Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Should You Eat Protein Before or After Your Workouts?

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

Some people say you absolutely need to eat protein before your workouts to maximize muscle and strength gains. Others say eating before you train doesn’t matter, but eating after is vital. Others still say neither of these “feeding windows” matter, and that you just need to make sure you’re eating enough protein on the whole. Science isn’t exactly clear on this matter, either, because each of these people have studies that purportedly bolster their arguments. And so you’re left wondering who’s right and what to do. Should you “play it safe” and just eat protein before and after every workout? Or should you just ignore everyone and just eat on a schedule that you like most? Well, in this podcast, we’re going to get to the bottom of all of it, and it starts with this: As far as eating protein goes, eating enough every day is what matters most for gaining muscle and strength as quickly as possible. Everything else related to protein intake--when you eat it, how many servings you eat per day, how large each serving is, etc.--is subordinate to total protein intake. That doesn’t mean these other factors don’t matter at all, though. If you scoff at them, you're overlooking an important part of natural muscle building: While 80% of your progress comes from the fundamentals, you can speed things up by making a number of minor improvements to your diet, training, and supplementation. Individually, the effects of each refinement may be slight, but collectively, they become significant over time. Well, protein timing is one of those slight refinements, and it includes pre- and post-workout nutrition. As you’ll soon see, eating protein before and after workouts isn’t as important as many people claim, but it’s not entirely without merit, either. Let’s get started. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime,

like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E, and sign up for your account. You probably know that eating enough protein is an important part of gaining muscle and strength. A high protein diet is better for both of those things. But is when you eat protein important? And in particular, is it important to eat protein before your workouts and or after your workouts? And that's what we're gonna be talking about today.

And many people ask me this question and are confused because there's a lot of conflicting advice out there and also conflicting research, at least if you take the research at face value. On one hand, some people say when you eat protein doesn't matter and they have studies that seem to indicate this, that having protein before or after workouts does not influence muscle and strength gain. And on the other hand, you have people who say it does matter and who might acknowledge that the anabolic window concept is outdated and not entirely true.

But you still should be eating some protein before and after workouts. And they too often have studies that seem to back up their claims. And then there you are in the middle wondering who's right. Well, I'm Mike Matthews from Legion Athletics, and I'm going to give you a conclusive answer. So let's just start with the long story short. The bottom line is, as far as protein intake goes, what is most important is simply eating enough protein every day. How you get there in terms of number of feedings and timing of feedings does not matter nearly as much as simply getting to the right number, which is going to be somewhere between 0.8 and 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day, depending on your body composition and what you are doing with your calories.

So for example, if you are a fairly muscular person, an experienced weightlifter who's cutting, who's in a calorie deficit, I would recommend your protein intake to be somewhere between 1 and 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. But if you are that person and you are lean bulking, you are in a calorie surplus, then you could lower your intake to somewhere around 0.8 grams per pound of body weight per day and be totally fine. I wouldn't recommend that you completely neglect protein timing though. For example, a number of studies indicate that for long-term muscle and strength gain, eating more servings of protein per day, somewhere around four or five servings with a few hours in between each is very likely superior that to fewer servings. So let's say maybe two servings per day with more hours in between, or possibly even three servings per day, your standard, you know, three squares a day type of approach. It is very possible. And the evidence does suggest that a five or six serving

of protein per day approach will help you at least a little bit over the long-term get more jacked. Now, some people say, yeah, who cares though? The effect is minimal. What does it really matter? And I understand that, but you have to remember that as a natural weightlifter, we can get our fundamentals right. And that's going to be 80% of our progress and our results are just going to be applying the fundamentals consistently. And those are both that applies both to the dietary side of things as well as the training side of things. But if we want to try to get more out of the time and effort we are putting into our bodies and tap into that remaining 20% of progress that is available to us,

at least in terms of speed, then we should look at what else we can do. What other things can we do that are going to give us slight edges? And if you took any of those things individually and said, oh, well, you know, yeah, maybe that, maybe you'll gain muscle 5% faster by doing that. That's not very exciting. And yes, that's true. But what if you could do three or four things that add 5%? Oh, now it's 15 or 20% faster. And again, if you play that out over time, it takes most people, men and women. Well, I'd say it takes most men probably three to five years. When you start from scratch, you're just a normal dude. It takes three to five years to get the

type of body that most guys want. And for women, two years or so, maybe two or three years. for women, two years or so, maybe two or three years. And so when you look at it over a longer time period, if you can get to your end goal 20% faster, that actually could be a pretty significant difference in terms of total time. And so that's why I talk about things like protein timing or supplementation, right? So as far as muscle building goes, is creatine going to be a game changer for you? No, but if you're like most people, you will respond well to it and you will gain muscle and strength a bit faster. And if you play that out over the course of years, you know, you might end up with your ideal physique three to six months sooner because you were taking creatine. Is that worth the relatively cheap cost and no cost in terms of side effects or health?

