The 3 Rs of Recovery Nutrition: How Protein Helps Repair and Rebuild Muscle after Working Out
Proper nutrition is essential to help athletes, weekend warriors and fitness enthusiasts recover from workouts or competition. This includes appropriate amounts of carbohydrate to Refuel glycogen (storage form of carbohydrate in our muscles and the main energy source during exercise), fluids to Rehydrate, and protein to Repair the damage done to our muscle tissue; otherwise known as the 3 Rs of post workout recovery nutrition. Over the next few posts I’ll focus on each of the Rs. Up first - the one that I feel like gets the most emphasis and attention - protein.
Protein helps with repairing the damage done to our body during our workouts. And while damage may sound a little extreme, the protein we take in helps our muscles adapt to the training we’ve put our bodies through so we can ultimately improve – whether that’s for an endurance event or building muscle through strength training.
Protein is an essential macro-nutrient we need to consume every day. It is also found throughout our body – in our organs, muscles, bones, nails, and hair. Getting enough of it helps repair, re-build and maintain important body tissues like muscle and nervous tissue as well as make new cells.
Daily Protein Recommendations:
The current protein recommendation (dietary reference intake – DRI) for people 18 years of age and over, regardless of level of physical activity, is 0.8g/kg body weight. However, many sports nutrition experts agree that protein requirements for athletes and active individuals are higher.
Why? The additional protein is needed to help the muscle adapt during recovery from exercise by aiding the repair of exercise-induced damage to the muscle fibers, promoting training-induced adaptations in muscle fibers (e.g., synthesis of new proteins), facilitating the replenishment of depleted energy stores.
Experts recommend endurance athletes consume closer to 1.2-1.4 g/kg body weight per day (about 80-95g protein/day for someone who weighs 150 pounds) and strength-trained athletes may be as high as 1.6-1.7 g/kg body weight per day (about 110-115g protein/day for someone who weighs 150 pounds).
Timing our protein intake is just as important - if not more so - than how much we consume. Throughout the day we are constantly either building muscle or breaking it down. When we exercise, we are in a period of muscle protein breakdown. Following exercise, we eventually will go into a period of muscle repair/recovery. When we have adequate protein to support that rebuilding effort, our bodies will adapt and recover faster and will preserve our current muscle mass vs. having to tap into it to repair our own muscle. What we don’t want is pulling from our own muscle tissue reserves to repair/recover as this defeats the purpose. This is especially important during strength training. Heavy resistance exercise increases the rate of both protein synthesis and breakdown of muscle for at least 24 hours after a workout. Unless a protein-containing meal is consumed during recovery, breakdown will exceed synthesis resulting in the loss of muscle mass. If you think eating all your protein at your evening meal will suffice, you just missed out on all the training adaptations that could have been made if you had spread out your intake throughout the day.
So how much do we need, what type and when should we refuel with protein post workout?
Type: during the post-workout or recovery window, the amount of dietary protein needed to stimulate muscle recovery isn’t that large – only 5-10 grams of amino acids. BUT essential amino acids are what’s needed most to stimulate muscle growth. Animal-based foods – like milk/dairy – are the best choices.
Amount: the ‘maximum effective dose’ of amino acids – or the single serving size that will stimulate muscle protein accretion (repair and rebuilding) – is not known but has been the focus of much research to date. What appears to be most accepted is 20-40g of essential amino acids given after exercise. There appears to be no additional benefit to consuming more than 40g.
Timing: the anabolic (rebuilding) boost stimulated by this 20-40g dose of essential amino acids only lasts 1-2 hours. Ingesting repeated small doses of protein during the recovery window may be more effective to optimizing the rate of muscle protein synthesis/gain as opposed to one large meal. Example: sipping on a bottle of Core Power over a couple of hours vs. chugging it all at once.
What about carbohydrate? While it doesn’t assist with repair and rebuilding of muscle, it is important for restoring muscle glycogen and if there isn’t sufficient amounts of carbohydrate ingested, the body may resort to breaking down it’s own muscle to replenish and/or pulling from the protein ingested. I’ll talk more about this in a future blog post.
What does this look like in food?
Following a workout, consider consuming a recovery beverage or snack that contains at least 10-20g of high-quality protein with adequate carbohydrate in order to repair and stimulate muscle protein synthesis while also replenishing muscle glycogen stores. Examples: chocolate milk, a small PB&J or turkey sandwich, a high protein granola bar (just watch out for hidden sugar), smoothie, bowl of cereal, yogurt parfait, etc. Then try and get a full meal within 2 hours of that.
Questions? Reach out to me to see if you are getting enough high quality protein in your diet to support your workouts and see results.