Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 041: Rehab, Protein Powders and Veganism

Episode Date: March 11, 2015

What is the best way to rehab from surgery? What is the best kind of protein supplement? How about eating a low fat vegan diet? Sal, Adam and Justin explore these listener questions from Instagram @mindpump

Follow Justin's 98 transformation from Pudgey to Rift right here each week on Mind Pump. To get Justin's exact face workout and diet plan, go to MindPumpRadio.com and click the big yellow button's only one place to go. Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Alright, welcome to Mind Pump. This is the show that puts the testicle in fantastical. Is that work? No, no, I mean, you can't say that.

What, almost it. Oh, fantast it. It's the oh, fantastic. Oh, it's different than fantastical. I was gonna take it in like rainbows and unicorn land and then you just, you compared it to testicles. Jesus. Where's wrong with me? All right, we're still going. I don't give a shit.

You're listening to Sal the Stefano, Justin Andrews, you thought I was gonna say her name. Oh, I said, I'm a shaper. I was so ready right there. Wait a minute, you threw me off. You went me than him. It did. Okay. That's a new thing now. Yep. So we got the three of you. Put you at the end. He did. He did. He did. Yeah, but they'll

remember me now. Listen, in the middle, they remember how it is. They remember how because he intros, they forget about me because I'm in the middle and they remember you did. Okay. But now, but now you're in the middle. Oh, what's it like to me? What's it like to be between Salon? Well, you know know that makes sense of your like the meat. Just say you're the buns. Yeah Means this is horrible We get to work here. Can we please get to work? All right. Let's do a Q&A I think we don't take this shit seriously. Let's do another Q&A. No, let's get real serious Serious serious. We're gonna be real really serial at the moment here.

Serial. I'm hungry. Alright, so we're gonna love some Q&A. So we're gonna start with the first question is from Sabub 2032. What was that actually? SABB OUD 2032. He asks about now. He just got surgery for a for moral hernia. So for those of you that don't know what that is. So that's a hernia. That's a hernia. It's where your your insides or your intestine kind of come out towards where you're growing is pushes its way down, pushes its way down. So something something tore there and allowed the the intestines to push through. So you have to get that operated on. You have to have surgery. Right. Sometimes they could sew together. Sometimes they put Gore-Tex to kind of block that area.

What's the healing time typically? Well, what the hernia for lifting weights can be a while. Now, doctors will say between four to six months. Now, I have found, if you train properly, you can get into the gym much sooner. And many times, the recommendations that they give you are on the cautious side for sure. Super cautious.

You know, they like don't lift anything over 20 pounds, you know, for the next three. Oh, they don't want you to lift like barely anything, like five pounds, right? They get ridiculous. And his question is, how is he gonna get back into the groove after he's cleared for exercise? So I would say this, short of recommending

that you work with a professional, because it will be some of the best money you invested in is if you hire a trainer who fully understands correctional exercise. A good one. Yes, I alluded to that too. Did you say that on the side? Yeah, but yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, so if hire a trainer that fully understands correctional exercise because that's what you're going to want to focus on before you get into what you were doing before, Otherwise, if they repair the hernia, that area may be stronger. However, the area surrounding it may be weaker now because of either scar tissue or because of the way they might attach the, you know, whatever material they use to close that area up. So you can cause another hernia in a different area if you don't strengthen and

correct, you know, basically do correctional exercise to prevent that in the future. So you're going to have issues with core stability. Absolutely. Because you're not, you're right now you can't brace your core. Because every time you brace your core you kind of push a little bit, which is what you don't want to do when you just got hernia surgery, probably really painful. A good exercise for that to start with is exercises where you brace yourself, maybe like a modified plank. Instead of doing it off your toes, maybe doing it off your knees, or having your elbows up on a bench.

Yeah, an bench usually helps when you elevate your body a bit, yeah, get some of the pressure off. Floor bridges, huh? Yeah, floor bridges. Floor bridges, for sure. Get some hip extension. I would say even just exercises where you're stabilizing your core while you're doing a really light curl,

or let's say you're doing a standing chest press with the cables, and you have to brace your core. You're using very, very little weight. You are working the chest and shoulders. It's not a muscle. It's not a huge mass builder, but it is going to, it's going to retrain your muscle recruitment patterns because what happens after an injury is your recruitment patterns change.

