Barbell Shrugged - Post-Workout Nutrition: The Window of Gainz

Episode Date: May 20, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about post-workout nutrition and the window of gains. Yeah, I know. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Two, one. Let it come to first. Shocker, bro. We'll keep everything we just said a secret.

That way they don't know. Welcome to Barbell Strugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe, standing here with Doug Larson. Chris Moore. CTP behind the camera. We've got Charlotte behind the other camera. Whoa. Multiple cameras.

Oh, we've arrived. Finally. Today we're going to be talking about post-workout nutrition. That's been waiting so long. We're going to cover the food, the different types of workouts that you're doing, and the different types of nutrition you might need afterwards. The mistakes you're probably making.

All the mistakes you're making. We're going to cover all of them. Let you know how dumb you are. No, we're not going to do that. Yeah, so we're going to cover all that. Before we go any further, go to barbellshrug.com. Sign up for the newsletter. What if they're already on barbellshrug.com? If further, go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. What if they're already on barbellshrug.com?

If you're already on barbellshrug.com, you should. What link should they click? All of them. Test them out. See which one's your favorite. There's all sorts of stuff you can click on on there. All kinds of knowledge. There's stuff for e-books.

There's stuff for recipes and whatnot. New article every day. Is that right? It depends on what you want. It's there. Yeah, whatever you want. There's something for everybody. Search. Not really. If you don't know? It depends on what you want. It's there. Yeah, whatever you want. There's something for everybody. Search.

Not really. If you don't know, just use a little search window. It's not for everybody. It's only for you. I promise. If you type in clown penis in a search box,

something different will happen. Sweet and salty Easter egg on the side. We now got to create like a page. The clown penis page. All right, before we lose all of our audience uh we want to talk about post-workout nutrition today uh mainly because like i'll post uh not this isn't mainly

but this is why i think we should talk about it i'll post like my post-workout meal to instagram or something like that and the people are like oh sweet and then they post theirs and then tag me back in it and i'm like what is that i'm like that looks like about people are like, oh, sweet. And then they post theirs and then tag me back in it. And I'm like. What is that? I'm like, that looks like about a third of what I've been eating. And they're like, I'm on the gains train. I'm like, no, you're not. It's what you would feed a three-year-old. Like, it's macaroon cheese.

I've got my 2% milk. You're on the gains short bus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, it's either not big enough or. Story of your life. I'm looking at it. It happens a lot. It's not big enough or, like looking at it. It happens a lot. It's not big enough or it just has the wrong stuff on the plate.

They're like, I'm going to totally recover. I'm like, what are you recovering from? Does anyone say that? They're missing a big opportunity. It's the most important meal out of probably all the meals you're going to eat the whole day. And you have basically full permission, especially if you're gaining weight, to just fucking go off the rails and just eat whatever the hell you want, and people don't do it for some reason. The window of gains. The window of gains. Once that closes,

it's all over. Yeah. Yeah. You missed the window of gains. You screwed up, man. I don't want to be that guy. Don't be that guy, because he might as well just start the day over. Just go take a shit, jump in the shower. It's probably the most important thing you do, and it's the first thing that you overlook as you rush out of the gym to go do whatever else shit, jump in the shower. It's probably the most important thing you do and it's the first thing

that you overlook as you rush out of the gym to go do whatever else you had planned for the day. Yeah. So, yeah, so we kind of covered

usually they're not big enough or they just have the wrong stuff on there and then there's a certain amount of protein, carbs, and fat you're looking

for, probably not so much fat. What else? You want to eat like a big bowl of country gravy after you train? And while you're consuming

your post-workout meal, you need to be dancing. That's how you know if you're doing it right. That's how you know you're doing it right. Death punk. Well, we were just,

oh, whatever. How do you know what your plate should look like, Mike? You look at all these terrible meals on Instagram. What should it look like? It should be a lot fuller. Like, I'm one of the typical jerks that has an empty, fat, heavy plate. Because, again, I like my salt milk country gravy.

Maybe I have to do my heavy deadlifts. What should be on there? Mostly carbs and protein. Like Doug was just saying, it's your opportunity to eat as much as you want, probably. Especially if you're trying to get big. This is not the meal that's going to make you fat, I promise. If you want to eat a ton of carbs, this is the time to do it. And the type of carbs you want to have is probably rice, oats, quinoa, potatoes, all that kind of stuff.

Ice cream. You know what? It is one way of going about it, but it's not. I would go post. That's after your post-workout meal. Yeah, that's. That's the dessert to your post-workout meal. It shouldn't be your meal.

That's not an ideal way to recover. And only if you're trying to gain as much weight as possible. As much weight as possible. But actually, that's a good opportunity for people that are trying to lose weight, too. It's your opportunity to actually eat some carbohydrates. Yeah. Like, if you're super low carb most of the day eating, you know, borderline paleo meals where you're eating meat and veggies and a few nuts and seeds and whatever, you know,

mostly protein and fat, and you're going to eat some carbohydrates, this is your opportunity. Post-workout is the best time to eat those carbs because you're going to actually take the carbs, put them in your muscles, and you're not going to convert them to body fat. You're not going to get fat at all off those carbs. It's only going to give you more energy and help you get stronger and build muscle mass. So if you're ever going to be not afraid- Or keep the muscle mass you already have as you lose weight. If there's ever a time to not be afraid of getting fat, this is the one time where that definitely doesn't have to be on the table for you. You know you're going to utilize it for

greater good. And real quick, I've cut carbs out of my diet for post-workout before, just as an experiment. It's one of those things, like all the literature says, eat carbs post-workout. And I was like, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play around with this paleo thing. For about 30 days, I cut out all that stuff,

stopped doing the post-workout shakes. And I was like, oh, I think I feel fine. I didn't really notice much of a difference. And then when I added it back in, I was like, holy shit, I feel amazing. So it's one of those things like over time you may not notice the effects of it because it's like slowly you're just getting less and less recovered and you may not pick up on it. It's kind of like sleep.

It's like sleep, right? Some people think they have six hours of sleep and go, well, I feel fine. I know some people say eight, but I swear I feel better on six then you try eight then you see the difference yeah and what about you just mentioned a good point but if i'm trying to lose fat do i still maybe try to go less carb after i lift weights just because i think this is now the time to ask that it does differ different types of people i think respond a little bit differently but i think it's still a great time to do carbs right afterwards for a few different reasons but we can go in the science of that. Uh, but you did ask earlier,

I didn't finish it. It was like, what should your plate look like? It's like half protein, half carbs. I think that's the easiest way to think about it. Yeah. Like if you just, if you just cut your plate down the middle and put meat on one side and some type of starchy, dense carbohydrates on the other side, like Mike said, like oats or rice or potatoes or what have you. That's the easiest way in my mind to know you're doing it right. In addition to dancing. We'll be dancing. Meat on one side, carbs on the other side. Will you also be going, oh God, this is a lot of food.

