Sculpt a Better Body with Proper Post-Workout Nutrition

Ideas for healthy post-workout shakes to help build muscle and enhance fat loss

by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
Author of best-selling program:  The Truth about Six-Pack Abs

As you’ve probably heard before, your post-workout meal may very well be your most important meal of the day.

The reason is that when you’re finished with an intense workout, you’re entering a catabolic state where your muscle glycogen is depleted and increased cortisol levels are beginning to excessively break down muscle tissue. These conditions are not good and the only way to reverse this catabolic state (and promote an anabolic state) is to consume a quickly digestible post-workout meal (can be a shake or smoothie) as soon as you can after training.

The goal is to choose a meal with easily digestible quick carbs to replenish muscle glycogen as well as quickly digestible protein to provide the amino acids needed to jump start muscular repair.  The surge of carbohydrates and amino acids from this quickly digested meal promotes an insulin spike from the pancreas, which shuttles nutrients into the muscle cells.

The post-workout meal should generally contain between 300-500 calories to get the best response. For example, a 120-lb female may only need a 300-calorie meal, whereas a 200-lb male may need a 500-calorie post-workout meal. Your post-workout meal should also contain anywhere from a 2:1 ratio of carbs:protein to a 4:1 ratio of carbs:protein. While most of your other daily meals should contain a source of healthy fats, keep the fat content of your post-workout meal to a bare minimum, since fat slows the absorption of the meal, which is the opposite of what you want after a workout.

When choosing what to make for your post-workout meal, the first thing to realize is that you DON’T need any of these expensive post-workout supplement formulations that all of the fancy ads you see everywhere will tell you that you absolutely NEED!  I tend to prefer to make my own post-workout shakes from natural ingredients instead of using a commercial mixture, since many of them are low quality.

However, one that I've found that I particularly like (and from a brand that I trust) is at this page:  http://losebellyfat.getprograde.com/workout -- they have just the right ratio of carbs to protein and use quality ingredients
.
 For the shakes that I make myself, here are some things to keep in mind if you try it...

A good source of quickly digestible natural carbs such as frozen bananas, pineapples, honey, or organic maple syrup are perfect to elicit an insulin response that will promote muscle glycogen replenishment and a general anabolic (muscle building) effect. The more you can assist the muscle repair process, the more you increase your metabolic rate and can help your fat loss as well.
The best source of quickly digestible protein is a quality non-denatured whey protein and/or some fat-free or low-fat yogurt. Here are a couple ideas for delicious post-workout smoothies that will kick start your recovery process:

Chocolate Banana – blend together 1 cup water, ½ cup milk (I prefer raw grass-fed milk for max health benefits), one and a half frozen bananas, 2 tbsp organic maple syrup, and 30 grams chocolate whey protein powder – 38 g prot, 72 g carb, 1.5 g fat, 450 calories.

Pineapple Vanilla - blend together 1 cup water, ½ cup vanilla yogurt, one cup frozen pineapples, 2 tbsp honey (preferably raw), and 30 grams vanilla whey protein powder – 35 g prot, 71 g carb, 1 g fat, 430 calories.

When choosing a good whey protein, it's important to note that the quality vastly differs between brands and types.  Most whey proteins are produced under high heat processes that destroy some of the fragile nutritional components of the whey.  The best whey that I've found is this great new grass-fed RAW whey protein...since this is from grass-fed cows, it also has higher levels of muscle-building and fat-burning CLA (conjugated linoleic acid).

When looking to lose body fat, keep in mind that post-workout meals should have the opposite characteristics of all of your other meals throughout each day. While post-workout meals should have quick high glycemic index carbs and quickly digested proteins, all of your other meals throughout the day should be comprised of low glycemic index, slowly digested carbs and slow release proteins.
These are powerful strategies towards developing a lean muscular body with a low body fat percentage.  Another great thing about post-workout meals is that you can satisfy even the worst sweet tooth, since this is the one time of the day where you can get away with eating extra sugars without adding to your gut. Instead, it all goes straight to the muscles! But ONLY if your workout was super-high intensity and involved resistance training for large portions of the body.  If all you did was some low intensity cardio, forget about doing this type of post-workout shake.

Enjoy!

A more detailed and comprehensive nutritional analysis with more of these various powerful dietary strategies are found in our best-selling #1 rated fitness ebook in the world, The Truth About Six Pack Abs.

