Do Protein shakes work

It's a common debate amongst athletes and personal trainers do protein shakes really do what they say they do. The marketing going into selling each shake is huge, which is the reason the price is so sky high. In essence the raw ingredients don't actually cost that much to make. The supplement companies however endorse the top athletes to say they got to where they were due to their protein shake.

Many studies have been conducted into the efficiency of protein absorption and it's interesting to note the different absorption speeds. The fastest is in fact whey protein, which gets absorbed at 10g per hour, and the slowest being casein which absorbs at 6.2g per hour. Protein shakes also contain plenty of branched chain amino acids which do help muscle metabolism and will reduce muscle breakdown while exercising.

The question is can you do without them? The answer yes in essence you don't need them however to grow muscle at the same rate as you would while taking them would be difficult. Reasons, it will be mighty hard consuming the right amount of protein around your workouts and will require 3 extra servings of solid protein a day.

Protein shakes cater to convenience, they are also cheaper then the average meat or other protein source, which makes getting massive on a budget easier.

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Paleo Diet for Athletes

The paleo diet is a recently revisited diet. When I say revisited that's because it's something we used to eat a lot when we were evolving. Which is why it's often referred to as the caveman diet. When we used to live in caves, we did not eat any cereals, such as wheat, barley, oats etc. This came much later when we developed our agricultural techniques.

So what was around back when we were evolving and living off the land? Well animals were plentiful, and we were very active beings and we would have no problem going out and catching them. This mean't that our diet was high in protein very important in building muscle and repairing ourselves from the harms of everyday life. Instead of using carbohydrate as our number one every source we used fats. They are a much more efficient energy source and pack around 2.5 times as many calories as carbohydrate per gram.

A historical note, fats up until recently were the most valuable part of animals. It would give you more energy and thus the ability to survive. It was the fat that was traded at markets and not the fillet steak!

So onwards, what else did we have? Fruit and vegetables. Scavengers would soon be able to identify which fruits were edible or not etc. Most likely through trail and error. This then made fruit which would be abundant in the vast vegetative landscapes to be high on the meal adjenda as it's easier to find than meat.

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