revchuck 

This concerns different goals as well. You've written that you often do hard workouts in a fasted state, in which case replacing glycogen ASAP is a high priority. OTOH, going into a race one is usually topped off nutritionally and if there's no race or hard workout immediately following, replacing carbs is less important than supplying protein to your muscles for them to start the rebuilding process. Also, as one ages, one's body becomes better at shuttling carbs into white fat production. (How do I know this? Trust me, I know this. ) So the carb/protein/fat balance required can change based on the situation.

shovelhd

I'd have a carb rich meal a few hours later. I could wait for that. I found that the longer I waited to supplement protein after a race the less effective it was preventing DOMS. I've never been into macro nutrition management, counting calories and whole foods only. Doesn't work with my lifestyle. It's a balance.

After workouts, sometimes, but I normally worked out before a meal (dinner on weekdays, lunch on weekends) so there was no need to supplement.

chasm54

I agree with that. Timing of protein intake may matter - after a workout, and (according to the Sky team nutritionists) spreading it out through the day - but most of us are getting plenty of protein overall.

Heathpack 

Well, yes that is true. Almost all interval workouts I do are fasted, although for most rides over 2 hours (and all races) I eat something carb-ish prior. And then I have a whirlwind of uploading data, making notes, getting ready for work, making my train, rounding on my cases. Very little time to eat anything for about 3 hours post-work-out. But I can sip a recovery drink (and a pot of black coffee) while doing all those things. So its practical for me.

But I didn't come up with the carb/pro formula based on these constraints. Its just what I read was optimal. Taking that with a huge grain of salt because I have only slight confidence in my sources.

Its been an interesting variety of responses, though, because I thought most cyclists who were "training" did something similar to what I've been doing vis a vis recovery. It appears there's pretty big variation.

TheKillerPenguin

Fasted intervals? No thanks!

mike868y

right? I can barely muster a fasted recovery ride.

Heathpack 

Yes, I do this all the time. It's a holdover from preparing for very long endurance events. The theory being training myself up to metabolize fat more efficiently. Works for me.

Besides, I get up at 4:00 or 4:30 am to do these intervals, the only way I can fit it in with my work schedule. It's either: 1. fasted or 2. food in my stomach or 3. sleep deprivation because I got up at 3am to eat something pre-workout. Pick your poison.

Doge

Local female Olympian friend from 90s just didn't eat after 4:00PM, but always ate before/after workouts in the morning.

TheKillerPenguin

I usually eat a nutella sandwich on recovery rides, sometimes a bagel+creamcheese. You're still burning kJ and purpose of recovery is to feel better, not to lose weight.

TheKillerPenguin

So. Early. !

Ygduf

I like to eat a lot later in the day - the last 3-hour and 4-hour rides I did started fasted and ate 200 and 400 calories during. No ill effects on efforts. The energy for those come from your liver, not your gut.

chasm54

On the subject of recovery drinks, the BBC ran a program on exercise this evening. They had a subject exercise one leg to exhaustion on a leg press machine, then take a whey protein drink which they'd tagged. Two hours later they took muscle biopsies from both legs. The muscles in the exercised leg had taken up substantially more of the whey protein than those in the unexercised leg. Which is what you might expect, but at least demonstrates that the theory works in practice.

Heathpack 

Haha, that's *exactly* what I was talking about upthread. That is well and good but unless you need to do another workout 2 hours after the first one, how relevant is the fact that there's more glycogen in the muscle 2 hours later? The more relevant endpoint is at whatever time the next workout is expected- typically 22ish hours later. Unless you're racing multiple races in a single day. So maybe they've proven whey protein post-exercise is something you should think about if you're racing multiple races in the same day and you want to be sure the glycogen is in the muscle 2 hours later.

But for most of us trying to decide what to do after our daily workouts to set ourselves up for success on the next day's workout, we'd want to know muscle glycogen say 22 hours later. Does the recovery drink make any difference vs just eating the appropriate amount of carbs subsequent to the workout throughout the day.

Even better: Does the amount of muscle glycogen at any time point correlate with a better workout the following day?

