There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
Protein: Isn't it about time you understand it?
Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work in the world of health and fitness Hence the name. There is a method to the madness.
Speaker 1:Today I'm going to talk about a very important macronutrient and a very misunderstood macronutrient. I think most issues with food are misunderstood. Before I get to that, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service and home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412.
Speaker 1:One, two, let's talk a little bit about protein. Protein is such a misunderstood macronutrient and, as I said, I really think all food regarding calories, regarding what it does, regarding what the nutrients do, is misunderstood. So today I'm going to really focus in on protein because it's come up in conversations. That's pretty much how I get my material for podcasts is I get questions and the other day I was sending somebody some information when they asked me about chicken and I was explaining something to them and then I talked about the biological grade on it and I realized they had no idea what I was talking about. So it's important to understand what we're putting into our body, why things work, what works and all that. So let's talk some about that.
Speaker 1:We need to understand that there are four macro nutrients, and macro just means we need these things in large quantities, and they are protein, carbohydrates, fat and water, and of the four, the only one that is non-caloric is water, of course. Now I should say that these are essential macronutrients, and essential in this case doesn't mean needed, although they are. What it means is your body cannot provide them on its own. In other words, we have to consume them from the outside. So these are essential macro nutrients. If you're curious, there are essential micronutrients, and they happen to be vitamins and minerals. All right, micro, because you don't need them in as large a quantity as you need the caloric based macronutrients. Now, protein has four calories per gram, and it shares that with the carbohydrate, which also has four calories per gram, and it is main function is for growth and repair. So eating large amounts of protein doesn't necessarily like make you bigger.
Speaker 1:Like people think we only need enough protein, now it's enough, meaning we definitely don't want to skimp on protein, but we only need enough protein to do that job of growth and repair. If we ate nothing but protein kind of like we think of the bodybuilders in the 1960s and 1970s eating the steaks and the eggs and the chicken and the beef and all this stuff and that's all they ate I guess steak is beef right, but I mean they actually ate all sources of meat. Right, and they did, but we think of that. And then if we think that we don't or they didn't eat carbohydrates for growth, we're very, very wrong. Like it's the actual carbohydrates that provide the energy for growth, protein is for repair, so we do need both. But sometimes nowadays people get on higher protein diets because they think it is the the be-all, get-all and they think they can only eat protein and they're going to get stronger. And that is just not the case. We need carbohydrates to sustain us. In fact, protein really isn't an essential macronutrient for energy at all. It doesn doesn't supply a lot of energy. I'll say it probably for the fifth time it is for growth and repair. Okay, so it has four calories per gram and its main function is for growth and repair. Now, I wish it were that simple.
Speaker 1:Here is the problem with macronutrients. There are different types. We think, well, protein's protein, that's not true. Then we go, okay, well, yeah, I get that. So with veganism and vegetarianism, there is, you know, plant proteins, and I heard that's not as good. And then there's animal product proteins and I heard that's better. Well, see, that's not as good. And then there's animal product proteins and I heard that's better. Well, see, that's not true either.
Speaker 1:The reality is, with protein that we really need to understand is that there is what is called essential amino acids and non-essential amino acids. Now, again, essential means your body can't produce it, not that they're not needed. So, for example, the non-essential amino acids are still needed, but your body can derive them from other foods that you're consuming. So it can take what you're eating and scrap it down and make the non-essential amino acids. But the essential amino acids we have to consume from our food. Now, amino acids are the building blocks of protein. So that's what goes into making the protein are the amino acids. There are nine essential amino acids and there are 11 non-essential amino acids. Now for a protein to be complete meaning that it does the job that it's supposed to do growth and repair you have to have all of the nine essential amino acids present at one time, Like during that digestion and absorption process. Those nine essential amino acids have to be there Now.
Speaker 1:The good news for vegans and the good news for carnivores is you can get them from animal products and you can get them from plant. But the problem not the problem, because I'm mostly plant-based so I'm not trying to down that at all but we do have to combine the amino acids to get the essential amino acids for it to act like a protein. So, for example, if you look at a loaf of bread whole wheat bread, sourdough, rye, whatever it's going to say that loaf of bread has maybe a Two to three and even some breads are up to five grams of protein. You think, all right, well, I'm getting my protein in this. You know that's not bad Five or six grams. And then I have a little bit of this and I'm going to be at what I need for protein.
