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Your post holiday workout for Friday…

Athlon Elite will be closed Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. However, the health club, Athlon Health & Fitness, will be open from 7 AM to 7 PM and below you’ll all have a workout to go in and do to make up for that "holiday glutony!"

Athlon Elite will re-open Saturday for our normal schedule. Be sure and log-on and sign up for your session on Saturday. George doesn’t like surprise visitors!!

Have an amazing, festive holiday with your friends, family and loved-ones.

Day After Thanksgiving Workout

1. Start with 1 min. of front, side & reverse plane holds (planks)

2. Then do 3 rounds as fast as possible of:

•    10 walking lunges
•    10 push-ups
•    10 jumping pull-ups (or 60 lb. lat pulldown)
•    10 sit-ups

3. Rest 3 minutes, then finish with 30 minutes of Cardio

1.    10 min Bike
2.    10 min Stair Climber
3.    10 min Run/Jog

**Bonus**
**10 EXTRA minutes of Cardio for every extra serving
**25 EXTRA sit-ups for every alcoholic beverage

Happy Turkey Day!

How much protein should you eat?

I read an interesting article yesterday by John Berardi, PhD on protein intake in your diet. Now, as you all know from reading my blog and working with me in the past, I recommend a higher protein intake, up around 30%+ of our total daily food intake, for athletes as well as general fitness enthusiasts trying to lose body fat.

There are a number of reasons for this (which you can read below). But, according to Dr. Berardi there have been two recently published studies on protein intake that have gotten a bunch of people arguing against high protein intakes. For you research nerds (like me) here are the references:

Ingested protein dose response of muscle and albumin protein synthesis after resistance exercise in young men. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009.
A moderate serving of high-quality protein maximally stimulates skeletal muscle protein synthesis in young and elderly subjects. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 2009.

What these two research studies are saying, in a nutshell, is that protein synthesis in the muscles (building of muscle) was maximally stimulated at 20 to 30 grams of protein intake per meal. And eating over 20 to 30 grams of protein in a single sitting did not increase protein synthesis any more than the lower dose… hence 20 to 30 grams should be the upper limit of protein intake per meal.

At least that’s what a bunch of people on the internet are now saying as a result of these two studies.

Well…

Does This Make Any Sense?

Let’s do the math. If I were to eat 20 grams of protein per meal (5 meals per day) that would give me 100 grams of protein in a day and hence 400 calories worth of food. Since, my diet regularly needs to be 3000 to 3500 calories per day to fuel my basic job and fitness activities that would mean that protein would only make up about 12% of my total intake.

That’s not very much!

Where would the other 88% of my diet come from…

Carbs or Fat???

Carbohydrate and fatty foods are far less "thermogenic" than protein (meaning they don’t burn as many calories to digest and hence don’t raise your metabolism as much). And, they tend to affect your body fat composition more negatively than protein (hence more frowns in the mirror).

Typically, protein rich foods are also very rich in other vitamins, minerals and compounds which are very beneficial to your health and performance, (see below). Plus, building muscle and losing fat is not the only reason to consume protein in every meal. There’s satiety and the positive effects it has on your immune system.

And, there’s probably a few other reasons too that science hasn’t yet figured out how to measure. There’s no doubt that our hunter/gatherer ancestors, whom had to be very healthy individuals just to survive, ate a bunch more protein than a measly 20 grams in a sitting. And I know from being in the sports performance and fitness industry for over 15 years now that when a client trains hard and they up their protein intake they do better. Simple as that.

