Well with Arielle Lorre - 402: The Protein Hack for Better Skin, Muscle, and Fat Loss with Angelo Keely

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Angelo Keely is the co-founder of Kion and an expert in amino acids and muscle health. He joins the show to break down everything you need to know about optimizing protein for better skin, muscle tone, and body composition. We discuss the difference between essential and non-essential amino acids, how creatine actually works (and whether it causes puffiness), the surprising benefits for brain health, and how collagen fits into the equation. We also cover how to cut calories or lose fat without losing muscle, what to look for in a protein powder, and how to use small daily habits to hit your protein goals—without being obsessive.Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.Visit getkion.com/blonde for 20% off and see what more at @Kion on Instagram.Visit justthrivehealth.com/discount/well  for 20% off your first 90 day bottle of Just Thrive with promo code WELL.Go to oseamalibu.com and use code BLONDE for 10% off. Visit fromourplace.com/blonde and use code BLONDE for 10% off sitewideSave 15% off my favorite red light face mask at boncharge.com and use code BLONDE.Go to hungryroot.com/blonde for 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life!Visit ritual.com/BLONDE for 25% off your first month. Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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a podcast about wellness in all its forms. I'm Ariel Lori, and each week I'm sharing unfiltered conversations with people shaping how we feel, live, and look. Come for the substance, stay for the honesty, and leave with the tools to be well, inside and out. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm really excited about today's episode because not only did it clear up a lot of confusion that I had around protein, collagen, and creatine, and the difference between all of them and where essential amino acids come into play with all of this, but also about how my needs are changing as I age. I'm turning 40 in like a week, which is absolutely crazy. And also how I can kind of tweak these things and optimize them to help fuel my body better for better body

decomposition, like how to lose fat without losing muscle, because as we age, we lose muscle, sarcopenia. So we are getting into all of that in this episode. My guest is Angelo Keeley, who has been on, I believe, twice before. He is the founder of Kian, which is a company that offers premium, clean, research-backed supplements and foods that support a long active life, including the essential amino acids that I love. and I wanted to bring him on to talk about this because I feel like he just has a great way of communicating all things protein. And then like I said, we dive deeper into things like creatine and collagen and essential amino acids in this episode. You guys loved his episode last year on protein. So I thought that he would be a great person to come on and help to just distill

all of this information in a digestible way, pun intended. So we are, of course talking about how much protein we need, how to get it in, best sources of protein, what to look for in protein powders. We also talk about collagen and hacks that you can do to make the collagen go where we want it to go, which is essentially our joints, our hair, our skin, our nails. That part was so fascinating to me. He actually has a lot of good microhabits in this episode on how to basically hack your protein, hack your collagen, hack your creatine. I know so many people are confused on how to use creatine, what it is, what it does, how to not get puffy with creatine. That's something that a lot of people complain about. So we do talk about creatine and puffiness.

And it's just such an informative episode, such a value-packed episode. I loved talking to Angelo about this because we have rapport. So I think that always makes for a fun listen. And I learned so much that I didn't know, despite having had him on two times before. So I know you are going to love it. Dare I say it's even better than our last episode from last year. That was so popular. And if you guys are inspired to try incorporating anything into your routine after listening to this episode, he gave me a code to share with you guys for 20% off. You can go to get keon.com slash blonde. We'll put that in the show notes as well. And please enjoy Angela Keely. Welcome, Angelou. Thanks for having me, Ariel. I feel like the narrative has changed.

a lot from the fat loss, right, of the 90s and early 2000s to this emphasis on muscle and not only the vanity, but it's protective nature, right? Yeah, it's awesome, I think. I think the focus purely on fat loss, which is not a bad thing, right? Having a lower, healthier body fat versus being obese is going to have amazing long-term impacts, but being under-muscled is also going to have really negative. long-term impact. So it's a great focus. I'm glad that's happened. Yeah. Well, there are two factors, right, when it comes to being under-muscled or two very obvious things. One would be

maybe not exercising the right way or not exercising at all. And the other would be not getting adequate protein, essential amino acids, creating all of these things that we're going to talk about today. Maybe you can speak to that more than I can. Yeah, I'd love to. Well, I mean, just kind of summarizing quickly what you just said, one big part of it is exercise and particularly resistance training. So if you lift heavy things, and that could even just be your body, it can be body weight exercise, air squats, pushups, anything. But when you stress the muscle in that way, basically what it does is it promotes the building of new proteins and it does other really important functions. We won't get into in the muscle that basically help it to be healthier and stronger and to build more

muscle. But another really big part of being able to maintain muscle mass as we age. And this is not necessarily just trying to build more, like trying to get jacked. This is actually about just replacing older muscle fibers with newer muscle fibers so that they're healthier. And so they work better. And that's that's like almost the more important idea to think about. And in order to do that, the core ingredient, like the most important thing is essential amino acids. And the reason for that is because essential amino acids are the thing that when you consume them, when they get into your blood, it tells the body, hey, we've got enough of this new thing, these essential amino acids, to where it's okay to start breaking down some of the old muscle

and to rebuild it with new muscle. A bit of a tangent, but it's not just muscle. It's really like all the proteins in your body. When you get enough essential amino acids in your blood, your skin knows, hey, it's okay to break down some of the older skin proteins and make new ones and your hair and all the these different functions in your body. The big idea is like getting essential amino acids. Most of us do that through protein. You eat chicken breast, when you eat quinoa, when you eat anything that has protein in it, you digest it, it goes into your blood, and there's a couple things that come out of this

protein. There's non-essential amino acids, which are good. There's nothing like wrong. They're not a bad thing. They're a good thing. And they actually are helpful for building new proteins. But the essential amino acids in them are the thing that actually stimulate the body to rebuild that skin, to rebuild that muscle. And if you have enough of it, and you do resistance training to to build more muscle. So that's like the big idea between protein and amino acids. Creatine actually is like a whole other thing. Do you want to jump to that right away? Yeah. Let's jump to it. Okay, cool. So creatine is actually an energy source. And the way that it works is people don't oftentimes, we're getting a little nerdy in the biochemistry here, but you've probably heard of aerobic exercise