Will that also be the way you know you're doing it right? If it seems like too much food for you, because you're probably not. You're probably under eating. That's one of the big problems. If you don't feel really tired after you eat, you probably didn't do it right. Yeah. This is all said in the context of your whole day. Like this is one meal out of your whole day. So if I say half meat, half dense carbohydrates, starchy, you know, carbohydrates, carbohydrates, like I just said, then we're thinking about that one meal in the context

of the rest of the day. So that means that the other meals you are eating healthy fats and you are, you are getting, um, you know, fiber and whatnot through meat and vegetables and antioxidants and all the other good things that you get from, um, fresh vegetables and fruits and whatnot. So this one meal, if you're looking at it, you're going, Whoa, I don't want to like just eat protein and carbs. Like what about healthy fats and what about vegetables and what about all these other good things? Well, you're going to get all that stuff, but you're going to get it at the other meals throughout your day. You're going to get it at breakfast and dinner and whatever, not in the post-workout meal. Yeah. This is a take within the context,

kind of setting it up is you already eat really well. And the majority of your day, you're eating paleo ish, lots of vegetables, high quality meats and fats, high protein, high fat, yeah. High protein, high fat, the vegetables, all that stuff. And then this is the opportunity to do like the denser carbs. So, Doug, can you explain the recovery side of things? Like we're talking about

post-workout nutrition, but, you know, people are like, oh, I'm supposed to do this, but why? Like, why are we doing carbohydrates and protein and how does that work together? Are you referring to the fancy science stuff that goes on?

Like in my cells and whatnot? Yes, on a very physiological, maybe even cellular level. We'll talk about a little bit of that. So in the window of gains, the window of gains. This ridiculous term that we just made up. Check out the hashtag window of gains for the one picture that's on there.

All your gains need. Basically what that means is right after your workout's over, you have like 30 or 60 minutes. There's no actual like definitive cutoff point, but that's typical what people say just to get you to eat right away. And during that time, say I eat a meal post-workout, you know, within that 30 minute window versus waiting two hours. If I eat it right away in that 30 minute window versus waiting two hours, I'm going to take more of those carbohydrates and actually store them in my muscles as glycogen, uh, as opposed to later on where I'll store less of those carbohydrates as glycogen. They didn't go to glycogen. That means

they went somewhere else. The assumption in that case is that they got stored as body fat. So the same number of calories, the same number of carbohydrates eaten post-workout you're going to use for good versus later on you're going to use for half good and half not so so good is it's being stored in the muscles glycogen not good is all right uh too much time's passed and so like you've missed the window of your insulin sensitivity right your the ability for your body basically to store those carbohydrates the sensitivity to that has gone down and so if you wait you know wait two hours or four hours or however long, and you're not doing it in the window of gains, then you're going to not have that sensitivity. And then a lesser percentage of the carbohydrates you eat are going to be going into your muscles, which is a good thing.

And well, sorry, a lesser percentage isn't a good thing. The fact that they're going into your muscles is a good thing. So if you wait, a lesser percentage are going to go into your muscles, and that's not a good thing. So you want to eat as soon as possible. You don't have to immediately jump off your wad and slam the shake, but you have 5, 10, 15 minutes. That should be down. The sooner the better.

The easiest way to handle that is just to have, like what I do is I usually drink a protein shake with some carbohydrates. In my case, I just take pure dextrose, like not a proprietary blend. I just add straight up dextrose, which is glucose, just pure sugar to my workout shake. That way, during my workout, I'm getting some protein and some carbohydrates during the workout. That way, by the time post-workout shows up, I already have all that flowing around in my system. It's already being digested. It's already in my bloodstream. It's already being fed to my muscles. That way, if I want to go home and make dinner and it takes me 90 minutes to get a meal, well, that's really meal number two. Like I'm, I'm just, I'm just eating again. The post-workout or excuse me, the, the during workout shake kind of makes up for the fact that, that I'm not going to be able to eat an actual meal right away when I get done training. That means I don't have to bring food with me to the gym, which is kind of nice. But for the person who's doing WODs or crazy Metcons,

and they're not going to drink a shake during, just right after is cool? Well, first of all, I'd encourage them to drink a shake during. And if you don't want to drink it during your Metcon, you don't necessarily have to. Some people don't really tolerate. You don't drink a milkshake during. It's like, what is in that shake exactly? Because it's a light, not very rich. Well, here, let's finish this.

Then Steve's going to call you a pussy for stopping to go get your drink. Oh, yeah, trying to catch your breath, aren't you there, Tom? So what you'd want to do in that case is either drink your shake like right before, where you're not actually in the Metcon when you're drinking the shake. That way, during your warm-up, during your strength work, you're drinking your shake. And then by the timeup during your strength work you're drinking your shake and then by the time the metcon comes you already have something again kind of in your system that way during the metcon you have to take a break and like go get a drink of your shake especially if it's a short metcon it's 15 minutes you don't need to like stop and get a drink you'll unless you're me i will have to refuel to stave off death

five minutes into whatever i'm doing right yeah i got 30 good reps in the tank coach and i gotta refuel go ahead yeah i, you always got to consider that if you eat something, it's going to take, you know, 30 to 90 minutes for it to like really kind of start to get

into your system. So if you drink a shake right before your workout, that means, you know, if you only have a one hour workout, really it's really just getting into your system

right about the time that you're finishing your workout. And so as a post-workout shake, that's pretty ideal, really. It's like, it doesn't have to take an extra 30 or 60 minutes to start digesting. It's already available for your muscles right then and there. Yeah, so timing is even better. Yeah, so for me, you know, I don't really do a post-workout shake specifically. I drink a shake during my workout, and then I eat

as soon as possible right after my workout. How soon into it do you start drinking it? Is it the whole time you lightly sip the same shake? Yeah, right about the time I start warming up, I just start drinking my shake. And by the time I'm about halfway done through my strength work, usually my shake's gone. And then that's kind of nice too, because by the time I actually get to my post-workout meal, there's been an hour, hour and a half in between where I didn't drink a shake, finish it, and then try to go eat a meal. There's been some time where I've gotten hungry and there's some room in my stomach. That might really help the people who afterwards they really struggle with even getting a shake down, even getting a light plate of food.

Some people with appetite is just not there. Yeah, for me, I like doing the shake during the strength work, warm up, strength work. And then once, like for five minutes before a conditioning session, I just switch to water. It gives your stomach a chance to clear. Personally, yeah, I need to to water. It gives your stomach a chance to clear. I need to be feeling nice and light and clean. And then immediately after that, I drink a little more water, but then I switch back over to a post-workout shake for sure.

Yeah, and actually on that note with mentioning water, I like to drink my workout shake and then the rest of my workout, crush a bunch of water. That way when I get to my post-workout meal, I'm not thirsty and i don't have to drink a bunch of right a bunch of fluids a bunch of water that don't have any calories i can just use all the room my stomach for a massive meal where water's not getting in the way so to speak so we want sugar you know uh dextrose is one form there's different supplements out there that have some carbohydrate in them. But what I find is a lot of times they just don't have enough. So buying like a big tub of dextrose can be really helpful.

Yeah, go to Now Nutrition. You know, the big orange containers that you see like on Amazon. Those things are clutch, man. All their line, right? Like a 10-pound thing of dextrose is like, I don't know, I don't even remember. It's 20 bucks or something like that. It's really cheap. It'll last you an incredibly long time.

It's actually cheaper on bodybuilding.com. Not plugging, just saying. Okay. We'll find the greatest deal and we'll link it to you, folks. But it's probably the best source of sugar that you could get. It's pure glucose. As far as sugar goes, it's probably like the healthiest sugar you could be eating. It's not a very-

Slippery slope, Doug. Slippery slope. Every other variation of sugar is not quite as good for you as, as glucose. Not saying it's like a healthy thing necessarily long-term if you crush it all day long, but, but post-workout glucose is probably the best sugar that you're going to want to consume as a, as a, as a workout shake sugar. Does it depend? Uh, so for me, I vary the carbohydrates in my drink, depending on the type of workout. If I'm just doing strength work, I guess we can go to – You mean the amount?

