7 Points to Better Protein Performance
Protein powders you find in your local health-food stores lack critical nutrients that give protein its real power.
These overly-processed and misleading products give you cheap, weakened forms of protein that come from sick, diseased animals. And some protein powders even have dangerous levels of lead, cadmium and other heavy metals.
Not only are they a waste of money, but if you eat them, they will only make you weaker and more vulnerable to disease.
To stay slim, strong and potent, you need a reliable source of protein that hasn’t been processed, contaminated or altered.
Today, I’ll show you the 7 factors you need in your protein powder to unlock its natural power.
The kind of protein powder that lets you:
- Hit and maintain your ideal size
- Melt pound after pound of excess weight
- Boost your immune strength and get sick less often
- Build lean muscle and functional strength you can use
- Fight free radicals and stay younger, longer
- Power up your performance
I’ll also show you how to use protein powder so you see these results fast.
Protein is Your Body’s Most Prized Power Source
Protein is the only truly essential macronutrient. You also need two essential fatty acids, but once you get a minimum of them, you can make all the fat your body needs.
Carbohydrates, the third macronutrient, are completely unessential to your health. In other words, your body can make whatever carbs it needs on its own. But you simply cannot survive without eating protein.
Proteins are the building blocks of life. Quality protein is your single most important nutritional concern. It’s composed of 20 amino acids, eight of which you can’t make and must consume. To be optimally healthy, you must consume all eight of these essential amino acids
every day.Protein is an important component of every cell in your body. Hair and nails are mostly made of protein. Your body uses protein to build and repair tissues. You also use protein to make enzymes, hormones and other body chemicals. Protein is an important building block of bones, muscles, cartilage, skin and blood.
But unlike fat and carbohydrates, the body does not store protein, and therefore has no reserve to draw on when it needs a new supply.
Throw Your Body’s Fat-Melting Switch
Getting a steady supply of protein actually programs your body to melt fat. It throws a “metabolic switch” that tells your body it’s okay to melt fat.
Here’s why: Your body is not a machine. It’s a living, sentient being that makes decisions based on the challenges it faces every day.
Your body’s number-one priority is survival. And protein is your body’s most prized power source. Under normal circumstances, your body keeps fat on reserve for one reason: to prevent starvation.
But when your body has more protein than it needs, its survival is not threatened. It then feels “safe” enough to start burning off its fat stores.
Over-consuming protein is one of the easiest, most reliable ways of melting fat. In addition, you’ll guarantee your body has the building blocks it needs for optimum health.
Here’s an easy rule-of-thumb for knowing how much protein you need every day:
Consume one gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass.
If you weigh 200 pounds and have 20 percent body fat, that means you’re carrying 40 pounds of fat, with 160 pounds of lean body mass. In this example, you would eat 160 grams of protein each day.
If you don’t know how to measure your body fat, there are scales you can buy that calculate your body fat for you. There are also hand-held devices that are reliable. You can find these on the Internet.
If you don’t have any way to measure your body fat, then use this guideline: For men, the average is between 15-17 percent. For women, the average is between 18-22 percent. Obviously, the heavier you are, the higher the percentage.
Consuming one gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass is more than your government recommends. But that’s the point. If you’re only getting 30 to 60 grams of protein a day, you’ll survive, but your body will hold on to its fat for dear life.
Over-consume protein and your body responds by dumping fat.
What Are You Really Eating?
But even if you follow a low-carb, no-grain diet, the meat you buy from the grocery store has been fed grain.
Corn and other grains are high on the glycemic index. That means they break down into sugar very quickly, causing a sharp spike of insulin. Remember it’s insulin that regulates fat gain. A grain-heavy diet makes the animals enormously fat and very sick.
Then we eat those unnaturally raised and diseased animals. If the cow is diseased, how can we expect to stay healthy by eating it?
Now let me clarify my point. The commercially-raised meat you are eating may be giving you health problems. It has the wrong kind of fat that’s unhealthy for your heart. But, contrary to what you hear, this is not because it’s red meat. In fact, I regard some beef as among the healthiest of all foods.
There is a difference between grain-fed and grass-fed cattle. To understand the difference, you must understand commercial meat production.
Commercial Cattle’s Unnatural Diet
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Cattle, in one form or another have been on this planet for millions of years. They have successfully survived by grazing on grasslands, prairies, and hillsides. Cattle’s natural diet consists of grasses and legumes. Their anatomy and physiology reflect their diet.
Most commercial cattle no longer eat their natural diet. Growers feed them cheap grain and other “feedstuff” in order to fatten them up quickly. The feedstuffs include hormones to make livestock larger. Ranchers even give the animals antibiotics to keep them alive in deplorable living conditions.