and aerobic exercise. Those two words, aerobic and anaerobic, are the ways that our body convert energy. Aerobic, meaning there's oxygen involved in it. So when we're converting sugars, carbs, or fats into this thing called ATP in our body, which is what allows us to move our muscles, to beat our heart, it's like the energy currency of the body. We convert it, typically via aerobic or anaerobic energy. Well, there's this whole other energy system called the phosphocreatine energy system. And the way that it works is when you need to do not, it's not something just like jogging, right, or walking around, when you need to like do a pull up or you want to push yourself up out of a chair, or you want to do some kind of intense short burst of energy. This could be like

with running, it would be like sprinting. Well, your body needs a really fast source of energy. It can't weight to convert it via aerobic or anaerobic. So what it does is it looks for creatine stores or phosphocreatine stores in the muscle themselves that can really quickly be converted to ATP, like super fast. And so when you load up your muscles with creatine, it enables you to do those activities better. So if you started supplementing with creatine, if before you could do two pull-ups, suddenly now you might be able to do three or four pull-ups. And the reason for that is not just because you got stronger, but because you actually have more energy, this kind of latent phosphocreatine energy store in the muscle that can be used really quickly to perform these types

of exercises. And if you keep taking creatine and you keep training, well, naturally, your muscles are going to get even better, right? Because you can do more exercises. You can do them longer. You can do more reps, et cetera. And that's the primary reason why creatine has such a big impact on improving people's, it's not just muscle growth, really, but like muscular endurance, like improving your overall strength and muscular endurance. Why do you think it's been so heavily marketed towards men? Because I feel like the creatine conversation and even creatine products were not marketed or geared towards women at all until maybe the last year or two.

And you were saying that it had 40% year over growth. Was that last year, 2024? 2024 had a 40% year over here growth. So why do you think women are just being brought into that conversation? Because it sounds like those benefits are something that would be. universally good, right? That's a great question. It might be like way above like my pay grade.

I'm not in charge of like all of the health marketing for the whole industry. But as we were talking about earlier, you know, it used to be that what was marketed to women and whether that's because they wanted it to be marketed to them or someone else was making those decisions was more about fat loss. And it was more about being skinnier, I think, than trying to actually build tone and build muscle and be more athletic in that type of way. And as things have changed, and again, I think it's much for the better for women and for overall society that there is more of a focus on building and sustaining lean muscle.

And it's not about getting jacked, right? It's about literally just having healthy muscle so you can perform any activity you want to perform. Because of that, then suddenly it's like, oh, actually this creatine product, like we should probably sell this to women too because it's really good for them. And, you know, some of the interesting things that come up around that, though, too, is that there's another overlap where typically women tend to be more plant-based in their diets. And creatine doesn't really exist in plants. Creatine largely is going to come from fish and beef in your diet.

So if you're not eating a lot of fish and beef, then you're probably more deficient in the creatine as well. And so it's an interesting situation where it's not necessarily that women are going to benefit more from creatine than men are. But if naturally they're maybe not eating as much fish and beef and they haven't been taking it and haven't been doing training in the same way, they're going to probably see like a lot more benefit from it from adopting a supplementation. That's interesting. I know that a lot of people are worried about water retention with creatine. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I feel like

as a woman, I already am worried enough about water retention as it is because I deal with it, as I'm sure a lot of my listeners do, as our hormones are fluctuating throughout the month. I also deal with that as a result of certain types of exercise, like we are chronically puffy. So is that something that we have to worry about with creatine? So there is some truth to it, but I also think that it's not that negative when you hear a little bit more about it. So the way that creatine works is when you consume it as a supplement and it goes and gets stored in the muscle, it does get stored with water.

So by storing more creatine in your muscle, you store more water in your muscle. So there is some additional water retention at the site of the muscle itself. So I think though oftentimes when you're worried about water retention, it's like, I'm going to be bloated or puffy. Like literally, let's say like one pound, I would say probably max for someone your body size. You're going to have additional water retention throughout your entire body, but it's all in the muscle. So it's like, yeah, your bicep might look a little bit, like a little bit more bigger, you know. But I mean like tiny, like tiny, tiny.

It's not going to make like your face or your waist or something else like that be puffy. Got it. Yeah, I think that that's the fear. And does it impact metabolism at all? Or is it just indirectly by making you more able to work out and sustain and have that extra energy that then your metabolism is impacted? Yeah, it doesn't have a direct impact on metabolism that say the way that protein or amino acids, essential amino acids probably have the greatest impact on metabolism. of all three of these things we've discussed,

creatine's not going to have like a huge immediate impact on, say, metabolism in the way that I think that we are traditionally talking about it, like how you convert sugars and fats and how metabolically healthy you are, it's more about overall improving your general fitness in that way. Something that it does do, and I think that it's, this is the reason why it's also becoming more popular with older individuals. In the past, I think a lot of people associate creatine with like 20-year-old Jimbrough, right? But now suddenly it's like 60-year-old,

women are even taking it. So why would she take it? And it's because not only does it improve your muscle, but it also improves cognition, specifically memory and focus. And the reason for that is it's similar to how it works in the muscle in the way that it offers these really immediately available energy stores. Basically, it seems that we don't understand the exact mechanisms of action, but it seems like it's actually improving our ability to remember things, to perform these brain functions that are kind of high energy functions in the brain. So it's a pretty cool supplement in that not only will improve your physical fitness and thus ultimately make you more metabolically healthy, it'll also improve your cognition. Would you recommend if somebody is starting at square one

that they get the protein and the essential aminos down before they add something like creatine? Like as you're talking, I'm a kind of visual person. I'm picturing a pyramid. And it sounds a little bit like the creatine is a little bit further up the pyramid. Whereas if you were to start, start with the creatine, but you don't have the rest of your foundation necessarily solid. Like, it's not going to make that big of a difference for you. I think that's an excellent insight, and I would definitely agree with it. If you aren't getting a sufficient amount of essential amino acids in your diet daily, then trying to focus on this creatine thing is like not. It's kind of silly.

