Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Everyone wants to know how to lose weight, how to get healthier, how to run faster, and how to get there as quickly as possible. We have become a society of instant gratification, from instantly …
Continue Reading about 255. The Shortcut to Health & Fitness Success →
I talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, mainly why it’s advised to keep your carbs low if you’re a runner who wants to lose weight and use body fat as fuel for running. I realized I haven’t …
Continue Reading about 246. The Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners →
When it comes to weight loss tips, one principle stands out among all the others: counting calories. For decades, you’ve been told that the only way to lose weight is to make sure you count all …
Continue Reading about 243. Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work →
There is so much contradictory advice out there when it comes to losing weight. It’s really hard to know what’s right and what’s just BS. I’ve always taken the approach that you need to ignore …
Continue Reading about 242. Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Runners →
If you are a runner and you want to improve your speed, endurance, or both, then you’ll want to work on building some lean muscle. The problem is that most runners don’t really know how to build …
Continue Reading about 234. What It Takes to Build Lean Muscle →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 234 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today what it takes to build lean muscle. So if you’re a runner and you want to improve your speed, your endurance, or both, then you’ll want to work on building some lean muscle.
The problem is that most runners don’t really know how to build muscle, or they’re using an outdated approach that really isn’t doing much for them. Building a stronger body will not only help improve your running performance, it will also help you to lose weight, have more energy, and generally feel better all the time.
So in this episode, what it takes to build lean muscle so that you can get leaner, get stronger, and become the most badass version of yourself yet, but first, as always, if you want some help with all of this stuff, with nutrition, with building endurance, with getting stronger, building strength, becoming that stronger, leaner, more badass version of yourself, I’m here for you if you think that you might benefit from coaching, and I think you might then look into it.
You don’t have to commit to anything. You can go on my website, go to running leancoaching.com, and click on work with me. You’ll fill out a little form. You and I’ll have a discussion over zoom. We’ll talk about coaching and see if this is a good fit for you. If it is, cool, if it isn’t, no big deal, at least now, you know, but I think that most people can benefit from having the expertise, the guidance, the support, the encouragement of somebody that has done all this before and helped hundreds and hundreds of people to become their most badass selves. So if you want a little bit of help, you want to hit the easy button on all this stuff, hit me up. Go to runningleanpodcast.com, leanforlife muscle.
So one of the things that I have found over the last five years or so working with runners on all this stuff, is that runners are not so good about resistance training, right? They don’t do it consistently, maybe only in the off-season. Oh yeah, you know, I run, so I really don’t need to strength train, or do any kind of resistance training while I’m running. Not necessarily true, or that maybe they’re not doing it right. They’re doing, you know, what they think is the right way to get toned, you know. So light weights, super ton of reps and sets, you know? And basically they’re doing a lot of cardio at this point. They’re not lifting heavy enough to actually build muscle to get stronger.
They’re not making strength training or resistance training a priority. So they think that running is enough. So most runners are not being very intentional about building lean muscle. They’re more intentional, very intentional about improving their running performance, about hitting certain goals for their running and they don’t make this connection that the strength side of things getting stronger will help you to reach those running goals.
It’s actually one of the things that’s kind of required for you to reach those goals and to get there without risking injury and burnout and stuff like that. So strength training is essential for your success in long-distance running because when you’re running, you’re putting your muscles under intense stress. And so we want to make sure that we are building muscle. We’re building back that muscle, more lean mass, and we want to get stronger. Building strength helps you to maintain good running form.
For example, it helps you to maintain a consistent power output while you’re running. You know, strong muscles don’t fatigue as quickly as weak muscles. So it improves your endurance as a runner. And athletes who are over 40, especially will benefit from strength training, since strength, for most people, tends to decline faster than your endurance as you get older. So if you’re doing some sort of strength training, it has this sort of anti-aging effect for older adults by preserving lean muscle. I am helping you to optimize all your systems, your cardiovascular system, but mainly your skeletal muscle, muscular systems.
So being a lean runner means you’re a strong runner. Means you’re a more powerful runner, means you’re going to live longer. There are tons of benefits to getting stronger and building lean muscle. For example, you build stronger muscles, yes, but you also build stronger connective tissues, ligaments, tendons, stronger bones. All these things will help you to stay injury free as a runner, getting stronger, building some muscle, helps you to lose weight, because you’re more effective at your body’s more effective at burning fat.
You increase your metabolism. It just costs a little more energy for you to carry around more muscle mass, and we’re not talking about getting huge like a bodybuilder. We’re just talking about putting on a few pounds of muscle here, but it will help to increase your metabolism, because your body requires more energy to carry around that skeletal muscle. It’s a higher energy requirement than fat is.
So it will help you to not only speed up your metabolism, but burn fat more effectively. You know, speed up the fat adaptation process, lose more weight all of that stuff.
Carrying more muscle means you’re going to increase your power to weight ratio, because what you have that you’re carrying around is now muscle that is stronger, you know, than just carry around fat, all right? Because fat does not make you a faster runner, and building more muscle definitely does, though. So you’ll be faster, you’ll be a more powerful runner. You’ll get faster, you’ll be able to increase your endurance, like I mentioned, you can run longer.