Speaker 1:Here's the problem that bread protein by itself doesn't have all the essential amino acids, so it's not going to work like protein all the essential amino acids, so it's not going to work like protein. So if that's how you ate all day and you're being a good boy and a good girl and you're logging your food in your MyFitnessPal, like I always advise people to do when you care about your nutrients and care about your calories and you're trying to get on top of everything, you don't have to do it forever, but it certainly helps to do it for a while. But you can add up your protein and go, wow, I'm getting 80 grams. Man, that's pretty good, you know that's not bad. But there's no guarantee that's 80 grams of the kind of protein that you need, the essential amino acids that are going to do the job for growth and repair. You just might be taking in extra calories, of protein that essentially gets wasted, and that happens a lot and I'm going to get into that in a second, but that does happen.
Speaker 1:Now, if you are a bread eater and I like bread, I love whole wheat bread and you combine that with, say, peanut butter, well, guess what? Now you have all of the essential amino acids present, because what happens is peanuts have some of the essential amino acids, not all of them. They're not complete. Bread has another group. Please don't ask me to like say which is which, because you know, I used to know all those and now I just don't, because there's really no point to, because I can look it up on Google. But bread has the other missing essential amino acids and together we can combine them and get all the essential amino acids. So for doing that we're good and guess what? It just seems like nature knew what the heck it was doing, because you can do the same things with beans and rice. Beans and rice combined have the essential amino acids to make a complete protein. You can look up online and get all the different combos. You can mix together to get it. But just know this if you aren't combining and you're only having plant sources, then you're not getting your complete proteins. You're just not All right.
Speaker 1:Now the only plant proteins that have all nine of the essential amino acids is soy products and quinoa. Yep, soy products and quinoa have all nine essential amino acids. So let's say you don't want to combine foods and let's say you never want to eat any animal products. Well, there you go. If you ate quinoa and soy, you would get all the protein. And, by the way, all that talk about soy being dangerous and raising estrogen levels and decreasing testosterone levels. That is unfounded, probably put out there by the old meat industry trying to discredit it so it can sell more meat and freak you out. But whatever the facts are, it's unfounded that soy is dangerous. But you know what, like everything in a podcast, don't take my word for it. Discuss it with your primary care physician or whomever you trust on that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so here is another issue, though, regarding protein. So protein has a 92% bioavailability, and what that means is that we don't actually use, even if it's all the essential amino acids that we take in anyway. So there is some waste when it comes to protein. Now, that's the highest level of all the macronutrients, so we do have to consider that that's not an overly huge deal, but we do have to understand that not all food gets used for the purpose of what we think its purpose is. Another thing that we need to understand with protein is there's actually a biological grade to it, and what that means is the higher the biological grade, the more likely all of that protein is going to be used for protein and not other energy sources which, again, is rare and also the higher the probability that all of the essential amino acids are present.
Speaker 1:Now, the number one biological grade for a protein is actually an egg. And again, no, please understand that I am more of a plant-based person. I say more of because I do eat some dairy, I do eat some fish, I do eat some eggs, but I'm not big on anything else. I eat mostly plants for my consumption. Now, not to go off on something that may be unimportant to you, but that's mostly for my reasoning is that I'm big on animal welfare and I, you know that's just a really big issue with me, and so everything I buy, I do my best to make sure that the animals were treated fairly and ethically. So I do try to buy the highest quality products that I can find, and not just you know any that are your commercial grade products, but I'll leave that there. But anyway, the egg is the 100% biological grade, so it gets the highest rating. That means it's the highest quality protein there is.
Speaker 1:And then, believe it or not? Well, why would I say believe it or not? But next followed is dairy products, and then after that we get fish, and then, after that we get chicken, and then after that we get chicken, and then beef is actually very, very low as far as the animal products go. So there is a biological grade. Look it up, figure out what you like for protein, see how it ranks. You're going to find that the again, the beef does not rank nearly as high as we think it does. The chicken does not rank nearly as high as, say, the low-fat dairy products and egg whites. And I say that because that's getting the protein without the fat, which is why I say the low-fat dairy products and the egg white, because then we're going to get the protein without the fat.
Speaker 1:The problem with the super high protein diet I mean there are a couple problems, but one of the problems is is the majority of the highest biological grade proteins do come with high fat. If we eat the full fatty product, for example the whole egg, it's not bad to eat an egg or two per day. But if we're eating a lot and we're not eating the egg whites but we're eating the whole egg, we are taking in a lot of saturated fat. If we are drinking a lot of whole milk or whole yogurt and not the nonfat, the skims or the low fats, we are taking in a lot of the bad fat, saturated fat. So we don't want to do that. If we're concerned with our health, we want the protein without the fat. Just when you thought that that's all there was to protein, there's more.
