Eat For Muscle! Timing Is Everything

Eat For Muscle! Timing Is Everything
(by Dr Eric Serrano, M.D. and Jeff Stout)

Eric Serrano M.D. Recommendations

It is a widely held belief that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. My response is perhaps, but not likely for our population. At the very least, while this may be true for sedentary individuals, it is not so for most active trainees.

As a matter of fact, the feeding following your workout and the respective meal prior to exercise, I rank numbers one and two, respectively, as our most important meals. For a variety of reasons, these feedings should have the greatest impact on fat loss, muscle growth, recovery and physical performance, not only just for the next time you train, but for all your future workouts.

Research and experimentation with my clients has led me down a new trail surrounded by some controversy. But then again, I do not believe the maximum standards in the quest for muscle progress have been determined and thus, not approached, as all the factors for fat loss, performance, and muscle increase have not been assessed accurately, at least in my view. I intend to try and do so fully.


Hormonal Mileau & Muscle Protein Accretion

There are very precise and special metabolic conditions created by the type, duration and intensity of exercise. This fact makes the post workout meal an opportunity to provide metabolically activated muscle and endocrine organs with special signals and nutrients needed to augment natural processes for tissue remodeling, growth, substrate restoration and tissue/fiber repair.

A specific and altered hormonal environment exists at this time and you can manipulate powerful hormones (which may already be changed from exercise), with directed nutritional intervention.

The goal must be, to always create the highest level of an anabolic state. The anabolic environment is the state required for repair and growth of muscle, as well as for enhanced fat and sugar utilization. In essence, catabolism is the opposite state.

You realize of course, that exercise can create perpetual catabolism if you fail to address the changes (and opportunities) created by intense training. For example, if you trained hard and then did not eat or sleep for several hours and then trained hard again and again did not eat or sleep, and then tried to train again, you probably could not.

In fact, under such a self-limiting scenario, very quickly every system of your body would rapidly begin to fail, starting first with your brain thinking, language and memory processes. Then your immune system would rapidly fail, followed by rapid muscle atrophy and soon enough, failure of every organ system in your body!

Needless to day, muscle is metabolically and thermodynamically hungry following a workout, and of course, food fuel must be provided (as must sleep), for your system to recover and replenish energy reserves while enabling fiber hypertrophy.

But - did you know that in theory, you can possibly over load 'the system' by providing nutrients that may actually compete in some ways. Of course, a simple form of overload is excess caloric energy, even though you are exercising. You want muscle accretion, not fat baggage. Another area that has not been explored properly is optimal absorption in the post workout environment. I believe the so-called 'window of opportunity does exist and that the timing of nutrient delivery is critical.


Before The Storm

Consider the meal before the workout somewhat the quiet before the storm. This meal should provide a prolonged release of specific nutrients to stimulate the release of specific hormones that best augment workout performance. Foods that are absorbed well and quickly, such as whey protein and sports drinks are best taken after your workout, not before. Forget the Gatorade here.

Foods that convert to glucose quickly and sugary-based sports drinks, certainly elevate insulin. Insulin is a powerful storage hormone in the presence of fats and carbohydrates that are easily stored, especially at the wrong time. All of which can potentiate the storage of fat.

Insulin itself may be beneficial at this time, but the key is to raise the hormone level without doing so in the face of available energy that is easy to deposit as body fat. You don't want energy levels to likely to crash because of the dramatic effect of insulin on blood sugar levels just prior to the workout. Post workout is of course a different story. What is needed then pre-workout?

Anabolic Protein Mix

I believe that an anabolic protein mix 1.5 -- 3 hours before the workout will prevent muscle break down during the workout (assuming a 45-60 minute hard session) and provide muscle 'fuel' needed for progress in every sense of the term. A strategically designed protein mix should also boost anabolic hormones that help with all aspects of performance and subsequent growth.

I also believe one should 'trick' your system into making muscle repair and growth a first priority. Despite popular belief, the body prioritizes survival over looking good every day of the week and along those lines you must trick the system into doing what you want it to do.

The complex human machine seeks to protect its self by breaking down components of muscle fibers for fuel during intense exercise such as weight training or sporting activity. This procedure naturally results in an increased blood level of free fatty acids, which is a homeostatic regulating signal the brain to stop breaking down muscle.

Now, when taken before training high doses of the branched chain family along with some very specific other amino acids, plays an elaborate trick by flooding the blood with free fatty acids to prevent muscle break down long before it is supposed to begin. As a result an alternative fuel source is available for use (FFA) and muscle fibers you have worked hard to earn are spared that function.

We do know that glutamine is heavily leached from muscle during exercise. It may be likely that FFA's preexisting within the muscles beforehand will be readily used to stimulate growth and repair, slow that process and put you a big step ahead of the game by thwarting muscle break down and further stimulating anabolism.

Both branched chain amino acids and glutamine are proven to reduce muscle breakdown during training by stimulating an anabolic state throughout the workout. Once more, BCAA's can even raise insulin to that acceptable level I talked about earlier in the absence of easily stored energy. The BCAA group can act in cooperation with glutamine as a surprisingly efficient intrinsic muscular fuel source.

So, a state of anabolism and elevated protein synthesis (muscle growth) can be promoted by the right combination of the BCAA group and glutamine (I use the PRD product GlutaCene and NitroMine in my research) when taken before a workout. Such usage can be timed perfectly to arrive at the functioning cell just as the workout winds down and ends. This alternative super fuel is used by muscles and can spare valuable stored energy in the form of glycogen. Now that 'spared' glycogen can be used down the stretch of your competition or even your workout if it is unusually long and hard, when you need it most.

Post Workout Exactly

A hefty post workout dose of the correct proteins can also flood the blood stream with FFAs, and tricks the hormonal system into believing that too much muscle has been broken down by accident! Can you imagine what should happen next?

The hormonal system unleashes its most powerful tools in an effort to prioritize muscle growth and repair to correct what is perceived as a mistake! Compare this to histamine, anti-inflammatory reaction following a bee sting.

Besides delivering the powerful protein to build degraded muscle quickly after the workout, the right nutrients must provide the specific raw materials, the correct ratio of all and be able to be rapidly absorbed with or through a specialized delivery system to accomplish all of this.

Once accomplished, you should experience progress like you never thought possible by making the powerful mechanisms of the hormonal system work for you naturally, rather like a steroid result without the steroid.

Muscles are begging for additional nutrients following the workout, but there is an exact time and place for everything according your goals. The call for nutrients can be

answered. How? By completing a specific process which I call the supplement primer phase, the fast acting food phase and the complete meal.