The MOST Important Meal of the Day
Posted by Joel Marion on August 13, 2009
Over the weekend I had the pleasure of training with my great friend, fitness model, and New York personal trainer John Romaniello.
For 30 minutes, he punished me with non-stop movement, compound exercises, calisthenics, and VERY little rest.
Think 30 minutes isn’t long enough to get an incredibly challenging workout in? Try working out with this guy for a half hour. Brutal.
But that’s John, and you gotta love the guy. And I do, in a totally non-gay way.
I digress.
So after our workout, one of the female members of John’s gym came up to us and asked us what we were drinking while we were working out.
My response: “The most important meal of the day.”
Clearly, by the look on her face, that didn’t quite register with her. So, I went on to explain.
I started with a question: “What if I told you that you could literally screw up everything else in your diet, but if you did just ONE thing correctly, you’d achieve exponentially better results than if you did EVERYTHING ELSE right and left this one thing out? Is that something you’d be interested in knowing?”
“Of course”, she replied.
So I pointed to the shaker bottle that I was drinking out of and told her, “THIS is that one thing.”
You see, if you’re someone who regularly lift weights or participates in resistance training, the time period from when you complete your first repetition of a workout until about an hour after your workout is complete is something we call the “critical window”.
Simply put, when it comes to building muscle, losing fat, increasing performance, and recovering from exercise, this 90 minute period is more important than the other 22.5 hours of each day COMBINED.
And that’s the truth.
It is during this time that your body is extremely primed to suck up nutrients in order to:
1. Replenish muscle carbohydrate energy stores
2. Halt muscle tissue catabolism (breakdown)
3. Initiate protein synthesis (lean muscle construction)
But it only occurs IF you give your body the proper nutrients in the right proportions during this critical time.
So what are the proper nutrients?
1. Maltodextrin/Dextrose – These rapidly digested carbohydrates will quench the catabolic hormone cortisol, produce a dramatic insulin spike for the purpose of shuttling nutrients into muscle tissue, and will begin to replenish muscle glycogen stores which have been somewhat depleted during exercise.
2. Whey protein isolate – Intense training causes an extreme amount of damage to muscle tissue at the cellular level, causing muscle protein balance to slip into the negative range. This fast-digesting protein further spikes insulin, helps bump protein balance back up to positive values, and sparks protein synthesis (the construction of calorie-burning lean muscle tissue).
How about the “right proportions”?
Research has shown that combining these simple sugars and fast action proteins in a 2:1 ratio yields the greatest results.
As far as your RESULTS are concerned, there seriously isn’t anything else more important, more EFFECTIVE than dextrose/maltodextrin and whey protein isolate in a 2:1 ratio sipped both during and after your workout.
Period.
Doing this ONE thing right will have you achieving 10 times greater results than if you did everything right for the other 22.5 hours per day while leaving out this step. It’s THAT important.
And if you want to talk about using supplements, you better make sure you have the above covered before you even think about purchasing some “muscle building” supplement or “fat burner”.
So, where can you get maltodextrin/dextrose and whey protein isolate in a 2:1 ratio? Well, you have the option to purchase the ingredients directly and mix them yourself.
WARNING: If you choose this method, be prepared to hold your nose while downing the stuff in 30 seconds or less, because it ain’t gonna be appetizing.
OR, you can purchase an all-in-one product that combines the above ingredients in the proper ratios while actually tasting good, and there are several products out there that do just this.
The one I recommend (again, because I KNOW that what they say is in the bottle is actually in the bottle…a huge problem within the supplement industry) is Prograde Nutrition’s “Prograde Workout”. It has dextrose/maltodextrin and whey protein isolate in a 2:1 ratio, and it comes packaged as a great tasting vanilla shake.
Oh, and better yet, it’s on sale until tomorrow.
Prograde Workout Sale <——- The number ONE “results” supplement. Period.
To be completely honest and transparent, there is not one thing more important than proper pre/post workout supplemention. Nothing. Omit it, and you’re pretty much saying that you’re cool with putting in a ton of effort and getting 1/3 the results that you could be getting.
Include it, religiously, and watch your results skyrocket.
Prograde Workout Sale <——- Don’t waste your workout.
I’d recommend stocking up, because this stuff doesn’t go on sale very often (maybe twice a year).
Joel
Hey, it’s Joel! So you want to know a little more about me, huh? Well, I’d be happy to oblige :-)
I guess it all started back in 2001 (my freshman year of college) when I was just a “skinny fat” 19-year old kid. At the time, I was spending close to 2 hours a day in the gym (now my workouts last about 30 minutes), and despite my efforts, you’d probably never guess I worked out a day in my life by looking at me...