A couple years ago I started working out with a trainer. I thought to myself that I would get in shape and lose a little weight. At the time I was 38 and since I was considering the thought of turning 40, I decided that I needed to take better care of myself. So with the encouragement of my wife, Summer, I invested in my health.
In my younger years, I was an active person I played several sports and played college baseball for a year at Union University. After that one year, I maintained a little athletic ability and picked up running during pharmacy school. During pharmacy school and at the beginning my career I found out about stress and how to maintain a poor diet. I added 20 to 30 pounds of non-muscle within that 5 to 10 year stretch. During the later years of this time I tried several popular diets. I tried the south beach diet, the HCG diet and the Adkins diet. I was successful with all of them but the pounds came right back on within 6 months.
Now fast forward to working with a trainer. I was expecting to just get a workout plan and workout enough to be able to tone up, lose weight, and eat what I wanted and not worry about it. What I found out was interesting and this is what I would like to share with you.
When trying to lose weight, 80% of my problem is my poor diet. I thought it was a 50% thing. So I was thinking I could start exercising and then I could eat anything I wanted and lose weight. I found this to be a major hurdle to achieving my goal.
I also learned that stress releases the hormone cortisol that breaks down protein and turns it into “blood sugar”. Excessive amounts of blood sugar make the pancreas pump out more insulin and insulin pulls the sugar into the cells for energy production. If there is too much blood sugar in the diet and “lots of stress” then the body is designed to store this excess sugar. The storage form of sugar is called fat.
My diet was like most Americans high in carbohydrates and low in protein. My stress level was also like most Americans, high. I created a situation where my metabolism was low. To increase my metabolism my trainer suggested that I increase my water intake and increase my protein intake. This combined with strength training and cardio will have my metabolism back to normal in a few short months.
I never have been one to try protein shakes but I realized that I was not getting enough protein and the protein that I would normally intake was not the best quality. So I tried several and found that there are some pretty good tasting shakes out there. I never found one that met my standards until I found Perfect Protein Powder.
My Criteria for choosing Perfect Protein:
Taste (I am picky)
Amount of Protein per shake/smoothie
The source of the Protein (Vegan) – Whey protein makes you have gas
Other stuff that are found in the powder – No weird herbs or ingredients that no one has ever heard of
Gluten Free/Soy free/Dairy Free and NO GMO
Here now was the question. How much protein do I need? How do I calculate this? As it turns out, there are several ways to calculate protein requirements. I chose one that is easy and I could remember.
1 Gram of protein per Kilogram of body weight. To calculate Kilograms of body weight all you need to do is divide your weight in pounds by 2.2. For example:
Body weight = 225 pounds
Body weight in Kilograms (Kg) = 225/2.2 = 102 Kg
The protein intake for someone weighing 225 pounds is 102 g.
There are several apps that you can download that will do all of this for you. The one that I use is “my fitness pal”. With this app you can enter your meals to determine if you are getting enough protein.
When you find out you are not getting enough then stop in and pick up Perfect Protein Powder. Click here to find out more about Perfect Protein Powder.