And when I say the essential amino acids, that's either through really high quality proteins or some type of supplementation, you know, weight protein powder, or essential amino acid supplements, but some other way to ensure you're hitting those bases first. That is definitely step one. Okay, so let's walk it back then since we jumped to the top of the pyramid. So let's kind of walk through the day. What would be an ideal day, say, without supplementation, just when it comes to diet as far as hitting protein needs? And how are we getting all of those essential amino acids? I know that if people, to your point about women being more plant-based, tending to lean more that way. What are the combinations that we need to be looking for? Like,

how can we make that foundation really solid before we're even thinking about bringing in extra things to help us? One nuance I would start with is age plays a really big factor. So how old you are, whether you're a 20, 30, 40, 50, 50, 60 or 70 year old woman, it's going to be a little bit different. What I'll do is I'll lean towards your 30 year over and you're starting to think about this more, right? And what I would say is if you're 20, you're getting a head start on this and like, it's great that you're already starting to eat and think about this way. If you're 50 or 60, like, you really need to be following this advice. And really, I would say the sooner, even if it's not as critical for you if you're 15 years old or 20 years old, the sooner that you start to build

these healthier habits, the easier it will be when you're older and you're not trying to catch up when it's kind of like you've already done damage for 15 years, right? Or it feels really hard. to like accept I don't know like the reality of like wow that food is like not very good for me I should really try to eat this other thing instead which I feel like I'm still going through you know like I'm still trying to like cope with like just treats and carb foods like with having little kids and stuff like man is it is it good for them you know like I want I don't want them to like overthink what they eat etc I want them just like enjoy life and it's like some of these things I'm realizing like it's like not a very it's actually not nutritious food like at all

it's like purely treat it's not food you know and so Anyway, the sooner I think that 20-somethings can adopt this, I promise, you'll appreciate it as you get older. So, what should you eat? How much should you eat? I think, again, this is kind of going to like the older you are, the more important all this is. What I would say is general guidance of trying to get about a gram of protein per pound of body weight is pretty good guidance. So if you weighed 120 pounds, that'd be 120 grams of protein per day. That's pretty good guidance.

What I would say is if you're on the younger end of that, it could be a little less. It could be like 0.7.8, right? If you're getting older, it's honestly probably even more. It's more like 1.2 grams. And that's because simply as we get older, it's harder to digest this protein. And we're not as sensitive to the proteins that we're eating, to the essential amino acids in them. So how would you get that in? The most ideal situation would be to break it up into probably six separate servings of protein throughout the day.

way, I'm answering your question in regards to like protein nutrition and improving protein turnover in our body, not necessarily like all the other micronutrients that we'd want to get in meals. And I have a question to your point about our protein needs changing as we get older and our inability to digest protein as well. Do we also lose the ability or the efficiency with which that protein gets allocated to things like hair, skin, nails, all of that? Yes, significantly. Oh, that's a bummer. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, honestly, it's more significant. Like, the amount that our ability to digest the protein degrades is, like, somewhat.

But what's actually more significant is that the essential amino acids that we get from the protein, their ability to signal to the body to stimulate this thing called mTOR and say, like, hey, let's go do new protein turnover, replace these old skin proteins. It just, it's super dampened, like significantly dampened compared to someone who is 20. And it becomes harder and harder as we get older. And the reason for that, though, it's like, it makes sense, though, too, right? As we get older and we used to, like, not live as long. We used to live, like, 50.

The body's not thinking, oh, I really need to rejuvenate this skin so it's as elastic as ever. Or I really need to make sure that, like, I maintain this tone physique for my arms. Like, it's thinking, you're done. You're done. But the world has changed. Life has changed. Medicine has changed things to where we can live to 70, 80, 90, 100, hopefully even beyond that. And so in light of that, you're done.

this whole, again, this conversation around, like, eating six meals of protein throughout the day. Like, it actually makes sense. So what I would do is I would break it up. So if you could, you know, you'd take, you'd eat 20 grams of protein six times throughout the day about. Like, it's an easy way of thinking about it. And what is that? Like four to six ounces of some kind of animal? Yeah, some kind of meat.

Chicken. It could be, honestly, I mean, like, it's a small cup of Greek yogurt, surprisingly. Cottage cheese. Cottage cheese. you know, if you like to be more plant-based, it's a small serving of beans and rice together. Unfortunately, with something like beans and rice or with, you know, quinoa and lentils and things like that, there are a lot more calories wrapped around the protein because there's not that much protein in the actual legume or in the grain compared to how dense the protein is, say like in a chicken breast, you have to eat a lot more of the beans and rice.

And thus, there's not as much opportunity to eat other things, right? It's like you're just eating quinoa and lentils. It's like don't put a sauce on it. Don't put, you know, it's like you just need to eat that. Otherwise, you know, you'll probably overconsume calories. So yeah, it's a small serving, if you're on serving of, you know, meat, fish. Dairy is a great like getting cottage cheese. And going to that point, there's nothing wrong with eating, you know, whole fat cottage cheese or whole fat yogurt.

They're great. Those are actually very, very healthy fats that are in there. and if you're trying to, though, get like, say, 20 grams of protein, if you eat a non-fat yogurt, it's going to be like 90, 100 calories. If you have 2%, it's going to be 120, 130 calories. If you have full fat, it's going to be 150, 160. And so over time, you'll see how that stacks up and you just have to choose. You know, would I rather, I like, love full fat yogurt and I don't really need a bunch of

like olive oil on my salad, then great. That's awesome exchange. So, yeah, it's eating that about six times per day. I think great alternatives for that, and this is where supplementation can start to come in, would be things like a protein powder. If you like protein shakes, that's a great alternative. And just to name though, I think I put protein powder really in the box of supplementation because it's not a whole food, right?

