Post Exercise Recovery Drink

 A Post exercise recovery drink is something that someone who has depleted their muscle’s glycogen stores by working out for a long time drinks to recover faster. I have personally found that 90 minutes is not quite enough to “need” one but two hours is. This from a person that still has enough fat stores to help me through a 90 minute workout better than the fit athlete that has nothing to spare. I would imagine someone with a lower body fat percentage would hit this point sooner (that would be me in 90 days).

How did I figure this out you ask and where did the 90 minutes to two hours come from? I recently increased my Saturday workouts to two plus hours of pretty intense work from ones that were not more than 90. What I found is that when I get home I am tired and want to nap. OK, no real surprise there. But, we are not talking about a nap like those my dad used to take where he would turn on the golf tournament and proceed to drift in and out for then next 3 hours. I am talking about I can’t hardly keep my eye lids open I feel like I didn’t sleep last night I need to go to bed. And then find myself under a few blankets hours later feeling like I just woke up after surgery in the recovery room straining to lift my drool covered face off the pillow and focus on something in the room. Which just happens to be about 3 hours later, not really a “nap” in anyones book. I chalked the first week up to not sure what is wrong, maybe I am a little sick and just didn’t know it. But the second week sort of made me think it had to do with burning more than 1500 calories while only eating a 300 calorie breakfast and a 100-200 calorie energy bar afterwards. Also a point I must make, my typical 60-90 workouts always includes me eating a 100 calorie mini-cliff bar at a minimum. My guess is that it may have been some help but not enough and with no food I would hit the wall sooner. With this study consisting of one it is all anecdotal evidence anyway.

As I am sure you know, I am trying to lose weight by triathlon, and have now reached a point where I can work out longer and this eating like a bird does not work if long workouts are the order of the day. I can have my 300 calorie breakfast no problem, but then to work out and burn what is approching 1800 calories in 150-160 minutes of working out without more energy is a problem. I need to consider what my body needs not only after that workout but during it as well. I decided to eat a 100 calorie mini-cliff bar between the swim and bike and bike and run. I also tried a gel pack during the bike instead. I think I need to skip the bars, they have too much chance to upset my stomach, and the gel is kind of pointless cause you need to swash it all down with a ton of water anyway. Instead I am going to try a gatorade equivalent this Saturday. I will start drinking it after the swim and finish it off at the end of the bike to head out for the run, since that is the easiest time to drink. Last Saturday I made a post exercise recovery drink using the protien drink powder, some milk, and a packet of hot chocolate to boost the carbs and make the stuff tase better. I don’t think I had the ideal mix yet, but I did have 25 grams of protien and another 40 grams of carbs. This is about 260 calories and although this might be a little bit light on the calories and carbs, it sure did make all the difference in the world. I had no overwhelming tiredness, and I felt later in the day and the next morning like I hadn’t even worked out. Most all of the weeks in the past I felt a little tight Saturday evenings and the next morning I knew the day before was a big workout. I also did not have the chew-chew-train of eating urges that normally follow a big workout. I made sure I had the drink ready and downed the thing about 10 minutes after I got back from the run over a 5 minute period. So I didn’t even flirt with the time frame recommended to get something in you within 30 minutes to an hour. I also ate my lunch within 90 minutes of the workout, so I did not stop at 260 calories. I am trying to lose weight as well, so I am trying to find the balance between endurance workouts and running a daily calorie deficit.

My last thought on this is that the commercially available drinks that cost $2 a serving are a rip off. I am sure they work and do the job, don’t get me wrong. But, it’s not like they have some magical ingredients that only the right mix of rare earth compounds mixed with special a slew of special chemical reactions can conjure out the healthiness. I mean what can possibly be in these drinks anyway that makes them so expensive? There is protien. There are carbohydrates. They also name off several amino acids which are super duper mondo important, in a way to make you feel impressed with all the studies and research that went into the development of their drink. The problem is that these amino acids have another name. They are called protien. Protien just refers to the whole group, and I can’t argue against what may be the drink manufacturers point that maybe it is benficial to have slightly more of the ones specially required for the recovery process to be more abundant in the drink. In fact I will go along with that as an assumption. So what are the ones that are more important? Hint, hint, they list them for us on the label. Nice! And if I make my homemade drink to also have more of these than the standard protien then didn’t I accomplish the same thing as them?