Yeah. Yeah. So we can talk about ratios a little bit. So if I'm doing strength work, I'm looking at sometimes a one-to-one or a two-to-one ratio of carbs to protein because I'm not burning up a lot of glycogen when I'm doing a lot of strength work. How much do you know to put in there, like grams-wise? Use yeah i mean the scoopers have 30 grams i use a 40 gram scooper and so like i can like just say okay it's half full or third you know two thirds or whatever you don't have to be extremely precise i'm not weighing anything but i do have a scooper that's

40 grams and so i can kind of i i do 40 grams of protein and then i do another 40 grams of dextrose or something like that uh but like if i'm doing just strength work and i'm keeping it under sets of five and the volume is relatively low i do like a one-to-one to two-to-one ratio of carbs of protein but the moment you start getting a long and longer endurance type workouts where you're working out for hours on end that might shift a little bit on if it's more of a conditioning workout if you start to do hero wads you might want to add maybe a three-to-one ratio of carbs and protein. Two-to-one is probably still okay if you're an average WOD or you just need some extra carbohydrate. You're doing more than squatting, but you're not doing anything too crazy.

You're your average CrossFitter doing the workout of the day. Yeah. So the amount of reps you're doing, that would be your volume, could dictate how much sugar uh, sugar is actually in your drink or carbohydrate. Uh, and we didn't really cover what the protein does. So we're talking about like post-workout nutrition. It's all about recovery. It's about, it's about, uh, feeling good after you work out and prepping for the next workout, even if it's the next day or two days later, like the faster you recover, the better. And the more you recover, like the sooner

we're talking about the window of gains, the you take advantage of that uh of your post-workout nutrition the the higher you're actually going to get in your recovery on both uh glycogen reuptake and then also with protein synthesis you want to get into like you want to get into like what the protein is actually for during the workout and then after as well because you're talking about sipping on protein during and there's something that happens there too. Sipping on that protein. Sipping on the sip. The two main things there,

if you're having sugar and protein during your workout and or post-workout, they're similar, but I tend to want to gravitate towards a during-workout shake and then a post-workout actual meal. In that case, you're going to break down less protein. You're going to break down less muscle mass. You're going to get less sore. Your muscles are made of protein.

Yeah, your muscles are made of protein. There you go. So you're going to break down less, and you're going to probably build more. So if this is baseline. And by the way, we learned from Dr. Andy Galpin that you don't have to break down muscle to build it up. Totally unnecessary. You don't have to. So trying to minimize the breakdown is actually a really good thing. Yeah. If you, as an example, if you are here at baseline, you break down some muscle mass and you dig yourself into this big hole, it might take you four or five

days to come out of that. If you have a good amount of protein and carbohydrates during your workout and right after your workout, then maybe you don't dig yourself into quite as deep of a hole and maybe you're fully recovered a day early, which means you can go train again. The difference between taking four days to recover or three days to recover is a lot.

Over the course of your life, that's a lot. There's a difference between you being an advanced, awesome athlete and still being at the bottom of the whiteboard. To add up all that cumulative better quality work and better feeding over the course of your life, that's a lot. There's a difference between you being an advanced, awesome athlete and still being at the bottom of the whiteboard. Add up all that accumulative better quality work and better feeding over the course of just one year. Your body looks completely different. Everything's different. Over the course of a year, I'm not even going to attempt to run the math on that,

but you're going to get dozens of more workouts. That's so many more opportunities to gain a little bit more strength. In that example, if you put on an extra pound on your back squat every single workout, well, if that's dozens of workouts and each workout's worth a pound, well, that's an extra 30 pounds you put on your back squat simply because you recovered better. And this is a major factor into helping you do that. That's a good thing. Are you saying that the window of gains can lead to a lifetime of gains?

As Usher and Little John once said, eat in the window. Eat it all. Eat it all. Till the sweat drops down your bones. Oh, eat, eat, eat, eat. That's the other thing we say is there's all the good scientific reasons why you'll feel better and feel better and recover, but then there's just the habit of if you're thinking about how you can quickly give energy back into your body after working out, then that habit is what's really, really powerful.

That stacks up. I mean, in the course of a year, you're going to be a lot different because of that. Yeah, I like to think about workouts as practice. You ever hear about the 10,000 hours? When someone accumulates that 10,000 hours, then they kind of master that task or something like that. You always said it was squats, right? The person who squats more than you has done more squatting than you. They just found a way to get the work done.

Now your job is to find a way to get the work done. It's going to take some while to catch up to that. Right. The same thing as nutrition. It's not that you had something magical today that you added to your protein shake. It's that for now a couple years, the habit and the ritual is you think a lot about how much calories you need and when you're going to do them and how to match that with the amount of effort you're putting out. So that's the thing that has a really good impact on your body. Well, transformational impact on

your body. Yeah, I do. Go ahead, Doug. You were going to make a point. I was going to touch on something that we brought up earlier when you're talking about ratios of carbs and proteins and how much to get and all that. The easiest, the easiest way I think for me to figure out how much to get and all that. The easiest way, I think, for me to figure out how many carbohydrates, how many grams of protein someone needs, and then I'll convert it out of grams here in a minute, is for a strength athlete where you're getting that kind of two to one carbs to protein, which I think is a good ratio for most strength athletes, about 20% of your own body weight. So if I'm a 200 pound guy, 20% of my body weight is 40, but I get about 40 grams of protein. And then since it's two to one, I could double that.

And so that would be 80 grams of carbohydrates. That's kind of the minimum for me as a strength athlete that I would want to get post-workout. So 40 grams of protein, 80 grams of carbohydrates, you know, that that's shy 500 calories. That's probably the minimum. You can certainly go beyond that. And if you're, if you're talking about're talking about you know protein powders and whatnot you know depending on your scooper you just look at it that's that's a scoop or two depending on the size of your scooper you don't have to like measure this in any fancy way just eyeball it and just take a big scoop and put it on there plus five whatever grams is not gonna make a big deal yeah the most important thing is that you did something you you ate something that's the most important thing you tried the difference you were focused

and you tried yeah the difference between nothing and a big pile is is an enormous difference okay you just want to make sure that you you get a big pile of food in some capacity that that's really the big thing have i ever gotten exactly 40 grams probably not it doesn't matter john broseway of saying it if you tried it was a plus. If you didn't fucking try at all, negative. Start again. Do better. Next time. So you don't have to hit those numbers exactly right. Just make sure that

you're getting something post-workout. You find that most people underdo it even after they listen to this episode. They're going to think, oh, I'm going to go do the window of gains. And then they still like, certainly if they're trying to gain weight. Scared of carbs? Certainly if they're going to think, oh, I'm going to go do the window of gains. And then they still like, certainly if they're trying to gain weight, scared of carbs, certainly if they're trying to gain weight, it's more common to underdo it than to overdo it. Like you should think, holy shit, I'm about to make myself so fat when you're trying to gain weight until you get the

hang of it. Once, once you've, once you've like gained a bunch of weight a couple of times for whatever reason, and then you've maybe leaned back down and then you've gained some weight again. And you're, you're good at that. And and you you're kind of a professional gaining and losing weight for whatever reason you know like i used to weight lift and i would gain weight for weight lifting and then i would i would fight mma and i would i would lose back down so i could have my fight and then i would gain weight for weight lifting and i would bounce back and forth all the time and eventually you get good at making those those adaptations you don't have to eat so much food like you feel like you're going to get fat because you know how much food it's going to take and you know that you're not going to get fat.