So I'm going to use, I'm going to give an example, I'm going to go away from the hernia because that's a little more complicated, but I'll, I'll, I'll use an example that most people can understand. So let's say I tore my bicep, okay. But I still need to use my arm to lift things. Why don't you use like a knee since very few people have torn their bicep. A lot of people have blown a knee out or how about shoulder or knee?

Can I get those two? Yeah, so okay, let's say you hurt your knee. I'm just sticking up for it for like at least 10,000 people that have never fucking tore a bicep. But they guarantee they've blown a knee or it was blown. Okay, so let's say you hurt your knee.

And now, but you're healing and you can walk now, but the knee is still healing. You're going to use more ankle flexion. You're gonna use more hip extension to propel yourself because your knee is not as strong as it used to be. And what happens is it teaches your body a brand new muscle recruitment pattern and then it gets used to that recruitment pattern.

So then later when your knee is 100%, if you don't, you have to relearn. You have to train the new reactivated. Exactly. Otherwise, you'll go back to doing your exercises and now you've got this different recruitment pattern. And so a lot of correctional exercises correcting is changing those recruitment patterns

to bring them back to where they're favorable again. So you're gonna have to spend, depending on how bad the injury was or how good you feel, between, I would say, four to maybe even longer, maybe up to eight weeks of pure correctional exercise before you gradually move yourself up into hard, extra. Yeah, this isn't something you're just going to jump right in and get back to squat and deadlift. I think you can mention, like, hip cardio and stuff like that. If you don't address these

things in these little minute, you know, correctional exercises and really like dive into that, you know, you're going to experience more problems down the road. And this is just going to be a continuing pattern for you. So it's really important that, you know, you get in a different mindset towards, you know, the longevity of your program as opposed to just getting back into how you want to get in shape and look better. A couple things.

One, because Sal was talking about neurologically and favorable and I kind of want to dumb it down a little bit just to so it makes sense to have his person. We all get it, of course, but that may not make that much sense to somebody. So like Sal said, your knee's blown on your left side. That knee's all bad, whether it's been casted or torn ACLM seal, whatever's going on with it to where you pretty much couldn't walk on it and utilize it.

So what happens is our muscle atrophies, part of what plays a role in your muscle at atrophing is your body stops sending that signal like Sal is talking about. So let's just use hypothetical numbers, this is how I explain this to somebody. Is let's just pretend that your body sends 100 neurons per minute to those muscles normally. When they're fine, you have no injury

and you're walking around to activate your legs with it to be a squad, a leg press, whatever. The number's 100. Yeah, let's just say for hypothetical reasons, your brain or your body demands 100 neurons to fire that. Just like if you looked at your hand right now and you wiggled your fingers, okay, that just just magically happened.

Neurons are getting fired and it's signaling and telling your body it needs to contract the little tiny muscles inside your hands to move. Same thing works with like this leg. Now, when you get an injury, what happens is let's say it goes from 100 neurons per minute and it drops all the way down to something crazy, like 25. Because now the body is rarely ever having to signal that way. And that becomes more important is retraining the brain to send the signal than even lifting a heavy weight, which is what Sal was saying.

So just reiterating what he's saying is that you should focus more on the stabilizing with that, the corrective exercises that are going to strengthen it, and that is, that you're doing work, even if you don't feel like it because you're not squatting or pushing all this heavy weight or whatever it is or back to your normal self, you're making serious progress just by teaching your body to, or your brain to have to fire more neurons back over there. The second thing is that neither one of us touched on or neither one of you got touched on yet, but I think after what the three of us have recently found not only by studying, but also applying to our own programs. Yes. BFR would definitely be something. If you were a client of mine that I just

now started, I feel confident enough to implement this into a rehab program, I would actually incorporate BFR training, which is super- Yeah, super- Yeah, but yeah, the knee, sure. Well, for this, for this, yeah, for the hernia, I would say no, but like you, Yeah.

For example, you were giving with the knee? Yes, yeah, I should, sorry, I should have cleared that up, right, so somebody with an extremity that they've had an injury like the knee, the shoulder, things like that, absolutely. This BFR is definitely something that I would try and incorporate for sure helps speed up that. Well, it's just because you know you can train in a really low volume and get a maximum result out of it that way. Yes.

