Time Is A Valuable Thing || Coach Tim Garland
Time is a Valuable Thing.
I get it, making it to the gym can be difficult. You work 40-60 hours a week and have family obligations on either side of those work hours. There are only 168 hours in week. Understanding this time frame, we have the opportunity to formulate a plan which allows us to attack the week head-on, as we see fit. Again, time is a valuable thing and our higher life priorities get the bulk of that valuable time investment.
Over the next few weeks, I will delve deeper into the valuable aspect of time as it relates to protein intake and results in my following blog posts. Today, I want to shift our focus from time to some different categories of protein, and give us a foundation and common terminology to build upon for the next installment.
Consider this; if you invest your hard-earned money in stocks, bonds and the like…you do so hoping and expecting for a positive gain or return. Hopefully you did your homework to have some understanding as to where you are putting your money. Similarly, if you invest a portion of your monthly budget on supplemental protein, you want a gain or return. That “return on investment” comes in forms such as added muscle size and tone, increased performance and faster recovery to name a few.
Any efforts researching protein or asking questions and conversing with a coach will inevitably lead you to hearing about amino acids and how they are the building block of protein. So, let’s break protein up into a few different categories that use amino acids to distinguish the difference:
High quality
Low quality
Supplemental
High quality protein, also known as complete protein, is considered high quality because of its high biological value. The biologic value is in terms of the unique amino acid pattern similar to that needed by the body. Complete proteins are of animal origin and include chicken, fish, red/white meat and eggs.
Low quality protein, known also as incomplete protein, are of low biological value and deficient in at least one of the essential amino acids. Examples of these proteins are vegetables, grains and beans. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not vilifying these foods whatsoever! Remember, for our purposes, we are examining protein quality.
Complete and incomplete proteins (high and low quality proteins) come from the food sources we eat on a daily basis (hopefully). Now what about my protein shake I drink post workout? This, as referenced above, will be called supplemental protein. As many of you know, the most common form of supplemental protein is whey protein. Any idea why whey? A quick search on the ‘ole Google machine should reveal that it’s a quicker, easily digestible protein, thus jump starting the recovery/rebuilding processes.
Now that we have some base terminology of some different types of proteins (complete, incomplete and supplemental) we can move forward. Next time we will dig deeper, focusing on that valuable time aspect and why it is important as it relates to our supplemental consumption. In the meantime, just like a financial advisor would recommend, let’s diversify our portfolio and make sure our protein is coming from a myriad of sources so we can reap the myriad of benefits.
Stay healthy my friends,
Coach Garland