Likewise, you know how much food that you're going to have to not eat to lose weight without losing all your muscle mass. And eventually you'll get good at it. But initially, especially if you're trying to gain weight, you probably should feel like I'm eating too much food. Yeah. If you're eating too much, you're probably doing it right. That's a great way to guide is if you feel that emotion, you're probably getting to where you haven't been. And because you are feeling uncomfortable, now you're getting something done. You should be outside your comfort zone. You should be outside your comfort zone.

That means you're doing it right. If I'm trying to maintain or if I'm not trying to put on too much fluff, I adjust my carbohydrates by how much fat I'm putting on. First off, I've been doing it long enough. If I do a big, long conditioning session, I know I need more carbs. If I do a strength work, I need fewer carbs. And then I can kind of track the trend over time by I just look in the mirror. You could you could get fancy and do calipers or something like that. But I go, oh, I'm not as lean as I was two weeks ago.

I should probably cut the carbs back post workout. Or if I'm starting to get too lean. And what I mean by that is like I start getting too lean and I can tell them I tell Or if I'm starting to get too lean, and what I mean by that is, like, I start getting too lean, and I can tell them my... Tell us what it's like to be too lean. If I start getting too damn lean, well, here's what I do for that problem. You say something important.

Well, what I'm saying is, like, there's a level, when I start getting too lean, my performance goes down. And I know that. I know that, like, when I get to a lean, my performance goes down. And I know that. I know that when I get to a certain point. You probably stop having your period too, don't you? Well, your hormones do take a shit when you get too lean. Strength athletes know that.

But you get too lean. That's the Melissa Etheridge window of gains. Now you just know you're not recovering enough though. If you start getting leaner, it's like, okay, my recovery is not as good, but I might be liking the way I look better. And so I think that's a good way to adjust the carbohydrates. So even if you're trying to be leaner, it's good to do the carbs afterwards. But you need to be tracking what happens.

And if you're doing too many carbs, you might be getting fluffy. So you just need to keep backing it off. You're asking people to do a thing that's actually really tough to do. And that is, you know, my dad told me to do that one time. I asked him when I was a kid, like, do you think I should, like, do this? I was feeling fat. Like 10 years old years old he told me just look in the mirror you like what you see you're okay if you don't well he left it hanging there i go oh i thought that life lesson up if you don't like what you see in the mirror or if you see changes good or bad

that's your first indicator you gotta get comfortable with looking at yourself if you can't look at yourself that's that's it seems like another problem that's going to displace these other worries you have in the gym you have to be comfortable doing that first and paying attention to what's happening with your form that is quite a bit of a tangent but i i kind of want to talk about it is uh we i'm good at tangent uh no i mean like uh for for all of our uh for muscle gain challenge and then for our uh barbell shred and barbell bikini we ask people to take photos of themselves like oh this oh, these are up. It's a huge thing to do.

And it's not for us. It's for the individual. Like, you got to be comfortable looking at yourself and then making a judgment, I guess. But like you go, hey, am I going the right direction or not? And a lot of times people go, oh, I don't feel like I'm getting any better. It's like, do you have any objective data? It's like, well, no, I didn't collect any because I was embarrassed. Because the way you feel is not that accurate. Right. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, if you need to take a photo before,

photo after, you can do, you know, body fat testing or something like that. But a lot of times people want to get leaner if you're not measuring and measuring can be just taking a picture, putting it up and comparing it to last month or six months ago or something like that. If you're not doing that, then you have no idea what's going on. And the only reason we're tuned in and it's easy for me to go, oh, I know if I'm getting leaner or not is because I've been watching it for 18 years. I've been paying attention to what's going on as I eat different types of food, as I train differently. I think it's just like when Doug said, if you feel like you're doing too much, that's a good sign that you've broken through a pattern and you're doing something new. And if you know the numbers and you know what you

should be hitting, then you can be reassured you're in a good spot. If you pair that with, I'm not comfortable looking at myself and watching closely what's changing, but now I'll break that. Now I'm just in the routine of paying attention. I know what my weight is. I know how I'm looking. I can see that I'm slightly different, but in a good way. I can reassure myself that I'm right on track every day. You start doing all of this. Now you got, you got your shit nailed down. You know, all the data, you know what's going on. You will not be surprised, but one day waking up being bigger, smaller, weaker, whatever than you thought you'd be. You're on your shit. This is what you should be doing. I used to graph my weight in Excel. So I always

knew if I was gaining or losing, especially when I was doing the bouncing back and forth between weightlifting, where I was competing either at 85 kilo or 94 kilo, depending on how far along I was in the process of gaining weight, and then losing weight back down to fight at 170. So that's a big swing from 94 kilos, which is 207, down to 170. I would go back and forth probably a couple times a year in some cases. But now what I do is on my iPhone, if you click on the health app. And if you're on iTunes, you are not seeing you're not seeing this you have a health app on your itunes that comes with your iphone just click on health data body measurements weight and then add data point and

then just plug in your weight it time stamps it and then it automatically graphs it for you it couldn't be easier dude uh yeah i gotta add that going to use that for a week, and then I'm going to fall out of the habit. Then you can see it'll graph it over the course of your week. Then you can click on month, over the course of your month, over the course of your year. It's just right there. It just tells you automatically where your weight is going, and it does it for you. It's super easy. I'll include that in the notes, too, because that's a really handy tool.

I'm sure there's something else that'll do it for you. It's super easy. I'll include that in the notes too because that's a really handy tip. I'm sure there's something else that I'll do it for you on Android or whatever. I've evolved to the point where like, I just go off of how much my wife wants me. That's how I test my nutrition. You've gone through all this science

and all these years of training. There's many factors there. Does my wife think I'm hot or not? Let me guess what the answer is. In your mind, you think it's always,

oh yeah, she wants me. She's trying to jump my bones all the time. I guess you're doing just fine. You're hyper lean enough, right? Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of graphs, though, I feel like your wow when he showed that was like way fucking overdone.

Like he just showed you like the new tester or something. It's because you can chart your weight on a fucking iPhone. Whoa. Well, it's because it's dummy proof. If you can just type in you can type in the code to get into the phone you can track your body weight

it's pretty automatic like it's not you don't have to set anything up I mean I don't know say wow again whoa I don't have to do anything

wow alright with that we're gonna take a break when we come back yeah we'll figure out how much we'll give you some awesome questions to answer

how much oh yeah we got a bunch of questions from Instagram we're gonna answer at the end of the show jumped. Oh, yeah, we've got a bunch of questions from Instagram that we're going to answer at the end of the show. We're actually going to answer questions. We tried to do this early, like back in episode five or something like that.

We're getting around to it. And every time, we're like, oh, we don't have time for the questions. It took us 173 pilot tries. 177. This is 178. After episode five. Oh, yeah, I did reference five.