It's not just yogurt, right? It's not just a piece of chicken. It is something that's been separated from the rest of the dairy. It's been broken down. It's been isolated. And so I think, you know, it's the kind of thing. you have, you could have maybe up to like two times a day, but otherwise, you know, I would try to eat three meals, like least per day. That's good to point out because I did do a question box

for this episode and I had some questions around that exact thing. People were like, can I only get my protein from protein powder? And somebody asked also, can I only get my protein from protein bars? So, yeah. This is a judgment free zone, but. Well, here's what I would say. You could make that work for you. And this is kind of, there's multiple things true at the same time. If we're just talking about protein, then actually the protein that's in a way protein powder is going to vastly outperform the protein that's in chicken breast or in steak. Interesting. Yeah. Explain that to us. So the reason for that is because in steak, the way that steak works is that it's wrapped up. Actually, if I eat like a six ounce piece of steak, only about 25% of it is protein. 75% of

of it is minerals, carbs, fats, water, other things, right? And on top of that, it's, you know, it's got a much more complex structure. So when I chew it up and I digest it, again, the benefits of it come from the EAAs, the essential amino acids in that steak. Well, in that steak, less than half are essential amino acids of the protein. So let's say only 25% of it is protein. And then even less than half of that is essential amino acids. So it ends up being like 10% of that total steak is actually essential amino acids, which is the reason why you're trying to eat the protein. When you compare that to a weight protein powder, if you get like a weight protein isolate, it's maybe like 22 grams of total powder, meaning there's like other minerals and a little bit

of sugars in it. There's like 20 grams of protein. And about half of that, 45% is essential amino acids. So it's probably roughly 35 to 40 percent essential amino acids. So gram for gram, it has like three, at least three times the potency as that stake of the active component ingredient in protein that stimulates all the protein synthesis. So what is the argument for not just relying on a protein powder or an essential amino acid powder? Is it because of the other things in it, the micronutrients, the vitamins, the minerals, those things? Yeah, so I think there's multiple. So first of all, would be the other micronutrients and minerals that are available in a steak,

for example. Like there's iron, there's creatine. There's all kinds of great minerals and other micronutrients, all types of different vitamins in it. And if you're only taking a protein powder, well, you're not getting that. And then someone could say, well, I could take a protein powder and a multivitamin. Yeah, I mean, you could end up just like drinking soylent or like some like, you know, only drinking shakes all day.

And then the question would be like, well, what's wrong with that? Well, I don't know if there's necessarily something wrong with it. You would likely over time lose your jaw function and ability to like chew. There are studies that show that it's really beneficial actually chew your food and that the saliva and the ability of the enzymes that are produced to help digest that food. There's a lot of benefit to eating real food. I think another main thing that maybe gets overlooked as we like start to obsess over protein turnover, right? Or like, what's the best protein is our whole life. You know, like I follow you. I see you like go to like Italy. last summer on this amazing trip. You know, it's like enjoying life, like enjoying meals with people,

enjoying food. You know, I think there's a real, if you just don't even like that though, and it's not even a big thing to you, then like, yeah, maybe you're not missing out on that. In general, though, I would say like, so that you don't become this person who's like only eating engineered foods, I think using it as a supplement is probably the best balance in health. But again, judgment-free. Like, if you're the type of person that's like, I just like, I don't like meats and I don't really like protein powders, then okay, well then actually maybe the best solution for you is trying to use protein bars, is trying to use protein powders, or even in some cases trying to use just straight essential amino acid supplements. You know, there's a great story.

I'm actually really excited by this. The recent editor-in-chief of women's health, Liz, Plosser, who was, I think she was there like seven years. She's now works with us. She joined our team in January and really specifically just to help us like she's just a content master and amazing person and she was a huge you know aminos and protein fan but she was telling me the story last week of she's very protein forward and yet she's a mom of three kids she's 45 she gets home her husband typically makes dinners and he made this dinner it's like this like super rich like creamy pasta thing with like no protein in it and she either can be like the sounds good sounds really good, right? And so it's like in the past, she might have been like, needs to like get a can of

tuna fish and try to like mix it in or eat on its own and just super offend him. Yeah. Like he's like, you know, honestly like ruin the meal. Like that's not what it's made to be, right? And instead, she takes like a couple servings of essential amino acids and eats the meal and realizes she actually got, and we haven't explained the benefits of these essential amino acids yet, but like they're basically three times the impact as the weight protein. So she takes those and kind of guilt free just enjoys the pasta dish with her husband. Now, is that the thing she's going to do every single day? No. But it did in that moment allow her to just engage in the food that was really delicious, have a good time with her family, not be like the weirdo that's like adding tuna fish

to this perfect dish, but still hitting good daily protein requirements. In this episode, we are talking about habit stacking, particularly habit stacking our protein and making it more efficient. Well, I like to habit stack in other areas of my life as well, including a stack that I just did right before I recorded this, which was my meditation and my red light in one. So I shared on my solo episode recently that I do this 10-minute meditation app in the morning. And I do it at the same time as my red light. And it has been such a game changer in my results from my red light, because I found that when I started doing it every day, instead of three to five days a week, for me, I really noticed a big difference. Obviously, you can get results that way, but for me,

consistency has really been key. So my absolute favorite, of course, is my bond charge face mask. I love it so much. I've tried pretty much every device on the market. And I love this one the most for a few reasons. One, it's the most comfortable. Two, I love that it's very customizable. So you can adjust the time. So sometimes my meditation is 12 minutes or 17 minutes and I can adjust the time for that, whereas other red light face masks on the market have a set time and that's it. Also, you can adjust the intensity and you can switch between near infrared and red lights. Also super lightweight on the face, super comfortable. It doesn't get hot. It has zero EMF radiation and zero flicker and it also has a one year warranty. So the studies on red light therapy are

are pretty indisputable. Red light therapy has been reviewed by over 4,000 peer-reviewed studies, with over 400 being double-blind placebo trials. It is known to help with wrinkles and fine lines. It can help with acne, wound healing. It can even help with things like razor burns, ingrown facial hair, migraines, scar tissue. There are so many applications for red light. I use it for wrinkle reduction and my skin has been so even since getting really consistent. So go to bondcharge.com and use the coupon code blonde right now to save 15% off your red light face mask. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com. The coupon code is blonde for 15% off.