A couple of other benefits of getting stronger and building muscle. It helps to increase your lactic threshold, helps to fight depression, reduces risk of disease, protects your joints, boosts energy levels, improves your sleep. So many benefits to getting stronger, carrying around a little bit more muscle. We should all be actively working on improving our muscle mass. And again, we’re not talking about putting on 80 pounds of muscle here. We’re talking about, you know, five pounds, 10 pounds of muscle, something like that.
For most of us, it’s going to offset some of the fat we’re trying to lose. So we want to lose fat weight. We want to put on some muscle weight. That way, we’re improving our body composition. We’re getting rid of some of the tissue that we’re carrying around, the fat in our fat cells, you know, that we’re carrying around that isn’t doing us any good, and replacing that with muscle and which does do us good, it does us lots of good. It helps to improve so many different areas.
So let’s focus on building some muscle while we are losing some of the fat weight. Because listen, running and losing weight are both things that are considered catabolic. They break down muscle or can break down muscle tissue, especially for long-distance runners. So we got to offset the catabolic activity that’s happening with some anabolic activity.
So anabolic activity is building muscle, so running long distances, especially, will break down muscle in the long run. And so we want to replace that. We want to make sure that we are eating enough, getting enough protein, getting rest and recovery. We want to make sure that we are doing adequate muscle building and losing weight is the same thing. You know, a lot of people who restrict calories to lose weight, they lose muscle mass in the process. We do not want this. You want to maintain or you really want to build muscle, and you can build muscle while you’re losing weight, it’s absolutely possible, but you have to have the right approach. You have to do a few things, particularly the things that I’m going to talk about today.
I’ve got three requirements to building lean muscle that you really need to be doing consistently if you want to stay in that anabolic state where you’re building muscle and not in that catabolic state where you’re breaking down muscle.
Okay, so the three requirements to building lean muscle, you know, whether you’re running a lot or trying to lose weight, we got to be building muscle. Here’s three things that are very, very important for building muscle.
The first is going to be resistance training. I think we all know this, like you have to practice some sort of resistance training in order to build muscle. So there’s this principle called the progressive overload principle, and this says basically that in order for a muscle to grow or get stronger, you have to overload that muscle or that muscle group, so that your body has an adaptive positive response to that overload.
So let’s say you go to the gym and you lift 20 pounds, and you do that 10 times as a bicep curl, and you stress out those muscles. When you leave the gym, your body’s going to have a response to that, which is it’s going to make those muscles a little bit stronger and is going to produce a little bit of muscle growth. Okay, so then the next time you go to the gym, you may be able to do 22 pounds, you know, and you may be able to lift those 10 times. Okay, well, now you’ve had a positive adaptation to that overload, you overloaded the muscle. Your muscle now says to itself, doesn’t really say anything, but what it says to itself is, hey, we need to be stronger. We need to be bigger. Because, you know, we’re putting a lot of stress on this, on our muscles here, so your muscle will grow in response to that overload. Okay, so then the next time you go, it’s 25 pounds. The next time it’s 27 pounds.
So the point is that in order to get stronger, in order to build muscle, you have to be doing resistance training. I just went over a ton of benefits of resistance training, but really what we’re trying to do, one of the main things we’re trying to do is either get stronger or build larger muscles, so we can improve the muscle strength, so the strength of the muscle fibers, or we can improve the size of the muscle fibers.
And there’s different types of exercises you do that, you know, there’s a lot of overlap between strength and hypertrophy and power, but ideally you want to be doing things in sort of all areas. I did a whole podcast on this. It was episode 199 called Strength, Power, and Hypertrophy for Runners. So definitely listen to that one, because I break it all down and tell you exactly how to do different resistance training workouts in order to improve strength or power or hypertrophy.
Hypertrophy just means building bigger muscles, right? More muscle mass. Now, if you’re focusing on strength training specifically, you will be getting stronger, but you will also be building bigger muscles. And if you’re focused on hypertrophy, building bigger muscles, you will also be getting stronger. There is an overlap there, so it just kind of depends on where your focus is, what your priority is, but I think we can all benefit from doing some sort of strength or hypertrophy training, some sort of resistance training in order to get bigger muscles.
And you don’t have to do a ton of working out. You don’t have to become a gym rat. And this is where I think a lot of people think that, oh, I don’t have time to do this. Well, one of the things that I teach all my clients in my program is a full-body strength program that you can do twice a week. It only takes 20 minutes each time. You just have to do it twice a week. It’s a full body workout. It is a intense workout. It’s not easy, it’s pretty simple, but it’s not easy. It is hard, but it has great results. And if you were to do that once a week that would be enough to just maintain where you are.
So once a week. Resistance training, if you worked your whole body once a week, that’s fine. You’re going to kind of maintain where you are. Remember, with strength training, it’s a use it or lose it situation. If you don’t work your muscles, they are going to, you know, atrophy. They’re going to get smaller. You’re going to lose some of that muscle mass. So we don’t want to do that. So make sure at least once a week you’re doing some sort of resistance training. Just to maintain what you got, twice a week is enough to build muscle.