All right, so let's look at this next question here. Let's see, the next question is from Chris J. Keith. And the question is, is there a difference between proteins, like between way protein, hemp protein, soy, casing, you know, all the different proteins that we see advertised in the magazines and online? Are they different? Of course they are. They're all from different foods. Every one of them is going to tell you that they're all good for you. They're all going to be really rich. They're going to have to own camp established that, you know, they're going to back, you know, supporting studies. They're all gonna be really good. They're gonna have their own camp established that they're gonna back supporting studies. And this is why this is a very good question though,

because I'm sure this is why he's asking it because you can pick up one magazine and just remember what the magazine is. It's Vigids Daily. They're gonna be talking shit about way approaching. They can even mention way. And they're gonna be hyping up their soy and everything like that.

So keep in mind where you're hearing this. And of course, our job on MindPump is always to kind of put all the information out there in which everything in perspective. Yeah, so where you're reading either the study or the information that gives you, keep in mind of where it's coming from. Cause they all, there's great things about all of them.

And so typically for me with clients, it's normally a preference thing. So obviously if I have someone that's allergic to dairy, I'm going to send one one way. If I have someone who is a vegan, they're going to go one way. If I have somebody who, none of their not allergic to anything, nothing bothered them. I'm going to send them this way. So I mean, I kind of mentioned in response back to me, like everybody's biochemically diverse, like they're, you know, somebody's gonna respond a little bit differently

to a different type of protein too. So they might like have a better absorption, like they're getting react, their stomachs react differently to different proteins. Right, and you know, I'm sure you've probably read or heard that some proteins are better because they absorb faster than other proteins. And yes, if you take way protein by itself isolate isolate, it's going to, you're going to reach

a peak amino acid level faster than if you have casing. So what they've done with this is they've now said, okay, way is for post workout and then also buy our casing so you can have it at night. So that's trickling in your bloodstream. Slow absorption rate. Okay. You're splitting so many hairs here that I can't even, I can't even, my brain wants to blow out of my face. They're all, they're all going to be fine. Look, my pump, look, a protein is a

complete protein because as all the amino acids necessary to be complete protein, some proteins have a limiting amino acid. So what that basically means is if there's a low amount of one amino acid, then all of the amino acids are useful up until you get to that limiting point. So some proteins, they'll say are inferior, for example, you'll hear people saying collagen hydrolysis inferior, which is still false because something like collagen hydrolysis, which is the protein from like all then, like basically from cartilage organs, they used to be what they would throw away, or what they used to make cheap protein powder as well. Those have health benefits. It's good for your joints, it's good for your skin,

it's good for your hair, it's good for your gut, way protein, very high in the branch, chaining amino acids, also high in glutamine or glutamine peptides. So that's a good protein for gut health. It's also a good protein for recovery. Soy protein, it's higher in the argonine. We all know argonine helps with blood flow, right? But really, I mean, if it's a complete protein goal for, look, I don't take, the protein powder I take is vegan because I'm allergic to, or not allergic, but I have an intolerance to dairy. So I can have anything with dairy in it. There you go. I don't have soy because it kind of bothers me also. Sometimes I have hemp and other times I have one that's kind of a blend of different proteins.

And did I notice a difference when I switched? Yeah, I felt better because I don't have an intolerance to a vegetable protein. There's a couple things I normally tell a client. There's a couple things I tell you to pay attention to. One, look at the actual amount of grams of protein you're getting because that's the other big significant difference really between them is your way is

typically going to probably be the highest per serving. Typically. Constant trade. Yeah, constant trade. The most concentrated is going to be your way. So you're going to get, you know, 24 anywhere, anywhere between 20 to about 30 grams of protein per serving size. Soys typically almost almost 50% I'd say less than that,

maybe 40, 50% less than that. If you guys back me up on that number, I think so. Hampe, I believe, comes in as similar to soy with that. And then casing is normally close to the way, but like Sal said, you're splitting hairs when you're talking about the difference of slow timing versus fast timing. It just cracks me up when you know, there's no reason for you to have two big ass juggs on your refrigerator, both of two different types of proteins. It's just it's silly to even go out. The next thing that I tell clients to look for is you'll get more more important or more benefits I

should say by picking a company that's reputable and that regulates their supplements versus trying to save money and try out. It. It's about the quality of it. And like really, and a lot of times you got to pay for quality. You do. So I mean, that's that's something to consider because everybody's kind of looking for the deal. But you know, if you're really that detailed about what kind of protein you're going to take, you know, you're going to want to look for something maybe that's a little bit higher. Well, let's be clear. Most of your proteins should come from food.

