BCAA's - What do you need?

Your basic BCAA (branch chain amino acid) requirements come from multiple sources, summarized in an fao.org page here. Additional information used here comes from a Journal of Nutrition publication here. Both utilize the WHO tables.

Great, what is a BCAA and why do I care?

BCAA's are the building blocks of protein. Any protein. And, in order to build muscle in your body, you need to ingest these. So, technically, you are what you eat. Of note, if you short yourself on carbs, some proteins are deaminated into glucose for cellular energy. This is bad for both the reason that toxic ammonia is a byproduct and that you are now shorting your tissue repair process its proteins. BCAA's in your meal become your body tissues within four hours.

Why four hours?

BCAA's only circulate in your body for four hours trying to match up with each other, after that any remaining unpaired ones are excreted from your body. Wasted food if you ask me. Think High School biology here. Remember DNA base pairs? A only pairs with T and C with G, etc. All ingested proteins are composed of three base pair amino acids. Which, while interesting to biochemists, is really more than you need to know.

So, what do I need to know?

Of the 22 BCAA, there are 11 that concern us as muscle building, fat reducing humans. Muscle building seems to focus on Leucine, Isoleucine and Valine. Luckily, the WHO (World Health Organization) has paid people much smarter than me to tell you that the basic requirements for an adult are (in daily mg/kg of body weight):

Histiane: trace
Isoleucine: 9.5mg
Leucine: 12.5mg
Lysine: 9.4mg
Mehtionine: 12.1mg (Cystine may make up 80 to 89% of this.)
Phenylalanine: 12.1mg (Tyrosine may make up 70 to 75% of this.)
Threonine: 6.5mg
Tryptophane: 2.9mg
Valine: 10.7mg
(You can see this and the child/infant/etc. tables in the first link.)

Ok, so how do I use this?

The easiest way is to just eat complete proteins. They have all of these in them in sufficient quantity. Remember the four hour circulation time? Yep, multiple small meals a day is staring to make even more sense now, huh? Well, in order to see what you are eating, I will again refer you to one of my favorite online resources for those things that enter your mouth (at meal time): NutritionData.com 

While their front page is always the same, boring black eyed peas, I have now found this useful. (You need an item with protein to see the data.) Click on the title that says "Black Eyed Peas." When the page loads, there are two graphs I want you to look at. The first says "Nutrient Balance" and the second "Protein Quality." In the first is the blue pie slice labeled "Pr" for protein. Genius, I know. In the second is what comprises that protein. THE KEY: AS LONG AS THE PROTEIN QUALITY IS BLUE FOR ALL 11, YOU HAVE A COMPLETE PROTEIN. If you take nothing else away, remember this. If it is not, combine protein sources for each meal until you have all blue. :) This is the easiest way I can tell you to do it short of writing a program. Maybe, someday, I will get to that part of my to-do list. EVERY FOUR HOURS, COMPLETE PROTEIN. Ok, so two things you have to remember.

Uhm, you said daily requirements; what if I work out?

See, I knew you were smart. :) Ok. This is what I have worked on. You know all of those supplements out there? I have yet to find one that follows the WHO set. So, something I am not aware of may be at work here. (i.e. use this part at your own risk and do some research)

Given: Proteins are 4 cal/gr, and you can measure how many calories you burn exercising.
BMR: The "average joe" needs 25% of calories from protein. More for weight loss, less for weight gain. This follows for your workout calories as well.

Take your energy expended from the workout (Ew) and multiply it by 20% to get your protein caloric requirement in grams (Pg). So, we have Ew * .2 = Pg. Stick with me...I need to get to milligrams, means: Ew * 200 = Pmg. Sweet. Now you know how much protein you need.

Now, here is the sticky, gray area. And, if you hate math, you may want to skip this.

ASSUMING (I know I hate the word too, but don't have the research to know for sure) that you need the same mix of BCAA's (same relative quantities) then you can find the individual requirements using:

Pmg / 75.5 * BCAAmg = BCAA requirement : 75.5mg is the total from the daily and converts the protein to a relative 1. Then you multiply by the mg stated for each specific BCAA to get that specific BCAA mg requirement. This at least lets you check out the supplement labels with a little more knowledge. On supplements, one last thing, avoid hydrolyzed...the process tends to render the BCAA's useless. Just saying...

Or, ignore the math and just eat a hard boiled egg with some black eyed peas.

Daily Lifestyle Fact - 29.11.11

Since your brain's only source of energy is glucose, make sure you don't cut the carbs when trying to stay fit over the holiday season. It uses over 150grams per day alone. The best way to stay in shape is by eating a balanced diet based on your metabolism and goals combined with a good plan for Peak Functional Fitness.

Oh, and if you were looking for a LabRat yesterday - the lab was delayed a week due to sick children and the holiday combination. Not to worry, our trainer is working out and will be posting week 1's retake on Monday, December 5th.