OK, back to the list. They also have some vitamins and then some electrolytes. Well these should be easy to add in too. Even if we have to resort to special powders for some of the ingredients, as long as the powder isn’t being sold as a “recovery drink” then it is probably much cheaper anyway and I can hopefully still add it in and keep the cost under a quarter. As a quick example, the electrolytes are probably going to be had from salt and salt substitutes. Salt is so cheap you just buy it if you need it and we could care less if they doubled the price. What is it like 25 cents a pound or something?

Now before we go any further let’s consider this drink. Protien drink with lots of carbs, a few vitamins and electrolytes. Call me crazy but this sounds like chocolate milk, or better yet fortified chocolate milk as in “more ovaltine please”. A few sprinkles of various salts and voiala we have a delicious drink. Uh, maybe, or we can call it an equivalent drink anyway. So I will probably take this direction for my first homemade drink, including a version with a shot of espresso and maybe blended with ice to make it frozen if I am at home. Although I can certainly see how a fruit juice and soy milk smoothie might also fit the bill once a dash of electrolytes are added. Nothining like going all natural, I think the key there would be to keep the fiber out as the whole point is to absorb the thing fast and leaving in the fiber will slow things down. There might finally be a point to breaking out my guy-with-the-big-fat-gray-eyebrows-that-sold-me-the-juiceman-juicer on tv juicer from the back of my cupboard collecting dust. I always knew that thing had a purpose.

So now you have the ideas behind my research and my roadmap of the next few posts. Links follow to some of the research I am looking into.

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Here is an entertaining article written by a certified marathon coach, Wendy Bumgardner, that pointed me in the right direction on a chocolate milk drink.

Here is the research, completed by Jason Karp, that Wendy mentioned in her article that completed a study comparing chocolate milk vs Endurox vs. Gatorade as a recovery drink. An excerpt of the study follows for those not inclined to read the whole thing: 

In conclusion, the results of this study suggest that, chocolate milk, with its high carbohydrate and protein content, may be considered an effective alternative to commercial FR (fluid replacement drink= Gatorade) and CR (carbo replacement drink = Endurox) for recovery from exhausting, glycogen-depleting exercise.

Here is a nice  blog entry about post exercise nutrition by Bob Seebohar, MS, RD, CSSD, CSCS. So many letters… he definitely knows what he is talking about.

And an article about post exercise recovery drinks by Jessica Seaton, D.C.

Finally, one last article by Erica Lesperance, RD, LD.

100,000 calories to burn

I have not posted lately but am still going at it. I am in the mode to try and increase the amount of training and have found a few problems with my plan. Today I also hit my milestone of needing to burn/save 100,000 more calories to hit my estimate of what I need to do to burn off my excess weight. The starting number was 240,000. Iam currently hitting my low weight again, but I have been seeing other goals reached even when the pounds didn’t drop. I must have been in a lose the inches mode by switching out fat for muscle and as a few of my scarce posts indicate I was having trouble on the food side of the equation.

I am doing a triathlon every Saturday with unrealistic transition times because I go change in the locker room. So there is about 10-15 minutes between each workout.

I start out with a half iron man swim, 2100 yards. I time myself for 1650 of it which is an olympic swim, and use 250 to warm up and 200 to cool down. So in this sense its also unrealistic as far as race conditions go. My best 1650 time so far is 30:50, I am trying to get it under 30 minutes and am so close I should bust it any week now.

The bike is a spinning class with a gung ho instructor. I go about 15 miles according to the bike, but I am not sure I believe that thing. This is a hard workout that has me making a big sweaty mess on the bike and floor. I am sure the person in the yoga class that follows that gets my little area on the floor is not too happy about it. Weather has stopped me from getting out on the road, and laziness I suppose. I should be able to get a much better sense of how the spinning class intensity equates to real miles on my bike.

A few of us in the class then go for a run of 3-4 miles. I am sure that as we go further along in the year we will be increasing the distance. We seem to run at a group pace of 9:00 to 9:30 per mile depending on the group which is perfect for me at this point in time. Although I hope to drop to 8 minute miles, I still have my best 4 mile time at a 8:50 pace and don’t see any huge strides coming in that area, only measured increases over time.

