Today I met with my surgeon to see how the recovery is going. I was secretly hoping to hear it goes better than expected and I can return to my training.
X-Ray pictures, then range of motion assessment… impressive! What?
October 29 (4 weeks later)October 1st
Indeed, I’m healing really fast and haven’t lost any mobility in the shoulder. In fact I am moving so well, that when I asked about physiotherapy he smiled and asked Why? He said I already do the things people usually can’t in this stage of recovery. He also allowed me to slowly get back to the training, however warned me about lifting weights and stay away from it. Swimming, Running, Cycling? Yes, Sir!
What contributed to such fast recovery?
1. Continuous movement. I haven’t stopped moving and every day I would find a way to keep the blood flowing. My arm can’t move, but the legs can. Walk, walk, walk… a lot of walking. Blake might’ve cut a few pounds from putting so many steps.
2. Nutrition. I always stay on top of my nutrition and closely look what I put into my body. Clean, nutritiously rich foods sure helped with recovery by delivering all the necessary building blocks.
3. Attitude. It was not always bright and positive. In fact, I went through a lot of frustration and it got pretty ugly at time. During those time I haven’t stopped reminding myself that it will not last forever and it’s a good mental training.
4. Support. Mental support from the people around helped me to see a better future and find the positives in situation. Knowing that there’s is someone you can ask for help gives hope.
Would I do anythingdifferently?
This is a tough question to answer. I don’t think I would do anything differently… Maybe just working on cutting the negative thoughts and emotions. However without having those dark periods I won’t feel so good right now. No, I won’t change anything. All was good! Couldn’t get any better.
I am so happy and grateful for recovering so fast, so well. I am grateful for everyone who helped me along the way. A huge Thank you!!!
It’s been though, it’s been painful, but it was a good mental training. Time to roll up the sleeves and get back to business! Watch me evolve…
There are so many ways to loose weigh: fast & slow, simple and overly complicated, cool and “sexy” & long, boring… People find motivation from all sorts of things and reasons that are uniquely different for each individual. We are not going to explore the infinite world of weigh loss psychology, dietary restrictions or any other topics of such matter in this chapter.
Being an athlete, you are motivated more by performance rather than just the looks. It’s obvious, the lighter athlete is, the less weigh to carry, especially in sports like cycling or running. The ideal weight is the weight, where you perform at you best, WHILE staying healthy. “Race weight” is not to be kept year round and achieved only for short periods of time during competition season or major athletic events.
In this post you will find the information with real life examples to teach you simple and basic approach to a short-term weigh cut. This technique is slightly adjusted to meet demands of high energy expenditures of endurance training, however it can also be adopted by non-athletic population.
This example uses 150 lbs athlete who tries to loose few kilos to meet his/hers ideal race weight prior to major competition.
Starting Weight: 68 kg Goal Weight: 65 kg Time: 3 weeks Loss Rate: 1 kg/week
1. Determine your Energy Intake
First of all, you need to determine what’s your current energy intake level or “maintenance level”. To do so, you will record everything that goes into your mouth for one-two weeks. There are numerous phone apps and online calculators that will allow to pull up foods nutrition data and estimate energy equivalent of the foods you eat. You need to have a very good idea of how much you eat on a daily and weekly basis. Below is example of 150 lbs athlete daily energy intake:
Such energy intake allows this athlete to maintain his current weight with current level of activity. Multiply by 7 and get the following number:
Weekly Calorie Intake : 21,042 Calories
IMPORTANT NOTE: Calories consumed during exercising (sports nutrition, energy bars, gels, chews, isotonic drinks etc) are not to be included in energy intake calculations.
2. Determine you Energy Expenditure
Now that you have a good idea of how much you eat in terms of numbers, next step is to calculate how much energy you expand. Modern fitness trackers, such as FitBit, Garmin, Apple Watch etc. allow you to guesstimate your energy expenditures during your trainings. Keep in mind that this number is far from being precise, however is used consistently it will allow you to get a general idea of what your body expands and have a rough number of calories used to fuel your trainings.
