Everybody knows that the first rule of a post-training shake is that it has to be fast. You must drink it as soon as you are done or you won’t get jacked. You must drink the fastest protein on earth with only the fastest carbs, no fiber or fat allowed! This usually entails people drinking whey protein, either in the form of isolates or hydrolysates, because concentrates are just too darn slow. The carbs are usually from maltodextrin or dextrose, and maybe even that fancy new waxy maize starch. Anything with fiber , fat or fructose is terrible and will decrease absorption time. Right? We know all of this because that is what we have always been told. No one denies that this is effective, as it has worked for millions of people, but does effective equal optimal? What are we actually trying to accomplish with this shake?
I want to start this post with a bit of a disclaimer. The health benefits from alcohol consumption are hotly debated, as most of the data comes from epidemiological research and other relationship style studies, not cause-and-effect controlled trials. In addition there is no doubt that binge drinking or excessive consumption can cause massive problems, affecting nearly every organ and system in the body.
However, based on the data that is available, and the fact that historically many cultures have engaged in moderate consumption, I think a reasonable case can be made for the benefit of alcohol.
While wine, red wine in particular, gets most of the hype for the health benefits from alcoholic beverages, beer is no slouch in this department either.
I apologize for the minimal content this week, it has just been a mad-house around here. Tons of grad school work all culminating at once since we are coming up on spring break. Plus taxes. Fun stuff.
The good news is that I will have a new article going up on t-nation.com relatively soon (once I finally finish it and send it to them) as well as my first article on wannabebig.com.
I also recently had a few articles go up on getprograde.com that I never even told you guys about! I thought today would be an appropriate time to let you guys know all about them, plus there are a few more in the pipeline that should be going up shortly!
As I am sure most of you have heard, diabetes is rapidly becoming an epidemic not only in the US, but worldwide. Diabetes can affect people of all ages, and it can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, vascular complications and amputations, blindness, immune suppression, kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease and more.
I know this is a little late, but a former client sent me this video of the late, great Jack Lalanne from his fitness show back in the 50′s. It just goes to show how the basics have not really changed! Minus the emphasis on the fat free dairy of course. Check it out!
While looking over an online client’s food log recently, I came across a mention of a homemade vegetable dip (he wasn’t a fan of hummus). I asked for the recipe, it was his wife’s by the way, and he was gracious enough to send it to me. I must say, it looks delish!
Another big plus for those of you who may lack serious kitchen skills, it is as simple as it gets. Without further ado, here is the Fage Vegetable Dip.
First, I want to remind everyone that today is the final day of the introductory sale price for Lean Hybrid Muscle Reloaded. I have only done 1 session so far, but it is a killer! I have heard some more really great things about the program from Tony and EC as well, as they are a little farther along in it than I am.
If building a leaner, more functional and athletic physique is your goal, then this would be an absolutely fantastic resource for you. It balances strength, hypertrophy, power and conditioning, and allows you to tweak the parameters to emphasize one of those elements over the others, without neglecting any of them.
Plus, you risk absolutely nothing. If you’re not thrilled, simply return it within 30 days and Mike & Elliott will refund every penny – no questions asked! The sale expires at midnight tonight, so don’t wait!
Secondly, as some of you may know I am a big fan of youbars.com. This is a website where you can design your own protein bars, and the ingredients are real food, not loads of sugar alcohols, maltodextrins or artificial sweeteners. Instead you get things like peanut butter, almond butter, raisins, coconut, cacao, chia, flax, whey protein and so much more.
For those of you who own the Show and Go Nutrition Guidethere is a bar I designed that I put in the Recommended Recipes section. It is awesome. I highly recommend these bars, and now to sweeten the deal even more, if you type in the coupon code “bspbars” you get 10% off!
Pretty sweet huh? Well that’s it for today guys, two cool announcements, so check them both out!
I am very pleased to announce the newly available BSP Training & Nutrition Newsletter!