Now I know it is important to get in a post exercise recovery meal. I typically have a water bottle in my locker and eat a mini cliff bar or two as I am still cooling down (100 calories per bar). This seems to work fine for my other classes like when I just swim, or just run. But for this longer workout which is about 2 hours 10 minute of workout over a 2 and a half hour period just doesn’t cut it. I get extreemly tired and wind up taking a nap in the afternoon. Now I am not one to be scared of a nap, but taking one because I feel completely wiped out after a good nights rest and a good long intense workout seems to be signalling some problem. My working hyposthesis is the post exercize recovery meal is not adequate.

I have been looking into finding a good recovery drink that doesn’t have me spending $50 for a bottle of powder or $2 per single serving packets. The stuff out there just seems so expensive. The simple fact of the matter is there just has to be easy ingredients to “build your own” recovery drink for less than a quarter per serving. The one thing I seem to have found is that part of my problem might be not getting enough calories for a good recovery. Now I do the 100 calories and then go eat a meal, but I am in weight loss mode which is at odds with optimum performace mode. I think I need to use a recovery drink that has the protien and carbs and gives me at least 300-400 calories. That seems to be the right target. I will be doing some more research on the topic and will try and figure out how to make my own drink, that is as good as the “engineered” ones from separate ingredients to cost much less. We’ll see how that goes. I hope to post my research results sometime next week.

calories consumed

I did not do the bike last weekend. I still haven’t. I did my working out besides that though. I have burned many calories working out last week and am starting well this week too. I swam more last week than any other week: 3.8 miles. Running too with 14.4 miles. Unfortunately I also tied my worst week of eating too many calories at about 17500. It is true my body burned a few more than that but my goal is to create a deficit from working out and eating, not just working out so that I lose weight faster.

At first I was willing to write it off as residual from the month off of everything, but I am still doing it this week. The bad part is I will be fine to eat this much once I am at my target weight but until I get there I need to eat less. So deep down I am telling myself to just lose the weight with extra exercise and not with eating less. But the eating needs to be under control or I will not keep the weight off. I need to be able to say ok I shall eat this today and then do it. Or ok, I can deviate as long as I make it up tomorrow and then carry through with the plan. The problem is I am not planning 100% and I deviate without ever making it up. I wind up with one good day out of every 4 with this lack of care. I will only lose a half pound a week at this pace and will not reach my goal until next winter. I got to get back to the plan on the food side of things.

Here are the best ways I can think of to help:

1. Plan all my food at night after dinner for the next day from breakfast up to dinner, this way I can pack snacks and control what I eat. If I will be in the car for lunch (the two days I go running at lunchtime for example) then plan to take food that can be eaten cold in the car rather than stopping somewhere. (I actually ran 4 miles and then ate at taco bell!)
2. Until I get a grip on the problem stop eating lunch in restaurants altogether. Or only eat preplanned meals like subway 6″ ham no mayo or oil and a bag of sun chips for 530 calories. All too often lately I just go for the spicy Italian or meatball and then what the heck just get the 12″ instead and while I think to myself I will save half so I can get the chips for now I wind up gobbling it all down anyway. What was planned to be under 600 calories on the way there turns out to be 1200 all said and done.
3. Eat fresh fruits and vegetables with every meal and as every snack: carrots, apples, pears, and oranges. This makes the full feeling yet low calories from all the fiber.
4. Plan meals in a way that I never eat a meal of more than 600 calories, then if I do find myself in a restaurant when I shouldn’t be I can eat 600 calories and then stop. Even if I only get one item from the menu. I have to be strong and think of how full I feel and how bad that feels for the rest of the afternoon to eat 1000 calories at lunch. I need to look at the restaurants that attract me and view the nutritional info online. Then if I am weak and I get there eating the proper meal is not guesswork. I ate a grilled stuffed burrito the other day and thought I was not doing too bad, but the thing was packed with calories. If I have in advance, while a clear head prevails, planned a meal that I like and know the calorie count I can just order that.
5. I need to plan in the snack in the evening and it needs to include a filling element like raw carrots or broccoli and those calories need to be part of the overall plan. I have been planning to eat about 2200 calories a day with no late night snack and then I eat the snack and get to 2500. If I eat 400 and 500 for breakfast and lunch with  another 200 for two snacks then I can have 600 for dinner and the final snack of 300 gets me to 2200. This is a typical weekday and I can juggle the numbers around depending on what I feel like having. I shall shoot for more of the yogurt with fruit type of snack rather than the fiber one bar which feels more like a candy bar and has me wanting more the second I am finished.

Please post any other suggestions I am up to trying something new.