I think so. And so that I think is the lens through which you should view something like the topic at hand. Should you eat protein before or after your workouts? This is one of those slight improvements you can make that is not nearly as important as many people would have you think, but is worth optimizing because it's easy and it can make a slight difference in your results over time. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode

and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. All right, so let's start with pre-workout protein. Now, I had mentioned earlier that some studies indicate that having some protein before your workout is going to help you build more muscle as a result of that workout, whereas other studies indicate that there are no such effects and it doesn't matter. Now, the key factor in these studies and just in general, the thing that determines whether eating protein before you workout will or will not help you gain muscle and strength faster is when you last

ate protein before you worked out. You see, if you had, let's say a scoop of whey protein, maybe 20, 25 grams of protein, and that's it, it's going to take your body around two hours, give or take a little bit of time to fully process that food, to digest it, absorb it, and it's done. Whereas if you ate a steak as a part of a mixed meal, maybe there was a potato with the steak and maybe some butter on the potato to add some more fat to it, it might take your body six hours to fully process that meal. So what that means then is if you had the scoop of protein, let's say three hours ago, and you're going to the gym. Now your body is almost certainly done processing that food. Your body's plasma or blood amino acid levels are not going to be elevated. They're going to be at the normal baseline level. And you could benefit from having some protein before you hit the weights. You could benefit

from starting your workout with your body's amino acid levels, blood or plasma amino acid levels elevated because that kickstarts the body's muscle building machinery. If however, you had the scoop of protein, let's say an hour ago, and you're going to the gym now, or you had some protein as a part of a mixed meal. So maybe it was some, it didn't have to be steak of course, but maybe it was chicken with rice and something else. Again, maybe some fats in there, which helps slow down the digestion of food. And if that's the case, then you probably won't benefit from having some protein before you go to the gym because your body's plasma or blood amino acid levels will still be elevated from the previous

meal, whether it was just the scoop of protein an hour ago or the mixed meal a couple hours ago. So a good simple rule of thumb here is if you train first thing in the morning, like me, or if it's been several hours since you last had a smaller meal that contained protein, have about 20 grams of protein before you work out. And chances are that is going to give you a slight boost that if sustained over a long enough period of time can add up to something at least slightly significant. Okay. So what about post-workout protein? Well, this one is simpler because the weight of the evidence is clearer here and the consensus among most of the respected professionals in the evidence-based fitness space

is that yes, you should eat some protein after you work out. Now, it's not hugely important, of course, but a number of studies do show that having some protein after your workouts can help you gain muscle faster over time. And this makes sense because we know that one, after training our muscles, they are more responsive to the muscle building stimulus provided by protein. And two, we know that muscle protein breakdown rates really start to ramp up after training and that having some protein negates this. So the rule of thumb here is have 20 to 40 grams of protein within an hour or so of finishing your workout. Now, as far as types of protein go, what's best for pre and post-workout nutrition, anything will work.

So if you have one specific preference that's not whey protein, for example, that's totally fine. However, whey is particularly suited to pre and post-workout nutrition because it is rapidly digested and absorbed, and it's very abundant in the amino acid leucine, which is the primary driver of muscle protein synthesis as far as the amino acids that protein contains goes. Leucine is the one that really kickstarts your body's muscle building machinery, so to speak. And those two things, the rapid digestion and absorption and the abundance of leucine are why you see in research that whey causes a very sharp increase in muscle protein synthesis rates. And as far as types of whey proteins go, whey concentrate is fine if you want to save some

money. But I myself prefer 100% whey isolate because I think it tastes better, generally speaking, than whey concentrate. It mixes better and it's easier on your stomach because all the lactose has been removed. And that's why I sell a 100% whey isolate product called Whey Plus that you can check out over at legionathletics.com slash whey, L-E-G-I-O-N, athletics.com slash whey, if you want to learn about it. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to learn about it. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including bigger, leaner, stronger for men, thinner, leaner, stronger for women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical

and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. Again, that's bigger, leaner, stronger for men, thinner, leaner, stronger for women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get leaner stronger for men thinner leaner stronger for women the shredded chef and the little black book of workout motivation oh and i should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100 free when you sign up for an audible account which is the perfect way to make those pockets of

downtime like commuting meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audiobooks for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E and sign up for your account.