In this day and age, “Fitness” and how to look and feel the way you want can get a little confusing…
There are so many different diets that claim to be the best by the people who follow them…
There are more supplements than ever…
Even the food industry has picked up on health buzzwords like protein and added it to everything from cereal ... to chips ... to ice cream ... all in an effort to get you to eat more…
There seems to be a new fitness studio or way to exercise popping up frequently (personally, I actually enjoy this as it provides more people an opportunity to find something they love).
With all of that going on around you, in front of you on social media, and the conversations you have with your co-workers, friends, and family … it can be hard to realize which route to take for your fat loss journey.
It's hard to pinpoint what will help you burn fat and earn the results you want … and what will not.
Even figuring out what to eat can be tough.
So in this blog, I want to explain one thing that helped me a ton, and that can help you earn real results so you don’t waste time, money, and flat out get frustrated by the lack of results … I’ve been there, done that, and want to help you avoid doing that yourself.
What’s Most Important for Fat Loss
If you get down to the basics, I think we can both agree that a good nutrition plan and working out are the two most crucial pieces to fat loss! But today, I want to talk about another very important piece of your fat loss plan.
It’s a piece most people do wrong. Shoot, I know I was doing it wrong for a long time, leading to less-than-desirable results.
Unfortunately, so many people who have a fat loss goal are short-changing their results by failing to do the right things post-workout.
This is not “new” information by any means; it is just highly overlooked when it comes to what truly works.
Therefore, today I want to fill you in on what is happening to your body during resistance training and what you can do after a workout to help you earn the best possible results when it comes to building muscle and burning fat.
The Impact of Exercise on Your Body
When done properly, post-workout shakes can help support your fat loss results and here is why … when you are doing any sort of resistance training (weightlifting, machines, Crossfit, bodyweight workouts, TRX, etc.) you are doing two things to your body:
• You are depleting your glycogen stores. (Glycogen is glucose that is stored in your muscle cells to be used as fuel during bouts of intense activity. Glucose is a simple sugar and type of carb.)
• You are breaking down your muscle tissue and creating micro-traumas to your muscle fibers.
Proper post-workout nutrition can address both of these issues as your body has a set order of operations it must go through to replenish, rebuild, and recover.
If you do this part right, it can help you recover faster, reduce soreness, and maintain more lean muscle. By maintaining more lean muscle tissue, this can help keep your metabolism high while dieting, as well as helping you earn the lean, toned, athletic look that many are working towards.
So, let’s talk about what to eat after a workout.
What to Eat After a Workout
After your resistance training, your body will work very hard for 24-48 hours afterward to repair itself, at which time it will burn plenty of calories during that process. Muscle is your metabolic workhorse, meaning the more of it you have or the longer it stays active, the more calories you are going to burn every day … which can lead to better results.
Your body is genetically built for survival and will always replenish your glycogen stores first and foremost.
So, before your body is able to make repairs to the muscle … glycogen stores need to be replenished.
Your body thinks of it like this … having stored energy is essential for survival, whereas looking good on the beach is not.
See, your body is an incredible machine, and no matter what you give your body post-workout, it will recover.
What your body wants and needs for better and faster recovery is protein AND glucose, not one or the other.
What most people don’t realize ... once again, myself included ... is that when you wrap up your workout and leave the gym … your body is still in a state of breakdown.
Therefore, it's your job to get your muscles out of the catabolic state of breaking down for fuel, and signal to the body to start rebuilding and repairing that muscle.
This can be done with spiking insulin and by stimulating muscle protein synthesis.
How Do You Make the Switch?
This is where Ignition can help facilitate quick and efficient recovery. Ignition is a pure dextrose monohydrate.
This means that it is a mono-saccharide that assimilates rapidly (aka a quick digesting carb that our bodies run off of), and requires little to no work by your body, to break it down and shuttle it into the muscle cell so it can replenish glycogen stores.
The faster your glycogen stores are replenished, the better and faster you can recover ... and that’s why Ignition is so great.
This makes it the most rapid assimilating carb available, and it also spikes your insulin post-workout. You might be thinking, isn’t spiking insulin a bad thing for fat loss?