Best: Does a recovery drink improve racing performance? But this best study is vastly harder to do. Takes more time, way more money, and there's so many variables that your sample size would have to be huge for your results to achieve statistical significance and be publishable. Which is why this type of study typically does not get done, too much work for the researcher for too little professional gain.

chasm54

Well, your scepticism appears to be justified. Subsequently, they did a double-blind trial with two groups on an 8-week resistance program. Half got a protein shake as a recovery drink, half got placebo. At the end of the 8 weeks each group had put on muscle mass and gained strength, but there was no difference between the groups. Their conclusion was that as long as your total dietary intake of protein is adequate, supplementing immediately post-workout is ineffective and unnecessary.

I'd guess the same applies to carbs, but I'm only guessing.

Heathpack 

I'm actually not that skeptical. I am pretty much bought-in to the recovery drink concept, especially since my version is tasty and I can't imagine it doing any harm, as long as I remain cognizant of my overall daily calories.

All I was saying is the first study you quoted does not actually address the question as to whether protein post-workout is the best practice to improve your cycling. It just says that maybe a dose of whey protein is the best practice if your goal is to improve glycogen content of your muscles two hours post-workout. Quite a leap to conclude that improves your cycling.

And the second study does not really disprove the recovery drink concept, either. For all kinds of reasons. Like its looking at weight-training, not cycling. Like the study only lasted 8 weeks, maybe the differences between the two groups are too small to be detectable at 8 weeks. Like the frequency or volume of training might be vastly different between the resistance training in the study and what most of us typically do as cyclists. Like maybe they had the protein dose wrong or the protein is beneficial if dosed with carbs because without the carbs the next day's workout is less effective. Who knows?

None of which is to imply these studies are worthless. Just that the mainstream media gets wind of them and tries to imply the study says something way bigger than it actually says.

<Truthfully, it might not just be the mainstream media, it could be the study's author(s). The peer-review process is supposed to weed out these kinds of over-stated conclusions but there's lots of journals with lower standards and even prestigious journals get it wrong sometimes. We spend a lot of time teaching people to critically read journal articles and not just accept the author's conclusions. You really do need to know enough about the subject to read the entire article, not just the abstract, and to understand what conclusions are supported by the data. Or else rely on the judgement of someone knowledgeable in the field to do the work for you.>

chasm54

No, I buy all that, of course. But the difficulty of doing large-scale prospective studies in real-world situations specific to individual sports is huge.

My own view, for what little it's worth, is that our bodies are pretty well evolved to deal with irregular patterns of activity and nutrition, can store and synthesise most of what we need, and homeostasis probably smooths out (and thereby makes inconsequential) most of our efforts at supplementation. If one is getting enough nutrients in total (and even there, the best balance between carbs, fat and protein seems highly debatable) there's probably no need to sweat the small stuff.

mollusk

I am making pasta puttenesca.

I love the smell of garlic in the evening. It smells like dinner.

Ygduf

latter probably right, former is why I do recovery drinks. placebo is worthwhile.

canuckbelle

I've been doing well with a pretty regular diet with rice/quinoa/veggies and then some sort of sauce to change it from day to day (Indian, Thai, etc). Lots of bananas, rye bread, and peanut butter, too. Snack is yogurt w/ berries. Lost 24lbs last year, including 7 in December.

Oh and lots of coffee, obvs.

mollusk

Lightly grilled skinless and boneless chicken breasts with a radicchio, baby spinach, arugula salad with pears and a honey and hazelnut oil based dressing on the side.

Eating healthy can be tasty.

globecanvas

If peanut protein has a something score of 0.52, what happens to the other 48% of the protein? Does it still convert into calories?

gsteinb

150 and about 9% bf

but my hill climbs look to be off my calendar for this year so eff it, steak for dinner.

Ygduf

I scraped up my courage to weigh myself last night and then again a few hours later to see if the tears changed it any.

Enthalpic

Yes. The nonessential amino acids are deaminated and the remnants can enter Krebs and be oxidized or even be be turned into glucose (via gluconeogensis).


Carbon Atoms of Degraded Amino Acids Emerge as Major Metabolic Intermediates - Biochemistry - NCBI Bookshelf

A small amount will be consumed by the gut bacteria but even then those bacteria release short chain fatty acids which the colon consumes directly.
Revealing the bacterial butyrate synthesis pathways by analyzing (meta)genomic data. - PubMed - NCBI

mollusk

Made sundried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, garlic, basil, red pepper flakes and cream with shrimp for dinner served over penne.

Yum.