Okay, we'll be back in a minute. Oh, quick math. This is Tim Ferris and you were listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged

is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter.

Oh yeah. Well, I know who's not going to be able to sponsor the Shrug-a-palooza. We're live. Do you hear the whistle?

Oh, yeah. Gain train's coming. Window of gain. Gain train. Get on board. Here's your ticket, friend. And we're back. You know what?

What were we going to talk about when we came back? I don't know. You're the host. Yeah, host today. It's host. Oh, okay. So we have this new intern. We're not even going to say his name.

That's rude. He brought the gear for us today. This shit wouldn't even be happening without Ryan. Ryan's a man. Look at him, dude. He's got a spam sweatshirt and everything. You can't give him too much attention. He's just an intern. Maybe by the end of the summer, he'll earn all the respect. We are respectful of your contribution, Frank.

His big concern was budget. He is a college student. We were all in college once and making attempts at eating healthy. Oh, man. My understanding of healthy now is way different than back then. That's for sure. His understanding of lots of things is different. Go figure.

I feel like all my meals used to look like post-workout meals. And the reason they did is because post-workout meals are probably the cheapest meal your whole day. Yeah. Carbohydrates are so cheap. If you're saying, man, I've been, listen, I got a lot of bills. I just can't afford that bag of generic, white, mass-produced, almost free dextrose powder. A lot of new rice. Amazon will have right on my front door like two hours from now.

There's no real good excuse why you can't eat better after you work out. Ground beef and potatoes. That's your meal. I can't afford rice. That's as cheap as it gets. The thing they throw out of helicopters over Somalia. You can't afford that? You can go to Dartmouth.

You can't afford rice and fucking dextrose and a good protein. Get the fuck out of here. You have one iPhone for work, one for all your personal porn. You can go to Dartmouth, you can't afford a rice and fucking dextrose and a good protein powder. Get the fuck out of here. You have one iPhone for work, one for all your personal porn usage when you're shitting in the morning. You got money for some dextrose powder, homie. Yeah, so the now dextrose powder is really cheap if you're thinking about supplements for protein powders. I think there is a difference in quality from one whey protein to another. That I'll say, for sure.

I definitely think that now. Carbohydrates across the board are super cheap. Like rice, potatoes, oatmeal, whatever. Protein is the focus. Protein is where it's going to get probably a little more expensive, and there's different costs for that protein. If you get cheap, you're going to walk around with bubble guts and farts all day. If you get some cheap whey protein with a bunch of artificial sweeteners in it, that could be bad.

If you get a weird inflammation in your throat after drinking your protein shake, some quality issue is way off. Probably protein. When you drink your whey protein, be paying attention to how it makes you feel because there is some variance there. When we were younger younger i think we all took the the the cheaper stuff and i don't think it really bothered us as i got older i just bought my whey protein at costco the biggest bag i could find i got a big thing probably wasn't the best

but it got me by still that's the go-to spot you can get big bags of isolate which i think still the fanciest whey protein that is there a better one than that really that's just genera it's got a little artificial sweetener in it, but it's good quality, and it's got this limited amount of ingredients and no crazy flavor additives, and it's like 50 bucks for a giant tub of it. I mean, it's like 100 steaks in there.

Don't come into my high school with your Costco protein. They'll be like, little Costco protein having ass. Yes. TTP group in Memphis. And you go, hey, listen, asshole, you don't have two kids to feed and this protein game trying to get on, okay? There's only so much shit I can afford. I'm grew up in Memphis. And you go, hey, listen, asshole, you don't have two kids to feed and this protein game trying to get on.

There's only so much shit I can afford. I'm going to isolate from Costco. Yeah, so the carbs are really cheap. The protein is where you can kind of have some variance. If you can afford the more expensive stuff, it's usually a good idea. Three fuel is actually my favorite right now. What was your favorite? I wasn't taking a protein for like a year. Every whey protein I was taking was upsetting my stomach in some way,

the digestion. So I kind of came off of that, and I do a lot of BCAAs. That's actually one thing I want to talk about. Doug's routine is different than my routine, which is probably different than Chris's routine and the shakes that we drink during and after workouts. But what I was doing is I just drink BCAAs. I was doing high doses of BCAAs during my workout.

And then afterwards. What's a high dose? Like 25 to 30 grams. So if you get BCAAs. That's not one scoop. No. That's three to four scoops. So depending.

Most BCAAs. That probably tastes like shit when you drink that too, dude. Moneybags McGee over here. That's got guy tastes gross. A dose would be like seven grams normally. And so what I do is I take three to four scoops, so three to four doses of the BCAs during my training session. I throw a lot of other stuff in there like creatine, beta-alanine,

all that kind of stuff. The go-to commodities of performance. Yeah, so I like to do the BCAs. I start sipping on it before I work out. The BCAs are huge in a couple things, which is reduce muscle breakdown and then also kickstart building new muscle right after training. So I actually still do the BCAs while I'm training, and as soon as I'm done, I crush a 3-fuel.

I like that just because of the protein. It treats me really well. And it also has some carbohydrates and then some fast-burning fats in it as well, the MCTs. Does it tickle your scrote? What do you mean it treats you really well? So what? It makes it feel so good.

It treats you really well. It's a scrote-tickling shake. Yeah, it honestly, like, it gets in, it digests pretty fast, it doesn't keep me full very long, and it doesn't, you know, send me to the bathroom with the runs a half hour later. Yeah, so long story short. All pluses. Long story short, BCAAs are, they're kind of just the most important part of a protein drink, right? If your protein is made out of 20 different

components, it's like the top three, right? So a normal scoop of protein, if it's 20 grams, about four or five grams of that is usually BCAAs. So in your case, if you're, if you're having 25 grams of BCAAs, it's kind of like taking 100 grams of protein. So it's without actually having to take five or six scoops of powder that fills up after your container. That would destroy my stomach. Yeah, you will shit yourself after that. Yeah, so yeah, the BCAA is just a really great way. It's a shortcut or whatever you want

to call it, I don't know. Does it replace your need for other proteins? I'll beg the question because i know it doesn't it doesn't no it does what it does is it blunts catabolism the the breakdown of muscle and it and like it kind of kicks off uh the anabolic state so uh if you're doing that and then you throw like a whey protein which has a lot of other amino acids in it if you throw that that in and it's got a complete set of amino acids, so it's everything you need really. You throw that on right afterwards, that's when I feel I recovered the best. But I'm talking like if I'm training hard,

if I have a two, two and a half hour training session where like when I was competing at my best, it was 30 grams of BCAAs. I'd say probably, I'd say 10 to 15 grams of BCAAs per hour of training seems to be best for me. BCAAs, if you get them unflavored, taste like total shit. You got to be careful.

I can't get it down. I do end up getting the BCAAs with some artificial flavors and that's kind of where I make a what's it called? Exception. Exception would be a good word. Compromise.

How good am I at that compromise thing? I can't even remember the word ever. I like what you're getting at. It seems like you want to use BBCs for what they're best used for. BBCs? The BBC. What did I say? BBC.

The branch chains. They don't replace protein. They are a better way to get that early jump in that one window. Then you go back to just eating. Like I said, it might be great, but it's still in your hand, a scoop of white powder. It's still not steak with potatoes. It's all about the timing.