The example below used Garmin Fenix 5 watch and Garmin Connect App to determine energy expenditure:
Average Weekly Expenditure: ~20,500 Calories
Because the athlete consumes about the same amount of energy as what he expands, he is able to maintain his current body weight. To loose weight he needs to create energy deficit.
3. Create Appropriate Deficit
It is estimated that 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat. Therefore we can make an assumption that you need to burn about 3,500 caloriesto lose 1 pound. We also assume that cutting about 500 – 1,000 calories a day from your maintenance level, will make you lose about 1 to 2 pounds a week. Sounds simple, isn’t it?
Below is example of adjusted energy intake with a goal of loosing 2 kg of body weight in three weeks.
Adjusted Daily Macronutrient & Caloric Intake:
Because of very active lifestyle and a lot of aerobic type training, given athlete needs to make sure he maintains proper glycogen stores in muscles and more importantly – in liver. The goal here is to keep eating as many carbohydrates as possible, while loosing weight. Therefore fats – is the first macronutrient that will need the adjustment.
Fats 25%
Healthy fats are really important for proper body function and hormonal health. About 10 years ago a healthy fat intake was suggested to be 1/2g per 1 kg of body weight. This is when “fat free” products became popular. Modern guidelines suggest the minimal fat intake to be around 1g/kg of body weight. For 150 lbs athlete, minimal dietary fate intake should be no less than 70g of dietary fats per day. It is really important not to go below the minimal amount as it can harm your hormonal health!
Proteins 25%
Healthy protein intake for active people is suggested to not exceed 2-2.5g/kg or 1g/lb of body weight per day. For the athlete with weigh of 150 lbs (70 kg) its 150 g of protein per day.
Carbohydrates 50%
The rest, half of your calories, will be coming from carbohydrates. Again, such high carbohydrate intake is necessary to fuel athlete’s trainings. Ideally carbohydrates will be coming from complex and low glycemic load sources. This is necessary to keep blood sugar within healthy levels.
Energy deficit of 576 Calories/day made our athlete loose 3 kg in one week. Not all the weight loss came from fat, partially it’s a water weight. Anyways he reached his “ideal race weigh” three times faster than expected. This is a very rapid weight loss, not ideal scenario for long term health and performance. Such fast results could also have an impact on nervous system, making the person apathetic, demotivated to exercise and pessimistic about life in general. In case if you loose more than 1 kg a week, you might want to slightly bump your daily energy intake by 100 calories. This will not stop the weight loss, but it will make it healthier and more sustainable in long run.
Meal Examples
Below are few examples of complete meals designed to fuel athlete’s body post-workout with weight loss goal in mind. These meals come from organic and “clean” foods and contain proper amounts of macronutrients to fuel athlete’s body post exercise activity.
More detailed nutritional guidelines to proper fueling, types of foods and timing discussed in section solely dedicated to Sports Nutrition.
Energy expenditure is extremely high in endurance sports and a lot of athletes are failing to adequately fuel their bodies. Under-eating is commonly seen among endurance athletes.
Hydration During Exercise
Hydration is a complex topic and deserves a special attention. Hydration before, during and after exercise is discussed in the post that can be accessed here: Performance Oriented Hydration Guidelines for Athletes. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly suggest you do so, before we move on.
To refresh your memory, the goal of hydration is not to completely stop your body from loosing fluids, but to prevent it from loosing more than a 2% in body weight from fluid loss.
Drink to thirst! Quite simple. BUT make sure you don’t over drink. There is such a nasty thing called hyponatremia (low sodium concentration in the body fluids). Over drinking during exercise can cause dilution of sodium which eventually leads to health problems and even death. Utilizing sodium in your hydration solution helps to maintain blood plasma volume and reduce the risk of over-hydration.
For high intensity and workouts longer than 60 minutes we begin to utilize hydration solutions or sports drinks. When choosing a isotonic drink for your workout aim for the following carbohydrate & electrolyte concentration:
Carbohydrates: 4% – 8%. To calculate it, divide the grams of carbs (sugar) per serving size by the volume of the serving size (in mL), then multiply by 100 . So let’s say you want to fill your bicycle flask of 500 mL with a 6% solution we will need 30 grams of carbs (sugars).