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a protein powder, essential amino acids, and then I also want to touch on like a collagen powder as well. I think that those are maybe the three that we can go with. Okay, great. Yeah, so with a protein powder, I think the first thing I'd start with is like obviously there's lots of different protein powders. There's all different types of plant-based ones, hemp, pea, rice, lentils, etc. Is there one that's better than another in the plant-based world? Because I know that that causes a lot of confusion. Yeah, you know, so I think, like, really, what you want to look for in a protein powder

is you do want to look for its essential amino acid profile. And that is typically why whey protein has been the gold standard for so long. It's because way protein has such a good essential amino acid profile, meaning 45% is essential amino acids, and then it's really high in certain ones. It's high in lucine, isolucine, valine, et cetera. So when you look for that in plant-based protein powders, it's typically hard to find because plants don't naturally occur in that way. So you end up needing to like combine a bunch of different

plants. So I would say it's likely you have to combine different types of plant proteins to get a more ideal profile. The other thing I'd say though, and this is not to scare people, is just to be real about it. It's that anything that grows in the ground has some amount of heavy metals in it. and when you concentrate things from the ground, they end up with, like, a lot more heavy metals. So plant-based protein powders tend to be very high in heavy metals. Yeah, and there was a report that just came out recently. I think that checked for heavy metals, pesticides, dioxins. I don't remember what else.

And it was not good. I don't remember the exact figure, but I think it's something like over 70% of plant-based proteins basically tested over the limits for these heavy metals. Yeah. And this is something you're doing every day, usually. And you're doing it for your health, you know? which is kind of a weird thing. Not to bum anyone out, but dark chocolate also tends to be pretty high in metals and heavy metals.

And that's just because, again, you're concentrating this thing from the earth. But what I would say is like having one piece of dark chocolate is one thing. If you're drinking like a scoop of this protein powder that's high in these heavy metals every single day, it's like, I wouldn't do it. And that's, you know, and not about my brand, but just that's why we haven't made a plant-based protein powder a key on. because it's hard to do it, I think, with integrity around that stuff. I feel like that's unfortunately something that happens a lot in the wellness world. And you take the consumer who's going to buy these things or use these things. Usually there are things that you're going to do daily, take daily, whether it's a supplement, a protein powder, whatever it is, because you're trying to be health conscious, right?

And I just had somebody on. We were talking about supplements. and we were talking about fillers in the capsules and the capsules themselves and how it's just so unregulated and how there are often ingredients that you'd never want to be ingesting on a daily basis, but we largely are not aware of it. And it's like unfortunate, right, that it's this health conscious person who's likely navigating something. They're trying to get healthier. They're facing a challenge, whatever it is. And then we're like inadvertently doing some kind of harm to ourselves. It's challenging the two to like, do the perfect math on like, am I creating more harm or is it better?

You know, it's like I think regardless, and that's why I said I didn't want to scare people. Like keep trying to pursue like your good, healthy behaviors, right? Like don't be like, oh, and I shouldn't even do this. You know, it's like keep trying, but also keep trying to be a more knowledgeable consumer and, you know, read more and listen more and try to, you know, learn more. So, all right, getting back to like the protein powder. So way protein is a, I think, and particularly way protein isolate is a great solution for a lot of people. And the isolate basically makes it to where you remove everything besides the protein.

So it's like 99.9% even lactose-free. So I'm pretty lactose-sensitive and I can totally consume a weight protein isolate. So it's a great solution. And again, it's very high in these EAAs, et cetera. When you compare that, though, to an essential amino acid supplement, which this actually might be a good, then, solution for someone who wants to be more plant-based. You can get essential amino acids that are vegan or non-vegan. I would definitely encourage people to go for the vegan. It's a much cleaner process. It's basically

fermentation from like beet sugars and cane sugars and almost like the way that kombucha is created. And from that fermentation, you're able to generate these essential amino acids. So when you compare an essential amino acid supplement, if you formulate it correctly, and so if you're looking for that kind of thing, make sure you're looking, like the formula really matters. Similar to the way the protein powders aren't all the same, essential amino acid supplements are all the same. it can be formulated in such a way to where, again, it's only the essential amino acids. There's none of the non-essential. And you can tweak the formula to where you have even more of certain amino acids like leucine, which is this very crucial amino acid that significantly improves

protein turnover. It plays the biggest role in terms of telling your body to break down the old proteins and make new ones, you know, rebuild the skin, rebuild the muscle, etc. And by doing that kind of formula, it, again, can have a way greater impact than a way. weight protein powder. How much greater? Quick, kind of simple way of thinking about this is whatever decade you're in, divide that by 10, and that's how many times greater it is. So if you're in your 30s, an essential amino acid supplement has about three times the impact of a way protein powder. In your 40s, four times, 50s, five times, in your 60s, six times the impact of a weight protein powder. And that's been demonstrated through studies. There's like multiple

studies actually that show, for example, like women in their 60s, Less, actually, it's even greater than a six times, like three grams of essential amino acids enriched with lucine have the same impact as 20 grams of weight protein powder. Wow. So it's like a hyper-concentrated protein powder, basically. Again, it's not the thing to replace eating all your regular meals, but if you're trying to supplement, you know, and you're 40 like us, like basically, sorry, you're not 40. 40 like me. Let me have these last six months. Or you like me. Basically, you know, that one scoop of aminos, which has five grams of essential amino acids, is equal to a whole 20 gram scoop of protein. And so that's a pretty awesome trade-off. So I think in the shortest way of explaining it, that's the difference. Now, if you try to compare it to collagen, collagen is actually quite different. It's a cool supplement. It doesn't have all the essential amino acids. It doesn't function like these other things we've been describing. It doesn't lead to this increase.

