‫One of the most common questions that I get through my website is, Brad, what sports training supplement
‫do you recommend that I take to lose fat, to build muscle, to get into the best shape of my life?
‫And I always tell people the same thing What are you doing with your nutrition?
‫I.e. what are you doing with your calories and your macronutrients?
‫Have you got that set up correctly?
‫And secondly, what are you doing with your training and marrying the two?
‫So nutrition training and putting the two together, once you've got those two things sorted, then
‫we can talk about sports supplements and how they can help you move the needle a little bit to get the
‫edge.
‫Most people go to sports supplements first.
‫I did this years ago.
‫I didn't know better.
‫Most people go to supplements first and then they think about calories and macros and training later.
‫But no supplement is going to help you get into shape unless you've got nutrition and training sorted
‫out first.
‫And by the way, most supplements are absolute garbage anyway.
‫I would argue 95% of them on the market are completely useless.
‫And I've never been paid or sponsored to make a video for any particular sports company.
‫Supplement company.
‫That way I can just talk freely the truth based on my experience and everything I've researched over
‫the years.
‫So I'll keep to the ones that can help you that have helped me.
‫But these are absolutely not essential.
‫First and foremost, I'll talk generally about protein powder.
‫Now, protein powder is really just a convenience item.
‫So if you have if you're training in the gym, lifting weights, we've already talked about how much
‫protein you'll need, right, to repair muscle to build strength and that kind of stuff.
‫So for example, just say you've calculated your protein intake requirement for the day to be, say,
‫150 grams.
‫You need 150 grams of protein per day.
‫Now, if you've skipped those videos and hopefully you haven't.
‫Right.
‫But just a quick recap.
‫100 grams of chicken breast, for example, is about 20 grams of protein.
‫So I'm talking about 150 grams of actual protein.
‫Right.
‫So you can see very quickly how much chicken do you need to get?
‫150 grams of protein per day.
‫That's a lot of chicken or beef or whatever.
‫Right.
‫So that's where protein powder becomes convenient because it's going to help you meet your protein requirements
‫for the day.
‫I mean, most of you watching this work, jobs have a family, your kids.
‫I used to work night shift for almost ten years, and so it wasn't convenient to have carefully prepared
‫meals of all of my protein coming from Whole Foods forms of protein like chicken and beef and all that
‫kind of stuff.
‫So protein powder absolutely helped me meet my protein intake requirements for the day.
‫When it comes to convenience, consider protein powder.
‫Now, there are different types of protein powder, plant protein, soy, protein, beef protein that
‫does exist, whey protein.
‫In this video, I'll talk specifically about whey protein and how whey protein can help you meet your
‫protein intake for the day.
‫One of the great benefits of whey protein.
‫And by the way, you can do all this research online.
‫There's plenty of plenty of information on Google.
‫Right.
‫But I'll keep this conversation very practical just to make it more interesting.
‫So one of the greatest benefits with whey protein is that it's a dairy product, by the way, right?
‫So if you are lactose intolerant, there are more refined forms of whey protein that you can take,
‫which we'll get to in just a second.
‫It's a byproduct of the cheese making process, right?
‫That's filtered out and then made into a powder that you go buy from a supplement store and then you
‫can mix it with water or you can have it in a smoothie or whatever.
‫But it's very convenient.
‫But one of the biggest benefits is that it has bcaas B c a branch chain amino acids, which from the
‫perspective of building muscle, is a big plus.
‫Now the bcaas in question are leucine, Eissa, leucine, Eissa, leucine and Valine.
‫Right?
‫These are, I used to call them the Three Amigos because they essentially are the branch chain amino
‫acids that are commonly found in whey protein.
‫And you might think, Well, what's the relevance of these three?
‫Leucine specifically has been found to be the main driver for building muscle, repairing muscle tissue
‫after a weight training session and that kind of thing.
‫So whey protein has has high amounts of leucine in it that's going to help you build and repair muscle.
‫So if your primary goal is to build muscle, then whey protein for the fact that.
‫Has branched chain amino acids, namely leucine.
‫It's going to help you achieve that goal.
‫The second the third one on the list here is timing.
‫The question that a lot of people ask me on my website is, you know, when is the best time to have
‫whey protein?
‫Now, after years and years of drinking whey protein myself for my bodybuilding competitions back in
‫the day, it doesn't really matter except that when it comes to putting your meal plans together.
‫For me personally, I would usually have a protein shake before my workout and a protein shake after
‫my workout.
‫But you don't have to or you don't have to.
‫Timing doesn't really matter, right?
‫I used to think that it was a big deal.
‫In the scheme of things, it's not really a big deal.
‫The big deal is making sure that you're getting enough protein every day.
‫So if your daily protein requirement is 150 grams, if your daily requirement is 150, then you don't
‫have to split that 150 up in some preordained five meals a day kind of regimen.
‫You don't have to do that right, as long as you get the 150 in one day in or whatever your requirement
‫is, then that's all that matters.
‫But in terms of timing, there is some but very, very slight benefit to having protein before and after
‫your weight training session.
‫So this is what I do.
‫Usually I have 25 to 30 grams, call it 30 grams of protein, 30 grams of whey protein before my workout
‫and around 30 grams of protein whey protein after my workout.
‫So 30 grams before 30 grams after.
‫All right.
‫But you don't have to do that.
‫And then the rest of your protein requirement, you know, can be spread out across the day, first
‫time, the first thing in the morning or just before you go to bed, it's up to you.
‫Typically, what I like to do is I like to get I like to get most of my protein from whole food forms
‫of protein.
