For sports, it is extremely important to have enough protein in the athlete's diet. It is an important building block for the whole body, which contributes to the improvement of athletic performance. In some cases, protein is used as one of the meals, regardless of sports. This article will tell you how to consume protein correctly.
Protein function
A lot of people are very wary of protein. They have heard or even seen that protein negatively affects the liver, causes headaches and worsens well-being, so it will seem incredible to some, but every person consumes protein during his life. There is no difference in age, weight or diet. Anyone can consume protein.
This happens because almost all products contain some amount of it. The word "protein" is translated from English as "protein", and this is the main nutrient for maintaining the vital activity of the body.
Friedrich Engels - a prominent philosopher of the XIX century - gave such a definitionlife:
Life is a mode of existence of protein bodies, the essential point of which is the constant exchange of substances with the external nature surrounding them, and with the cessation of this metabolism, life also stops, which leads to the decomposition of the protein.
That is, for the body, this element is the most important, causing all life processes. That is why life itself cannot exist without it.
Therefore, any person lives only because he consumes enough protein, that is, protein, to maintain his life.
Protein Sources
The main sources of protein are: meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cottage cheese, legumes (vegetable protein) and various protein mixes.
All of these protein sources can be combined with each other. It does not matter for the body whether you ate chicken with fish or eggs, and then cottage cheese. In any case, it breaks down the protein into its constituent parts and distributes them throughout the body.
When calculating the amount of protein, you can use the calorie tables on the Internet. They will indicate the approximate ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates in each product in your diet.
Protein Amount
In order for a person to fully function, he must consume a certain amount of protein. On average, to maintain metabolism and metabolic processes, it is required to take about 1 gram of protein per 1 kg of body weight. For example, if your weight is 70 kg, then you should get at least 70 grams of protein in one day.
It is worth remembering that the protein rate can be gained not only from food, but also using protein shakes. They contain about the amount of protein that a person consumes in one meal.
Reducing the rate of intake often leads to chronic fatigue, confusion, memory impairment and attention. Often, those who decide to lose weight do not know how to properly consume protein, do not follow the protein norm, so their athletic performance deteriorates over time.
Another disadvantage of having a small amount of protein in the diet is a decrease in muscle tissue. This is due to the fact that the body uses protein reserves in muscle tissues in the first place. Therefore, it is important to take a responsible approach to reducing calories when playing sports and to know how to use protein.
Muscle Protein
Exposing the body to physical activity, you need to calculate how much protein you need to consume on training days and rest days. The best option for obtaining a protein norm is a diet in which about 70 percent of the protein comes from regular food, and the remaining 30 from protein mixtures.
It should be remembered that for a training athlete, it is recommended to double the amount of protein, since such a person will consume nutrients much faster.
To know how much to consumeprotein per day, you need to clarify the person's weight. If the weight of an athlete is, for example, 80 kg, then for him the norm would be to consume 160 grams of protein per day. Of this amount, approximately 100 grams should be obtained from regular food, and the rest from a protein mixture.
Weight gain with protein
It often happens that an athlete with a long training history mistakenly believes that protein contributes to weight gain. But this information is incorrect, since consuming protein for mass gain is not the best solution. Protein is a building material for many body cells, including muscle cells.
But if the amount of protein exceeds 4 grams per 1 kg of weight, then the body can get poisoned, as it cannot cope with the digestion of such an amount of protein.
For weight gain is a supplement called a gainer. It contains a small proportion of protein and a large amount of carbohydrates. It is the complex of proteins and carbohydrates that allows the body to gain additional mass.
In this mixture, carbohydrates become the main energy component for training, nourishing the body, while protein restores and builds muscle tissue.
Build muscle mass
There is a lot of information on how to use protein for gaining muscle mass, but they all boil down to the fact that the athlete should adhere to a high-calorie diet. This means that more calories must enter his body than he can spend.
As mentioned earlier,to gain weight, it is recommended to take a gainer, since you can consume protein without carbohydrates while gaining weight only if you need to replenish the protein norm. It should be remembered that an athlete's diet must contain both complex and simple carbohydrates.
Complex carbs make you feel fuller and are much he althier. With their help, metabolic processes in the body occur more smoothly, excluding large releases of hormones into the blood. It is also recommended to increase the amount of complex carbohydrates for those people who suffer from diabetes.
The calorie content of complex and simple carbohydrates is the same, but with an increase in the number of simple carbohydrates, it may happen that excess calories are quickly stored in the form of body fat, which will negatively affect both the athlete's form and his results. Therefore, it is better to focus on complex carbohydrates.
Protein Instructions
The following will provide step by step information on how to consume protein.
- You need to calculate the amount of protein in your daily diet.
- If the amount of protein is less than 1 gram per 1 kg of weight, then you need to increase its proportion in food.
- If you have difficulty increasing your protein intake with a regular meal, add a protein blend.
If only the third item is suitable for you, then you need to contact the sports nutrition store, where you can find a variety of protein mixtures. In appearance, they are very similar, but on the label of each package with a similar mixture should beServing weight and protein percentage shown.
It is recommended to take those products in which the protein concentration is 75% or more. In this case, you will get the required amount even from one dose.
One serving of this mixture usually contains 20-25 grams of protein. It should be mixed with water or milk approximately one hour before training or within two hours after training.
Types of protein
For those who have not come across the topic of sports nutrition, this information may seem too confusing, but having delved into it, you will see that it is not very difficult to understand. Therefore, the next important point will be to list the types of protein.
Main types of protein by origin:
- whey;
- soy;
- casein;
- dairy;
- egg;
- meat;
- fishy.
Each of these species has a certain structure, which determines the degree of its digestibility and completeness of splitting.
Whey protein, meat and eggs are much better for the human body. Their amino acid profiles are very similar, so they are almost 100% absorbed. For training, it is much better to use any of these types of protein. But among them, whey has the highest absorption rate, mainly for this reason it is used in sports.
Amino acids in protein
Purchasing protein at a sports nutrition storeor eating protein from food, a person always receives a certain amount of amino acids. Typically, a protein contains 18-20 different amino acids that perform the necessary functions.
Amino acids can be nonessential and nonessential. The former can be synthesized in the body at different rates, while the latter come only with food. That is why any diet should include a sufficient amount of proteins, since the human body is not able to provide itself with all the necessary components.
In some cases, it is recommended to use amino acid complexes, which are protein compressed into tablets. This option is suitable for those who are allergic to flavors and other additives in protein blends.
