If You Are Into Fitness, You Should Drink Protein Shakes

You should drink protein shakes if you are: trying to build muscle, you are an athlete, including an endurance athlete.  If you are not an athlete you should drink protein shakes to be healthy.   You might think that you get enough protein from the food you eat, and you might be right if you eat more than six eggs a day.

Here is How Much Protein You Need a Day

When you search for how much protein you need in your diet, you will likely find you should have .8g of protein per kg of body mass.  That would be .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight. A 160 lbs man would need to eat 58 grams of protein a day.  To quickly see how much protein you should be getting just add or subtract 7 grams for every 20 lbs of body weight.  The 58 grams of protein is pretty close to the US FDA 2000-calorie diet food labels we are all familiar with reading. The US FDA standard 2000-calorie diet lists 50 grams as the daily value of protein to consume.  The 100% value of fat is 65g, carbohydrates 300g, and dietary fiber 25g.

That is Not Enough Protein to Maintain Your Muscle Mass

To maintain your muscle mass, you should be eating. The 0.36 grams per lb of body mass. You could quickly get this much protein with a diet that has: 2 eggs (12g of protein) in the morning, 3 oz of turkey or chicken breast on a sandwich at lunch (24g of protein), and 3 oz of a lean cut of beef (23g of protein) for dinner.  These foods put you right in at 59g of protein and .36 grams for a 160lb individual.  You will also get additional protein with the other food that you are eating.  So this seems pretty simple and would make it sound like no one needs to drink protein shakes.  There are a few problems with this example.

1st Reason – To Drink Protein Shakes is for Complete Protein

The first problem is that the one complete protein was the eggs in the morning and it was the lowest quantity of protein in the diet.  If you are unfamiliar with the term complete protein, it merely means that eggs have all of the essential amino acids or the amino acids that our body can’t produce from other amino acids.  Protein is a pretty complex source of energy, it is made up of amino acids, and there are 21 amino acids that our body uses to make all the proteins.

Essential Amino Acids

There are nine of these 21 amino acids that our body can’t produce, and these are called essential amino acids.  If a source of protein contains all nine of the essential amino acids then it is considered a complete protein.  The most common complete proteins are eggs, whey, and soy protein.  Getting complete proteins is just one of the reasons why people drink protein shakes.

2nd Reason – Do We Really Eat That Well

A second reason why to drink protein shakes is a flawed way of thinking.  If you believe that you are getting all the nutrition that you eat in your food.  Even though beef may have 23g of protein, our body has to be able to break down and use the amino acids that the meats are made out of.  The beef and chicken protein is not as easily digested as taking a whey or soy protein shake.  I personally would rather have a juicy piece of steak, but it is also not as economical to eat all your protein in steak.

3rd Reason – Saving Money

That brings us to the third reason to supplement protein, and it is for the money.  Your whey or soy protein shake is likely to cost a lot less than eating many other forms of protein, and they are complete proteins, whereas your meets are not.  It would still seem pretty easy to get to the daily value of protein that the FDA states we should have in our diet, and that is true.  You shouldn’t need to supplement if you are eating enough protein, that is why they call it a supplement.  Many of us have to supplement our diets because we are not getting a number of certain nutrients from what we eat.

4th Reason – It Is Easy to Make and Drink Protein Shakes

The fourth reason is the one that gets me to drink protein shakes nearly every morning is that it is easy.  I typically drink a protein shake for breakfast, and it is out of efficiency.  Drinking protein shakes in the morning is not out of laziness.  Making a shake is way faster than cooking some eggs or making some other breakfast.  I want to do other things in the morning, and cooking usually is not one of them.  I also want to get some protein in my system within 30 minutes of waking up, and the fastest most efficient way to do that is with a protein shake.  Drinking a protein shake makes me feel a lot better, and I have more energy than when I eat any other breakfast that I have tried.

Do You Want To Be Fit

Protein supplementation is likely for you if you want to be or stay fit. Or you want to maintain or build strength or muscle mass.  Or you want to be healthy and you have a busy life.  You probably are or should be supplementing with protein.

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