protein turnover. It doesn't say like, hey, let's rebuild the skin. It doesn't do that. So then why is it associated with skin and hair and nails? Because what it does have is it has these important non-essential amino acids, which are proline, hydroxyproline, glycine, that are actually the building blocks to rebuild things like joints, skin, hair, nails. So typically your body would actually make those. It would take essential amino acids and synthesize. and synthesize them into these non-essential amino acids that then would help to rebuild these types of tissues. So what happens if you just like dose yourself with tons of hydroxyprolein, proline, and glycine? Because it's more readily available, it does improve the quality of things like

skin, hair, nails, joints. What I would say, though, is it's similar to the creatine piece where it's kind of like you're getting further downstream. And if you're not telling the body through a high concentration of essential amino acids, which would either come through something like a weight protein powder or more ideally a free-form essential amino acid supplement, then your body's not wanting to do it, right? It needs to get the stimulus first. So what I would say is I would prioritize taking an essential amino acid supplement

before I took a collagen, or if you really like it and you want to take a collagen, take them together. Because what you'll do is you'll get the stimulation, the body is basically told like, hey, let's rebuild the skin, let's rebuild the hair. And then it has all, it has this like super big dose of these readily available building blocks specifically for skin hair now. So maybe that's, I saw your eyes like, oh my gosh.

Yeah, like maybe that's like the big skin hair nail hack of the day. Oh my gosh. You heard it here first. Well, as you were talking, I was thinking like how does the body decide where to allocate this? So if you are, whether you're eating protein through your diet, diet or you're supplementing with collagen or you're taking way protein or you're taking the essential amino acids. How does your body decide where that's allocated? So there is a certain amount of prioritization. And there's a lot more turnover in certain

places than others. Like in the liver, it's like, I want to say it's like 40% daily. It's a huge turnover because it's converting all these different things every day through all these proteins. Whereas the heart is in like the teens. Muscles only like one to two percent. a day. So certain parts of your body have to do way more turnover than others. And so that's actually like the unique benefit of supplementing is you're communicating to the body, hey, you're safe to turn over even more of the older, more dysfunctional proteins more quickly than you typically would have because you were like, didn't think you had enough. So it's not like in a deficit where it's trying to hold on to everything. And protect, yeah. Got it. Which I think that's maybe even like

the bigger shift. And that's probably the more valuable shift for. for more of us. Like, historically, again, even protein, right, has had this, I think, resurgence in the last few years and has become more important to women and to other populations other than like Jimbrose, right? Like that's who it used to be for like in the 90s, right? And so I think the thing that's actually

maybe more valuable and more important to all of us, to like the broader audience of people who are thinking about protein and to essential amino acids is that it's not just for building new muscle, it is for stimulating all the proteins in our body to be rebuilt. When you supply your body with enough, and again, if you can get like enough concentrated essential amino acids at once, you're really communicating to the whole body, all the proteins in your body. And this is thus for hormone health.

This is for your neurotransmitters and thus your emotions. It's for your skin, your hair. It's for like all these things throughout your body, not just your muscles. Yeah, I wanted to touch on that a little bit. And I also wanted to ask if somebody who's listening is that woman in her 30s who's 120 pounds and is getting around 100. to 120 grams of protein a day. Should she also be supplementing with essential amino acids to get that concentrate, to just be extra cautious that your body is not in that deficit so that your body feels safe

to be optimized in all these other areas? So let's just say that you are in your 30s, you weigh 120 pounds, and you're getting 120 grams of like perfect protein. Yeah. And so I'm saying perfect. What I would just say is, and I'm not trying to like drop. all lines. Animal protein.

You're getting 120 grams of animal protein. And thus, I assume the rest of your diet is like fruits and vegetables and like really healthy stuff because if you're maintaining 120 pounds and that's what you're eating, like you're a pretty clean eater. What I would say is that like one serving probably of like amino acids like first thing in the morning is going to provide. It's not going to be like the thing that's going to totally change your life, but it is going to enhance overall like skin hair nails.

It's going to improve like overall protein synthesis. it's going to have this one extra stimulus throughout the day. It's going to have benefit. I probably wouldn't take, like, you don't think you need to be taking, like, more than that. That said, if it's a day where it wasn't a perfect day. And I guess that's my thing in my mind. It's like, who lives that way? Like, who eats the perfect, you know, like four to six servings of protein every single day

and the right amount? Then that's the type of situation where it's like, hey, I don't know, like, I went to lunch with some friends. And, like, I didn't really actually like the check. chicken that they were putting on the salad. So I didn't want to have a story of my life. I just want to have like salad on its own. Like that's the reason then maybe to actually like supplement at that meal. You could take some aminos and you know, you're getting the equivalent of 15, 20 grams of protein through a serving and you suddenly it's like no stress, right? You just had that. So I think it's the kind of thing where it's probably a simple daily serving for someone who's already

eating pretty well. But on the days when you're not, it's like you could supplement more. Yeah, that was going to be my other question. So on those days, where maybe you're on vacation, like to your point when I was in Italy or France or whatever, like I'm not necessarily sitting down and having protein with every meal there. You know, it's like usually a light breakfast, maybe an egg or two, and then lunch is like pasta, you know? And then dinner is maybe more pasta or maybe like a piece of fish and more pasta or pizza, something. Like there's definitely not 120 grams happening. So in that situation, is it good to take multiple, servings? What I would say is like, again, if you just kind of go with like the basic principle of

I would say minimum four servings of protein per day, and ideally maybe closer to six if you can, like maintaining that it's going to provide huge dividends long term for you. And so it's totally fine to replace some of those with supplementation. Right. And so from a pure like safety level, you could take up to like 100 grams of essential amino acids per day as a supplement. That is like 20 servings. So that's like from a pure like safety level actually has been studied over longer time periods with people. So it's totally fine if you take two or three servings per day.