To sign up simply fill in the info on your right, and you will have immediate access to some cool stuff. I plan on this newsletter functioning as my RSS feed, as at the end of each week I will provide a small recap and link to each blog post so you can catch up on anything that you may have missed. This will also allow me to see which content and blog posts people read the most, and the least, allowing me to greatly improve what I write and cater the content better to you guys!
It will also provide exclusive content and cool new updates that may not appear on the blog itself. In addition by signing up I will send you my 20-page report “The Truth About Saturated Fat & Cholesterol.” In this report I really dig into the data and showcase how off-base the mainstream recommendations truly are.
All of that combined will clearly make you so much more awesome, how could you not sign up! This is a completely FREE service, and you can unsubscribe at any time if you wish (though who would want to?), so feel free.
If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email. Enjoy!
One thing that I believe has become pervasive in this country is this idea that things that have become common, are therefore now “normal”. To my mind this could not be further from the truth. Eating the crappy Standard American Diet (SAD) is common, but it should be considered a normal diet. It is hardly full of any real food!
In addition, being overweight has become more common than not being so. Being overweight is not a physiological norm. Look at the data from our own country 30 years ago, and this was not the case. Look at traditionally-living societies, and it is anything but common. Diabetes is also becoming normal, but hardly existed at all in traditionally-living people.
I say this not to insult anyone, but to simply point out the fallacy that just because something has become common, it is now normal. I also point this out so that when you are looked at strangely because you eat whole eggs rather than just whites, or you consume full-fat organic dairy rather than fat-free conventional, or even because you choose to cook with butter (grass-fed of course) rather than vegetable oil I want you to realize that while these things may be uncommon now, in the history of human consumption these are very normal actions.
What passes for “normal” these days is far from. We have strayed very far from our physiological norms, mainly due to the now-common practices of eating excessive sugar, refined flour, industrial vegetable oil, genetically modified and/or heavily sprayed produce and crops, and inhumanely raised and poorly-fed animals. How did that become “normal”?
While it may suck to be at parties or social events where people question your eating habits because what and how you eat isn’t “normal”, I personally think you are much better off being rather uncommon and armed with the knowledge that while what and how you eat may not be common, it is certainly normal.
Before I get started I wanted to provide a final reminder that today is the last chance to capitalize on my 20% OFF Online Training & Nutrition Consulting! Shoot me an email at brian@brianstpierretraining.com, and let’s get your training or nutrition headed in the right direction!
Moving on, today I wanted to showcase an awesome product that I have never discussed before. Many of you have become fans of Organic Valley’s Pasture Butter, which I have blogged about many times. It is an absolutely delicious grass-fed butter that is available nationwide, and I highly recommend it. The only downside is it is often not available in traditional supermarkets, and you have to check out a Whole Foods or local health food store to pick it up.
Fortunately for you I have come across another amazing grass-fed butter, and I came across this one right in a traditional Hannafords. Not only that, I personally think it might actually be better than Organic Valley Pasture Butter! It ranks right up there with butterI bought this summer that was straight from the farm in Maine!
It is called Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter. This is a delicious grass-fed butter straight from Ireland. Let me tell you, it is a beautiful yellow color, and makes the most amazing scrambled eggs!
I will point out that I found this butter on accident, while perusing the cheese options in fact. I had heard of Kerrygold butter before, but did not expect to find it in Hannaford’s! So check your local grocer, and make sure to check the butter section as well as the near the cheese.
To be totally honest I don’t have a huge problem with this title, as you can certainly make an argument that carbs can help you lose weight. A reasonable person would simply point out that they provide fuel to help you train more intensely, and they help you to recover from that training, among a few other things.
Unfortunately reasonable recommendations are not sexy, and sexy sells. So instead this article has paragraph headings like eating carbs makes you thin for life, carbs control blood sugar and diabetes, and carbs blast belly fat. It also focuses on the term resistant starch, without providing any real world examples of resistant starch foods.