If you are doing it properly, you got to be practicing that progressive overload principle, three to five times a week is ideal. Really, if you can get three, four or five times a week in your training plan, that’s perfect. You know, that’s gonna give you the best results. But if you can only fit in twice a week, that’s good too.
Okay, that’s kind of the bare minimum. Once a week would just be enough to maintain okay? So if you can get into three or five resistance training workouts a week. That’s kind of the sweet spot where you want to be. So you have to be doing regular resistance training. Consistency is key here, right? You can’t just do it every now and then, right? It’s not one of those things where you can take time off and only do this in the off season. You don’t want to do it that way. You want to be resistance training the whole time. You’re the whole year around really, there’s really no time that you want to take off again.
If you don’t use it, you lose it. So if you practice some resistance training in the off season, and then you go 16 weeks of training for marathon without doing any resistance training, you’re going to be kind of starting from square one come, you know, the next time you go to start again. So don’t do that. Keep up with the consistent strength training resistance training regimen all year round. The only time I tell people, usually to take off from strength training would be the week of a big race. So if you’ve got your marathon coming up, then, you know, that’s your taper time. You want to make sure you’re not doing anything that’s going to, like, overload you or, you know, break you down the week of your race. You want to be as fresh as possible for that race.
Okay, so three requirements to building lean muscle. Number one, we just talked about, you have to be doing some regular, consistent, intentional resistance training. In order to build lean muscle, you have to build the muscle.
Number two is make sure you have adequate protein intake. If you don’t eat enough protein all those workouts at the gym, there’ll be some benefits, but they won’t amount to much. You need to eat enough protein every day to support the production of lean muscle via muscle protein synthesis, right? You have to eat protein. You have to eat protein, or you will die. Protein is what’s considered an essential nutrient, along with fat. Fat and protein are both called essential nutrients. That means we have to get them externally. We have to eat them, ingest them. Our body does not produce those things, so if we don’t eat fat and protein, we will eventually die. So make sure you’re eating fat and protein every single day.
What’s interesting is that carbohydrates are not considered an essential nutrient. If you don’t eat carbs, you won’t die. Your liver actually produces all the glucose that your brain needs to function properly. Your your brain does need a certain amount of glucose to function every day, and I know tons and tons and tons of people who never eat carbs, and they function absolutely fine. They’re they’re doing just fine. You don’t have to eat carbohydrates. I’m not saying don’t eat them. I’m just saying they’re not essential. Protein is essential. Fat is essential, but protein is one of those things that most runners do not get enough protein.
And there’s a lot of old notions around about how much protein we should be getting and the timing of our protein intake, and a lot of these old notions have been updated in the last couple of years. And I had a podcast where I talked about this back in 2021 I believe it was the ultimate guide to protein for runners, and at the time, it was what I knew to be the science. At the time, it was the, you know, kind of accepted principles and accepted guidelines for athletes. At the time, since then, I’ve changed my advice a little bit, so as the science gets updated, so will my advice to you, just keep that in mind.
So what I’m about to tell you here, I may change this in a couple years time. Who knows? But for now, it looks like what is recommended for most people is to try to get somewhere around point seven grams of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. So this could go up or down, depending on your goals, so maybe point six or up to point eight, even up to one gram. But for most of us, even athletes, we can probably safely say or safely use the point seven grams per pound of ideal body weight as a benchmark for how much protein would we should be getting.
Okay, so just understand that that’s a good place for you to be. You’re going to be fine if you stick around that point seven grams of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. Okay? And the other thing that is interesting that has been kind of debunked or changed or updated, is when you should be getting protein.
So some things that I’ve been learning in the last year or so is that, well, first of all, in the past, we used to be told that we have to get protein like within an hour of a workout, or you’re you’re going to miss the anabolic window. Like there’s this window of time when your body’s going to use the protein to build muscle, and if you miss the hour, it’s not going to do you any good. Not true.
Okay, new research shows that the anabolic window is basically 24 hours. Like your body is constantly using protein to build muscle. Your body is constantly doing this muscle protein synthesis. As long as you’re meeting your daily protein requirements, you’re pretty good to go. Don’t worry about having to get protein in within an hour after a workout.
Now, there are minuscule benefits from eating protein, you know, within an hour or two after a workout, but they’re minuscule. The difference between eating protein within an hour or two after a workout or six or eight hours later is negligible. It’s really not that big of a deal. And unless you’re some sort of elite athlete or bodybuilder, don’t worry about it. If you are an elite athlete or bodybuilder, then knock yourself out. But for most of us, getting, you know, point seven grams of protein every day and or per pound of body weight every day, and just making sure we’re getting that within a 24 hour period, you’re fine. You’re going to be fine. It’s more important that you’re getting adequate protein.
Just got to be consistent with all this stuff. Do it consistently. Use it or lose it. Just remember that we have to do these things consistently. So if you want to get lean, get strong, become a better runner, have more energy, you know, lower risk of injury, have more, you know, fat burning turned on, you want to have faster metabolism. You want to sleep better. You want to just feel better, be in a better mood. Resistance training is going to be the key. Building lean muscle is going to be the key.
