Ep. #440: Should You Eat Protein Before or After Your Workouts?

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including bigger, leaner, stronger for men. Thinner, leaner, stronger for women, my flexible dieting cookbook, the shredded chef, and my 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym.

The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes Noble stores.

Again, that’s bigger leaner stronger for men, thinner leaner stronger for women, The shredded chef and the little black book of workout motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books, 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting.

Meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www. legionathletics. com slash audible. That’s L E G I O N athletics slash a U D I B L E. And sign up for your account. You probably know that eating enough protein is an important part of gaining muscle and strength.

A high protein diet is better for both of those things. But, is when you eat protein important? And in particular, is it important to eat protein before your workouts? And, or after your workouts, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. And many people ask me this question are, and are confused because there’s a lot of conflicting advice out there and also conflicting research, at least if you take the research at face value.

On one hand, some people say when you eat protein doesn’t matter, and they have studies that seem to indicate this, that having protein before or after workouts does not influence muscle and strength gain. And on the other hand, you have people who say it does matter, and who might acknowledge that the Anabolic window concept is outdated and not entirely true, but you still should be eating some protein before and after workouts.

And they too often have studies that seem to back up their claims. And then there you are in the middle wondering who’s right. I’m Mike Matthews from Legion Athletics, and I’m going to give you a conclusive answer. So let’s just start with the long story short. So the bottom line is, as far as protein intake goes, what is most important is simply eating enough protein every day.

How you get there in terms of number of feedings and timing of feedings does not matter nearly as much as simply getting to the right number, which is going to be somewhere between 0. 8 and 1. 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day, depending on your body composition and what you are doing with your calories.

For example, if you are a fairly muscular person and experienced weightlifter who’s cutting, who’s in a calorie deficit, I would recommend your protein intake to be somewhere between one and 1. 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. But if you are that person and you are lean bulking, you are in a calorie surplus, then you could lower your intake to somewhere around 0.

8 grams per pound of body weight per day and be totally fine. That said, I wouldn’t recommend that you completely neglect protein timing though. For example, a number of studies indicate that for long term muscle and strength gain, eating more servings of protein per day, somewhere around four or five servings with a few hours in between each is very likely superior that to fewer servings.

So let’s say Maybe two servings per day with more hours in between, or possibly even three servings per day. Your standard, three squares a day type of approach. It is very possible. And the evidence does suggest that a five or six serving of protein per day approach will help you at least a little bit over the longterm get more jacked.

Now, some people say, yeah, who cares though? The effect is minimal. What does it really matter? And I understand that, but you have to remember that as a. A natural weightlifter, we can get our fundamentals right and that’s going to be 80 percent of our progress and our results are just going to be applying the fundamentals consistently.

And those are both that applies both to the dietary side of things as well as the training side of things. But if we want to try to get more out of the time and effort we are putting into our bodies and tap into that remaining 20 percent of progress that is available to us, at least in terms of speed, then we should look at what else we can do.

What other things can we do that are going to give us slight edges? And if you took any of those things individually and said, Oh yeah, maybe that maybe you’ll gain muscle 5 percent faster by doing that. That’s not very exciting. And yes, that’s true. But what if you could do three or four things that add 5%?

Oh, now it’s 15 or 20 percent faster. And again, if you play that out over time, it takes most people, men and women I’d say it takes most men probably three to five years when you start from scratch. You’re just a normal dude. It takes three to five years to get the type of body that most guy, most guys want.

And for women, two years or so, maybe two or three years. And so when you look at it over a longer time period, if you can get to your end goal, 20 percent faster, that actually could be a pretty significant difference in terms of total time. And so that’s why I talk about things like protein timing or supplementation, right?

So as far as muscle building goes, is creatine going to. Be a game changer for you. No, but if you’re like most people, you will respond well to it and you will gain muscle and strength a bit faster. And if you play that out over the course of years, you might end up with your ideal physique three to six months sooner because you were taking creatine, is that worth the relatively?

Cheap cost and no cost in terms of side effects or health. I think so. And so that, I think, is the lens through which you should view something like the topic at hand. Should you eat protein before or after your workouts? This is one of those slight improvements you can make that is not nearly as important as many people would have you think, but is worth optimizing because it’s easy and it can make a slight difference in your results over time.