Unlike grass-fed cattle, commercial cattle consume grains and a whole host of contaminants in their feed, including pesticides, cement dust, candy, animal manure, cardboard, nut shells, feathers and meat scraps.1
The old saying “you are what you eat” comes to mind. As a result, commercial beef has drastically less nutritional value than their pasture-fed relatives. A study in the Journal of Animal Science found that the more grass cattle ate, the more nutritious their beef became.2
Grass-fed products have three to five times more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than that of commercial animals.3 CLA is an important nutrient that has cancer-preventing properties. Grass-fed beef also has four times more vitamin E.4
You probably already know how important omega-3 fatty acids are to your health. But even more important is the ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids. Too much omega-6 fatty acids have been linked to heart disease, cancer and other health problems. For example, according to a study by Midwest Land Grant University, grain-fed beef had 20 times the Omega-6 fatty acids to Omega-3s as grass-fed beef.
Choose a Protein Powder That Comes From
Healthy, Grass-Fed Animals
In our modern world, when you eat the meat from an animal, you have to concern yourself with the environment that animal came from. It makes a great deal of difference.
The same holds true for protein powders.
If the meat from grain-fed cattle is dangerous, so is the protein. And that’s important to remember. When you’re buying a bottle of protein powder, you don’t always think about where the protein came from.
Avoiding the meat that comes from sick and diseased animals also applies to protein.
The best protein supplement comes from whey protein. Whey is actually a by-product of the cheese production and contains a wealth of the amino acids and other vital nutrients we need from protein.
The 7 Factors Your Protein Powder MUST Have
To Unlock Its Slimming, Energizing and Anti-Aging Power
1. Choose Grass-Fed: First, a grass-fed source of pure whey protein is essential when you’re choosing a protein powder. If it’s not grass-fed, chances are you’re consuming protein that’s coming from pesticide-treated, grain-fed animals. And that’s bad news, especially when you consider that grain-fed whey is missing many of the amino acids and enzymes found in grass-fed whey. Grain-fed whey is also much lower in healthy omega-3 fats.
2. Hormone-Free Cows: Grain-fed cattle are almost always injected with antibiotics, estrogens and growth hormones to quickly fatten the cows and fight the infections and diseases that come from being confined on feed lots.
3. Low-Temperature Processed: Most commercial protein powders are heat processed at very high temperatures, which destroy many of the enzymes and other heat-sensitive nutrients that give whey protein its power.
4. Acid-Free Processing: To save money, many manufacturers process whey with a technique called “acid/ion exchange.” Using acid and other harsh chemicals to separate the whey from the fats, it damages the amino acids that give whey protein its power.
5. Whey Protein Concentrate: When you’re browsing the aisles of your local vitamin store you may see towers of protein powder bottles boasting “whey protein isolate” as being better absorbed. Truth is, isolates aren’t natural and are not easily metabolized. What’s more, isolates are acid-processed and missing key amino acids.
6. Sweetened Naturally: Avoid artificial sweeteners, especially the ones that contain aspartame, sugar alcohol or high fructose corn syrup. A good protein powder should be low-glycemic, meaning it should not raise your blood sugar.
7. Free from Toxic Heavy Metals: Many protein powders contain high levels of toxic and cancer-causing heavy metals like mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic. This was confirmed by a recent study published in Consumer Reports.5
Get More Muscle and More Energy With
These 2 Strength-Building Secrets
To get the biggest boost of energy, the leanest body and the strongest muscles, take your protein powder first thing in the morning and right after you exercise. Studies show that giving your body a good source of protein right after exercise helps build muscle and melt fat. Professional athletes do this routinely and you should, too.
Grass-fed protein powders are not as easy to find as other commercial brands, and they tend to be more expensive. But the difference makes it worth the search and the extra money.
A quality, grass-fed protein powder can help you take off pounds of unwanted fat in record time. In fact, you’ll feel the slimming effect right away. You’ll also notice firmer, stronger muscles, more energy and better performance in the bedroom. You may even find that you don’t have to sleep as much and that you get sick less often.
Here’s how you can get a top-grade whey protein powder made from only grass-fed animals.
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[1] Robinson, J., Why Grassfed is Best, Vashon Island Press, WA, 2000, pg. 10
[2] French, P., et al, “Fatty acid composition, including conjugated linoleic acid, of intramuscular fat from steers offered grazed grass, grass silage, or concentrate-based diets,” J. Anim. Sci. 2000;78:2849-2855
[3] Dhiman, T., et al, “Conjugated linoleic acid from cows fed different diets,” J. Dairy Sci. 1999; 82(10): 2146-2156
[4] Smith, G., “Dietary supplementation of vitamin E to cattle to improve shelf life and case life of beef for domestic and international markets,” Colorado State University
[5] “What’s in your protein drink?” Consumer Reports July 2010