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| Bad news bro: Whey will shed significant amounts of trunk and android fat only in conjunction with 16 weeks of resistance training. No matter what the ads promise. |
Why's that? With different training protocols focusing on strength endurance and strength-hypertrophy-power, and three supplementation groups with either protein (37.5g whey concentrate), carbohydrate (34.5g maltodextrin) or a combination of both, whey and maltodextrin.
Read more about ISSN studies like Hulmi's at the SuppVersity
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All subjects were mixed with non-caloric sugar-free drinks (FUN Light provided by Orkla Foods Finland, Turku, Finland) depending on the week and subject’s preference (either strawberry,
Vitargo, Red Bull, Creatine & More | ISSN'15 #1
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forest fruit, pomegranate-strawberry, apple-pear or raspberry-lemon).
Otherwise, the subjects were advised to eat normal recommended mixed meal based on the Finnish
Nutrition Recommendations 2014 (see below) 1–2 hours after the exercise bout.
In combination with the workout routine outlined in Tables 1 & 2, the dietary + supplement intervention lead to significant increased fat-free mass, muscle size and strength and that independent of post-exercise nutrient intake (P < 0.05)."Subjects kept 4-day food diaries during the second block of the 12-week RT period. Dietary intake was recorded over three weekdays and one weekend day [not ideal, but better than nothing].
Download the >600 page NNR2012 for free.
The researchers gave subjects both verbal and written nutritional recommendations based on the Finnish Nutrition Recommendations 2014. As a rule, these follow the recommendations for the Nordic countries in Europe pub lished in Autumn 2013 (NNR2012) and are very close to USDA and HHS dietary guidelines (2010) for normal healthy adults. The subjects were instructed on how to report nutritional intake in the diaries.
Nutrients provided by the supplements were included in the analysis. The food diaries were analyzed by nutrient analysis software (Nutri-Flow; Flow-team Oy, Oulu, Finland)" (Hulmi. 2015).
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| Table 1 & 2: An overview of the RT program: the first block was a preparatory phase after which supplementations started and within those the subjects were separated into 2 different training regimens. Training bout consisted always of four main exercises trained with the specific regimen of using either MS, HS or PS as a focus. Five accessory exercises were trained in an HS manner // Typical exercise bout performed 2–3 x week contained exercises for legs, whereas exercises for other muscle groups rotated and thus were trained on average once per week (Hulmi. 2015). |
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| Body composition changes in Lockwood et al. (top | 2016) and effects of adding small amounts of hydro whey on anti-oxidant activity of a lemon whey beverage (bottom | Athira. 2015). |
How come? I guess there are a few potential reasons here, all of which eventually relate to the peculiar (small) peptide structure of the practically pre-digested whey protein. One being the peptides' glutathione boosting anti-oxidant prowess, which is way greater for hydrolysates vs. concentrates (Pacheco. 2005). It could also be the peptides ACE-inhibitory activity (Tavares. 2011; Sawada. 2016), which has been linked to fat loss in rodent studies (Weisinger. 2009) and preliminary evidence of improvements in body composition in human studies (Carter. 2005). As well as evidence of its ability to improve glucose management (Adams. 2016).
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| Figure 1: Changes in body fat (top), and performance measures (bottom); green = there are stat. significant inter-group differences; grey = there are no stat. sign. inter-group differences (Hulmi. 2015). |
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| Figure 2: If you're still thinking about the concentrate vs. hydrolysate study, here are some hints on what may contribute to the difference Lockwood et al. have reported only recently (Lockwood. 2016). |
So, why do many "experts" still emphasize the importance of post-workout carbohydrates? Well, I guess a good answer (not sure all of them can give you one, though) would be the possibility to increase your training frequency from frequent to extremely frequent without compro-mising your performance on the altar of low(er) carb intakes, because you're afraid of fat gains due to the insulin boogieman.
You believe you are training "extremely frequently"? I doubt that. - or do you hit the gym, the road or the pool twice or thrice a day, with every workout lasting (several) hours? No, ok, then you better don't eat like Michael Phelps does and this goes for both, his energy and macronutrient intake... unless, obviously, you want to balloon up like a porker.
