When to take my Protein

Around training is always a good time to take easily digestable protein. Other than that it's horses for courses when you consume it IMO. Some will tell you to divide your daily intake into 6 or 7 and consume at regular intervals throughout the day. Never made a difference to me but others I know do this religuously. Personal trial and error is the best way to find what suits you.

Hi both and welcome to the forum.
There's a long topic here about the best time to drink a protein shake:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/forum/when-is-the-right-time-to-drink-a-protein-shake-29978

Hope that helps,
Michael.

Hi Robert,

Welcome to pponline and the "want to burn body fat club".

Apologies for the length of this reply, but hopefully my advice will save you a lot of money and time.

It sounds like you may have received some very dubious advice on what is required to lose body fat so I will try my best to help you based on my own studies and the vast amounts of information contained on this great site. Correct nutrition is not brain surgery, however stakeholders in the multi billion dollar supplement industry will make you believe that taking their products is the only way to cut your body fat percentages.

In trying to burn body fat you simply need to ensure you burn off more calories than you take in on a daily basis. You do not mention your weight, height, age, or the type of training you are doing? Another critical point is do not expect to be able to cut more than a kg of weight/fat off your body a week or again you will end up losing muscle as part of your weight loss which slows your basil metabolic rate down further meaning if you don't cut your calories to compensate, your body will store more fat.

However unless you in weigh excess of 150kg in bodyweight and are undertaking either extreme strongman training or other very heavy resistance type work that causes quite a lot of damage to your actin and myosin filaments, then taking such high doses of protein will not help you burn body fat and could indeed cause harm to your body. Even an elite athletes body cannot normally absorb more than 30g of protein in any one sitting especially the synthetic type found in protein shakes regardless of brand. Some of this excess protein that cannot be absorbed is broken down and passed in the urine, and the excess above this process is converted back to unused glucose which then gets stored as fat. Thus effectively defeating your whole goal of wanting to lose body fat by increasing your existing stores. I am assuming you are taking protein shakes as if you were consuming natural sources of protein such as eggs, milk, chicken breast etc, you would struggle to physically consume 200 - 300 grams of protein due to its dense and filling nature.

If you have received this advice on the amount of protein you need to take from down the local body building gym or worse a seller of protein supplements, then please disregard it and instead look through the factual advice on this site. There is a really good article on diet in one of the monthly newsletters that focuses on a "back to nature" approach and explains more about the levels of protein you need to take when undertaking heavy training.

You also do not mention what levels of carbohydrate you are consuming alongside this huge daily protein intake. NOTHING can be broken down by the human body for energy without the presence of carbohydrate so if you carb intake is viturally nill, your body will simply break down its own glycogen from muscles in order to produce the energy required to process the protein, thus again defeating your goal.

Another key element to losing fat is ensuring your body is adequately hydrated. The common theme I get with most of my clients is not consuming enough water. The more hydrated the human body is kept the more efficiently it operates all processes including that of fat metabolism.

Good luck and once again please look through this sites great resources for the factual information required to drop your body fat levels.

Kindest regards

Simon

Simon Vincent
Sports Performance and Nutrition Consultant
Body Bullet Dynamics!
South Wales, UK

Another great post Simon, many thanks.

Brilliant post Bodybullet. Welcome to our new posters :)

I think as Simon says, but don't forget to work hard and rest well. Then just let your body convert that fat into muscle!

Zef on Facebook replies, 'Simply need to to reduce daily total calorie intake from all 3 main macronutrients. By maintaining your normal daily food intake in increasing protein will more than have an adverse effect on your goals.'