Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2023-06-04

Whey protein supplements are very popular. Whey powder was the first protein powder to be mass-marketed. In the early days, you could pick the "best" one by simply seeing which tub had the most muscular Mr. Olympia contender featured on its label. Obviously, if you bought THAT one you would soon look like a muscle mountain yourself. Except, this is not what happened.

Not only is protein typically not the limiting factor for beginner and intermediate training people who want to add some muscle, whey powder isn't a good way (no pun intended) to get extra protein. Whey was always the waste product from cheese-making until someone came up with the idea of drying it to sell as protein powder. And that is how the scamming began. Whey is the dairy equivalent of the meat industry's floor sweepings that are made into hot dogs. And it comes with all the antibiotics and stress hormones you get with factory-farm milk.

What's hilarious is to see someone pour the whey off the top of their yogurt and then have a whey shake later. Well, maybe not hilarious. Maybe just sad.

One problem with whey separated from the casein in dairy products is you're getting only the (much) faster-absorbing of the two. Whey has relatively short chains of molecules, so it is "uptaked" faster. It's not as dramatic as separating the juice from fruit, but it is a problem. Your body cannot utilize much protein at one time; what's not utilized is converted to fat.

The figures on utilization are grossly overstated, and we know this for a variety of reasons. We also know the body doesn't allow much whey before the insulin starts cranking out to remove it (convert it to fat). This is the dark side of whey that the "supp" industry doesn't disclose. Insulin is antagonistic to testosterone. You need testosterone to, among other things, signal the bones to store calcium. Testosterone suppression is all downside.

And it can get worse. Many of the whey powders contain sugar. The "mass gainers" contain huge amounts of sugar. Many of those wanting to avoid being noticed for sugar, add other garbage. And I don't mean just corn syrup solids, which are fantastically bad for you. Various gums, colorings, artificial flavors, and other "enhancements" may be added.

Better choices

A better choice, if you want dairy, is either non-homogenized yogurt made from the milk of grass-fed cows (e.g., Amish yogurt) or 4% fat cottage cheese made from the milk of grass-fed cows (e.g., Amish cottage cheese). You will still have to deal with lactose and you're getting a lot of calories. It is not possible to "supplement" your protein needs this way and be lean.

Another issue to consider is these specific whole foods are very expensive, if you can even get them locally where you live. They are very expensive because the "economies of scale" (cheating the animal of its basic welfare) enjoyed by the animal torture industry that produces the pus-containing cow's milk you find at the supermarket are not used by ethical dairy farmers. Adding to the cost is the FDA, which is essentially the "hitman" arm of Big Agra. They routinely raid organic dairy farmers in an illegal effort to drive them out of business. If you buy whey protein, you're supplementing crime more than you're supplementing your protein intake.

Eggs are typically classified with dairy, because the FDA goons who dump organic milk on the ground also hassle organic chicken farmers. It's part of their job as federal employees of Big Agra. That said, you might swear off dairy (cow's milk products) but still consume chicken eggs. The catch with chicken eggs is you need to spend the money to get eggs laid by unabused chickens. If the chickens are subsisting on corn or are living a hellish existence, the eggs will be toxic instead of healthy. I am fortunate to live in an area with a plethora of Amish farms. The Amish don't abuse chickens or other animals. Wal-Mart sells "cage free" eggs; what they did was just remove the cages but change nothing else. The birds still live in ammoniated air with the same meager 2 feet of space they had with the cages. I eat a lot of those Amish eggs, averaging 8 to 10 per day. These eggs run about 6 grams of protein each, so I figure I get an extra 50g/day via eggs.

You can't go wrong with a plant-base protein supplement if you get a blend that evens out the amino profile and gives you a "complete protein". But you can go upscale to get better-tasting, better-mixing powders that also come from better sources and thus are utilized more effectively with far less gas than the econo brands. The question is how much should you consume?

How much?

