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Product Spotlight: Isalean Shake

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Runners are now recognizing that protein plays a big role in endurance performance. However, what we are seeing is that a lot of our athletes, they simply aren’t getting enough. To make matters worse, the protein that they are getting in, is of fairly poor quality. It was in my own diet that I recognized this, and decided to utilize the Isalean shake in my own diet.

So how much protein do we need? For the longest time, protein requirements were no more than that of the average person, at 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. For a 150 pound person, you’re looking at about 55 grams of protein. However, new recommendations are 1.2-1.6 g/kg of body weight and I have seen all the “whey” up to 2.0 grams. For that same 150 pound person, you are looking at a new amount of 82-110 grams. Potentially, they may need as much as 136 grams! Now, a lot of this depends on the size of the person, how hard they are training, and where they are at in their training cycle. But, you get the point, it’s significantly more protein than what was previously thought.

Why we need more as endurance athletes

While we aren’t bodybuilders trying to bulk up, our body is constantly turning over tissue. These are exponential with the amount we are training. We aren’t talking just muscle, but amino acids (protein broken down) is vital to things like connective tissue and blood components!

While carbohydrate and fat provide so much of the energy needed to run, protein does provide some fuel source. Protein can provide up to 5% of energy demands. This number is not a game changer, but also note that if you are on a low carb diet, then the amount of protein providing fuel for exercise increases by even greater numbers.

Why I chose Isagenix Isalean

The Isalean shake is so much more than a simple protein powder. It’s 24 grams of undenatured whey protein. If you are not sure what that means, it’s simply not boiled to death so all the good stuff is cooked out. The dairy that Isagenix uses comes from grass fed cows with no antibiotics or hormones. On top of that the shake includes 23 essential vitamins and trace minerals.

These shakes are loaded with all the things I need- including essential fatty acids and high quality complex carbohydrates. For me, it made getting all the quality nutrients I need for my health and performance so much easier.

Product Spotlight: Isalean Shake

Product Spotlight: Isalean Shake

Why shouldn’t I just drink chocolate milk?

It is true that chocolate milk is a nice treat after a tough workout, but is it as the “perfect” recovery drink as often advertised? Let’s take a quick look at the make up:

For overall calories, there’s not a ton of difference roughly 200 for an 8 ounce glass of chocolate milk vs 240 calories for the same amount of Isalean shake. However, looking at where those calories are coming from, the differences become a lot clearer. In a glass of reduced fat chocolate milk, there is roughly 8 grams of fat, whereas there are 6 grams in a shake. Breaking that down even more, an Isalean shake has only 2 grams of unhealthy saturated fat and 6 grams of healthy fats (coming from olive oil and flax seed). Chocolate milk will include about 5 grams out of 8 total grams as saturated fats.

Moving to carbohydrate, chocolate milk will give you 30-36 grams of simple sugars. An Isalean shake will give you 24 grams of carbohydrate, with 8 grams of that total being in the form of fiber and only 11 grams of sugar.

Chocolate milk is often touted as a great source of protein, but in 8 ounces of milk, you get 8 grams of protein. Compare that to the 24 grams of high quality undenatured, complete protein in an Isalean shake it’s not even close. To get the the same amount of protein from chocolate milk, you now need to drink three glasses- which now puts your sugar content at about 100 grams.

Lastly, when we look at vitamins and minerals, chocolate milk contains sodium, potassium, magnesium, vitamin d and small amounts of a handful of other vitamins. An Isalean shake contains 40%, or more, of daily values for over 20 different vitamins and trace minerals.

Chocolate milk is great when you are in a pinch, but given a choice, you can see that there are more complete options out there.

Best practices

What are the best practices with using the Isalean shake (or any protein supplement)?

  • Use as a meal replacement. When Isagenix first formulated this shake, I hardly think they were keeping an endurance athlete in heavy training as a baseline! The shakes certainly were meant as a meal replacement for those trying to lose fat weight. Can they serve that purpose for the athlete in heavy training? The best answer is partly. I will use the shake in conjunction with other food (mainly fruit) to complete my breakfast. However, if you are a person who runs after work and needs something of quality a couple hours before your run/workout, then this is the perfect option.
  • Can it be taken as a pre workout meal? Yes, if you are in a window of say 90-120 minutes before a run, then go for it!
  • Post workout is probably the most popular use for my athletes. If you workout in the morning, then getting one of these bad boys in right after is crucial. Add some fruit for more high quality carbohydrate and you have an excellent start to the day. Your recovery is off and running, and your body is getting not only the carbs and protein it needs to refuel and rebuild, but also the vitamins and minerals that are crucial to performance and health.

Want to try a FREE sample? I’d love to send you one. Fill out this form and I’ll have a sample of the best seller Birthday Cake flavor sent directly to you. (I won’t sell/share your info)

More Nutrition: Eating to Body Type

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We have talked about body type before at LHR, mainly as a determinant of what type of runner you are. However, as we have expanded our conversation  into nutrition, body type has come back into the picture. This time to really determine if body types change how we should eat. (Hint: I believe it does). Let’s take a quick look at the differences.