The author refers to research without providing any references. I will admit that I do this in my blog too, because it is a blog, not an article. However when readers ask for the references, I gladly provide them. There were requests, but no follow through as far as I could tell.
This just might be my favorite quote in the whole piece:
“A recent multi-center study found that the slimmest people also ate the most carbs, and the chubbiest ate the least. The researchers concluded that your odds of getting and staying slim are best when carbs make up to 64% of your total daily caloric intake, or 361 grams.”
First, you can’t conclude anything from observational research. It simply provides data to generate a hypothesis, from which you do intervention trials to test that hypothesis. You want to know when your odds of getting and staying slim are best? When you don’t eat to caloric excess. Lame I know, but true.
I also love how we all require 361 grams. So a 110lb 75 year old sedentary female requires the same amount of carbohydrate as a 250lb 22 year old linebacker? Does that make sense to anybody. Your carbohydrate needs are dependent upon many, many things, not some pre-determined number.
How about carbs control blood sugar and diabetes?
“The right mix of carbs is the best way to control blood sugar and keep diabetes at bay. In one study at the Beltsville Human Nutrition Center at the USDA, participants who consumed a diet rich in high Resistant Starch foods were able to lower their post-meal blood sugar and insulin response by up to 38%.
Eat the carbs you want, but you need to combine them so that they don’t cause a spike in your blood sugar. Instead of eating white rice, switch to brown and combine it with beans, corn, or other high Resistant Starch foods that keep your blood sugar more balanced than low-carb diets.”
First of all, extrapolating data on blood sugar and insulin response in healthy people to a diabetic population is a recipe for disaster. People with diabetes have an altered metabolic response to carbohydrate, and their post-meal blood sugar and insulin will be vastly different than that of non-diabetics.
Second, when are people going to realize that the difference in blood sugar response between white rice and brown is virtually non-existent? On top of that, blood sugar response to any food is highly variable by person, as well as the other foods in the meal.
Third, yes let’s tell diabetics to just eat the carbs they want, but to simply combine them with these special foods and magically their blood sugar will remain stable. Pay no attention to amounts, those aren’t important.
Finally, carbs blast belly fat.
“Carbs help you lose your belly fat faster than other foods, even when the same number of calories are consumed.
When scientists fed rats a diet rich in Resistant Starch, it increased the activity of fat-burning enzymes and decreased the activity of fat-storing enzymes. This means that the belly-fat cells were less likely to soak up and store calories as fat.”
Again, this research is simply theoretical. Ok so it certainly seems like resistant starch might be helpful, but did these altering of the enzymes actually lead to less fat accumulation? Soft end points are all well and good, but if the research did not look at a hard end point (like actual weight loss), you can’t extrapolate it out to actual weight loss! Where was the control? Did the control group also see the same result? This research could be completely meaningless.
In the end I think articles like this do more harm than good. Are carbohydrates these evil foods that they have recently been made out to be? Clearly not. Do some people do better with less of them in their diet? Absolutely. Do some people do well with lots in their diet? Yes to that too. Telling people that simply eating carbs, and resistant starch, is going to lead to long-term weight loss is ridiculous. Its like telling people that just eating protein is going to lead to weight loss. Neither is true.
Long-term weight loss or maintenance of a healthy body weight is not achieved by a singular focus or removal of any one macronutrient. Especially one as easy to over-consume and make poor choices with as carbohydrate.
The key is to focus on the actual food sources of your carbohydrate intake. Foods that have sustained humans throughout history, not nutrient-empty refined foods (white flour, sugar, HFCS, etc). Things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, oats, fruits, vegetables, etc should make up the majority of your carbohydrate intake.
The next focus is on amount. I firmly believe that most people would do best with a moderate intake of all of the macronutrients. Obviously there are exceptions to this, but I think it fits best for the majority of the population. As long as you maintain energy balance and the majority of your intake is from real, whole, minimally processed foods you should be A OK.
Posted on February 28th, 2011 by Brian St. Pierre
8 Comments »