Eat Prior to Workout? Protein Shakes? Thoughts??

tigersword

Shoot for 1g protein per lb of lean body mass; and .35g of fat per lb of body weight. Fill in the rest however you want. Use whatever meal frequency you feel best with. Don't worry about pre-workout or post workout nutrition. That's it.

This. Meal frequency and nutrient timing is 100% personal preference.

THE LAWS OF NUTRIENT TIMING
The first law of nutrient timing is: hitting your daily macronutrient targets is FAR more important than nutrient timing.
The second law of nutrient timing is: hitting your daily macronutrient targets is FAR more important than nutrient timing.
-Alan Aragon

Tiger, I agree with you, but post-workout nutrition is very important. The 1-hour window has been proven to death at this point, and eating with 20 minutes of finishing is even better. Some carbs and some protein; the carbs help the body metabolize the protein.

Obviously, if you're not eating well, or you have a post workout meal and then eat crap the rest of the day, or don't eat at all the rest of the day, you're not helping yourself. But eating right after a hard workout is definitely an important aspect of nutrition.

From Alan Aragon:

When speaking of nutrition for improving body composition or athletic performance, it’s crucial to realize there’s an underlying hierarchy of importance. At the top of the hierarchy of effects is total amount of the macronutrients by the end of the day. Below that — and I mean distantly below that — is the precise timing of those nutrients. With very few exceptions (i.e., the intermittent fasting crowd), athletes and active individuals eat multiple times per day, to the tune of at least four meals. Thus, the majority of their day is spent in the postprandial (fed) rather than a post-absorptive (fasted) state. The vast majority of nutrient timing studies have been done on overnight-fasted subjects put through glycogen depletion protocols, which obviously limits the applicability of the outcomes. Pre-exercise (and/or during-exercise) nutrient intake often has a lingering carry-over effect into the post-exercise period. Throughout the day, there’s a constant overlap of meal digestion and nutrient absorption. For this reason, the effectiveness of nutrient timing does not require a high degree of precision. -Alan Aragon, Alan Aragon’s Research Review, January 2008

The postexercise "anabolic window" is a highly misused & abused concept. Preworkout nutrition all but cancels the urgency, unless you're an endurance athlete with multiple glycogen-depleting events in a single day. Getting down to brass tacks, a relatively recent study (Power et al. 2009) showed that a 45g dose of whey protein isolate takes appx 50 minutes to cause blood AA levels to peak. Resulting insulin levels, which peaked at 40 minutes after ingestion, remained at elevations known to max out the inhibition of muscle protein breakdown (15-30 mU/L) for 120 minutes after ingestion. This dose takes 3 hours for insulin & AA levels to return to baseline from the point of ingestion. The inclusion of carbs to this dose would cause AA & insulin levels to peak higher & stay elevated above baseline even longer.

So much for the anabolic peephole & the urgency to down AAs during your weight training workout; they are already seeping into circulation (& will continue to do so after your training bout is done). Even in the event that a preworkout meal is skipped, the anabolic effect of the postworkout meal is increased as a supercompensatory response (Deldicque et al, 2010). Moving on, another recent study (Staples et al, 2010) found that a substantial dose of carbohydrate (50g maltodextrin) added to 25g whey protein was unable to further increase postexercise net muscle protein balance compared to the protein dose without carbs. Again, this is not to say that adding carbs at this point is counterproductive, but it certainly doesn't support the idea that you must get your lightning-fast postexercise carb orgy for optimal results.

To add to this... Why has the majority of longer-term research failed to show any meaningful differences in nutrient timing relative to the resistance training bout? It's likely because the body is smarter than we give it credit for. Most people don't know that as a result of a single training bout, the receptivity of muscle to protein dosing can persist for at least 24 hours: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21289204

I can't figure out how to insert my stuff inside all that already quoted stuff, sorry.

1. Your first Alan Aragon quote seems to focus on pre- and intra-workout nutrition, not post-workout nutrition.
2. The second quote specifically addresses post workout nutrition in the context of someone who has had pre-workout nutrition.
3. I have a lot of respect for Alan Aragon (because I'm not an idiot), the big argument seems to be that, well hell, you're going to eventually eat at some point, so what's the big deal. But I can tell you that, when I wake up after not having eaten for about 10 hours, and then I workout like a crazy person, I'm personally pretty hungry. If I don't eat pretty quickly, I start to feel like crap within about half an hour.

That's different. That's overall energy levels. That has nothing to do with the post workout window.

MoveTheMountain

Dude, that is a seriously sill example...

You're right. The correct answer would be to disassociate myself from anybody rude enough to invite me out to dinner. If anything gets in the way of post workout feeding, it is wrong and should be completely eliminated. One should structure their lives such that the 1-hr (or better yet 20 minute) anabolic window is never missed, for to miss it is just like wasting the whole workout.

You know, you're rather given to hyperbole...

taso42

Dude, that is a seriously sill example...

You're right. The correct answer would be to disassociate myself from anybody rude enough to invite me out to dinner. If anything gets in the way of post workout feeding, it is wrong and should be completely eliminated. One should structure their lives such that the 1-hr (or better yet 20 minute) anabolic window is never missed, for to miss it is just like wasting the whole workout.