‫But we've already talked about how that's not necessarily convenient for most people.
‫Right.
‫So what I like to do is I like to get maybe 70% of my protein requirement from whole food, and then
‫the other 30% will come from protein powder.
‫You know, if I'm traveling on the road, then maybe 50% is coming from whole food forms like chicken
‫and beef, and the other 50% is coming from whey protein.
‫If I'm traveling, if I'm jumping on and off flights, that kind of stuff.
‫Right.
‫So that's just a quick insight to what I do.
‫The last one there is brands.
‫What brands do I recommend?
‫It's another common question I get.
‫I'm not going to give you specific brands that I recommend.
‫I'll tell you the ones that I use.
‫I'm not paid or sponsored to talk about them, but I'll mention them.
‫These are the ones that I have been taking for years now.
‫I've tried different brands over the years, right, Just because I get curious.
‫I've tried different plant proteins as well from macro milk, but that's a plant based protein.
‫I'm not, again, not paid or sponsored to talk about these guys at all.
‫Right.
‫So that's but that's plant based, right?
‫So I sometimes play around with different plant based proteins as well.
‫But when it comes to way, I like optimum nutrition whey protein.
‫Optimum nutrition is one that I like, Ultimate nutrition is another one.
‫So just write these down real quickly.
‫Ultimate nutrition.
‫All right.
‫So there to in fact, I've got optimum nutrition in my cupboard now that I'm finishing off.
‫And then when I finish that one off, I'll go back to Macro Mike for four weeks and then I'll go back
‫to Optimum Nutrition.
‫So I like to mix things up a little bit, but honestly, go to Google and type in, you know, best
‫protein brands and just do a little bit of research.
‫I'll talk more about some of the more controversial aspect of what to look for when you are buying a
‫protein powder.
‫There's things such as like proprietary blends, amino acid spiking.
‫So I'm just going to plant some quick seeds for you because not all brands create their products equally.
‫There's there's things called amino acid spiking.
‫Right.
‫Which does happen.
‫Right.
‫So companies do cheat when it comes to displaying how much proteins actually in the product.
‫There are a lot of lies in the system.
‫I'm not going to talk about them in this video, but amino acid spiking, proprietary blends, all those
‫other things I'll talk about in other videos I've already written about about them in my articles over
‫the years.
‫But these are things to consider when you're researching different brands, but the ones I use are the
‫ones I wrote up there before.
‫Now the last thing I want to talk about is this sliding scale here of the different types of whey protein
‫that you can get now, the one that I like to use.
‫Is whey protein isolate.
‫But but you can get a cheaper whey protein concentrate or if you've got the money you can spend that
‫on whey protein hydrolyzed site.
‫It's a sliding scale from cheap to expensive and a mid-range.
‫I like to use the isolate personally.
‫So the first one we have here is concentrate, which is typically cheaper.
‫It is the less refined type of whey protein and it typically has around 20 to 80% protein by weight.
‫And so you are getting more fat and more lactose, right, in this particular product.
‫So you're getting less protein per serve and more fat and more carbs.
‫Essentially, you're getting more of the stuff that you don't actually need.
‫The next one is isolate, where a lot of the fat and lactose has been isolated out of the product.
‫So it's more refined, it's more filtered, that kind of stuff.
‫And so you're getting more or less 80 to 90% protein by weight, but you are paying a little bit more
‫money for it.
‫So if you are tracking your macros and your calories and you sort of want to buy a product that has
‫more protein in it and be concerned more about where you're getting your carbon, your fat from, from
‫other parts of your diet, then isolate is definitely going to be what you should take.
‫When I was doing my bodybuilding competitions, I wanted to take a protein powder that had very little
‫fat, very little lactose in it.
‫And so this was the one that I went for.
‫And the last one is hydrolyzed site.
‫I only was taking hydrolysis eight when I first started my fitness journey years ago.
‫It is the more expensive form of whey protein.
‫They call it the pre digested form which essentially is isolate but has been broken down further into
‫predigested predigested proteins.
‫And it's around 90% protein by weight.
‫So again, more of the lactose has been removed, more of the fat has been removed.
‫And if you think of it like this, the analogy here is that if you imagine like buying chicken, right?
‫So you have chicken thighs right down one end of the scale where chicken thighs have it has protein
‫in it.
‫Right.
‫But there's more fat in chicken thighs, right.
‫That's more or less akin to whey protein concentrate, which has more fat, more lactose in it.
‫And then chicken breast, Right.
‫Has more chicken.
‫So it has more protein per weight, but less fat.
‫Right.
‫Which is more or less akin to whey protein isolate.
‫And then you've got ground chicken breast, which essentially is chicken breast, but has been predigested,
‫making it easy for you to digest because it's been grounded up.
‫So think of it like the analogy.
‫Ground chicken breast is chicken breast.
‫But to make it easy for digestion, we've just grounded it up for you.
‫That's akin to whey protein hydrolysis, which is essentially isolate, but it's been broken down into
‫into sort of more refined protein structures.
‫That's easier to absorb into your body, into your muscle cells, and that's essentially it.
‫So if you have any questions about this, please let me know.
‫But again, this is not absolutely essential.
‫Whey protein, like other protein powders, will help you reach your protein goals for the day.
‫That is the main benefit.
‫It's going to help reduce hunger, right?
‫Because when you're in a calorie deficit, you might be a little bit hungry.
‫So protein powder is going to help you get rid of those hunger feelings that you're going to have.
‫But the biggest benefit is convenience to try and meet your protein intake requirements for today.
‫So if you have any questions, let me know and I'll see you in the next video.