If You Do Sports

If you regularly do sports, aerobics, CrossFit, run or go to the gym, you need more protein for adequate performance.

Why focus on taking in protein??

An adequate intake of protein is important for each of us, not just for athletes. In regard to essential nutrients functioning in our body and our muscles, we differentiate between proteins (essential amino acids) and fats (essential fatty acids). There are no essential carbohydrates though so our body, theoretically, would be able to work without them.

However, an average person eats mostly carbohydrates and most unfortunately, “bad” carbohydrates at that (sugar, flour, potato, bread and other pastries) – wherever we go, we can always get a nice carbohydrate bomb.

Still, if you focus on staying fit and healthy, you must focus on taking in enough protein and more so if you do sports.

Lots of people don’t use protein powders because they associate these products with body builders, harmful steroids and fake ingredients. They often believe that you use protein powders only to build muscles, otherwise there is no point in taking them.

Nevertheless, if we don’t talk about steroids but a controlled, clean and healthy protein powder, you don’t have to fear from any unwanted side effects, especially in case of a hypo-allergenic, vegetable based protein.

Everybody needs protein for survival and protein powders are the concentrated and user-friendly forms of this need. These products are also considered to be food just like the food you buy in the shops for everyday consumption.

We can satisfy our need for protein with normal food too, but many of us don’t often get a decent meal even three times a day, not to speak of the really satisfactory five. Protein powders can be the solution to this problem because they easily give you all the amino acid your body needs. If you want to solve this problem with normal food, you take in a lot of different nutrients besides protein, which turn out to be unnecessary calories, fats and carbohydrates. If you try to get enough protein from the company canteen without unnecessary calories and carbohydrates, you’ll find it really hard. Just consider an average meat product, and you’ll find in it a lot more unnecessary, even unhealthy ingredients than in a high-quality protein powder. Naturally, the basis of our everyday intake of proteins (which can be even 2.2 g/ kg of body weight) must come from normal food but protein powders can complete this very well.

So not only body builders but everybody – between 0-120 years – needs proteins! The amount for adults recommended by the WHO is 50g/day and this is just the minimally necessary amount!

If you also use protein powders, try to choose a healthy one that contains only natural ingredients.

Let’s look at some sports, in case of which using a complete protein powder could be really helpful. What’s common in them?

Running

Running is a very popular sport nowadays, there are millions of people who run regularly. It’s no wonder that running is so well-liked as you can run everywhere and any time and it can effectively complement other sports, too. Running used to be a lonely sport but this is not true any more thanks to social media sites and smart phone applications.

If you also run, that’s really good for you: it moves your whole body, strengthens your circulation and helps you tackle your everyday tasks at home and at work as well. If you take to it, you’ll start running more and more, faster and faster because you start to demand more from your body.

However, if you forget to refill your body with nutrients and especially protein, that’ll be a problem. Running for a longer period at a time stresses your muscles at least as much as weight-lifting – they are the same for your body. Your muscles don’t know if you lift gym weights or your own weight. If you forget taking in enough protein, you’ll lose muscles and degrade your performance. It’s important that after a nice bit of running you drink a healthy and light protein shake (made from e.g. brown rice protein) besides refilling your body with carbohydrates, too. One of the several advantages of brown rice protein is that you can digest it much more easily than e.g. whey, so even if you drink it (one, two or even only half an hour) before running, it won’t make you bloated, slow or sick but will provide valuable amino acids to your muscles.

CrossFit

It’s a new sport but getting more and more popular. Those who have tried it know what unbelievable stress and exertion it means. Thus it’s a must to eat adequate food and take in extra protein when you do it. This is typically the sport where nicely built muscles are not the goal but the “side effect” of your growing strength. Those who do CrossFit regularly surely use protein powders and/or extra amino acids (mostly glutamine and BCAA). Those who don’t use protein powders probably avoid these products because of their doubtful appearance and list of ingredients. If you do CrossFit, then real strength and organically growing muscles are important to you. You might be thinking that there’s no point in “poisoning” yourself with fake substances and you have every reason to think so. However, you still need protein and so the solution is a natural and additive-free protein shake before and mostly after training.

Aerobics, spinning, Zumba and Pilates

Although these sports have more women fans, they still demand considerable muscle performance and adequate nutrition. Ladies often say that they never use any nutritional supplement because they don’t wish to be over-muscular. Many of them think of the professional female body builder with her not exactly attractive body that they don’t want for themselves. We can, however, reassure everybody that there are no such nutritional supplements with the help of which you can suddenly grow unwanted muscles. Even if there are such products, they are not found in shops with the label “protein powder”. Nobody in history has ever got too muscular against their will. What you see on TV is the result of continuous hard work, extreme nutrition and probably some other unnamed factors.