Would you do a BCAA drink and then still have a whey protein drink? Or is that just getting crazy? I think it's unnecessary. Yeah. Just one drink is fine, then go back to eating regular food. Yeah, you've covered your bases there. I know people who take BCAAs throughout the day. There's actually some data to suggest that's not a good idea for mental clarity

because the enzymes necessary for breaking those different things down and using them competes with stuff that happens in your brain. So if you're somebody who's like, oh, BCAAs are good. I should take them all the time. Well, probably not. This is all about... I'll just skip steaks. This is all about...

I got everything I need right here. This is all about timing. All right? So BCAAs are great right before, during, and then a good whey protein is good after. That's how I see it. Do not use these to replace... This is not a quick protein source in the morning

to replace a breakfast. That's proper. Absolutely not. So if we're going to skip off of talking about like protein supplements for the moment, as far as real food goes, what's the cheapest meats that are still decent quality that a person could go to?

Like I mentioned ground beef. You get grass-fed ground beef. You can actually get really good quality ground beef now at Costco and stuff. Big, like four or five of the things together for $21, $22. It's a pretty good price for high quality. Yeah, buy it in bulk and freeze it.

Yeah. I used to do ground turkey and stuff too, but I got that, again, the quality issue. I would rather just pay a few extra bucks to not have everything they're dousing that poultry with. Eggs are cheap. Eggs, yeah. Eggs are very cheap. It's fucking milk, man.

Just get, you know, not cheap milk. It is interesting. People think about chicken as cheaper, but if you get like high quality chicken versus high quality beef, the highquality beef is actually cheaper. If you get a pasture-sourced free-roaming chicken that's half the size and three times the price, that's a little extensive. Eggs and milk are always the go-tos, right?

Yeah, I'm actually real big on the dairy for the purpose of gaining weight. This is the perfect time for you to talk about your return to goat life now. I've been off the goat life now. Oh, yeah. I've been off the goat life for about a year now. You got your groin healed up.

I was bouncing around. I was traveling. Raw goat milk is not easy to come by because it's illegal in different ways in different states. It's been over a year since you had a live goat squirt milk right in your mouth. Yeah, you sucked a goat in. It's been about a year since that. Chris, you're going to have to link that episode. Epic moment. Oh, that was the best tasting milk I ever had in your mouth. Yeah, you sucked a goat in. It's been about a year since that. Chris, you're going to have to link that episode. Epic moment.

Oh, that was the best tasting milk I ever had in my life. Slow motion. We're going back there soon. Back to Vermont. We are. It's going to be way better this time. Farmer Joe. One of the benefits of dairy, specifically in this case,

I'm wanting to get big, so why would I drink a pint of raw goat milk after I train? Yeah, it's really high quality protein. It's the same type of protein you're going to find in whey protein. It does come with some carbohydrate and it comes with some fat. If you're getting a grass fed raw deal, the fat in there

is actually really good for you. And growth factors and whatnot in the milk too. That's the other thing. It basically comes with steroids in it. Here's the thing. Milk is specifically designed for making small things bigger. Specifically mammals, which we all are, so great. Convenient for us. There are some growth factors.

There's some things in there that happen hormonally that I don't fully understand. I'm not going to try and explain something I've read about a few times. It'll stop you from every other time you've done that. I don't know what you're talking about, Chris. I read this in a book once. Hold on. Bear with me. I don't know what you're talking about, Chris. I read this in a book once. Hold on, bear with me. I'm an expert. A lot of people say milk is the most complicated food

on the planet. There's hundreds and hundreds of things in milk, and we probably haven't even discovered all of them. I've never seen a Durkin, then. I keep on finding new things. That you brought to a birthday party once that was fucking super weird? I don't know.

It's like a Durkin. It's a weird I don't know it's like a durkan it's a weird fruit oh durian oh durian oh fuck that thing durians are awesome that thing gave me

the creeps for weeks durians are illegal in some countries because they taste so bad and they smell so bad like rotten flesh go to an international

food store and find a durian and go eat it yeah I'll feed it to my friends don't smell it just eat it it's, I'll feed it to my friends. Don't smell it. Just eat it.

It's a good gag gift. But with the raw dairy, and this is where people get confused. Like, oh, is organic dairy enough? No. Raw, if it's not raw, you're wrong. Okay? If you get nothing organic, it's better than going regular milk, but it's not the same as raw. The thing about raw, and here's some other things that are beneficial.

It's got probiotics. It's got a lot of bacteria. It's got the enzymes necessary for breaking down the protein that you're actually taking in the the sugar that's included in the milk like you need the raw version of the milk and or digest the milk that you're consuming and so uh there's a lot of gut health things things that go along with the raw milk so if you're there's really no way around it you're like oh you know it's okay if i don't do the raw thing it's like in my opinion you're – there's really no way around it. You're like, oh, you know, it's okay if I don't do the raw thing. It's like, in my opinion, you're missing out on the majority of the benefits if you're going with pasture.

We say if you struggle with milk, you should try getting a raw version before you make a final determination whether dairy is for you. Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you're an athlete because it could be a really relatively cheap, really hugely beneficial thing for you to try. You can get your hands on it. Yeah I feel like

just my overall recovery from workout to workout is better if I have raw milk in my hands. You can definitely have a much easier

time in this country getting any drug you want than getting your hands on fucking high quality raw milk. The fines are in some cases

more steep. Fucking moving across state lines a quart of delicious milk. Oh yeah they'll come in guns of blazing. What do you got there son? So you're drinking milk huh state lines a quart of delicious milk. Oh yeah. They'll come in guns of blazing.

What do you got there son? Ah so you're drinking milk huh? Well step out of the car. That's America. That's a fucking

state. That's a felony. If you cross state lines. Did you boil that milk son? If you cross state lines with raw milk

it's a felony. Go to jail. Pound me in the ass jail too. Are you questioning our government? Yeah. Not on my show.

You're real sweet. Saying it my show. You're sweet. Saying it's somebody who pays their taxes, I'm American like anybody. If I have a grievance, I'm going to ramble about it. Fucking the milk, man. Come on, man. Just go back to doing something else that's crazy and evil. At least give us some fucking milk.

Crazy and evil. So what about regular milk? If you can't get any of that shit. You know, it depends. If you can digest it, I think it's fine. I like that grass milk. Grass milk? The company, the brand is called Grass Milk.

Oh, I'm not familiar. It's grass-fed whole milk. Yeah. You can go buy it at Whole Foods or any kind of natural food store. I don't think I'd find it at a regular grocery store. Grass milk paying you now, Doug? Sponsored by grass milk. That'd be awesome.

I wish. The difference between like a grass-fed versus like a corn fed animal producing milk. And that's where some of the danger comes in. It's like, actually, let's not get too far down that road. Let's get off of milk. No one cares about milk anymore. What are the kinds of humans you could drink milk from? Think of the body type you'd want to prefer.

How many humans do you want to drink their milk? There's a couple. All right. What else we got? We're too far off the milk? There's a couple. What else we got? You mentioned Costco earlier. We used to buy at Costco the giant pork tenderloins. They're enormous. They're this big around

and they're this long. And if you add it all up, it's like $1.50 a pound. It's like the cheapest meat you could possibly get. I do want to add this in at this point. If you can afford good food, buy the high quality stuff. Like make cuts.

It matters a lot. Make more money. Cancel your cable. Yeah. Cancel your cable. Figure out how to make a few more bucks. Listen to Barbell Business.