And what I would say is as you become older, you know, it's like, again, we're talking about someone in their 30s, right? I think like doing it one to two, even three times a day is like totally fine. Again, so long as like, what I don't want to do is encourage people not to eat real foods. But even in this case, you are like pasta in Italy. That sounds awesome. Like a cream sauce. Like that's good.

That's real food. You've got real good healthy eating behaviors. It's just a time when like you're trying to stay protein focused and it wasn't there. Like it makes sense to supplement. Or, you know, I'm kind of jumping in a totally different demographic. But like with my daughter, my son. So I have an 11 year old son and 9 year old daughter. My son like he'll like just eat whatever and he was happy to just eat tons of protein.

My daughter is like she's more picky. It's like doesn't like this meat and then doesn't like this one. And so it's like I'm always kind of, you know, struggling to find the right thing that she'll like it. And initially I was like, I don't, you know, I don't want her to think, oh, I can just like eat pasta and then I'll just take aminos, right? But then sometimes I'm sitting there and I'm like, I look at all these other little kids, right?

And they're just going to eat macaroni and cheese. I'd rather she eat macaroni and cheese and she take aminos than not take the aminos. Yeah. So it's like you just got to find the right balance. But overall, from like a safety level and an efficacy level, you can absolutely take aminoes multiple times per day safely. And from an efficacy level, it's like super protein. It's going to work even better than protein would work. So you absolutely will get the benefits.

And there's no reduction in benefits, actually. You can actually take up to three servings. You could take 15 grams at one time, and it would be a linear improvement in benefits, meaning two servings is literally twice as good as one serving. Three servings is three times as good as one serving in terms of how much protein turnover gets stimulated. After that, it starts to lose efficacy. You're not getting like a return on having taken it. So, yeah, you go to Italy and you're trying to like be low key and just enjoy all the meals, but you also... You bring your little travel pack with you.

Yeah. They're so convenient. It's totally fine to like take it, you know, a few times per day. There's never been a better time to take control of your health. And it all starts in the gut. processed foods, pesticides in your food, antibiotics, stress at work, and even toxins in the air you breathe can overwhelm your digestive system so that postmeal bloat, indigestion, and more are all signs that your gut needs some help because our bodies are basically being attacked on a daily basis.

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it's not going to mess anything up you could take it without meals you could take it with meals it doesn't have kind of these negative side effects maybe some other things like oh if I take it right before bed I won't feel good or is it okay I take on an empty stomach it's great on an empty stomach it's great on a full stomach so I think that the most important thing like most things in health are consistency like it's really about being consistent where you're going to see benefits and that's true for I mean really almost everything except for like really significant medical procedures like everything I've learned about in health it's like you know it's about taking it daily is how you really start to see the benefits. And so I think some people experience it. If they take it right

before they exercise, because it has this ability to improve your endurance and exercise, you might feel it like that first day. Yeah. Because I feel like I feel something instantly from it. But maybe it's like placebo, like what we were talking about before. Although, as we were saying, placebo is real. Yeah, placebo is real. Like the placebo effect really is real. It's incredible. Yeah. But it is likely that you could experience it right away. What I would say is just kind of varies. In terms of With exercise, you definitely can experience it because it literally will improve your muscle fatigue. Like, you will not get as fatigued as quickly. That's how I feel, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. But also, depending on kind of everyone's chemistry is different. But because the aminos are the precursors to our neurotransmitters, some people who have slightly different, you know, like, as you know with people, right, people have different chemistry in their brains that makes them maybe be more alert, more sleepy, more kind of spazzy, more fun, more quiet. right these are actually like chemical combinations and I think some people who as I'm not trying to single you out but I have this experience too like who maybe would benefit from some regulation of like mood they experience it more quickly like I take it and I immediately feel like better yeah kind of more balanced and alert yeah where some people they might not experience that as immediately whereas I would

say everyone if you start taking it every day within 30 days you will experience improvements and basically all these things that are protein-based, with your skin, your hair, your nails, your body composition, all these things. Let's touch on that because we haven't really gotten to the body composition part. I mean, we've been talking about the ability to put on muscle and maintain muscle and all of that. But how does it uniquely impact body composition? So the basics of body composition, and just to like make it all explicit, I think we're talking about like how much fat you have on your body and how much muscle you have on your body.

the basics of the way the body composition works is that part of it is exercise based and part of it is nutrition based and I would say it's about like 80 20 80% nutrition 20% exercise and so if you want to reduce and I'm just I think speaking the way that most people are thinking about it unless you're like a little boy trying to get jacked and strong like most people are trying to lose fat and maintain muscle So if that's the case, the way that that fundamentally works is through a reduction in total energy intake, meaning you eat less calories than you burn in a day. The thing, though, is that when you eat less calories than you burn in a day, then you also prioritize protein differently.