You know what to do. Just get out there and do it. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean. I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and interested in getting the most out of your training, then you’ve probably tried a multitude of supplements. There are literally thousands upon thousands of health and …
Continue Reading about 213. Supplements Every Runner Should be Taking →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 213 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, supplements every runner should be taking. If you’re a runner and interested in getting the most out of your training, then you’ve probably tried a bunch of supplements, there are literally thousands upon thousands of health and wellness supplements out there on the market today.
And I looked this up – around one thousand new supplements are introduced every single year. So if you’re feeling a little confused, and a little overwhelmed by all of these options, rest assured you are not alone. Today on the podcast, I’ve got a few simple suggestions for supplements every runner should be taking that will actually improve your health and fitness.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, running strength training. And if you’re new, it may seem a little overwhelming and a little confusing. And that’s okay, I got you covered.
You may not know where to start with all this, but I’ve created a free hour long training that you can check out at any time, it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance and the right mindset that is required for you to become your best self. And all this is geared towards you the runner.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, I hope you are, then this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, supplements every runner should be taking. The reason I am talking about this today is because I just realized after looking back through 212 episodes that I haven’t really talked much about supplements. And it’s something that I talk about with my clients regularly.
But one of the reasons why I typically don’t make suggestions for supplementation, or even, you know, certain nutrition suggestions here on the podcast is because, you know, making these blanket suggestions for the general public is not the way I like to do things.
I don’t like to just tell you like, oh, everybody should be doing this, or everybody should be doing that. Because we are all different. And we all respond differently to different nutrition, to different exercises to different supplements.
But I feel pretty confident about these few supplements I’m going to talk about today and I’m pretty sure everybody can benefit from from these particular supplements, okay, these are pretty generally accepted, pretty generally beneficial to just about everyone, there’s probably going to be some exceptions out there. Which is fine. If that is you and you’re like, oh, this one doesn’t apply to me or I can’t do that one. That is completely fine. Don’t do it.
Don’t think that I’m telling you that you have to do anything, okay. Also, I think that these supplements will really help you if you are a runner, because they are geared towards, you know, building strength and hydration and helping you to become as to perform your best as a runner.
Okay, so if you’re a runner, and you’re someone who’s interested in improving your athletic performance, improving your body composition, then stay tuned, this is definitely for you. That being said, I do have to make a little disclaimer here that I’m not a doctor, we’re not engaged in any kind of a coaching relationship.
So please check with your doctor before taking any kind of supplements to make sure you don’t experience any adverse side effects and that there aren’t any interactions with any other supplements you’re taking or medications. Cool. Okay. Awesome.
So first one is and we all know about this one is electrolytes. And what are electrolytes? First of all, electrolytes are minerals that actually carry an electric charge. They’re found in your blood, your urine, your sweat, and they are vital to specific processes that keep your body functioning properly.
Some of the most common electrolytes found in your body include sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium phosphate and bicarbonate. These electrolytes are required for various bodily processing, including nerve and muscle function, maintaining pH balance, and keeping you hydrated.
Electrolytes are crucial to keeping your nervous system and your muscles functioning and your internal environment balanced. So your brain sends electrical signals through your nerve cells to communicate with the cells throughout your body. And these signals are called nervous impulses. And they’re generated by charges to the electrical changes to the electrical charge of the nerve cell membrane.
And these changes actually occurred due to the movement of the electrolytes sodium across the nerve cell membrane. So electrolytes, if you don’t have electrolytes in your system, you will die. This is something where you just have to get electrolytes in your system.
And we all get these in our in our body, you know, through our diet, you know, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium phosphate, these are all very common, and most people will get these in their diet.
I do think that as runners, especially if you are a heavy sweater or live in a warm environment, that it is very important for you to supplement with electrolytes, it can really improve your health and fitness and you’re running performance in a lot of ways. So let’s talk about some of these ways that taking supplemental electrolytes can help you.
Number one, it improves hydration. And this is the most common way we think of electrolytes, electrolyte water, electrolyte drinks, you know, energy drinks, you know, running endurance drinks.
Water is the most essential nutrient. And it’s very important that you drink enough water throughout the day, right> However, staying hydrated with water doesn’t really work on its on itself. Like you have to have electrolytes in the mix somehow throughout the day, okay, they play a key role in maintaining your hydration levels, by directing the flow of water in and out of cells.
So studies have actually shown that adding salt to fluids greatly improves improves your fluid retention, especially when you’re restoring the fluid balance after significant electrolyte loss, which happens after long runs when the weather is really hot outside when you sweat a lot. This is because both water and sodium need to be consumed in order to establish proper hydration levels.
Okay, so know that you cannot just drink tons of water by itself, that you have to have electrolytes in your water. When you are especially when you’re exercising. I like to start my day with electrolytes first thing in the morning, I hydrate what right when I get up with electrolytes.
And I feel like it’s a great way for me to start the day. And I feel like I’m not myself until I’ve had my electrolytes first thing in the morning. When you sleep you you kind of tend to get dehydrated. So it’s great to start the day with proper hydration including electrolytes.
Okay, another benefit of taking a supplement electrolytes is that they do give you energy so electrolytes support energy production, by ensuring the body is properly hydrated and fueled. So sodium in particular, plays a pivotal role in hydration, which is essential for maintaining high energy levels.