Ectomorph

  • Light and lean
  • Long limbs
  • Fast metabolism
  • Excess energy burnt thru activities like fidgeting and heat
  • Easily satisfied, rarely hungry (forget to eat)
  • SNS dominant, thyroid dominant (fight or flight)
  • High carbohydrate tolerant

They can easily maintain a “lean-normal” to a “lean-athletic” body fat percentage. This person may struggle to put on muscle. General nutrition guidelines would look like this: Ectos: 55% carbs, 25% protein, 20% fat.

So, what does this look like? For men, each day may include:

Men:

  • 6-8 palms of protein dense foods
  • 6-8 fists of vegetables
  • 10-12 cupped handfuls of carb dense foods
  • 2-4 thumbs of fat dense foods

Women: 

  • 4-6 palms of protein dense foods
  • 4-6 fists of vegetables
  • 7-9 cupped handfuls of carb dense foods
  • 1-3 thumbs of fat dense foods

Mesomorph

  • Medium and balanced, naturally muscular
  • Middle of road metabolism
  • Excess energy usually builds lean mass
  • Normal appetite, hunger, satiation
  • More hungry if active
  • Testosterone and growth hormone dominant
  • Normal carb tolerance

The trained person will have above average muscularity with “lean-normal” to “lean-athletic” body fat. They may have denser bones than average. Their diet may be composed like this: 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat and look like the following.

Men (daily intake):

  • 6-8 palms of protein dense food
  • 6-8 fists of vegetables
  • 6-8 cupped handfuls of carb dense foods
  • 6-8 thumbs of fat dense foods

Women (daily intake):

  • 4-6 palms of protein dense foods
  • 4-6 fists of vegetables
  • 4-6 cupped handfuls of carb dense foods
  • 4-6 thumbs of fat dense foods

Endomorph

  • Heavier, more body fat
  • Slow metabolism
  • Excess energy gets stored as fat
  • Often sensitive to appetite and hunger cues. Less sensitive to satiation and satiety cues.
  • PNS dominant (conserves energy, increases digestion and gland activity)
  • Lower than average carbohydrate tolerant

This person will have denser bones than average. They may have a fair amount of lean mass, but still have a relatively higher body fat. There diet may be composed like this: 25% carbs, 35% protein, 40% fat. In more practical terms, it may look like the following:

Men (daily):

  • 6-8 palms of protein dense foods
  • 6-8 fists of vegetables
  • 2-4 cupped handfuls of carb dense foods
  • 10-12 thumbs of fat dense foods.

Women (daily):

  • 4-6 palms of protein dense foods
  • 4-6 fists of vegetables
  • 1-3 cupped handfuls of carb dense foods
  • 7-9 thumbs of fat dense foods

Take-Aways and Caveats:

What I want to point out here is that at no point is a macronutrient scaled back so far that another macro has to make up for it. We are simply maximizing (or minimizing) a macronutrient to reach the body’s needs. I can’t stress enough that the body needs all three of the macronutrients, but not necessarily in the same proportions that other people require. This is simply an easier way to individualize nutrition to your needs.

The second point I want to make is that these guidelines are for eating outside what we call the workout window. The workout window is the 1-2 hours before your workout, the workout itself, and then the 1-2 hour recovery window after the workout. Now, personally, I don’t refer to easy runs as workouts. These are usually short enough for most people where they don’t drastically alter your daily nutrition needs. I am referring to SOS days, or speed, strength, tempo, and long runs. These runs are usually long enough and intense enough to drastically change glycogen stores, even if you are “fat adapted” and we need to replace those calories with quality carbohydrates. With all the options out there nowadays, finding real food and/or quality options is no longer an issue.

Pre-exercise guidelines have been discussed previously, so we won’t enter those discussions again. During your workout, general guidelines are 30-45 grams per hour of exercise. This may be a gel(s), or the right mixture of fluid. There seems to be a little bit of mixed thoughts on protein or BCAA’s during exercise, but some say 15g of BCAA per hour will help with performance. Finally, recovery is of the utmost importance if you want to improve your ability to perform and perform more. Again, there’s a bit discussion of how much is needed, but I would recommend at least 15-20 grams (up to 40 grams) of high quality protein or BCAA. Then I would say 80g of a mix of high glycemic/low glycemic carbohydrates. A 2:1 ratio of glucose to fructose to enhance replacement of what you have utilized during the workout.

Once outside your workout window, assuming that you have adhered to workout nutrition, keep your nutrition to the recommendations given your body type. This is just one strategy to employ when trying to individualize your nutrition, but still maximize performance. Hope this helps you navigate the waters a little bit!

 

Luke Humphrey Personal Coaching!

Podcast Episode: Metabolic Efficiency Pt 1

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I’ve been doing metabolic testing and VO2max testing for a fair amount of time now, but mostly with predictable results. Not until recently, have we been testing for than one type of runner, and boy have results not been quite so “textbook.” These results have led me to explore more into the topic of metabolic efficiency.