So if I cut my calories by a few hundred calories per day, 200, whatever the number is, my body is going to say, ah, I'm really hungry, right? And it's going to, in some ways, burn some fat tissue that's stored in my body because that's why we have fat. The idea of storing fat is actually a positive biological activity where like if you eat a lot of food and you can eat enough extra food, then when a day comes and there's not enough food, you can live off the fat you store. So if you eat, you know, less than you need in that day, you're actually going to start burning that fat that's on your body. But the other thing that will happen is your body starts to say like, hey, that protein. and maybe we didn't go as much into it on this show we've talked about on previous ones but when you eat protein your body does not think about it as an energy source it's not thinking i'm going to use

those essential amino acids or i'm going to use that chicken protein to burn to fuel my body it's looking at that protein and saying oh i need that to help rebuild my skin to help rebuild my muscle etc but if it's starving it says i'm actually going to use some of that instead to actually just fuel my body. So immediately, the protein that we consume is not as valuable as it was when you're on maintenance calories. Like if you're just your ideal weight, you're kind of your ideal percentage of body fat, and you're just eating these kind of higher, you're reading a gram of protein per pound of body weight. It's going to use all that protein as ideally as possible to help nurture all the proteins in your body. But if you're technically like starving yourself a little bit, you know,

eating less than your body wants to maintain the current weight, it's going to burn some fat, but it's also going to use some of that protein to fuel your body. And because of that, you're going to lose some muscle. So you actually start burning muscle also to supply the body with amino acids. So if you want to lose fat, but you don't want to lose any muscle, you need to eat a lot more protein. Like so typically before you were eating 20, you know, 30% of your diet and protein, you suddenly need to eat like 50, 60%. Like it's, I mean, depending on what the proportion of like the calorie cutting is, but it's a lot. You basically need to not reduce your protein at all and only reduce the other calories, but ideally even increase your protein. So in a recent study, this has been

studied a lot more in the last few years, and it's actually sponsored by the U.S. military because they're trying to figure out how to work with soldiers in the field and who are on calorie deficits and carrying big packs. They found that with a 30% calorie reduction, which is a lot, but that'd be like someone trying to lose a pound and a half a week, which is, I think that is a lot, Lots of people try to do it. You need a 300% or a 3x increase in essential amino acids to maintain a net protein balance, meaning maintain your muscle. That's like a lot more. Whoa. And that's why. And that's hard to do when you're just eating protein, I feel like, because it's protein, eating enough protein, eating a lot of protein, it makes it really hard to overeat. And it makes it

really hard to, yeah, just, I mean, just eat beyond satiety because, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you're full and it's like, yeah, and it's boring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How much like, you know, how much like chicken can you eat? Yeah. So, like, that's kind of like, wow, like that's pretty significant. And so, yeah, without kind of any major intervention in terms of increasing your protein intake, that's why typically when people go on diets, at the beginning, it's almost like 40% of the, you know, you know, you're not, you the weight loss is muscle, and as it progresses over time, it ends up being like 30 down to 25%. Which is actually losing quite a bit of muscle if you don't supplement with it.

So what I would say is if you're actively cutting calories, let's go to this, you're a 125 pound person in their 30s who wants to be 120 and they want to lose that last five pounds but only want to be fat. You definitely want to eat the 120, 125 grams of protein per day, and you want to be taking essential amino acids probably multiple times per day. during that specific phase when you're trying to cut so that you're only losing fat and not losing any of your lean muscle.

Got it. And it is possible. Like it's absolutely possible to lose only the fat and not to lose any of the muscle if you supplement. So in terms of like an active diet, that's how it would play into body composition. Maybe even more interestingly, though, just like on a day-to-day kind of nutrition basis,

when you consume protein, it is more energy-intensive to digest and to utilize. then carbohydrates are fat. It's about like somewhere between 10 to 20 percent more energy gets expended just breaking down the protein and then stimulating this protein synthesis or this protein turnover in the body. So by focusing more on protein as being a higher percentage of your diet, you actually burn more calories just eating the food. With essential amino acids, because the bulk of that energy expenditure is actually from the protein turnover, like building the new skin, building the new muscle, building the new hormones, essential amino acids are significantly more

impactful than even protein. When you consume essential amino acids, not only are they helping to rebuild all these proteins in your body, but they're also increasing your overall metabolism. Now, not to the degree where it's like you're going to have this like big fat loss or something just from consuming essential amino acids, but as you stack that over time and say you choose to supplement with essential amino acids instead of like just eating protein, it could end up being a few pounds over the course of 60 days, 90 days. Because again, it's like these little benefits that stack over time. That's the title of this episode. Like micro habits, like tiny habit stacking things. I mean, I know what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm doing the collagen and the essential

amino acids. But that's a really good tip too. And the takeaway is just like we need more essential amino acids, especially as we age, no matter what our lifestyle is, no matter what our diet is. It's important. It's not something that we can really ignore, it sounds like. Definitely. Well, you will ignore it at your peril or you'll ignore it at your like, just kind of like unfortunate, not as vibrant life. And this is the kind of thing too where it's, what's crazy about this is like it's not new. Yeah. The research community has been studying proteins and essential amino acids for pretty in depth for 40, 50 years. But even just in the last 20 years, like this, this information is dozens, you know, 100 studies.

by major organizations. Like it's really, we would all do better to embrace it. Amazing. Well, tell everybody where they can find you and where they can get Kion and get those essential amino acids. I know my whole audience is probably going to get collagen too and do the combo. Well, I'm not like a big personal brand guy.

I've really just poured everything into Kion. So it's, you know, get Kion. That's our website and the Kion on social handle. But yeah, everything's there. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked the episode, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well.pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at Ariel Lorry. I'm always sharing great clips from the episodes. And we also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch an entirety. Thanks for listening. Hey there, I'm Brittany Xavier. And I'm Anthony Xavier.

And this is the long game. I'm Brittany, a mom of three and content creator, passionate about wellness and living life to the fullest. And this is my husband Anthony, who's been my partner in life and everything we do. If you're looking for inspiration to live intentionally, nurture meaningful relationships, and embrace a lifestyle that promotes well-being, you've come to the right place. Each week will bring you conversations with experts in health, wellness, and personal development.

We'll also be sharing our own stories, like how we navigate the ups and downs of family life and our journey towards a more mindful, fulfilling lifestyle. Expect some fun, laughter, and honest moments from us along the way. New episodes will be released every Thursday, and you can find us wherever you listen to podcasts. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest

in products or services referred to in this episode.