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Harvard Study Shows an Obscure Trick

Harvard Study Shows an Obscure Trick to Make ANY Exercise Program or Workout MUCH More Effective

Hotel cleaning attendants got "tricked" by researchers into burning more fat in 4 weeks. They also lowered their blood pressure, and improved their waist to hip ratio. This article explains what factor caused these benefits!

by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
Author of best-sellers:  The Fat Burning Kitchen  &  Do This, Burn Fat: 101 Sneaky Weight Loss Tricks

I've read about this very interesting Harvard University study about exercise multiple times in the past, but I was just recently reminded about this study again while reading the fascinating book called 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman.
Pay attention, because this actually shows a pretty powerful trick that you can use to literally make ANY workout or exercise program a LOT more effective and results producing.
According to the book 59 Seconds, here's how this study was carried out:
Researchers at Harvard University studied over 80 hotel room cleaning attendants from 7 different hotels.  The hotel room attendants naturally received a lot of exercise from their daily jobs, which included cleaning an average of 15 rooms per day at about 25 minutes per room.  This work involves a good deal of exercise in carrying things, scrubbing, lifting objects, vacuuming, and so on.
The researchers knew the hotel maids led an active lifestyle from their work, but also questioned whether most of the maids may not realize that their work was actually good for their health.  The researchers set out to study the effects on the hotel attendants of making them very aware of how beneficial the exercise they got while working was for their health, and to see if this increased the results that they actually received from the exercise.
Basically, the question was... Would telling them that their work was great exercise improve their health, lower their blood pressure, and help them to lose weight compared to the hotel attendants that didn't realize their work was in fact "exercise"?
The hotel attendants were split into 2 groups:
1. This group was informed about the benefits of exercise and told how many calories they were burning while doing their hotel cleaning work each day. They were specifically told how many calories activities such as changing sheets, vacumming, and scrubbing bathrooms were burning each hour.
The researchers also wanted this information to stick in their heads daily, so they gave the attendants a handout showing the quantities of calories they were burning doing each activity of their jobs.  They were also shown a poster daily that reinforced how many calories they were burning.
2.  The control group of hotel cleaning attendants was simply informed of the benefits of exercise, but were NOT told how many calories they were burning doing their work, and also were NOT told that their work actually constituted a good form of exercise.
The researchers studied the existing lifestyles of all of the participants in both groups as well as giving them various health tests, including weigh-ins.
The study was conducted for 4 weeks.  The researchers made sure that none of the participants had actually changed their exercise habits, smoking, or eating habits outside of work.  This assured that there was no external lifestyle factor that could have accounted for the results of the study.
In addition, the hotel managers assured that the workloads of both groups stayed the same throughout the entire experiment.
Here are the VERY interesting results:
It turned out that the group of hotel cleaning attendants that was informed daily about the calorie-burning effects of their normal work routines ended up losing a significant amount of weight, lowered their body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio, and decreased their blood pressure.
The control group of hotel attendants that was not told about the calories they burned while doing their work showed NONE of these improvements.
Wow... very interesting huh!
Remember that each of these groups received the SAME amount of exercise and did not alter their lifestyle, eating habits, drinking habits, smoking, or anything else.  The only thing that was different between the 2 groups was simply that the one group was constantly being reminded of how beneficial the exercise during their work was for their health and how many calories they were burning, and therefore their minds were busy believing in the benefits of it.
This actually doesn't surprise me... this is classic placebo effect at work here, and reinforces how powerful our brains are in relation to the results we get from exercise, food, supplements, etc.
How to use this info to burn more fat in your workouts, build more lean muscle, and improve your health more from exercise and nutrition
There's a good lesson in this study.  If you strongly believe in your mind that the workouts that you are doing are drastically improving your body, your results will increase dramatically from those workouts.
The trick I've used over the years is to really "get mental" during your workouts and believe strongly that the exercise you are doing is transforming your body into a lean chiseled machine. (This is assuming that you're actually doing legit workouts such as Truth About Abs routines and not just wasting time reading a magazine while pedaling away on a boring exercise bike or treadmill).
So, if you want to burn more fat, not only do you need to workout intensely (for your individual capabilities), but you also need to mentally visualize the results you're getting, the bodyfat you are burning, and really strongly believe in how powerful the workout routine that you are doing really is for your body.
Along the same lines, if your goal is to build more muscle, then you really need to strongly believe in your mind at how powerfully your workouts are helping you to build muscle.
And this can be applied to your food intake too!
Don't underestimate how powerful your mind really is... If you are eating truly healthy foods such as those detailed in my Fat-Burning Kitchen manual, make sure that you are also actively thinking in your mind about how those foods are dramatically helping your body, making you stronger, making you leaner, improving your energy and health, and so on.
Don't ignore this... this will drastically improve your results if you actively think about how truly healthy the foods you are eating every day are and how they are changing your body.  This is assuming that you actually are eating truly healthy foods every day.
Another benefit of this "mental programming" is that it trains you to actually want to avoid junk foods, because you want to be able to think about how everything you eat is improving your body instead.
So there you go... an interesting study that shows how you can legitimately increase your results from your exercise and nutrition by just actively thinking about the benefits of both every day!
But this trick I just showed you is just one of many more unique and powerful tricks to burn more fat, boost your metabolism and get the body shape that you've always wanted...
Here's What to do Now...
On the next page below, you're going to discover some extremely SIMPLE tricks that you can apply to your daily life to BALANCE your hormones, BOOST your metabolism, and fire up your fat-burning machine inside your body...  there are 101 total "tricks" you can use to flatten your stomach faster and get lean, including these:

• Fat-Burning Trick #1:    The simple twist to your morning routine (takes less than 1 minute) that INSTANTLY jump-starts your metabolism and boosts fat-burning by as much as 30%!
• Fat-Burning Trick #5:    The tasty beverage you've been WARNED to stay away from...but new-found studies reveal the shocking health benefits jam packed in this potent anti-aging & fat-burning "elixer"!
• Fat-Burning Trick #15:    The amazing "super-food" that in one clinical study, dissolved away more than 10 extra pounds in 12 weeks...WITHOUT DIETING or any other lifestyle changes!
• Fat-Burning Trick #99:    The candle (yes, candle) that can help maximize your body’s own natural release of age-defying, fat-melting growth hormone and have less fat on your body within the next 8 hours!
   

Some of these fat-burning tricks are odd, some are crazy, some involve your diet, others exercise, and some involve your mind - but they all have one thing in common... they are all SIMPLE!
All you have to do to discover those tricks, and so many more, is head to the Next Page...

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How REAL butter can make you leaner

If you've read my book or my newsletters for some time, you know I'm a big fan of REAL butter... and NOT margarine.

In fact, I would NEVER, EVER even think about touching margarine with a ten foot pole... and even these new fancy so-called "cholesterol lowering" margarines still contain some trans fats and inflammatory refined oils.  I would NEVER touch those either.

I can't tell you how many times I've been at certain restaurants and been horrified to find that they don't even have real butter.... instead, they have nothing but artery-clogging trans fat laden margarine!  Yuck. No thanks.

I've also been shocked to find that some people (a LOT of people) are still confused about the whole butter and margarine thing.  In case you're still confused, let's clear this up now... the debate has actually been over for YEARS now, and I'll make it real simple:

Butter is healthy (if you choose the right type) ... Margarine is deadly!  Simple as that.

I know that's a bold claim to say that butter is healthy...but it's true, as long as you choose organic grass-fed (pastured) butter, and NOT butter that came from confinement feedlots (CAFOs) from cows fed corn.

In fact, butter is one of the best natural sources of the healthy fat conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) that actually helps you to build muscle and lose fat.  Butter is also a good source of the healthy fats, MCTs, and also omega-3's in grass-fed butter too.

But it doesn't stop there... this article below shows not only how butter can help you get leaner, but is also one of the best sources of a few very unique vitamins that are hard to get elsewhere, can improve your cardiovascular function, and even lower diabetes risk.

Click here....How butter can make you leaner and improve your health

That article is a must read!  It's refreshing to see a health author that actually "gets it" when it comes to this stuff.  I'm sick of reading meal plans from bodybuilders and nutritionists that say to avoid butter and make sure to have plain boring steamed vegetables instead.

No way!  I'll take my grass-fed butter on my vegetables and I'll love it.  And by the way, yes you CAN get single digit bodyfat lean and still use butter on your foods if you want.  I do it every day.

Some people have told me that they have a hard time finding grass-fed butter in their grocery store.  My favorite that I've found is called Kerrygold Irish butter, and although the label doesn't clearly state "grass-fed", this butter is 100% pasture-raised from cows that eat lush green grass in Ireland.  You can tell from the deep color of this butter, that it has higher levels of carotenoids than standard butter.

Please fwd this email on to your friends and family to help them live healthier!

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
TruthAboutAbs.com

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