With my other whole foods, I easily get 1 gram of protein for each pound of body weight. But it is not enough, primarily because of how protein sources differ. That is, it's not the total grams. If I don't supplement, I lose muscle because I train so hard. So I have to supplement. If you are seriously training with weights, you probably cannot get all of your necessary protein from whole foods either. This is especially true if you've opted out of poisoning yourself from our contaminated meat supply or our even more contaminated fish supply. So supplementation is necessary for us hard trainers. It is not necessary for the person who "goes to the gym" to do a circuit on machines three times a week, unless that person has a protein-poor diet. It is cheaper and healthier to fix that diet.

How much protein does a hard trainer need? Nobody can give you an honest answer. They may say X grams per pound of body weight, but as noted already not all protein is utilized to the same degree. You'll have to experiment. If you increase your protein supplementation too much, you'll also increase your body fat. If you ingest too much protein at once, you'll increase your body fat.

Here's where I cheat. I buy a supplement called FundAminos. I can barely tolerate the taste, though some people love the taste. I probably don't use enough water, making it too tart. The utilization is superior to meat (the gold standard there), and you don't get the calories that come with protein (4 calories per gram). No nitrogen loss, either. So this is what I consume post-workout, along with beta-alanine, creatine, and l-glutamine. I get the equivalent of 50 grams of protein (fully utilized) but not the 200 calories that come with it. Now I don't need to use those expensive vegan powders quite as much. I could forego them altogether and just increase my use of FundAminos, but I like the taste and texture of those vegan powder shakes.

I just make a little vegan protein shake in a coffee cup. I add water and stir it with a spoon. If I use the choco flavored powder, I often add a scoop of cocoa powder (10 calories) for a rich, chocolatey taste. On training days, I have one after Meal #2 and Meal #4. Every day, I have a vanilla-flavored one as the basis for Meal #6 (not actually a meal per se, because it is really small). I don't use the big scoop that comes in the tub, I use a small one so I don't make a mess while adding the powder to a coffee cup. These coffee cup shakes typically run about 25g of protein, or 100 calories each. That's 300 calories of protein per day, amounting in 12 days to the calories it takes to make a pound of fat. But I don't gain a pound of fat, because I keep my total daily calories close to what I need each day. And sometimes, I have an extra one of these shakes. Just for the heck of it.

Keep it simple

Many people will make this protein intake thing unnecessarily complicated. If you meal prep, your meals are all a known size and (estimated) calorie count. I just eyeball these, no real measuring. I supplement with a modest amount of protein at a time, taking in those calories across the day. Trying to be precise with "calories in" when my "calories out" can vary dramatically is a waste of time. For example, climbers typically burn 1200 calories per hour. So in two hours, a typical climber burns more calories than the typical person should ingest in a whole day. I'm a climber. And some of my sessions are so amped up with back to back climbs that the hourly burn is 3X what's typical.

My weight training sessions also burn calories at a prodigious rate because while I am resting from a set of one exercise I am usually doing a set of another. For example, I'll do a set of wide-grip pulldowns followed immediately by a set of biceps curls. This is the same HIIT that Arnold, Lou, and Frank did "back in the day" before fat burner supplements were available. If it's leg day and I'm doing this, the calorie burn is far more than it is on shoulder day (big difference in muscle mass being used).

Then there are all the projects I do. This is beyond mowing the lawn (mine is on a steep hill), cleaning the gutters, doing the housework (it never ends!), and generally living life. For example, I recently painted the trim on my garage doors. I had done a wood repair late last fall, but it was too late in the year for decent weather to paint. So I got it this spring, using a high-end primer and a brush before brushing on the paint. And before that, the taping. Afterwards, the clean-up. Think of all the bending, stooping, ladder climbing, reaching, squatting, etc. I do two or three projects per year. I don't try to count the calories I'm using and I don't wear a Fit Bit or similar. I just eat more, knowing I will be using more energy.

Of course, I don't do cardio because it simply trains your body to conserve calories. If you are trying to be lean and muscular, you can't be doing cardio (not the traditional low-intensity stuff, which is what most people mean). Incorporating HIIT into my weight training and also engaging in a sport that is HIIT takes care of the calorie burn issue, but also makes it hard for me to know precisely how many calories to ingest. I have found that when I am in a calorie deficit, I feel hungry. It's not because of sugar cravings (I don't eat any processed sugar), it's because my body wants fuel.

Mindconnection eNL, 2023-06-04

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