If, on the other hand, you are one of the few pro-athletes that burn through 5,000-8,000 kcal on a daily basis, you will be having a hard time getting enough energy to perform without a high carbohydrate intake (and for many athletes carbohydrate supplements in form of energy drinks, gels and bars).
So, whey helps, CHOs don't. Great, but there is a few question we still have to address: (1) Do dietary differences explain the whey advantage? Meaning: Did the subjects simply get more protein, consume fewer calories or have any other "unique" dietary quality, besides the 30g+ of whey protein PWO?You believe you are training "extremely frequently"? I doubt that. - or do you hit the gym, the road or the pool twice or thrice a day, with every workout lasting (several) hours? No, ok, then you better don't eat like Michael Phelps does and this goes for both, his energy and macronutrient intake... unless, obviously, you want to balloon up like a porker.
If, on the other hand, you are one of the few pro-athletes that burn through 5,000-8,000 kcal on a daily basis, you will be having a hard time getting enough energy to perform without a high carbohydrate intake (and for many athletes carbohydrate supplements in form of energy drinks, gels and bars).
If statistical significance is our yardstick, the answer is no. If it's absolute differences between mean intakes, however, the whey and whey + CHO group consumed 15 and 16% fewer calories, respectively. Can that explain a fat loss of 1.5 kg? Well, mathematically it can, because that's a 438kcal difference in favor of the whey groups. If we did the math and assumed that 16 weeks on a pseudo-deficit of 438kcal per day should translate into 7 kg of body fat loss... besides being based on the stupid 7000kcal per 1kg of body fat equation, this prediction does yet have another problem. With almost identical energy intakes in the two whey groups, i.e. whey along and whey + CHO, the fat loss should be identical. That this is not the case clearly refutes the notion that it's only about calories. It's also not just about protein, because the total protein intake (including supplements) of the CHO group was higher not lower than in the whey groups.
(2) Would a no-carb control have shown a similar lack of body fat loss? Meaning: Did the extra carbohydrates blunt the fat loss, or did the whey accelerate it?This is likewise a question that cannot be answered conclusively without a follow-up trial, but with sign. fat loss in the whey + CHO group and no fat loss in the CHO group (receiving the same amount of carbs), we can pretty much exclude the possibility that the carbs are to blame. The answer to the above question is thus probably that whey accelerated the fat loss, just as it did in Antonio (2014), where a very high protein intake (3.4g/kg) that was achieved by the means of whey or beef protein supplements helped the subjects of the 8-week study shed an average of 1.6 kg of fat mass (compared to only 0.3 kg in the high protein group, ingesting only 2.3g/kg from foods) | Comment on Facebook!
- Adams, R. L., and K. S. Broughton. "Insulinotropic Effects of Whey: Mechanisms of Action, Recent Clinical Trials, and Clinical Applications." Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 69.1 (2016): 56-63.
- Athira, Syamala, et al. "Production and characterisation of whey protein hydrolysate having antioxidant activity from cheese whey." Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 95.14 (2015): 2908-2915.
- Carter, Christy S., et al. "Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibition intervention in elderly persons: effects on body composition and physical performance." The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 60.11 (2005): 1437-1446.
- Lockwood, Christopher M., et al. "Effects of Hydrolyzed Whey versus Other Whey Protein Supplements on the Physiological Response to 8 Weeks of Resistance Exercise in College-Aged Males." Journal of the American College of Nutrition (2016): 1-12.
- Pacheco, Maria Teresa Bertoldo, and Valdemiro Carlos Sgarbieri. "Effect of different hydrolysates of whey protein on hepatic glutathione content in mice." Journal of medicinal food 8.3 (2005): 337-342.
- Sawada, Yoko, et al. "Milk‐derived peptide Val‐Pro‐Pro (VPP) inhibits obesity‐induced adipose inflammation via an angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) dependent cascade." Molecular nutrition & food research 59.12 (2015): 2502-2510.
- Tavares, Tânia, et al. "Novel whey-derived peptides with inhibitory effect against angiotensin-converting enzyme: in vitro effect and stability to gastrointestinal enzymes." Peptides 32.5 (2011): 1013-1019.
- Weisinger, Richard S., et al. "Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibition lowers body weight and improves glucose tolerance in C57BL/6J mice maintained on a high fat diet." Physiology & behavior 98.1 (2009): 192-197.