Electrolytes. Formula: 0.5-0.7 grams of sodium per 1 liter (34 oz) of water. So in the same 500 mL cycling water bottle you will need to add 250-350 milligrams of sodium.
Fat or Carbohydrate for Fuel?
Adequate glycogen storage in your body is the key for optimal performance. Exercising at low and moderate intensities your body uses both: muscle glycogen and fat. The higher exercise intensity, the more carbohydrates are required to fuel your engine. Below is an example of how your body shifts from using fat for fuel towards running purely on carbohydrates. This is my VO2 test, conducted in professional laboratory:
Red column on a left is my heart rate (HR), measured in beasts per minute (bpm). Two columns on the right show the carbohydrate (CH) and fat (F) utilization related to heart rate. What we see here is that at lower intensities (<111 bpm) my body works primarily on fat as fuel. However the higher intensity of the exercise becomes, the faster my heart beats, more carbohydrates are being burned. Approximately at 111 bpm my body’s engine works as a pure hybrid, utilizing about the same amount of fat and carbohydrates for fuel. As the intensity increases, less and less fat is being used to fuel the exercise, until my body shifts completely to using carbs for fuel at 163 bpm.
Maintaining optimal carbohydrate stores is essential not only for good performance, but for protecting your health. Your nervous system, and brain primarily use carbohydrates for fuel. When glycogen stores get depleted and blood sugar level is low your brain will do anything to stop you from continuing exercising. You “hit the wall”. Pack your bags buddy, cause you are not going anywhere at this point. Consider yourself lucky if you just finish the race.
90 to 120 minutes are the short exercises and include sprint distance triathlons, time trials, some mountain bike races, 5-K, 10-K etc. What sets such events from longer-distance races is the high intensity.
The main focus is on hydration and the greatest nutritional need is WATER. Assuming adequate nutrition in the days and hours before the race, the athletes body is well prepared with glycogen stores. Taking in solid foods not necessary.
During prolonged or high-intensity physical activities, blood flows out of the least important organs, such as gut to supply your muscles and skin for optimal performance. It impairs your gut’s ability to process and absorb the foods, therefore carbohydrates at this duration is best in a liquid form. Solid foods are better tolerated at very low intensities or exercising in cold-weather.
Don’t sacrifice your health and performance training in a low-carb states during competitive seasons or when the training load is high. Training in such way will reduce your body’s ability to utilize it’s preferred source of fuel (carbohydrates) for energy, which leads to the series of health issues: hormonal disturbances (low testosterone in men), injuries, sickness, sleep disorders, burnouts, mood swings (moodiness). Don’t work AGAINST your body, but work WITH it. Fuel appropriately and it will pay you back with those fitness gains you are chasing for.
The main focus is to maintain adequate glycogen levels in muscles and liver to delay fatigue and prevent “bonking“. Some research shows that including small amounts of protein may be beneficial in improving performance during endurance events. Protein requires additional energy to break down in your gut therefore it can be too much of a load on your digestion system, causing diarrhea and nausea. Test it on yourself!
Inadequate carbohydrate fueling during high-intensity and prolonged exercise can result in muscle wasting.
High glycemic index drinks with much greater maltodextrin or glucose than fructose are preferred. Caffeinated sports drinks or gels has been shown to enhance the utilization of the glucose in sports drinks. Be careful, too much coffee may cause you shit your pant, when intensity get’s higher. Distribute 200-300 calories per hour in equal chunks, ideally from liquid sources. As always, drink enough to satisfy thirst.
Marathon, ultra-marathon, half-Ironman (70.3), Ironman (140.6), cycling races like century rides, ultra-marathon cross-country ski and rowing events fall under this category.
Participating in such events your main focus has to be on your health. Such long exercises is a true test of your nutrition and hydration strategies. Longer durations give more opportunities to fuck up, either catching hypoanatremia, or bonking on the field, running out of fuel.