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It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. All right. So let’s start with pre workout protein. Now I had mentioned earlier that some studies indicate that having some protein before your workout is going to help you build more muscle as a result of that workout, whereas other studies indicate that there are no such effects and it doesn’t matter.

Now, the key factor in these studies and just in general, the thing that determines whether eating protein before you work out will or not help you gain muscle and strength faster is when you last ate protein before you worked out. If you had, let’s say a scoop of whey protein, maybe 2025 grams of protein, and that’s it’s going to take your body around two hours, give or take a little bit of time to fully process that food to digest it, absorb it.

And it’s done. Whereas if you ate a steak as a part of a mixed meal, maybe there’s a, there was a potato with the steak and maybe some butter on the potato to add some more fat to it. It might take your body six hours to fully process that meal. So what that means then is if you had the scoop of protein, let’s say three hours ago and you’re going to the gym now, your body is almost certainly done processing that food.

Your body’s plasma or blood amino acid levels are not going to be elevated. They’re going to be at the normal baseline level and you could benefit from having some protein before you hit the weights. You could benefit from starting your workout with your body’s. Amino acid levels, blood or plasma amino acid levels elevated because that kickstarts the body’s muscle building machinery.

If however, you had the scoop of protein, let’s say an hour ago and you’re going to the gym now, or you had some protein as a part of a mixed meal. So maybe it was some protein. It doesn’t have to be steak, of course, but maybe it was chicken with rice and something else. Again maybe some fats in there, which helps slow down the digestion of food.

And if that’s the case, then you probably won’t benefit from having some protein before you go to the gym because you’re, your body’s built. Plasma or blood amino acid levels will still be elevated from the previous meal, whether it was just the scoop of protein an hour ago or the mixed meal a couple hours ago.

So a good simple rule of thumb here is if you train first thing in the morning like me, or if it’s been several hours since you last had a smaller meal that contained protein. Have about 20 grams of protein before you work out and chances are that is going to give you a slight boost that if sustained over a long enough period of time can add up to slump something at least slightly significant.

Okay. So what about post workout protein? This one is simpler because the weight of the evidence is clearer here and the consensus among most of the respected professionals in the evidence based fitness space is that yes, you should eat some protein after you work out. Now it’s not hugely important of course, but a number of studies do show that having some protein after your workouts can help you gain muscle faster over time.

Okay. And this makes sense because we know that one, after training our muscles, they are more responsive to the muscle building stimulus provided by protein. And two, we know that muscle protein breakdown rates really start to ramp up after training and that having some protein negates this. So the rule of thumb here is have 20 to 40 grams of protein within an hour or so of finishing your workout.

Now, as far as types of protein go, what’s best for pre and post workout nutrition, anything will work. So if you have one specific preference, that’s not whey protein, for example, that’s totally fine. However, whey is particularly suited to pre and post workout nutrition because it is rapidly digested and absorbed.

And it’s very abundant in the amino acid leucine, which is the primary driver of weight loss. of muscle protein synthesis as far as the amino acids that protein contains goes. Leucine is the one that really kickstarts your body’s muscle building machinery, so to speak. And those two things, the rapid digestion and absorption and the abundance of leucine are why you see in research that whey causes a very sharp increase in muscle protein synthesis rates.

And as far as types of whey proteins go, whey concentrate is fine. If you want to save some money, but I myself prefer 100 percent whey isolate because I think it tastes better generally speaking than whey concentrate. It mixes better and it’s easier on your stomach because all the lactose has been removed.

And that’s why I sell a 100 percent weight isolate product called way plus that you can check out over at legionathletics. com slash way l e g i o n athletics. com slash way. If you want to learn about, Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, And if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best selling health and fitness books, including bigger, leaner, stronger for men, thinner, leaner, stronger for women, my flexible dieting cookbook, the shredded chef and my 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for Personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, the little black book of workout motivation.

Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes Noble stores. Again, that’s Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation.

Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100 percent free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting. Meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining and productive. So if you want to take audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.

legionathletics. com slash audible. That’s L E G I O N athletics slash a U D I B L E and sign up for your account.