burn_work.php is a fairly good resource. Calculator links are on the upper left. If you use your RMR as they are suggesting you will have an even better approximation of what you need. Keep in mind that their calculators are averages and if you are like me and have way more muscle than the average 215 lb guy then your RMR will be higher than calculated, in my case about 20% higher from what I remember.

Another thing to keep in mind is that to a large degree your metabolism scales to how much you eat, so in other words if you aren't eating enough your body will slow down healing processes AND catabolic processes appropriately to match the food intake, up to about 40%. So you can run up to a 40% consistent calorie deficit and not tear yourself apart, but everything happens much slower that way. That's why you hear me mentioning intermittent deficit days with a bit of normal days (with perhaps a moderate calorie deficit that is NOT created by carb reduction) in between.

When I say carbs I do mean slow carbs unless specifically mentioned otherwise. If anyone doesn't know what those are, please use google to learn about them.

Sorry if that was hard to follow, I tried not to get too crazy.

As Sliz said, I would try a whey isolate as the first step before giving up whey. With ultra/micro filtration there basically is no lactose.

As per Sliz's nutrition thread and the numbers I found on other protein powders, I would check into brown rice protein powder, especially those sprouted brown rice proteins. Not really that expensive from what I googled. Some of the vegetarian protein powders have more Arginine than whey (not sure about egg).

Have you tried just egg protein? Probably better than even the best vegetarian protein powders. I remembering them taste bad but I don't use them because they taste good. Just chug it! I'm not talking about soy either. Rice, pea, hemp, spirulina.

Pea's numbers are good but since they are a legume I'm wondering about this.

http://www.toddcaldecott.com/index.php/todds-blog/49-2011/520-pea-protein

Oh wow, that definitely brings me up for how many carbs I have during the day, especially on rest days. I don't think I've been getting anywhere near 200 even on training days, never mind rest days. I'll definitely work on keeping the 200 minimum, which is going to consist of sweet potato and brown rice for the most part.

As for the supplements I'll be checking out the BCAAs and grabbing some dextrose within the next few days. As for the whey, I'll be going at it once more with your suggestion, within the next 3 days I should have everything I need to get the ball rolling. Hoping after everything is in order I'll be seeing some big changes. I haven't had any problem with strength increases but my LBM doesn't seem to change, if I didn't know better I'd swear I was just getting fatter if anything. :roll:

Everything I needed was covered without flaw, couldn't thank you enough.

FLeXi said:

brown rice

Too much phytic acid, use white rice or parboiled. Or google up "Soaking brown rice".

Slizz, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Generally, I'd say the same but I don't know if brown rice protein carrys that over.

To actually get enough protein through eating brown rice, you would have to be eating it as if you were Sumotori. Not really ideal for someone interested in bodyweight excellence.

Falcon said:

FLeXi said:

brown rice

Too much phytic acid, use white rice or parboiled. Or google up "Soaking brown rice".

Slizz, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think you need to worry about that with the protein. It is an "issue" with straight up brown rice, but like you said you can soak the brown rice before cooking. You can also rinse it with a FOOD GRADE hydrogen peroxide solution. It's pretty weak, you can find it on google. You WILL have to buy or order FOOD GRADE hydrogen peroxide, which is generally 30%, and dilute it down yourself.

Or you can just not worry about it and eat your brown rice. I don't think you need to worry about phytic acid. You can mitigate the effects by not depending on the rice for the majority of your diet or by simply getting your micronutrients at meals without the rice present. You can ALSO consume large amounts of lactobacilli and related probiotic bacteria with your meals, as they are a rich source of the enzyme phytase. Yes, you guessed correctly, that's the enzyme that digests phytic acid and breaks the chelated bonds with micronutrients that we normally can not digest.

Interestingly, there isn't much more phytic acid in brown rice than polished rice despite the propaganda floating around on the internet, and rice in general isn't terribly high in phytic acid to begin with.

Wait, we were talking about brown rice protein? Not about using brown rice as a source of carbs?

If so, then yea, it wouldn't matter as much I think...

Anyway soaking is always the solution

I was talking about brown rice protein powder and I thought that was what we were talking about.

Lol well the original post was meant to be towards me saying brown rice, in which case was referred to as a source of carbs, not the powder.

slizzardman said:

Why buy dextrose? Try it and see. Fructose won't help during the workout at all, and will not go towards replenishing muscle glycogen to any significant degree. Even in fully depleted marathon runners there's only a 10% difference in total time to glycogen replenishment, which works out to a few hours and that's from basically 0. The remaining glucose will be the primary source, but absorption is slower from mixed sources so straight glucose does work better. I would use whole fruit sources over honey, at least for the bulk of the carbs, if you go with fruit. The fruit and honey is, quite honestly, much more expensive as well. Grapes and raisins are probably the best fruit sources for during the workout with raisins being the cheapest, most space efficient and for some reason much more alkaline choice.

Read something about proteina + carbo ingestion that really sound new to me.

No real difference between taken protein isolate or with carbs http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21131864

Have you any aditional information slizz?