You know, you're rather given to hyperbole...

this is nothing. try talking to me about proper coffee or pizza or beer.

MoveTheMountain

Dude, that is a seriously sill example...

You're right. The correct answer would be to disassociate myself from anybody rude enough to invite me out to dinner. If anything gets in the way of post workout feeding, it is wrong and should be completely eliminated. One should structure their lives such that the 1-hr (or better yet 20 minute) anabolic window is never missed, for to miss it is just like wasting the whole workout.

You know, you're rather given to hyperbole...

this is nothing. try talking to me about coffee or pizza or beer.

Man, I love coffe and pizza and beer. We should go out for... well, all three - but it has to be right after my workout!

MoveTheMountain

Shoot for 1g protein per lb of lean body mass; and .35g of fat per lb of body weight. Fill in the rest however you want. Use whatever meal frequency you feel best with. Don't worry about pre-workout or post workout nutrition. That's it.

This. Meal frequency and nutrient timing is 100% personal preference.

THE LAWS OF NUTRIENT TIMING
The first law of nutrient timing is: hitting your daily macronutrient targets is FAR more important than nutrient timing.
The second law of nutrient timing is: hitting your daily macronutrient targets is FAR more important than nutrient timing.
-Alan Aragon

Tiger, I agree with you, but post-workout nutrition is very important. The 1-hour window has been proven to death at this point, and eating with 20 minutes of finishing is even better. Some carbs and some protein; the carbs help the body metabolize the protein.

Obviously, if you're not eating well, or you have a post workout meal and then eat crap the rest of the day, or don't eat at all the rest of the day, you're not helping yourself. But eating right after a hard workout is definitely an important aspect of nutrition.

From Alan Aragon:

When speaking of nutrition for improving body composition or athletic performance, it’s crucial to realize there’s an underlying hierarchy of importance. At the top of the hierarchy of effects is total amount of the macronutrients by the end of the day. Below that — and I mean distantly below that — is the precise timing of those nutrients. With very few exceptions (i.e., the intermittent fasting crowd), athletes and active individuals eat multiple times per day, to the tune of at least four meals. Thus, the majority of their day is spent in the postprandial (fed) rather than a post-absorptive (fasted) state. The vast majority of nutrient timing studies have been done on overnight-fasted subjects put through glycogen depletion protocols, which obviously limits the applicability of the outcomes. Pre-exercise (and/or during-exercise) nutrient intake often has a lingering carry-over effect into the post-exercise period. Throughout the day, there’s a constant overlap of meal digestion and nutrient absorption. For this reason, the effectiveness of nutrient timing does not require a high degree of precision. -Alan Aragon, Alan Aragon’s Research Review, January 2008

The postexercise "anabolic window" is a highly misused & abused concept. Preworkout nutrition all but cancels the urgency, unless you're an endurance athlete with multiple glycogen-depleting events in a single day. Getting down to brass tacks, a relatively recent study (Power et al. 2009) showed that a 45g dose of whey protein isolate takes appx 50 minutes to cause blood AA levels to peak. Resulting insulin levels, which peaked at 40 minutes after ingestion, remained at elevations known to max out the inhibition of muscle protein breakdown (15-30 mU/L) for 120 minutes after ingestion. This dose takes 3 hours for insulin & AA levels to return to baseline from the point of ingestion. The inclusion of carbs to this dose would cause AA & insulin levels to peak higher & stay elevated above baseline even longer.

So much for the anabolic peephole & the urgency to down AAs during your weight training workout; they are already seeping into circulation (& will continue to do so after your training bout is done). Even in the event that a preworkout meal is skipped, the anabolic effect of the postworkout meal is increased as a supercompensatory response (Deldicque et al, 2010). Moving on, another recent study (Staples et al, 2010) found that a substantial dose of carbohydrate (50g maltodextrin) added to 25g whey protein was unable to further increase postexercise net muscle protein balance compared to the protein dose without carbs. Again, this is not to say that adding carbs at this point is counterproductive, but it certainly doesn't support the idea that you must get your lightning-fast postexercise carb orgy for optimal results.

To add to this... Why has the majority of longer-term research failed to show any meaningful differences in nutrient timing relative to the resistance training bout? It's likely because the body is smarter than we give it credit for. Most people don't know that as a result of a single training bout, the receptivity of muscle to protein dosing can persist for at least 24 hours: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21289204

I can't figure out how to insert my stuff inside all that already quoted stuff, sorry.

1. Your first Alan Aragon quote seems to focus on pre- and intra-workout nutrition, not post-workout nutrition.
2. The second quote specifically addresses post workout nutrition in the context of someone who has had pre-workout nutrition.
3. I have a lot of respect for Alan Aragon (because I'm not an idiot), the big argument seems to be that, well hell, you're going to eventually eat at some point, so what's the big deal. But I can tell you that, when I wake up after not having eaten for about 10 hours, and then I workout like a crazy person, I'm personally pretty hungry. If I don't eat pretty quickly, I start to feel like crap within about half an hour.

That's different. That's overall energy levels. That has nothing to do with the post workout window.

That's actually a fair point, and I'll never forgive you for it.

tigersword