It helps regulate fluid volume levels and ensures that your muscles function correctly. So essentially, a well hydrated body is an energized body. And if you’ve ever been out on a long run on a hot day, and you’ve kind of, this has totally happened to me, I’ve kind of run out of water run out of electrolytes and just got a little dehydrated, my energy levels tanked really fast, you know so it is important that you stay hydrated and use electrolytes to maintain energy levels.
Another benefit it improves athletic performance. So sodium before a workout helps to increase blood volume. This means that more blood is available system wide. More blood volume means more oxygen is available for working muscles. So more oxygen means better performance.
So if you just want to do something to improve your athletic performance, salt before a workout is going to help get you there. You know you’re improving increasing blood volume, and you’re going to improve your athletic performance for that workout. So right there is a great reason to make sure that you’re doing electrolytes especially before workouts.
Another benefit of electrolytes it helps to promote good sleep. So quality sleep is crucial for just being an overall healthy human being. Electrolytes particularly calcium helped to promote REM sleep, which is a deep sleep phase allows your body to rest and recharge.
This is especially beneficial, beneficial for people who struggle with insomnia. Maintaining a proper electrolyte balance can significantly improve your sleep quality. So electrolytes support sleep without the need for stimulants or our caffeine or anything like that. So just understand that good quality sleep is important electrolytes play a role in that electrolytes also helped to reduce stress.
Magnesium, one of the electrolytes we talked about is an essential electrolyte has been shown to have a calming effect on the body in the mind. And this is often used to help with sleep as well. But it helps to alleviate anxiety too. And it helps to regulate the nervous system and promotes relaxation.
So maintaining a healthy electrolyte balance helps you to your body to function properly helps to reduce stress levels, and helps you to just to feel less stressed throughout the day. Good thing for all of us.
Another benefit of electrolytes is helps to strengthen bones and muscles. So now we’re talking about calcium and potassium. These are vital for strengthening muscles and bones. Calcium contributes to bone health, which is particularly important for those at high risk of osteoporosis. And potassium helps to maintain muscle health by preserving muscle mass and helps to prevent muscle cramps. All very good things for us runners right.
Electrolytes also helped to improve recovery. Studies suggests that consuming electrolytes like sodium can optimize water absorption, which yields faster recovery times, and probably is more effective at enhancing your performance and recovery than water alone.
So it’s encouraged for someone to focus on fluids and electrolyte consumption to facilitate proper recovery not just to improve performance. And it helps with tissue repair too. So electrolytes help to rebuild damage tissue by improving cell function and cell hydration. So better all around workouts and better all around recovery from workouts, which is super important.
And then we’ve all probably heard that electrolytes help to prevent muscle cramps. Yep, this is true. Studies have shown that to that there are two main types of cramping, there’s a overuse cramping, that means you’re just pushing a muscle too much too hard, too soon. And there’s cramping from electrolyte deficiency.
If you are a really salty sweater, temperatures are really high, you’re doing really long distance runs, consider using electrolytes before and during those long events to prevent cramping. And then obviously, you have to make sure you’re ramping up your training slowly and you’re not overdoing it.
A lot of runners experience cramping, you know, miles 18 to 22 into a marathon because they’re not used to running nonstop for that long. So a lot of people get cramps during their first marathon because, you know, they may have done a few 20 mile runs.
But they’ve done them where they stop and they take breaks and things like that. But you know, running nonstop for, you know, three hours or whatever is a little bit different and it causes muscle cramps. So the the overexertion tends to be the big contributor of muscle cramps, but the electrolytes will help prevent that as well.
Okay, so how much should you take? So the recommendations vary, but listen, we’re mainly talking about salt intake. That’s the one that you know people are concerned about. And the FDA says that we should only be getting 2.3 grams of, of salt per day maximum.
Interestingly, the average American gets around three and a half grams of sodium per day. Of course, the FDA would like to see that reduced. There is a growing body of research that reveals that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels, two to three times the government recommendations.
So if you eat a diet, low in unprocessed foods, less you’re getting less sodium right there. If you eat a diet low in carbohydrates, you’re gonna have less water retention. And then you probably need to add more salt in the way of you know, an electrolyte supplement into your diet.
And the sweet spot for most people seems to be four to six grams of sodium per day. That’s kind of recommended by new research and by experts, and the new research definitely backs this up as being the optimum amount. Of course, if you have high blood pressure or hypertension, you have to check with your doctor before adding more more salt into your diet.
And then just understand that you are if you are a low carb athlete, then your body will be not as inflamed and not holding on to as much water which means you’re processing more fluids processing more water and losing more electrolytes in that process.
So most low carb athletes tend to err on the side of more salt is better and they seem to feel much better doing more salt brands I recommend there’s a couple brands that I like one is called element LMNT and they come in little packets.
And the ingredients are pretty simple. It’s salt, in the form of sodium chloride, citric acid, magnesium malate, and then potassium chloride, natural flavors, stevia leaf extract. In each packet of LMNT there’s 1000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. This is a good mix.
These things are really good I’ve recommended these in the past. Another one that I really like is is by a salt brand called Redmond. Redmond Re-Lyte is the name of the product. Re-Lyte and they use ancient sea salt. These are the ingredients coconut water powder.