Typically intensities during such events are staying low, meaning that your body is going to rely on fat for fuel. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need carbs anymore, we do, but not as much as at higher intensities. As discussed previously your body is a hybrid when it comes to fueling the muscles and the ratio of fat:carbs being utilized depends on intensity of physical activity, therefore your heart rate.
“Fat burns in a carbohydrate fire”, meaning that if carbohydrate stored as muscle glycogen runs low, the body will gradually lose its capacity to produce energy from fat.
If the athlete is behind the carbohydrate intake versus expenditure curve, catching up is difficult and may be accomplished only by slowing dramatically or stopping the exercise. Carbohydrate must be taken in right from the beginning.
The highest rate at which an athlete can expand the energy is 1000 calories/hour. It is almost impossible to replace all of it during the exercise, therefore it is really important to eat enough carbohydrates in 24-48 hours prior to the event. If you did, you’ve got about 1500-2000 calories in form of carbohydrates stored in your body, which should last you for a good part of the race, depending on intensity and time exercising.
During 4-12 hours events:
1. Consume approximately 200-400 calories / hour equally distributed every 10-20 minutes. 2. Calories should be coming from carbohydrates, ideally in liquid form.
Formula: min 0.25 – max 0.33 grams carbs per hour x body weight (lbs) Or min 1 calorie/hour x body weight (lbs)
Therefore 150 lb (68 kg) athlete should aim on consuming no less than 150 calories per hour just from carbohydrates)
In addition, taking in some protein could help to the onset of nervous system fatigue. But keep in mind that protein requires extra hydration for absorption and digestion. Too much of it can cause nausea.
Use the guidelines above as the starting point and experiment. Every body is different, therefore go and test things out yourself.
If you’re up to something like this – you’re crazy and I wish you good luck! Nutrition is critical for such events Recommendations are the same as for the previous section, but in addition the solid foods now become necessity. It may include bananas, cookies, jelly sandwiches, fruit juices etc. Foods with higher glycemic index should be chosen. Don’t forget the protein, especially branched-chain amino acids.
That’s all I had in regards to fueling during the exercise. I hope you learned something new and implementation of it will improve your performance. Below I also attached a “cheat sheet” to be used as a quick reference for Pre, During and Post race fueling.
In addition, I uploaded the Race Pace Predictor, Fueling & Bonking Calculator for cycling, made by FASTFITNESSTIPS. This is a great tool to use while planning your race fueling strategy. Here are the video instructions of how to use it: Fueling Science! How to pace your cycling to avoid bonking.
Do you want to get the taste of every shade of pain? I’ve got a perfect recipe for you – get yourself dehydrated. All you need is to lose just 1%-2% worth of your body’s weight through the fluid loss. Here is how you do it: wake up early in the morning to get that 90 minutes bike ride done, before work or school. Have nothing besides a cup or two of coffee and jump straight on the trainer. I guarantee that your heart rate won’t go higher than zone 3-4, no matter how hard you push yourself. RPE of 3-4 will feel like 7-8, making every second of your workout count as you courageously suffer through it. Besides that, you might experience some of the following symptoms, but they most likely have nothing to do with you being dehydrated. Push harder!
Headache (wether changes)
Fatigue (don’t be lazy!)
Dizziness (thats ok, just don’t close your eyes)
Increased thirst (resist! less water = higher RPE)
Tachycardia (you won’t even feel it)
Weak pulse (don’t worry about that)
Chills/cold hands (put on an extra jacket)
Organ failure (people live even with one kidney)
Shrunken brain (less weight to carry)
Heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heatstroke – those are the things that will add more flavor to your experience of riding the paintrain. There are few tips on how to access those add on features and amplify your suffering:
Do some interval training outside, including extreme spikes in intensity or volume
Try exercising when sick. Disease and fewer is not an excuse to skip a workout
Put on as many clothes as you have. Let’s see how many cycling jerseys you’ve got in your closet
Neglect all the clues and heat-related illness signals your body sends you
Few more workouts like this and you begin questioning your abilities as an athlete and your existence on this planet overall. A little shit-talking voice in your head gets louder and louder, yelling at you to stop this suffer fest and quit the sport all together. Perfect! There are many other ways to get on the paintrain with a first-class seat, but I will not discuss all of them just yet. If it’s something that you’re specifically looking for, let me know and I will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to obtain the ticket to the suffer-land for free.