This led to some personal revelations as to why certain runners struggle so much with not only training, but losing weight, and being able to progress from a health standpoint. I hope you find this info interesting and can put some of this towards your own training or coaching!

Our New App: We’ll do the math for you!

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Some of you may have noticed that we have an app out, but we haven’t done a big release for it or anything, what gives? Well, for one, at the time of this post, we are still working on the iOS version. That should be released shortly!

What’s in this app?

Our app is a series of calculators to help you during training and race day. We get a lot of emails about proper paces for those using the Hansons Marathon Method, so we put together a calculator for that. It will give you all the paces you should be running when you use our training system, based on your time goal. It takes all the guess work.

We also have a really cool caloric calculator for those racing a half or a full marathon. By giving us some basic info, we can give you clear numbers to how much fuel you should be taking in during the race. We are actually really proud of this one. I think it could be a game changer for making your fueling plans, avoiding the wall, and running some really great races!

There’s a couple other calculators that you can read descriptions on, but the two I discussed are perfect for you Hanson followers! We are also working on several other calculators that will be nutrition based that will help you throughout the training. Those will be added as we complete.

To purchase the app and read the full descriptions, please check out this page.

Do you load up antioxidants?

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Keeping up with research is tough, but luckily the twitterverse makes it a little easier if you follow the right people. This little tidbit came across this morning and I had a chance to read through: Vitamin C and E supplementation

Recently, there has been increasingly more evidence that taking mega doses of antioxidants like vitamins C and E can actually hinder your hard earned aerobic adaptations. In fact I think I’ve seen a few people posting things about what’s true and what’s not. Anyway, here’s a easy breakdown of what this article found:

  • supplementation blunted certain protein up regulations that typically occur with training BUT training induced improvements  in VO2max and running performance were not altered.
  • However, these proteins being depressed could contribute to blunted mitochondrial growth. This, we know, would not be good! Keep in mind that this study was done over 11 weeks, which simply may not be enough time to show what happens long term. We know it takes years to develop our aerobic systems and a several week study just can’t represent long term effects. Imagine taking a huge dose of vitamin C several days a week over several years? It’s a very possible scenario.
  • Also, gened expression of certain signalling proteins were depressed, BUT capillarisation and stress proteins were not altered. I would consider what we just discussed in this case too.

Another study didn’t show any alterations, but the primary difference was the amount of vitamin C given. In the study that showed no “depression” in activity involved daily doses of 500 mg/day, whereas the current study used 1000 mg/day. Also, the previous study didn’t look at the same markers. The markers observed in the current study are directly related to the state of mitochondrial growth.

The bottom line is to be careful. People take these antioxidants to recover faster, but if you potentially blunt the growth of mitochondria, then it doesn’t particularly matter is you are recovered! Honestly, it simply shows that more is not always better- just like a lot of running related topics.

My 2 cents- Luke

 

 

 

 

 

 

Calories and the marathon

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Over the past few years, I have made an effort to get at the heart of some of the finer details of marathon running. Training always can take you a long way, but from a physiological standpoint, we simply have a hard time making it the full distance feeling strong. The calories we take in (or lack of) during the race make a huge difference in our performance. Here a quick video I made regarding part of this complicated discussion: http://youtu.be/NUKekOgLROQ

Hot Topic 9/20/2013- diet trends

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Ok, so I was going to do a Hot Topic on tapering, but I have been working on the nutrition chapter of my forthcoming half marathon book. I was looking over the chapter I wrote for Hansons Marathon Method as well as, doing some casual research in current trends. One thing that struck me was the growing popularity of high fat, low(er) carb diets and endurance athletes. I shook my head at a lot of it, but some of it makes sense.

Forgive me if my details aren’t exact but here’s basically what I know about high fat/low carbs and general eating habits.

1) The idea is that we eat too much carbs (true, but misleading) and that the excess carbs we eat are turned into fat. That part is also true. However, Americans eat way too much crappy carbs- pop, candy, starch, processed junk. That we know. What we don’t eat enough of is fruits, veggies, high fiber carbs. So, while we do eat too much of the crappy carbs, we don’t eat enough of the good carbs. So all that junk is not used and absolutely does turn into fat.

2)  If you eat too much fat, it doesn’t have to convert to anything, it just has to get stored!

3) High fat/low carb has been shown people to lose weight in the SHORT TERM. There isn’t a lot of evidence of long term maintenance.

4) You have to replace what you burn. Unless you train at a fast walk, you are burning both fat and carbs. You have theoretically unlimited stores of fat, while your carb stores can vanish within an interval workout. If you don’t replace what you burnt just to get back to baseline, things will not go well after even a few days.

5) If you focus on high quality food and nutritiously dense food, these things balance themselves out. That means eat lean sources of protein,  eat your fruits and veggies, and stay away from fatty/greasy crap as much as you can. If you can do that, you can take a lot of the guesswork out of your diet.

Feel free to discuss your thoughts below. Better yet, if you have had experiences to share, please do!

 

Luke