Coconut water is a natural has natural occurring electrolytes in it. Citric acid stevia leaf extract natural flavors 810 milligrams of sodium per serving and this stuff comes in a little tub so you can measure out your own servings but 810 milligrams of sodium, 400 milligrams of potassium, 180 milligrams of chloride, 60 milligrams of calcium, 50 milligrams of magnesium. So both of these have good electrolyte profiles.
I kind of like the Redman Re-Lyte just because it’s a little more convenient without having to have all these packets that you have to open, number one. Number two, it also includes calcium, which I think is important as an electrolyte. So, but they’re both great, they’re both great choices.
Okay, next supplement that I think every runner can benefit from is protein powder. So protein is probably the most important of all the macronutrients that we need for survive like we cannot survive if we do not get protein in our diet. Fat is the other one, we have to eat fat or will die, we have to eat protein or we will die. These are called essential macronutrients. If we don’t consume those in our diet, we will perish.
Interestingly enough, carbohydrates are not considered an essential macro nutrient. If we don’t eat carbohydrates, we’ll be fine. Like there’s really nothing that’s going to go wrong. Our liver will produce all the glucose that our that our brain needs for survival. So we really don’t even have to eat foods that are related with carbohydrates or sugars.
Okay, so protein is very important. Why should you supplement with protein? Why do you need to eat some kind of protein powder? Shouldn’t you just get enough protein in your diet? Yes, you can definitely get enough protein in your diet. But most people find it difficult to get enough protein by eating a protein.
You know, meat essentially is probably the best form of protein. But if you’re vegan, vegetarian, whatever tofu, beans, there’s legumes, there’s other sources of protein where you can up your protein intake. But I just find that most people I talked to struggle to get enough protein in during the day.
The recommendations from the government are like, hey, 65% of your calories needs to be coming from carbohydrate. So this right alone right there, if you’re following the standard American diet right there, it’s gonna make it really difficult to get enough protein.
And I think that the type of protein powder matters and that whey protein seems to be the best the safest, the most studied the most effective, the most bioavailable form of protein, it is a complete protein means it contains all nine essential amino acids. So whey protein seems to be the best.
Now, if you are vegan or vegetarian, you don’t want to do the dairy or you’re lactose intolerant or something like that. No problem. There are other good options out there. Soy is a good option. I know a lot of people are allergic to soy, but it does have all the essential amino acids, which is important.
Pea protein is the other one that has all the essential amino acids, so those are both considered complete proteins. And those are pretty good to do, but way is superior in a lot of different ways. So if you’re somebody that can handle, you know, eating the whey protein, then that’s your best bet.
Okay, so the for the focus of this conversation today, I’m going to be mostly focusing on whey protein as the protein supplement, but you can just, you know, plug and play the other ones into this same formula because they all have similar benefits. But there’s a couple of benefits that are specific to weigh as I’m going to mention here in just a minute.
Okay, so some of the benefits of whey protein or you know, taking a protein supplement. So muscle mass declines naturally as you age, unless you’re doing something to offset that, okay. For most people, this leads to muscle loss and fat gain, and raises the risk of lots of metabolic diseases right.
This adverse change in body composition can be slowed, prevented or reversed with a combination of strength training and getting enough protein in your diet. Strength training, coupled with the consumption of a high protein foods or a protein supplement has been shown to be an effective preventative strategy for muscle degradation, and weight gain as we age.
So particularly effective seem to be high quality protein sources such as weight. So whey is rich in a branched chain amino acid called leucine. And leucine is the most growth promoting or anabolic of the amino acids. And for this reason, whey protein is effective for the prevention of age related muscle loss, as well as for improved strength.
So for muscle growth, some studies show that whey protein may be slightly better than other types of proteins such as casein or soy, okay. Whey protein may also lower blood pressure, okay, so abnormally high blood pressure, or condition called hypertension, is one of the leading risk factors for heart disease. Numerous studies have linked the consumption of dairy products with reduced blood pressure, interesting.
This effect has been attributed to a family of bioactive peptides and dairy called ace inhibitors. And in whey proteins, that specifically, the ace inhibitors are called lactic acids and several animal studies have demonstrated their beneficial effects on blood pressure.
So one study in overweight individuals showed that whey protein consumption around 50 grams a day for 12 weeks lowered systolic blood pressure by 4%. And other milk proteins like casein had, casein had seen similar effects.
This is supported by another study that found significant effects when participants were given whey protein for six weeks. However, understand this though, blood pressure decreased only in those that had high or slightly elevated blood pressure to begin with. So it didn’t really have an effect on lowering blood pressure for people with normal blood pressure.
But that’s a good benefit of just doing something as simple as taking a protein supplement. Protein helps to reduce inflammation. So inflammation is part of the body’s natural response to damage and short term inflammation can be beneficial. But under certain certain circumstances, it can become chronic and this is not good.
Chronic inflammation can be harmful. It’s a risk factor for many diseases. And it may reflect underlying health conditions of or lifestyle habits that can be detrimental to your health. This large study done recently found that high doses of whey protein supplements and when they say high doses, they’re talking equal to or greater than 20 grams per day, that is not high.