Let’s get serious
Performance Hydration
Let’s talk first about why exactly is hydration so important?
I bet you heard a million times that making sure you are well hydrated with clean water is essential to your well-being. I’ll just refresh a few things in your memory in regards to why you need to drink water.
About 40 liters of water contains a 150 pounds human body. Every day you loose 2-3 liters of fluids. Your body doesn’t produce water and heavily rely on external sources. Without proper amount of water, your body fails to:
Transport fuel to your working muscles
Eliminate the byproducts of your trainings from your cells
Keeping you alive and not let you dies from overheating by cooling itself down.
Digest the foods you eat and convert them into the fuel for your next training sessions.
Keep your brain functioning, making you a bit smarter than your dog. Concentration is compromised.
Maintain the blood volume. The sweat that you loose during exercise comes out of your blood plasma. Loose too much sweat -> blood volume goes down -> performance decreases.
The list goes on and on, but the main point here is that WATER IS LIFE.
Dehydration
When endurance athlete “hits the wall” or getting “bonked”, running out of energy, he can grab a gel or coke and rapidly put that necessary calories into the engine. Up to a certain point dehydration is manageable and there no performance decline. However, if the athlete is getting dehydrated, there is no fast way to restore hydration status. When is too late? Over 2% of body’s mass lost through the fluids links to a low performance. Your main task as an athlete is to stay above 2% or 3% off for fluids lost during exercise. Its easy to miss the point of not coming back and once you’re in the hole of dehydration, you’re not coming out of it in a course of the event. Game is over! Or it for the least your performance is highly compromised.
A symptom of dehydration is often expressed as hunger. That sound weird, but it’s true. When people reach for carbohydrate rich foods, because they’re hungry in the pm its often the fact that they simply dehydrated. By retaining hydration status during the day, it get easier to manage portion control and quality of food consumed.
Hyponatremia
On the flip side is over-hydration problem – hyponatremia. A lot of athletes are over-hydrating lowering the body sodium levels to dangerously low levels. Your blood becomes thicker and saltier and you feel thirsty. If you drink a lot of water or a lot of low-sodium fluids you actually diluting your blood down. You hold about 32 oz (950 mL) of fluids in your stomach. Depending on your body size and exercise intensity it empties at a rate about 30-42 oz (890-1242 mL) per hour. If you drink too much, too fast, your stomach gets overfilled, having no choice, but make you vomit to remove the excess. Overdrinking can cause nausea.
Electrolytes
You noticed in the past that your sweat leaves white marks on your clothing. Sometimes less, sometimes more. With sweat you never loose just the water, but also electrolytes. Without those positively and negatively charged ions you won’t be able to contract your muscles properly, making your running form seem more like a butt injured bear running away from the hunter. Potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium are the micronutrients that in proper combination allow your body to remain in homeostasis by maintaining the fluid balance. Sodium is predominant electrolyte so you mainly loose this important nutrient with your sweat.
Five main electrolytes inside your body
If you don’t replace the fluids and electrolytes lost, it will essentially pull a cascade of negative events that will make you a dehydrated bitch. Luckily for you, mother nature provided your body with reliable fluid level management feature – a thirst. When too much water leaves your cells – they shrink and your brain gets notified immediately. If you feel thirsty, you’re on your way to a suffer-land, sponsored by dehydration. Listen to your body and drink enough to satisfy thirst, not more or less.
Better Hydration = Better Performance
You may not feel thirsty during exercise, but you absolutely need to hydrate while you exercise. Plain water is the best! There are three kinds you are safe to go with:
Purified water. This water is free of contaminants and produced by deionization, distillation, reverse osmosis and carbon filtration.