Have no fear from nutritional supplements but do fear from the loss of your muscles if after plentiful exercise you forget to refill your body with the adequate nutrients like protein. If you wish to lose weight (=fat), you must pay twice as much attention to your intake of protein while experiencing the beneficial side effect of protein shakes cutting down your appetite, too.

You only need to focus on your protein powder to be natural, complete, healthy and free of additives and sweeteners.

Yoga

Yoga often goes hand in hand with vegetarian or vegan diets. Although yoga greatly exercises your muscles, too, the concern of those doing yoga is mostly getting enough protein from sources of non-animal origin if they are vegetarians at the same time.Fortunately, brown rice protein is absolutely perfect for them, too. The important thing is that you choose a complete, natural and vegetable-based protein powder. The more neutral it is, the more uses it’ll have, so you’ll never get tired of its taste.

Training in the Gym with Weights, doing classic body-building

We left this as the last bit because protein powders and nutritional supplements are mostly associated with weight-lifting trainings. This is easy to understand because you always need extra intake of proteins when your foremost goal is to build your muscles. You can buy several protein powders in gyms although 90% of these are made from whey. In spite of them not being exactly dangerous, we don’t recommend you to use them regularly in great amounts (you can read more about this in the “What’s the Problem with Whey?” section).

If you haven’t been taking in extra protein because you have doubts about its use, we still advise you to choose brown rice protein, which is a fully premium quality vegetable protein containing only one ingredient, namely protein. Don’t care about the opinion of 120-kilo body builders about vegetable proteins. Firstly, it’s a clinically proven fact that protein made from complete brown rice has the same effect on muscle building as whey. Secondly, you don’t have to show off at body building competitions, you can simply put your health at the first place.

What’s common in all these sports?

All of them are done by people more health conscious than the average. They don’t do sports to build extra large muscles but to stay fit, active, young and healthy. It’s no wonder they are the ones most afraid of fake-looking protein powders, of doubtful fantasy brand names and of long lists of ingredients. Therefore they are highly advised to use a healthy protein powder product that is genuinely natural, complete and free of additives, coloring and sweeteners. The appearance of Naturize® premium brown rice protein is best news for such people because anyone can use Naturize without the usual disturbing thoughts. You don’t have to be afraid of allergic reactions, you can use it as a vegan, diabetic or if you’re allergic to milk. If you eat rice with a light heart, you can use Naturize® brown rice protein with a light heart, too.

If you have been using whey and experienced bloating and joint problems (pain in the knees, shoulders or elbows), we especially advise you to try Naturize. You’ll find that these symptoms were probably caused by milk consumption.

What to do if you want to lose weight?

Extra intake of protein is very important if you do sports in order to lose weight, i. e. fat, and in order to shape your body, not just to become lighter. When you start a slimming diet by eating less and starting an intensive sport, the speedy loss of weight at the start is very misleading.First of all you get rid of water, then the glycogen supplies of your body start to be used up (thus they can absorb less water, which also results in losing weight). However, you haven’t lost weight yet (in terms of slimness), you’ve only become lighter.

More bad news is that after getting rid of water, your body will start to use up your muscles mostly and not fat. (The “feeding” of muscles takes more energy and that’s how the body tries to save energy when lacking nutrients.) As one amount of muscles weighs three times as much as the same amount of fat, you’ll be happy to have lost many kilos but you’ll look more or less the same because you’ve lost mostly water and muscles instead of fat. You’ll miss the appearance of muscle fibers on your belly or anywhere else. If you do exercise without adequate nutrition, you’ll be in a lighter but more fatty body because of the loss of muscles (and water). Unless your goal is keeping your scales in good condition by standing on them with less weight, you have to tackle this problem in a different way!

If your goal is to look better, forget focusing on your kilos three times a day. As the Chinese saying goes: “there is no better scale than the mirror”.

What’s the solution? How can you squeeze a more spectacular result out of so much suffering?

Yes, you’ve got it: take in extra protein. The best way is drinking a protein shake some time around the exercise (1 or 2 hours before training or directly after), but you can even replace a meal with it. If you start your day with a protein shake (before breakfast), it’ll surely make a difference.

So if you take in the necessary amount of protein (not only cutting down on carbohydrates), you’ll protect your muscles and cut down your appetite, too, thus killing two birds with one stone.

What protein do we recommend?

Please forgive our bias but we really do believe that Naturize® brown rice protein is one of the best nutritional supplements if you are considering the introduction of protein powders into your diet. Read here what kind of protein powder we recommend.