We'll teach you. Make cuts somewhere else. Like even when I was, I think my wife and I were, our collective income was probably under $35,000 a year

and we were spending about $1,200 a month on groceries. And like, we were spending more on our groceries than we were on our rent. And people, and I would tell people that and they were like, you guys are insane. It's like, well,

how serious do you want to take this? Like how far do you want to take it? So I would recommend really trying to make the best decisions possible. If the money's not really there, then I say, okay, the Costco meat is a great way to go. And I think Costco does carry like grass fed now and stuff like that. Costco's actually really high quality. They've gotten better. I mean, of your options.

They've gotten a lot better. Of all your options for general, grocers, and bulk, it's definitely light. The demand is up there. You can get also other organic. You can get like raw coconut fat there. You can get high quality nuts. You can get a freerange chicken and good quality eggs and milk. It's good stuff. Lifetime supply of tater tots for your gains. The other thing, too, is if you go to the farmer's market,

you're more likely to get a really great deal. But people feel like they're trapped in having to go to the grocery store. It's like, just go to the farmer's market. It's cheaper. Especially with vegetables. You will spend way less on vegetables than any grocery store at the farmer's market. I will say Costco's got those big bags of the crispier vegetables you can get. They're salty, too.

You ever had those crispy green bean chips? Fuck, man, they're so good. They are good. Dried veggies? Veggie chips? In my mind, I'm going, these aren't vegetables, Chris. But I sure can believe right now they are. This comes conscious.

Should we get to some Instagram questions? What if you're not hungry? That's a question. What if you're not hungry? That's a question. What if you're not hungry? You should smoke a bowl. Then try to not eat. Also, a big bowl after a heavy squat session will help you recover real quick. The statements made by Mike Butzer are not endorsed by...

It'll also help your nervous system downregulate. Liquid meals are another good one. We talked about workout shakes and milk. Those are easy calories because you don't actually have to chew them and swallow them and eat them like you can just you can just drink them it's so much easier so so you could always run down the the smoothie train like just take a blender and just dump in everything you can think of put a bunch of spinach and blueberries and almonds and and like a can of of coconut milk which is like 800 calories in and of itself.

We used to do it before we went to bed when we were like seriously trying to gain weight. And that's an easy way to add like an extra thousand calories to your diet that if you were to add a thousand calories another way, just would be so much harder to put down. So big smoothies, we used to call them blender bombs. Just do a blender bomb and that's a way easier way to get a thousand calories

than to actually eat a thousand calories. I found two ways to actually increase my appetite that is legal in all 50 states. And that is to train earlier in the day. So if I train in the morning, I find that my appetite the rest of the day is just higher. The other thing is eat more carbs post-workout. So like eat more – like carbs are usually easier to get, get down anyway. But if you do more carbs in a, in a shake, I find that like the higher the carb it is, the more it's like my body's tuned in to consuming more calories the rest of the day, period. Yeah. And also making

your food taste better goes a long way. If you're trying to eat a lot of food, like add some, add some butter to your veggies and, and any fuck, add butter to everything. Like put it on your meat, put it on your, put it on your carbohydrates, your rice, your veggies. Spices. The only thing butter doesn't go on is fruit. That's about it. Do you think people- I don't know, dog.

I can do it, though, because I love butter. People go on a bodybuilder's mentality where they see, they imagine, if I'm going to be serious about working out, I've got to eat just a little thing of measured, bland chicken breast. And like, no, man, hot sauce and shit, good seasonings. Yeah, hot sauce. Yeah, put salt. Like, salt's not going to kill you, especially if you're lean, you train all the man, like hot sauce and shit. Yeah. Hot sauce. Yeah. Put, put,

put salt, like salt's not going to kill you, especially if you're lean, you train all the time, like you sweat all the time, like put some salt, you'll eat more food if you have salt on it.

If it's bland, you're not going to eat much food. I bet most people don't get enough salt. In a lot of cases, the athletes don't. Like I said, any,

any animal in the wild would do just about anything for a lick of salt. You should put more in your food probably. Yeah. Cheese goes a long way. Cheese makes everything taste better. You do a cheese and ice cream and it your food probably. Yeah, cheese goes a long way. Cheese makes everything

taste better. You can put cheese on ice cream and it'll be better. Yeah. All right, y'all want to go to Instagram for some questions? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure.

All right, so we're on Instagram at barbellshrugpodcast. We haven't heard these. We don't know. We got... We can't edit out any. Yeah. That's a bunch of bombs.

So, at Indiana Todd wants to know, can he eat too much protein? Can you overdo it on the protein, Doug? You probably could. You could overdo anything, but it's super unlikely in most cases. So I would say don't worry about overdoing it. You're probably not going to, but you still, you shouldn't only be eating protein.

If you're overdoing it on protein, that means that you are radically underdoing it on a bunch of other stuff. So if you're sticking with the model of most meals, about a third of your plate should be some type of meat or protein. And then your post-workout meal, you bump that up to like half your plate, then there's no way you're going to overdo it on protein. You've drawn like a sandbox around what you're going to do, so you should be all right. And people who say, hey, is protein hard on your kidneys or whatever? That was an old myth if you haven't ever heard that. Right. That's pretty commonly referenced. Basically, the only people that need to worry about that are people who have kidney disease. If you don't have kidney disease, guess what? You're going to process protein just fine.

The more harmful thing is you walk around as skinny as you are. That's way more harmful for your life. If I consume more protein, I get leaner. If I'm trying to maximize my protein, what's happening is I'm reducing probably the amount of carbohydrates and fat in my diet. I end up just getting lean and I go, oh, I need to bump my protein down and up something else. In here, Todd. You got your answer, homie.

Boom. All right. So CrossFit coach at CrossFit coach wants to know he's, oh, come answer, homie. Boom. All right. So CrossFit Coach, at CrossFit Coach, wants to know. Oh, come on, CrossFit Coach. He called the window of gains the anabolic window. Oh, get that. It's totally different. Outdated. Outdated.

Totally different. Not the same thing at all. Outdated lingo, CrossFit Coach. He says, so I'll fix it for him. So window of gains versus daily quantity. What do y'all guys think? Well, I think time is more important than just how much you're getting overall, right? Absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, overall calories throughout the day does matter. How much protein, carbs, and fat you're getting overall throughout the whole day is important. But it's hard to say. Just eat four or five meals in your day. That meal should be the biggest one. I'd say if the amount of calories is going to be at all limited, then timing gets more and more important as the amount of calories goes down. I'll say this.

It's at least a third or a fourth of your calories for the whole day. If you want to maximize your window of gains, if you want to maximize the window of gains, then you should be eating as healthy as possible all the time. for the whole day. If you want to maximize your window of gains, if you want to maximize the window of gains, then you should be eating as healthy as possible all the time. If you're eating a lot of carbs

throughout the day, the window of gains just isn't the same. You're not even looking for the window of gains. You need to fucking look for treadmill loss. That's the case, I guess.

All right, all right, all right. Oh, I like this one. 69 Stangman. What's up, dude? I like your stang. He says, this is a good one. How intense should your workout be to eat post-workout carbs? So what kind of training is necessary?

I mean, if I just go on a light jog, should I be crushing post-workout? Yeah, if you rolled around your foam roller for a few minutes, I guess you don't need 500 grams of carbohydrates after. There should be a line to draw. He brings up a good point. So, yeah, if you just warm up, you do some mobility work and some light cardio, it's more of an active recovery day. You probably don't even need like a real post-workout shake or meal.