Spring water. Spring water is the “natural” version of purified water. may have been disinfected, but most impurities and contaminants remain. In terms of quality, spring water is much closer to tap water than purified water.
Alkaline water. It’s less acidic than tap water, however there is little evidence that its healthier than regular tap water.
“Taste and temperature have no perceptible effect on fluid absorption”
Karel, L
Sports drinks
Hypertonics. They are the high-calorie sports drinks or simply soda. Drinking these is notoptimal way to hydrate as your body has to move water out of the bloodstream into the gut to absorb the calories within the drink.
Isotonics or Hypotonics. This types of drinks are formulated to a concentration that is similar to your blood, which makes them a good hydration tools.
Coffee & Tea
Coffee is considered as probably harmless and possibly healthy. Just keep in mind that it’s a central nervous system stimulant so try not to over drink it.Commonly accepted safe dose of it is no more than 32 oz (946 ml) a day.
Tea also has caffeine in it, but way less than coffee. It is often praised for its health benefits and can help to fight free radicals, reduce the risk of heart related disease and even cancer. Herbal teas increase immunity, support weight loss, control appetite, promote better sleep and lower stress levels. It’s not a magic bullet, but if you get to pick between tea and coffee, I would go with the first one.
Juice, Energy drinks and Alcohol
Liquid produce is not healthier than whole, solid produce. Real juice, even with no added sugars is a very easy way to over-consume the calories, compared with eating whole foods. However it may come in handy after the intense workout, assisting in rehydration and delivering vitamins with minerals. To make it even a better post-workout option, add a tea spoon of pink Himalayan salt to make it more similar to rehydration sports drinks.
Energy drinks is a no-no! 5-hour Energy, NOS, Monster Energy, Red Bull, Rockstar etc. is a poison straight from a can. Sugar, enormous amount of calories and caffeine along with other stimulants will put you at risk of cardiac arrest. Save your heart and opt from such drinks, especially during the exercise.
There are no benefits to alcohol consumption. Sorry. The use of alcohol even in small amounts can negatively affect your hydration status, sleep, recovery, motivation and overall performance.Not to mention, it causes weight gain and weakens your immune system. If you are an athlete, especially during a competition season, do yourself a favor – stay away from alcohol.
Know your Sweat Rate
Everyone looses fluids differently, therefore to better understand how much you are sweating it’s important to calculate your sweat rate. Right before your next big workout, jump on scales and record your weight. When finished, re-weight yourself and calculate your sweat rate using the example of how to estimate the sweat rate for 150 lbs athlete after a 2 hour 30 minutes bike ride:
Pre-exercise weight: 150 lbs (68 kg)
Post-exercise weight: 148.5 lbs (67.3 kg)
Weight (fluids) loss: 1.5 lbs (0.7 kg) or 24.7 oz (700 mL)
Water consumed during exercise: 3 liters (100 oz)
Total Sweat Loss: 24.7 oz + 100 oz = 124.7 oz (3688 mL)
HEALTHY PEE CHART [Digital image]. (2017, January 30). Retrieved February 3, 2019, from https://hydratem8.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/healthy-pee-chart_03.png
Modern “trendy” diets, aka Keto, Paleo, Carnivor, Vegan etc., made us perceive carbohydrates as evil. There are so many things that impact the way our bodies absorb and process foods. Every person is unique, with his set of hormones, digestive microflora, physical and mental stress loads etc… When it comes to developing a healthy individual diet a lot of variables need to be taken to the account: macronutrient content, caloric load, glycemic index, meal timing and a lot more.
For a while I’ve been wondering if the order we consume nutrients during the meal impact glucose response. I’ve been thinking, will it change anything if we eat proteins first and carbs later or in reverse order. Eventually everything mixes in the stomach anyways, so is there is a difference to the order we eat? I found the answer and I am excited to share my finding with you.
