How Whey Protein Can Help Build Toned Muscles

Now, researchers looking at the synergy between nutrition and resistance exercise have found ways to significantly boost the benefits of this kind of training by using strategies such as timing when you eat, what you eat, and how much you eat.

From milk to proteins and amino acids, it turns out that nutritional interventions can make a huge difference in maximizing your resistance training.

Is Nutrition the Answer to Building Stronger Muscles?

Resistance exercise promotes muscle building, but just how much muscle mass you gain is highly variable, and depends on factors including your nutritional choices. Researchers noted in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism:1

"Nutritional interventions designed to maximally stimulate MPS [muscle protein synthesis] may be useful for those individuals concerned with enhancing skeletal muscle protein accretion, particularly when they are combined with a program of chronic resistance exercise."

Exercise is the spark, and nutrition is fuel for your metabolism. You can exercise until you are blue in the face, but until you master what you eat, you will never reach your true fitness potential, and can even cause yourself harm. 

Remember that 80% of the results of your exercise program will be related to the foods you eat or don't eat and only 20% due to the exercise itself. This is not to diminish the value or importance of exercise but to merely provide a proper frame.

The featured article provides an update on some of the most current findings to reveal what nutritional strategies, specifically, stand out above the rest to help you build your muscle mass and strength and get the most out of your workouts.

So just what did they find?

Eat This After Exercise to Build Muscle Mass …

A fast-assimilating protein, such as whey protein. Researchers wrote:

" … in terms of current recommendations it appears that consumption of ~ 20–25g … of a rapidly absorbed protein may serve to maximally stimulate MPS after resistance exercise in young healthy individuals. Ideal candidates to fulfill such criteria appear to be whey or bovine milk."

I prefer whey to milk for a variety of reasons, one being that research has shown whey protein is superior to other milk proteins for building muscle. It appears as though the amino acids found in high-quality whey protein activate certain cellular mechanisms (mTORC-1), which in turn promote muscle protein synthesis, as well as boost thyroid and also protect against declining testosterone levels after exercise.

Additionally, milk is loaded with lactose or milk sugar. This is a combination of glucose and galactose. Even raw organic grass-fed milk. This can be a problem if you struggle with insulin resistance. It is less of a problem if the milk is fermented, as the bacteria typically will digest most of the lactose.

The researchers stressed that high-quality leucine-rich proteins, such as whey, may be particularly important for the elderly to maximize muscle protein synthesis. Leucine is part of branched-chain amino acid that serves multiple functions in your body, one of which is signaling the mTOR (Mammalian Target of Rapamycin) mechanism to increase protein synthesis and build your muscle.

The review noted that adding free leucine to meals did not appear to be an effective strategy to enhance muscle mass or strength over a 12-week period, and you should be aware that taking leucine as a free form amino acid supplement can be counterproductive and wrought with side effects.

For example, intravenous administration of free form leucine has been shown to cause severe hyperglycemic reactions and insulin resistance.

Further, you need VERY HIGH amounts of leucine to reap the optimal effect—FAR more than the recommended daily allowance (RDA)—because most of it gets used up as an energy substrate or building block rather than as an anabolic (muscle-building) agent.

The highest concentrations of leucine are found in dairy products -- particularly quality cheese and whey protein.  

Hence, to get the benefits without the side effects, make sure you get your leucine from food only. The typical requirement for leucine to maintain body protein is 1-3 grams daily. However, to optimize its anabolic pathway, you need an estimated 8-16 grams of leucine daily, according to Ori Hofmekler, author of The Warrior Diet, and an expert on how to use food to build muscle and improve your health. You only need three ounces of high-quality whey to reach the eight-gram requirement, compared to 1.5 pounds of chicken, or about 16 eggs, or half a pound of raw cheddar cheese!

Maximizing Your Window of Muscle-Building Potential

Personally I believe there may be great value in using intermittent fasting when working out. I tend to work out in the AM and do not eat until after I work out. However, after a workout, you need to supply your muscles with the appropriate fuel at the appropriate time to provide them with the proper signals and building blocks to build new muscle tissue.  

This is where whey protein, which is often referred to as the gold standard of bioavailable protein, comes into play. Ideally, you'll want to consume the whey about 30 minutes before your workout to help increase both fat burning and muscle building. The whey meal will stop the catabolic process in your muscle and promote protein synthesis towards faster recovery and growth. If you have done a strength-training workout you can repeat the dose about one hour later.

It is generally believed that there is ONLY a two-hour window after exercise that allows your body to fully use the proteins you ingest for optimizing muscle repair and growth. One of the reasons whey protein works so well is that it is a protein that assimilates very quickly, and will get to your muscles within 10-15 minutes of swallowing it, supplying your muscles with the right food at the right time.

However, in the new study, researchers suggested that this is a much larger window and that consuming whey not only immediately following your workout but also for up to 48 hours after resistance exercise may still offer some benefit:

" … since resistance exercise increases MPS for up to ~48 h [hours] consumption of dietary amino acids 24-48 h post-exercise recovery would also likely convey the same synergistic effects on MPS [muscle protein synthesis] as those that are observed when amino acids are provided immediately after resistance exercise. The synergistic enhancement of pre-existing resistance exercise-induced elevations in MPS by protein provision is greatest immediately post-exercise and wanes over time, but may still be present up to 48 h later.

We have recently shown that feeding 15 g of whey protein, a less than optimally effective dose of protein for maximizing MPS, ~24 h after acute resistance exercise results in a greater stimulation of … protein synthesis than the same dose provided at rest.

… We propose that there is, at least in young individuals, an extended 'window of anabolic opportunity' beyond the immediate post-exercise period that persists for at least 24 h …"

A recent study published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise demonstrated that consuming whey protein (20g protein / serving) 30 minutes before resistance training also boosts your body's metabolism for as much as 24 hours after your workout. In practical terms, consuming 20 grams of whey protein before exercise and another serving afterward will most likely yield the double benefit of increasing both fat burning and muscle build-up at the same time.

Reference: http://tinyurl.com/7vhh2my