Other Benefits of Protein Intake:

Here’s a more comprehensive list of the positive benefits of eating protein (lots of protein) taken from an article Dr. John Berardi wrote a while back:

Increased Thermic Effect of Feeding — While all macronutrients require metabolic processing for digestion, absorption, and storage or oxidation, the thermic effect of protein is roughly double that of carbohydrates and fat. Therefore, eating protein is actually thermogenic and can lead to a higher metabolic rate. This means greater fat loss when dieting and less fat gain during overfeeding/muscle building.
Increased Glucagon — Protein consumption increases plasma concentrations of the hormone glucagon. Glucagon is responsible for antagonizing the effects of insulin in adipose tissue, leading to greater fat mobilization. In addition, glucagon also decreases the amounts and activities of the enzymes responsible for making and storing fat in adipose and liver cells. Again, this leads to greater fat loss during dieting and less fat gain during overfeeding.
Metabolic Pathway Adjustment – When a higher protein (20-50% of intake) is followed, a host of metabolic adjustments occur. These include: a down regulation of glycolysis, a reduction in fatty acid synthesis enzymes, increase in gluconeogenesis, a carbohydrate “draining” effect where carbons necessary for ridding the body of amino nitrogen is drawn from glucose.
Increased IGF-1 — Protein and amino-acid supplementation has been shown to increase the IGF-1 response to both exercise and feeding. Since IGF-1 is an anabolic hormone that’s related to muscle growth, another advantage associated with consuming more protein is more muscle growth when overfeeding and/or muscle sparing when dieting.
Reduction in Cardiovascular Risk — Several studies have shown that increasing the percentage of protein in the diet (from 11% to 23%) while decreasing the percentage of carbohydrate (from 63% to 48%) lowers LDL cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations with concomitant increases in HDL cholesterol concentrations.
Improved Weight-Loss Profile —Research by Layman and colleagues has demonstrated that reducing the carbohydrate ratio from 3.5 – 1 to 1.4 – 1 increases body fat loss, spares muscle mass, reduces triglyceride concentrations, improves satiety, and improves blood glucose management (Layman et al 2003 — If you’re at all interested in protein intake, you’ve gotta go read the January and February issues of the Journal of Nutrition. Layman has three interesting articles in the two journals).
Increased Protein Turnover — All tissues of the body, including muscle, go through a regular program of turnover. Since the balance between protein breakdown and protein synthesis governs muscle protein turnover, you need to increase your protein turnover rates in order to best improve your muscle quality. A high protein diet does just this. By increasing both protein synthesis and protein breakdown, a high protein diet helps you get rid of the old muscle more quickly and build up new, more functional muscle to take its place.
Increased Nitrogen Status — Earlier I indicated that a positive nitrogen status means that more protein is entering the body than is leaving the body. High protein diets cause a strong positive protein status and when this increased protein availability is coupled with an exercise program that increases the body’s anabolic efficiency, the growth process may be accelerated.
Increased Provision of Auxiliary Nutrients — Although the benefits mentioned above have related specifically to protein and amino acids, it’s important to recognize that we don’t just eat protein and amino acids — we eat food. Therefore, high protein diets often provide auxiliary nutrients that could enhance performance and/or muscle growth. These nutrients include creatine, branched chain amino acids, conjugated linoleic acids, and/or additional nutrients that are important but remain to be discovered. And don’t forget the vitamins and minerals we get from protein rich foods. (And lest anyone think I’m a shill for the protein powder industry, this last point clearly illustrates the need to get most of your protein from food, rather than supplements.)

The Take Home Message

Clearly from the list above it’s apparent that we eat protein for a number of reasons and not just to build muscle. People that eat a higher, lean protein intake through natural foods (not just protein powders, which do come in handy at certain times of the day) have a better health profile than those that live by the minimums… 20 grams per meal or 0.8 g/kg/day.

If you’re concerned about your diet and whether or not you’re getting adequate protein to reach your fitness and health goals call us for a FREE consultation. We’ll discuss your current nutrition habits and show you how you can alter those to be more successful at losing weight and gaining lean muscle…

and being really healthy like we were intended to be!

Call (805) 440-0215 or click here to set up a FREE consultation.

www.SLOPersonalTraining.com/consult

Until next time,

Ryan