That’s like less than one scoop of protein powder basically. But anyway, these particular doses of whey protein supplements significantly reduced reactive protein CRP, which is a key marker of inflammation in the body so good at reducing inflammation. If you’re a runner and you want to recover faster and not be so inflamed, whey protein is a great supplement for that protein in general will help with that.
Also understand this protein is highly satiating, it’s very filling, and it helps to reduce hunger. So when we talk about satiety, we’re talking about the feeling of fullness we we experienced after eating a meal.
It’s the opposite of appetite or hunger, and it should suppress the cravings for food and the desire to eat. So eating food that is more satiating will help you to not eat as much to feel more full throughout the day. And to help you to not be craving all kinds of crazy foods throughout the day which is all good.
If you’re trying to lose weight then not being totally ravenously hungry and craving sugar and stuff like that is a good thing. It’s a good thing. So some foods are more satiating than others, and it depends on their macronutrient composition.
Carbohydrates, being the least satiating, fat being the next and then protein being the most, by far, the most satiating of the three big macronutrients. However, not all proteins have the same effect on satiety. Whey protein appears to be more satiating than other types of protein such as casein or soy.
These properties make it particularly useful for those who want to try to you know, consume fewer calories and lose weight. Okay, so protein, super satiating, I always suggest people eat more protein. And this is a great way to help you lose weight.
That is actually the next big benefit of a protein supplement is that it increased consumption of protein has been a well known weight loss strategy. And this is one of the things that I promote with my clients as well. And the reason this works is because it suppresses appetite, it leads to typically reduced calorie intake, it helps to boost your metabolism helps you to burn more calories.
And if you’re burning the right kinds of calories, meaning fat, then it’ll help you to lose more weight, it helps to maintain muscle mass when you’re losing weight. A lot of people they set out to lose weight, and they lose a lot of muscle mass in the process. We don’t want to do that. So supplementing with protein, especially a good quality protein, like whey will help you to offset that muscle loss.
And as long as you’re doing proper strength training as well, then you’ll be actually gaining muscle and losing weight and losing the fat weight. This is how you improve your body composition and get that have that nice, lean, strong look that we all want. So whey protein has been shown to be particularly effective, and it has a superior effect on fat burning and satiety than other types of protein.
So just know that how much protein powder should you be taking, really, the recommendations vary a little bit here, but 25 to 50 grams per day seems to be fine. If you’re somebody that is not really getting enough protein from your diet, then do a double scoop of protein.
So like 50 grams, typically a scoop is like 20-25 grams of protein. So do a couple scoops of that, mix it up with some water, some milk or almond milk or whatever, you know, floats your boat there. But 25 to 50 grams a day seems to be the recommended amount, total protein recommendations, and this has changed over the years.
But I like to tell people that you should probably be getting point seven to one gram of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. So if your goal is to get to 150 pounds, you probably want to be between 105 to 150 grams of protein per day.
Again, this can be hard for some people, especially women, women seem to have a little bit of a hard time getting enough protein just from food alone. So supplementing is a great way to make sure you’re getting adequate protein to support your weight loss to support your training.
Brands I recommend – there’s lots of great brands out there. I just recommend looking for brands that have few ingredients that don’t have any weird ingredients that you don’t understand that don’t have any added sugar. I’m currently using a whey protein powder by a company called Levels.
And the ingredients are really simple. It is whey protein, vanilla extract, sunflower lecithin, which is a natural emulsifier just improves the consistency when you mix it up. Sea salt, stevia leaf extract and monk fruit extract. That’s it super simple ingredients. I understand what all those are. There’s nothing weird in there.
But look for a brand that you know is in your budget and also because protein can be expensive. Look for something that’s in your budget and that that feels good to you. Okay, just read the labels get good at reading labels.
Okay, last of my big three supplements that I think every runner should be taking is creatine. So what is creatine? Creatine is a natural supplement used to boost athletic performance. It’s not only safe but it’s one of the world’s most popular and most effective supplements for building muscle and strength.
Creatine is a chemical compound that occurs naturally in the body. It’s also found in red meat and seafood. Creatine is an amino acid that comes from other amino acids. So there are Some amino acids that we call essential amino acids, and these are ones that we have to get in our diet, okay?
And so those those essential amino acids can kind of combine and then those produce other amino acids. I think there’s like 20 total amino acids that we need for survival. But then there’s, like 11 other amino acids that are created from combination of the essential amino acids, if that makes sense, okay.
And creatine is one of those amino acids that is created from a combination of other amino acids. So the human body makes creatine in the liver and the kidneys and the pancreas. It’s stored in your muscles, mainly in a form called a phospho, creatine or creatine phosphate. And creatine is involved in making energy for your muscles.
Why should you supplement with creatine? Can’t you just get this in your diet? You can you can actually get enough creatine in your diet if you’re eating red meat and fish, but you would probably need to eat something like two and a half pounds of steak every day to get you to the recommended dosage of creatine which is five grams per day.
Five grams is like a rounded teaspoon of creatine so it’s not a lot, but two half pounds of steak maybe a little bit much for most people. Okay, so it’s much easier to just supplement. Again, these are the supplements that I think are so beneficial, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be supplementing with them, especially creatine.