Lab Rat 1.1 - Do NOT Try This at Home

Ok. So, my short version of advice: Do not plan on using either of these unmodified for strength/resistance training post-partum. The core workout from The Complete Book of Core Training (c) 2006 is an excellent core workout, but not strength. If you follow another strength program, I could recommend it for the core portion (if not provided). It starts extremely easy.  This is probably another reason why I don't like it. :) TRX - Military Fitness Guide (c) 2007 is a decent attempt at getting your full body moving. The moves are too complicated or require too much starting balance for new mothers, especially those who haven't worked out much in the past. For the complexity, they don't address enough of the major muscle groups effectively. So, we will call this my experiment week.  No need for you to repeat. I will add in an extra week at the end, so the nine week program will be 10 weeks of posting.

The up-side is that if you try to combine these, you will feel a lot of solid core work. They do provide balance and stability training (almost to excess); what I really wanted to ensure made it into the end workout. I like the TRX very, very much. It will continue to be the focus of the workouts because of one simple thing: body mass. The workouts themselves are getting scrapped completely, and I am writing new ones. I am trying to give you a strength workout from home. This allows anyone with a door or outside on a tree...I live on a boat...no excuses...to manipulate their body weight into dead weight (i.e. your resistance). (Picture of my setup at the end.)

Since I am changing the workout so drastically, I am going to post it at the end, vice beginning, of the week. I will let you know how the lab rat fares, and you can follow along a week behind (at your own risk, provided for informational purposes only, I am not liable for your actions...you get the picture). Please comment all you want. I will approve them all as long as you would let your child read them. :)

Lab Rat's Top 10:
1. Lots of core = sore abdominals = happy rat.
2. Difficult moves for a short door.
3. Not enough leg muscle recruitment.
4. Good arm strength requirements.
5. More strength was maintained than I expected through the past two months.
6. More stamina is gone than I had hoped.
7. My body is craving cardio (not normal for me).
8. Body feels tighter (that annoying just had a child squishy feeling is gone). (MY FAVORITE!)
9. Was excited that the 2-month old liked watching and the 2-year old tried to work out.
10. Have to watch not pushing too hard too fast. This is the big one if you were active as late as possible in pregnancy. My body now has a taste of working out and wants to "go, go, go!" in the words of my 2-year old. For me, completing a workout that I want any of you to be able to use (assuming you are in reasonable health) will keep me grounded. Find something that will do the same for you. Otherwise, I can see injury trying to crop up just when we take off.

To New Moms!
-Crystal

Lab Rat 1.0: 9 Week Post-Partum Plan

Here is the plan:

NOTE: This LabRat will be published weekly at the end of the week and labeled by week.  There is not enough day to day difference to require me taking up room here.

I was 7 weeks post-partum at the beginning of week one (picture below from the past week), have hiked twice, walked a bunch and rode a bike once in the interim. I was going to do nothing, but that would have driven me totally batty. I feel the most out of shape I have in a long time. The picture may not show it, but I have lost muscle strength and cardiovascular ability. Hiking was a chore. I must assume I have traded it for fat.

So, below is my BCA. This will also show you what BCA means to our company, though yours will be prettier and have an explanation of how to apply the details. I have also included the texts I am using as a jumping off point.

1. BCA: DO NOT use my numbers.  They are very different from most as I run a 5 meal/day athletic program for a ridiculously fast metabolism plus breastfeeding.  All of these things get taken into account in your personalized one.  You get one full page with the numbers and what they mean (even more than I put here), and a second page of what you need ot do with them to support your goals.

132.5 # (10# heavier than at conception)
11% body fat (5-6% more than at conception)
 117.9# lean muscle mass
2287.5 Total Calories per day
86.4g Carb per meal
5.5g Fat per meal
15.6g Protein per meal

2: Texts: TRX - Military Fitness Guide (c) 2007 and The Complete Book of Core Training (c) 2006 First Ed. As I have said, these are my jumping off point. I will complete the first week using the texts verbatim and let you know how it goes. After that, I will borrow from them, but create my own plan that adds in cardio and focuses on items I think are important. You may be asking one of two questions now: (a) Why not just follow them? (b) Why wait for cardio?

(a) Published plans are great tools to start with. However, the same rule for why each of our plans is different for our clients applies: Each of us is different. So while the are many assets out there to aid in our planning, the plan is going to be tailored to meet my changing needs. The only reason I am not tailoring it from day one is to get an idea (in a week) of how the average person would do if they used these un-tailored for the full time. I will provide my recommendations so that, in case you don't want to pay us to train you, you have something that is more useful than the plans alone.

(b) I want to have an accurate assessment of my basic muscular strength at the beginning and end of the week to help with "(a)" above. If it weren't for this, I wouldn't skip it. This is important to me as it will help my recommendations. (And, I have done some little cardio bouts as listed, so have an idea of their general impact.)

To Fitness!
-Crystal