Speaker 1:We don't digest and absorb a lot of protein at one sitting, so we basically only take in about 25 grams and assimilate it in a meal. 25 grams, I mean, that sounds like a lot, but like if you're eating a chicken breast, most chicken breasts are going to have if it's a six ounce piece of chicken, like 35 grams right there, and then people will maybe gulp down a glass of milk with it, whatever. I mean, you know bodybuilders are going to have chicken with egg whites and they might have eggs and steak. But the bottom line is our body can only absorb about and I say about because it does depend on your body weight but about 25 grams at a sitting. So get the protein we need. We do have to spread it out throughout the day. How much you need depends on your activity level and depends on your body weight. So we can't just get all of our protein at one time. So what happens with the other? Well, we'll store the extra as fat or it will just simply waste it. We won't absorb it, we will just excrete it. So we don't want to be wasteful that way either, all the way around.
Speaker 1:So you know you might think well, when I buy that big jug of protein at Target or at the health food store, I notice it says my two scoops, which it's telling me to take, has 50 grams, 25 per scoop. Yeah well, they're in the business to make money. They want you to take in more protein because then you're going to use up that big old jug sooner and get some more. Now a lot of them have wised up. Thank goodness for good information being out there, because if we, you, if we don't have anybody watching over these people, well, I hate to break it to you they're going to do whatever they want to the unsuspecting public. But now that there are more watchdogs coming back and saying well, you're not being truthful with the consumer. You will see a lot of the protein, the protein powders I buy. I buy some at Publix, some Terrace Organic and there's other brands I buy. I'm not trying to, I don't promote any or sell any here, but they only have 20 to 25 grams of protein per serving. So they are doing it ethically and right. But just understand, people are in the business to make money, so they want you. They sell it that way.
Speaker 1:Oh, this, you know milk carton thing. We did this race the other day and somebody gave us these free protein drinks at the end which, by the way, tastes absolutely disgusting, and I won't say the product's name, but they were like strawberry flavored and I took a sip and I almost well, let's just say I didn't drink the rest of it, but it was simply disgusting. But on the bottle alone it said loaded with 35 grams of protein. Now the average consumer is going to read that and go, wow, man, this is high in protein. Hey, I'm going to get this from now on. You know, until they learn. And we have to spread this stuff.
Speaker 1:People, people, when you learn these things from me or anybody else that's qualified, tell other people, because you know we don't have a lot of nutritional education out there. I mean we should, but basically people don't learn anything in school when it comes to this stuff. And yet you're going to live the rest of your life needing to understand this information but pass it on and say, hey, they're a little Billy, those 35 grams of protein you're not going to use man. So don't worry about that. Don't fall for the labeling, you know. Just get the protein that you need 20 to 25 grams, and that's per meal. So, like you know, if you're going to have a protein source, don't have two, because it's probably going to add up really quick, but don't have too little either, because we do need it. It is a very important macronutrient, as they all are.
Speaker 1:Now one more thing we have to understand the other problem with consuming a lot of high fat foods to get our protein isn't just the fact that that's going to increase our chances of heart disease and obesity, but not everybody has healthy kidneys. We have to be very cognizant of that. If we've been told by our doctors that we have high creatinine levels or any other kidney issues, we need to watch how much protein we consume. We need to go even lower than the recommendations, because the protein too much protein, and that's only if you're having kidney issues is going to create more stress on those kidneys. So we do have to be aware of that as well. Okay, so remember we can only digest 25 grams at a serving. We need to make sure that our protein is of the essential amino acid variety which we can get from plants if we combine, or quality animal product proteins such as egg whites and low fat dairy and fish, and protein has four calories per gram and we have to spread it out. Okay, so hopefully we've learned a little bit more about protein today. Please pass this on.
Speaker 1:There is so much disinformation out there which just like really drives me nuts. I mean, look out of all of the different industries in the health and wellness. The easiest way to make money is on food. Okay, so we got to understand that that's going to be the area you have to watch the most as far as getting ripped off is on food and supplements, because it's an easy commodity to sell and buy.
Speaker 1:It's not a service. You're buying it. So it's an easy commodity to sell and buy. It's not a service, you're buying it, so it's the easiest thing to manipulate. Don't be stupid people, okay. Get your education, get your trusted sources and really try to better educate yourself on food sources so you can educate other people that you hopefully happen to care about. All right, now I care about my garage door, because now it is running perfectly. An overhead door of Daytona Beach is my go-to for any kind of garage door needs. They have the best product. They have the best service. They have the best people in the Hawks that own it. Give them a shout at 386-222-3165.