It certainly can be when done at the wrong times. Post-workout though, it can be very beneficial. A spike in insulin will halt the catabolic process your muscles are going through, and open amino acid receptors in the damaged muscle tissue, in order for the repair and recovery processes to begin.
In basic terms, it stops the breaking down of your muscles, and tells them to get ready to repair and recover.
Insulin is also a nutrient delivery hormone that helps transport nutrients to where they need to go.
It also tells the cells at those locations to accept and store the nutrients upon arrival.
The thing about insulin is that it drastically inhibits lipolysis (fat loss). You cannot burn fat with high insulin levels, it’s physiologically impossible.
In very simple terms, insulin turns off your ability to burn fat (it’s a storage hormone). Therefore, you're right in being a bit concerned about spiking insulin ... because if your goal is fat loss, you don’t want to spike insulin throughout the day.
Spiking your insulin levels post-workout though, and driving those nutrients into the muscle cell, can drastically improve recovery and help increase your results.
The faster you repair your muscle, the more muscle you can maintain while dieting (that is assuming you are sticking to a good nutrition plan that is inline with your goals too), and the more calories you can burn each and every day.
Plus, you'll can feel more recovered and be able to train hard the next time you hit the gym!
What About Post-Workout Protein Shakes?
Now that we have covered replenishing glycogen stores, it’s time to talk about recovering the micro-trauma tears to the muscle from exercising.
Your best option will be a low-temperature processed hydrolyzed whey protein isolate. Phormula-1 is a low-temperature processed hydrolyzed whey protein isolate whose protein peptides are 100% hydrolyzed. This can be much more efficient for recovery and your results than eating a bunch of protein.
Why? Great question. When a protein is hydrolyzed, natural digestive enzymes are added to it during manufacturing that takes the long protein chains and splits them down into smaller pieces.
This essentially pre-digests the protein so that when you drink it, your body doesn’t have to do much to it … and it can quickly get it where it is needed: Your muscles!
Plus, Phormula-1 is low-temperature processed, meaning that it was not exposed to super high heats during the manufacturing process.
To give you an idea, most protein powders are exposed to 800 degrees on average, which can cause a good amount of breakdown to your protein.
Instead, using lower temperatures allows the protein to be more bioavailable and less denatured. Allowing your body to get more out of them, better mix-ability, incredible taste, and it helps avoid any upset stomach feelings some may have experienced from protein before.
By using Phormula-1 with ignition as an immediate after-workout protein shake, you take advantage of the digestion rate of both products, as they work together to give your body exactly what it needs as quickly as possible post-workout.
What About Pre-Workout Shakes?
While both pre and post-workout protein shakes can be beneficial ... it's entirely up to you whether you choose to have a pre-workout protein shake or not.
Pre-workout protein shakes can be great because they sit lighter in your stomach than a whole-food source of protein. For this reason alone, a lot of people like taking a pre-workout protein shake to get extra protein and help support energy and performance for their workout.
Now, if you eat a high-protein meal within an hour or two of your workout ... a pre-workout protein shake may not be as necessary.
When it comes to seeing your goals, what matters most is your total daily protein intake. I recommend prioritizing your post-workout recovery, then adding in more protein when it's necessary.
Best Post-Workout Stack
Ignition and Phormula-1 were designed to go hand in hand post-workout to give your body exactly what it needs after resistance training.
Just drinking the Post-Workout shake will not directly make you lose more weight or have the fat falling off … it’s not magic, no supplement is.
But, because it can help your body recover properly and faster, you can set yourself up to retain more lean muscle tissue ... which will help you burn more calories and fat for longer, and ultimately help to speed up your fat loss results!
Plus, you will just feel a heck of a lot better after you drink Phormula-1 and Ignition post-workout, since your body will actually have what it needs to recover properly and quickly!
If you have questions about your fat loss plan, please feel free to contact us here at 1st Phorm Headquarters, where one of our NASM Certified Personal Trainers and NASM Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialists can help you out… for FREE!
You can email us at CustomerService@1stPhorm.com or give us a call at 1-800-409-9732 any day of the week from 6 AM to 10 PM central.