After searching for a while I found this recent research made by Dr. Alpana P. Shukla that brings up the term – food order. The term “food order” refers to the sequence of the nutrients consumed during the meal. Turns out that timing of carbohydrates consumption during a meal has significant impact on the blood glucose level response. The research shown that when the carbohydrate component of the meal is consumed at the end of the meal or last, the effect on the glucose level will be way smaller that if the carbs would be consumed on the beginning of the meal. In other words, if you start your meal from eating proteins and vegetables first and save the carbs for the end, it wont cause the blood sugar level go up high. The table below shows that carbs eaten last resulted in 37% less of a blood sugar spike and 49,6% less of insulin response:
This is fascinating! Simply by switching the order you eat your food you can control you glucose and insulin levels in control and loose or maintain your weight. I am also fascinated to see how it can help people with diabetes and other insulin related deceases.
Protein pre-loading. Another, related study showed that taking whey protein drink shortly before a high-glycaemic-index meal (your favorite pancakes or pasta), lowered the insulin response by 28%:
“The results showed that over the whole 180 min post-meal period, glucose levels were reduced by 28% after whey pre-load with a uniform reduction during both early and late phases”, (Jakubowicz, D, July 10, 2014).
The study published by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in July 2005 proved the previous one:
“Whey proteins have insulinotropic effects and reduce the postprandial glycemia in healthy subjects. The mechanism is not known, but insulinogenic amino acids and the incretin hormones seem to be involved”, (Anders H Frid, July 1, 2005).
I like how they put “the mechanism is not known” in a study, but it doesn’t matter. What matters to us that is it works. Simply have a whey protein before your carb loaded meal and you won’t skyrocket your blood glucose levels up. When choosing whey protein, I suggest looking at isolate as it usually has the least amount of added sugars. Make sure you check the label for sugars content as you don’t need more than 3-5 g of sugars per scoop.
Does eating this way impact satiety? Yes it does. The research showed that protein consumed first, suppressed the ghrelin hormone level. Ghrelin is the “hunger hormone” because it stimulates appetite, increases food intake and promotes fat storage. Good news, keeping your food in order will make you feel more full and you will eat less.
Here is the study published by Diabetes Care journal. The experiment was done in 3 ways:
Carbohydrate-first meal: carbohydrate (bread and orange juice), followed 10 min later by protein (chicken) and vegetables;
Carbohydrate-last meal: protein and vegetables, followed 10 min later by carbohydrate;
Sandwich: all meal components together, each half consumed over 10 min with a 10-min interval in between.
Below are the results:
Main takeaways:
The order in which you eat carbs and proteins matter. It is not only “how much” and “what not to eat”. Optimal timing of carbohydrate consumption during a meal have a big impact on blood glucose levels and as result on your health and body composition;
You can loose weight by simply eating protein and vegetables first and carbohydrates at the end;
Never eat carbohydrates alone. They should be consumed as a part of the meal, followed by protein intake;
Taking a whey protein drink before meal reduces blood glucose spike;
Eating proteins first make you feel more full for longer;
References:
Shukla AP, Dickison M, Coughlin N, et al. The impact of food order on postprandial glycaemic excursions in prediabetes. Diabetes Obes Metab. 2018;1–5. https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.13503
Aronne, L. J. (2018, February 23). Effect of Food Order on Ghrelin Suppression. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2018/02/22/dc17-2244
Shukla, A. P., Iliescu, R. G., Thomas, C. E., & Aronne, L. J. (2015, July 01). Food Order Has a Significant Impact on Postprandial Glucose and Insulin Levels. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/38/7/e98
Jakubowicz, D., Froy, O., Ahrén, B., Boaz, M., Landau, Z., Bar-Dayan, Y., . . . Wainstein, J. (2014, July 10). Incretin, insulinotropic and glucose-lowering effects of whey protein pre-load in type 2 diabetes: A randomised clinical trial. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-014-3305-x?TB_iframe=true&width=921.6&height=921.6
Anders H Frid, Mikael Nilsson, Jens Juul Holst, Inger ME Björck; Effect of whey on blood glucose and insulin responses to composite breakfast and lunch meals in type 2 diabetic subjects, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 82, Issue 1, 1 July 2005, Pages 69–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/82.1.69
