When is Evil Good? The Post Workout Nutrition Story
Darth Vader, evil, competent, energetic, and disciplined. His very voice strikes terror into the hearts of his enemies. He is the epitome of evil, and yet at the end of Return of the Jedi he’s instrumental in helping Luke to overthrow the emperor. Without Darth Vader, there is a good chance Luke Skywalker would have failed, leaving the empire under the control of the Sith.
I’ve been harping on how bad sugar is, and how much you should be avoiding insulin spikes, but there is one specific time when sugar is a good thing, when you want a large insulin spike, and that’s right after your workout.
As I discussed previously in Growth, Recovery, & Scheduling working out causes micro-trauma to your muscle tissue (damage). Once you finish working out the recovery process begins. In order for your body to repair muscle tissue it needs two things, energy and protein (specifically amino acids which are broken down protein components). Insulin is responsible for moving those items from the blood to the tissues.
There is a window of opportunity immediately after you train where the tissues are particularly receptive to increased nutrition. The exact size of the window is a matter of some debate, though most (but not all) agree that it’s about an hour or so. In order to take advantage of such a short time period you need to consume foods that will go from consumption, to digestion, to distribution in under 60 minutes. Eating solid food is too slow, a steak for example will take several hours to fully digest. Liquid foods like milk have an increased speed of digestion and gastric emptying (the process of leaving the stomach for the intestines). Casein, the main protein in milk is unfortunately pretty slow to be absorbed. Whey proteins, which compose about 20% of the proteins in milk are much faster to be digested.
The fastest of all is a type called Whey Protein Hydrolysate, and isn’t that a mouthful? Whey protein is made into hydrolysate by using enzymes to break down some of the amino acid peptide bonds, which basically means it’s partially pre-digested. This tends to make it bitter, and pretty awful tasting. Even if you could stand the taste though, Whey Protein Hydrolysate by itself, while quickly digested, wouldn’t be transported to our muscle tissues fast enough to take full advantage of the window of opportunity.
The key is to use sugar, specifically a mixture of glucose and maltodextrin, to cause a massive insulin spike at the same time as the proteins are hitting the bloodstream. This forces the nutrients out of the blood and into the tissue at an astonishing rate, giving the repair process all the energy and amino acids it needs to make a full recovery. Remember though you need an insulin spike AND quick digesting proteins, not just one or the other. Gatorade for example, produces a pretty hefty insulin spike, but without an amino acid component it only fulfills half the recovery requirements.
Due to the massive amount of energy moved out of your bloodstream by the insulin surge, you’re going to be low on blood sugar in about 45 min to an hour afterwards. Generally you’re going to want to consume a low or medium insulin impact real food meal at that time. This gets you back onto a more normal blood sugar profile, and you can move on with the rest of your day.
There are a number of post workout drinks on the market, any of them that use whey protein hydrolysate (and it does need to be hydrolysate not isolate or one of the other forms) and sugar will work just fine. I personally use Chocolate Surge from Biotest which I find reasonably tasty. Careful monitoring of my progress charts when I started using PWO drinks, and at times since when I stopped temporarily has convinced me that they’re quite effective in helping to retain lean body mass during a calorie deficit, I highly recommend that you try it for yourself.