You just go back to eating a regular meal. You should still eat right away, but just eat a regular meal. You're probably fine. If you're, you know, if you're doing a lot of volume for your bigger muscle groups, like if you did like a Metcon where the volume was high and it was total body, you were doing pull-ups and, and heavy squats and like heavy lunges. And, and you were doing, you know, push presses or something like that, like where you're kind of working all the muscle groups that you have in your whole body and you're going to be sore, you know, in your arms, your chest, your chest your back your legs like you're kind of sore everywhere the next day or you potentially could be then that's the day that you can just like go off the rails and

just crush as much as possible so generally the more muscle mass you work and generally the sore you feel like you're going to be then the more carbohydrates you can eat afterward yeah and uh just for everybody out there uh crossfit uh the typical CrossFit Metcon is highly glycolytic, which means you're burning a lot of glycogen, which means you need to replace that with carbohydrates. So when we're talking about conditioning or this or that, like CrossFit Metcons, out of everything, probably need more carbs afterwards than anything else. Right on.

With the exception of a Friday night dance party in this room, because we break it down. Because we're doing it right, we dance so much. One more Deaf Punk reference. All right. So I'm going to sum up this one a little bit. AmberCat831. I'm going to assume there was 830 other AmberCats.

Sounds like a lot of AmberCats out there. She wants to know, she had a big question, but she's pretty much asking if she goes and after a workout eats a meal, do you all think she should also have the shake or is only just going and eating regular food, is that cool? It depends on how much gains you want. How much gains you want. Let me ask her. Amber cat. Amber cat, how much gains you want. How much gains you want. Let me ask her.

Amber Cat. Amber Cat, how much did you want to gain? So again, this is all in the context of the rest of your day and what your particular goal is. So if you're a person that is aggressively trying to put on muscle mass. She's just trying to look good is what she said. You already asked her? No.

No, no, no. It was in her description. She's not really trying to get bigger. I'm Amber Cat. I'm not working out to look good. I'm not like those other Amber Cats, and I want to look good. It's all in the handle. So everyone's trying to look good.

So some people are trying to look good by losing weight, and some people are trying to look good by gaining weight. I'm going to assume for the moment I'm going to overly stereotype her and assume she's trying to lose a few pounds. That's what it sounds like. So in this case, only having one higher carb meal is probably all she needs. So if you're going to do the workout shake, then you probably for your post-workout meal, you can still go eat right away. Because again,

the sooner you eat after your workout, the better you're going to use the calories that you do eat. So you still want to eat right away. But if you have the workout shake and that's already a high carb meal, we'll call it for the moment, then your post-workout meal where you're actually eating real food probably should just be a regular paleo style meal where it's it's protein healthy fats vegetables and you don't actually have to have another high carb meal that sounds like you're trying to gain weight reasonable advice right there doug if i'm her i'm like you know what this is gonna be this gonna make for a better Amber Cat. Okay, all right.

All right, let's see. Let's see. Paul Lifts 1087 says, awesome show. Well, thanks, Paul. Thanks, dude. You're so correct. Hasn't even seen it yet. RT, oh, fuck. R2 Detune says, Kill Cliff or Fit Aid?

Protein shake or post-workout meal? Which one do you do? We do a FitAid just sitting on the table. I guess there's your answer to that one. You know, the FitAid for me is actually a pre-surf beverage. Well, I hope that answers your question. For the most part, I stick with dextrose for my workout shakes. And then, again, going back to real food, I generally don't do, like, pre-made anything.

I pretty much make all my own workout shakes. Whey protein, a little bit of dextrose. We haven't talked about creatine and beta-alanine, but I put those in my shakes pretty often. So that's kind of the mix for me. I generally make my own stuff. Yeah. I like the Fit Aid for pre-workout, really, to be honest. Yeah? stuff yeah i like the fit aid for a pre-workout really to be honest yeah like before i go train sip it down uh and then uh when i go surfing i drink like half a can and when i come back

so if i'm doing like cardio stuff it's like i'm more likely to to desire that if i'm doing a lot of strength training i like i do super high doses of stuff which is not going to come in that can yeah sounds weird but i do drink a party aid every once in a while during my training. Don't tell anybody what they're for, though. If I'm at my house and I have a ton in the refrigerator that's in my garage,

so I'll drink my workout shake and if I'm still thirsty and I feel like I need more calories, then I always drink a party aid. I never really plan it. It just kind of happens. It's like, hey,

I'm subbing my lifestyle. That's how you know you haven't been partying enough. You just want to drink the drink. I didn't even earn this. I didn't even earn this drink. Partiate and Golf Raid are my favorite Fit Aid drinks.

Golf Raid is so good. Golf Raid is the best one. I'm not a golfer. I'm going to go to a Golf Raid pit. Next question. I do like a good margarita during training. Some naturally occurring sugars This is turning into a golf raid. Next question. It's because Aaron always gives me golf raid at regionals. I will say I do like a good margarita during training. Some naturally occurring sugars in there, fresh grapefruit juice. You only need two shots of tequila in that one.

You taper down for the workout. Then you can do a proper margarita after the training. What's a proper margarita like? Three tall shots of tequila. If you're 21. Or less or older. We just got a live question pop in. is, I can't even read it. It's so good.

So I'm going to skip that, but go to our Instagram and see what Shoe Pack Shoe Care, the maker, put. It's really good. How long does it take you to log into Instagram with that handle? Jesus. Yeah, seriously. I hope he doesn't have two accounts like I do. Oh, good. All right.

Let's see. All right. Last one. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right have two accounts like I do. All right, let's see. All right, last one. What's Spud to Spartan says? He likes potatoes. That's good. What's the difference? Oh, speaking of...

Is it stud or spud? Spud. All right. Speaking of potatoes, the question is, what's the difference between a starch and a carb? Is there one? Starches are a type of carbohydrate. So generally carbs come from plants.

And if you're getting a denser form of carbohydrates, oftentimes it's going to be a starch. So like rice, potatoes, quinoa, oatmeal, those tend to be the dense starches. And then usually sugars, which are also a type of carb, we tend to refer to sugars as coming from fruits if we're looking for natural foods. Those aren't 100% correct in every case, but starch, type of carbohydrate, potatoes, rice, those are starches.

All starches are carbs, but not all carbs are starches. Am I right? Last question. Most important question. Let's end it on this note. Am I right? Last question. Most important question. Let's end it on this note. Sure. Watch out, Chris. Okay, go for the question.

Get out of the way. What if you miss the, say it on three, two, one. Window of Gains. Well, you're fucked. It's over. You're fucked. We'll see you guys later. Have fun benching 95 pounds

rest of your life yeah make sure to go to barbellstruck.com sign up for the newsletter get that new muscle gain guide oh yeah

if you are interested in getting bigger and stronger and better at the Olympic lifts then you should probably go there click that button it's free download that ebook

for free on muscle.barbellstruck.com muscle.barbellstruck.com backslash Download that e-book for free. It's a free e-book on muscle.barbellshock.com muscle.barbellshock.com backslash nothing. That's all you need. Grab yourself a free book. I'm deep in a groove right now. See you later.

Man, that's how you do an episode right there. Yeah.