Brutus said:

slizzardman said:

Why buy dextrose? Try it and see. Fructose won't help during the workout at all, and will not go towards replenishing muscle glycogen to any significant degree. Even in fully depleted marathon runners there's only a 10% difference in total time to glycogen replenishment, which works out to a few hours and that's from basically 0. The remaining glucose will be the primary source, but absorption is slower from mixed sources so straight glucose does work better. I would use whole fruit sources over honey, at least for the bulk of the carbs, if you go with fruit. The fruit and honey is, quite honestly, much more expensive as well. Grapes and raisins are probably the best fruit sources for during the workout with raisins being the cheapest, most space efficient and for some reason much more alkaline choice.

Read something about proteina + carbo ingestion that really sound new to me.

No real difference between taken protein isolate or with carbs http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21131864

Have you any aditional information slizz?

No, but this doesn't surprise me. I' have been against the common ideology of tons of carbs + protein for a while, as most people here either know directly or may have gathered from my approach to nutrition.

I use the carbs to inhibit muscle glycogen depletion and gluconeogenesis (GNG). This also supports my claims, which of course are backed up by known data on enzymatic saturation, that the body simply can't absorb 25g of protein in 1 hour, and that whey is absorbed in like 15-30 minutes, with peak blood saturation after 45-60 minutes. That's why I am always taking in 10-15g per hour, generally speaking. If we used 10g in this study instead of 25, or any amount up to the enzymatic saturation point (plus whatever losses there are to GNG) I suspect we would see a difference due to protein sparing in the carbohydrate group. If the amount of protein is equal to or greater than the enzyme saturation point then there is no way that more protein OR more carbs is going to make a difference in the numbers.

The only way to make a difference (as far as I am aware) would be to increase enzyme activity (optimize pH and/or get significantly more enzymes in there) and/or to increase hormone activity (alters rate of transcription in the muscles).

This is why I do the slow protein sip, this is why casein is usually a better protein source than whey (except for before and during workouts, which I hope everyone now realizes does not require 50g of protein or anything insane, nor does it require tons of carbs), and this is why so many bodybuilders have to do bulking and cutting cycles... they get fat because of the regular insulin spikes + excess calories.

I can't remember where I read it but I think whey digests around 10g/hr whereas most other protein digests around 5g/hr.

Interesting. I am quite sure absorption rate is far higher than that in terms of the protein being broken down and utilized for one process or another, but the ability of our bodies to actually use the protein for protein synthesis in new tissue is limited to something like 10-15g per hour, with the actual amount obviously dependent on one's muscle and overall lean mass as well as overall stimulation of load responsive elements in the muscles.

Sliz, are you saying that more than 15g of protein powder (my primary source of protein) a day is pointless? Hmm... that would mean about 240g of protein a day would be my requirement.

If someone spends eight hours a night sleeping than he/she will never need to take more than about 240-250g whey a day. I guess that makes sense, but doesn't that render IF a bit impractical. It seems like it would also force an increase of carbs or fats because of the less protein.

I'm still stuck in the "get a ton of protein post workout" mentality. There's really no reason to increase protein per hour consumption peri-workout?

Patrick Smith said:

Sliz, are you saying that more than 15g of protein powder (my primary source of protein) a day is pointless? Hmm... that would mean about 240g of protein a day would be my requirement.

If someone spends eight hours a night sleeping than he/she will never need to take more than about 240-250g whey a day. I guess that makes sense, but doesn't that render IF a bit impractical. It seems like it would also force an increase of carbs or fats because of the less protein.

I'm still stuck in the "get a ton of protein post workout" mentality. There's really no reason to increase protein per hour consumption peri-workout?

Per hour, not per day! But it's more like more than 15g per hour hitting the blood is a waste. With whey that's easy to measure since we know how fast it gets absorbed. With other sources it can be more difficult to estimate, but whole food proteins tend to take 3-4 hours to be fully absorbed when consumed in reasonable quantities (30-50g). There's always a curve to the absorption, but that's life.

IF is primarily a fat loss protocol, not a muscle gaining protocol. The two are NOT mutually exclusive by any means. In my opinion, a small trickle of protein and glucose throughout the day does not disrupt the primary mechanism of IF too severely. A small trickle in my book is 3-4g glucose and 7-8g protein per hour.

There's not much of a reason to increase protein consumption peri-workout, no, but there is some. Transcription factors will be upregulated so protein synthesis IS higher and more protein CAN be used during the 3-4 hours post workout, but that's sort of a special case and I don't know what the numbers are there. I don't think anyone does, but there's probably no reason to go over 20g/hour.

This is not what people are used to hearing, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Protein Absorption Rate (g/hour)

Raw Egg Protein * 1.4

Cooked Egg Protein * 2.9

Pea Protein 3.5

Milk Protein 3.5

Soy Protein Isolate 3.9

Casein Isolate 6.1

Whey Isolate 8-10

Tenderloin Pork Steak * 10.0

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/what-are-good-sources-of-protein-speed-of-digestion-part-2.html

That all depends on the amount taken in, the size of the food chunks, etc to a certain extent, but that is an interesting list. I tried clicking the link but I couldn't get to the original page so I have no idea what their sources are.