So what are the benefits of creatine? One it helps to produce helps your muscle cells produce more energy. Creatine increases your muscles phosphocreatine stores, it aids in the formation of ATP, which is the key molecule your cells use for energy and all basic life functions. During exercise ATP is broken down to produce energy.
The rate of ATP resynthesis limits your ability to continually perform at max intensity. So as your ATP as you use up ATP faster than you can reproduce it Okay, so creatine supplements actually increase your fossil creatine stores allowing you to produce more ATP energy to fuel your muscles during high intensity exercise. This is the primary mechanism behind creatine perhaps performance enhancing effects.
So I mean right there, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using creatine. Creatine also supports many other functions in the muscles. It’s a popular and effective supplement for adding muscle mass. It can alter numerous cellular pathways that lead to new muscle growth for example, it boosts the formation of proteins that create new muscle fibers. It can also raise levels of insulin like growth factor, IGF1, a hormone that promotes increases in muscle mass.
What’s more creatine supplements can increase the water content of your muscles. This is known as cell volumization and can quickly increase muscle size as soon as you start taking creatine you’ll notice a little bit of of water retention and your muscles. Most people see it as a little bit of weight gain.
So they’ll say oh my gosh, I’m starting creatine and I started gaining weight. No, you’re going to just gain a little bit of muscle and water content and your muscles are totally fine. It’s actually good for you to do that. Some research indicates that creatine decreases levels of myostatin, which is a molecule responsible for stunting muscle growth. So reducing myostatin can help you build muscle faster as well. Very, very awesome stuff this creatine, it improves high intensity exercise performance.
So creatine is direct role and ATP production means it can drastically improve high intensity exercise performance. They improve numerous factors including strength ballistic power, sprinting ability, muscle endurance, resistance to fatigue, muscle mass recovery brain performance, unlike supplements only affect advanced athletes.
Creatine benefits you regardless of your fitness level, that is key right there. And one review found that improves high intensity exercise performance by up to 15%. Why are you not taking creatine every day? Creatine also speeds muscle growth, so it’s one of the most effective supplements for adding muscle mass.
Taking it for just as few as five to seven days has been shown to significantly increase lean body weight and muscle size. This initial rise is caused by increases in water content of your muscles fine over the long term though.
It also aids in muscle fiber growth by signal signaling key biological pathways and boosting your performance at the gym. And one study of a six week training regimen participants who used creatine added 4.4 pounds more muscle mass on average than the control group that’s huge, huge, huge, huge.
Similarly, a comprehensive review demonstrated a clear increase in muscle mass among those taking creatine compared with those performing the same training regimen without creatine. This review also compared the world’s most popular sports supplements and concluded that creatine is the best one available. Its advantages include being less expensive and far safer than most other sports supplements.
Again, creatine for the when creatine helps to improve brain function, it plays an important role in your brain health and brain function. Research demonstrates that your brain requires a significant amount of ATP when performing difficult tasks and supplements can increase the phosphocreatine stores in your brain and help it produce more ATP.
Creatine may also aid brain function by increasing dopamine levels and mitochondrial function. As meat as the best dietary source of creatine vegetarians often have low levels of creatine in their system and one study on creatine supplements and vegetarians found a 20 to 50% improvement in some memory and intelligence test scores. When these vegetarians who are starving were on a creatine supplement.
And then for older individuals supplementing with creatine for just a few weeks significantly improved memory and recall ability. And older adults creatine may boost brain function protect against neurological diseases and reduce age related loss of muscle and strength. So just take creatine every day, just from now on. Okay.
One last thing about it is that it helps to reduce muscle helps to reduce fatigue and tiredness. One study they did show that people that had been sleep deprived had reduced levels of fatigue and increased energy levels. And they did a test on cycler cyclists. And they found that creatine reduced the fatigue in athletes taking a cycling test and has been used to decrease fatigue when exercising in high heat as well.
So again, creatine, for the win every day. Creatine is safe and easy to use. Along with all of its benefits, it’s one of the cheapest and safest supplements available. It’s been studied more than any other supplement out there. You can find it just about anywhere. It’s been researched for more than 200 years. Yeah, I know that’s crazy.
And numerous studies supported safety for long term use clinical trial trials lasting up to five years report no adverse effects in healthy individuals. What’s more, supplementing is easy, just do three to five grams of creatine monohydrate powder per day.
So what I’m recommending is creatine monohydrate. That should be the only ingredient so if you’re buying something and it has anything else in it, just don’t get it just stick with creatine monohydrate that should be the only ingredient I use a brand called Optimum Nutrition. It’s great, lots of good reviews. It’s odorless, tasteless, pretty much and and I just add it to my protein shake, mix it up. And then I’m good to go around five grams a day for most people, if you’re if you’re a little on the lighter side, you could probably be closer to that three grams. If you’re heavier, you know, 220 pounds or 250 pounds you could probably go six or eight grams per day something like that.
Most people seem to do well around five grams per day. Cool. Okay, those are supplements that I think every runner should be taking. I hope you got something good out of this episode today. I hope you have some good takeaways and you can start supplementing with abandon because these are these are good ones and I think just about everybody can benefit from these core. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