Period. Well, yeah, obviously. The benefit of protein powders are A, if you can't get enough from food, which is rare, most people can get enough protein from food, or B, it's super convenient post workout. You don't necessarily want to bring a stake with you to the gym or chicken breast,

so you have your protein powder. That being said, we talk a lot about natural foods and how they're better than processed foods. Protein powder is about as processed as it gets. That is food processed to shit and turned into a powder. So look at things like artificial sweeteners. I guarantee you, nine at a 10-year that are listening right now. Go grab your protein powder, look at the back. I guarantee you, it's a 10 you that are listening right now, go grab your protein powder, look at the back,

I guarantee you, it's sweetened with either sucralose or aspartame. Right, because otherwise it's just gonna taste like chalk. Right, so look at that, and you know, I know what people are gonna say, oh, those things don't, or not that bad for you. Well, if you have, think about how often you take your protein powder.

If you take it every single day for years, do you really wanna be taking sucralose and aspartane every single day for years? No, you don't. Look at, is it organic? Non-organic foods tend to have different residues on them, including glyphosate residues, which are what they spray all over GMO foods. So if you have soy protein, for example, get organic non-GMO soy. Otherwise, you're going to have these small, a little bit of glyphosate residues. Again, if you have it once, not a big deal. If you have it every single day, once or twice a day, it can affect your body. I recommend way protein to people who can have dairy, and I recommend that they get it from

grass-fed organic cows cows and that is a very good quality healthy protein. And you're going to find a lot of them from New Zealand, right, because they have a lot of programs for, well, aren't they, they're pretty much all grass fed. I believe a lot of them do. Yeah, I believe they have a huge market there. Yeah, that's, that's where I get them a lot of my protein production stuff. For that kind of stuff, yeah. I take a pretty, like I said, a vegan one. It's sweetened with stevia. It's got some probiotics in it.

So it's relatively healthy. But you know how much I take every day? I might take a scoop in the morning, which is 16 grams. And I might take, and I take a scoop post workout, which is another 16 grams. So I'm having a grand total every day of about 30 grams of protein powder, which I know guys that 100 grams of their protein,

or 150 grams of protein comes from protein powder. I don't even do that. That's crazy. Yesterday I had no protein from a shaker bar or anything like that. It's for me, it's always my goal to get it from food. I look at it as an absolute. The only time you'll probably catch me doing that, one, if I a seriously on the bulk

And like you know, I'm trying to time my protein shake right afterwards and I slam a shake post me a workout And then I turn around and eat again 30 minutes later But other than that Shakes and bars a big old jug of often nutrition will last on my refrigerator for you know several months And that's with me and my girl splitting it so yeah That's honestly that's the other thing that ends out just kind of set it. And I guess I'll just reiterate it again a little bit. It's just that that's the next thing that I tell my clients is that, Hey, it's your goal is to get this all through rail or food. This is like emergency.

You know, if we if we can't get it or we're struggling to get the protein up, then you have a hard time eating the chicken, the, you know, fish, the whatever other other things that are on your meal plan, you're struggling to get all that protein. Otherwise, it's so far more beneficial to get some. It's just the healthy way to approach it. Well, and I know this, and I don't want to get into the whole, if it fits your macros debate again because we've already kind of talked about that, but this is going back to that. And it's hard not to point that out because I know that this is why a lot of these questions

come out is because they don't discuss that. They don't talk about with fichermacros. If it fits your macros, fichermacros, it's the same. You know, there's a calorie, calories, calorie. And that's protein, it's protein. You're not true. I think your best bet with protein is to have a wide variety.

Sometimes have beef, sometimes have chicken, sometimes have fish, sometimes get it from vegetable sources, you'll get a wide variety of amino acids, but you'll get all the other benefits from all those different foods. I always like to kind of rotate it around. So you're not just constantly eating the same exact thing. Excellent. Okay, we have time for another question Douglas. Beautiful. All right, right runs with scissors runs is spelled with the Z with scissors ask us to review The low fat vegan diets. So what do we think about low fat vegan diets? I'm already not a fan Well, two of those two of my favorite things are missing

But, because two of those two, my favorite things are missing. That's a fun language. This is a foreign language. Me, me,, you do need a little bit more education and knowledge in terms of what to eat and what not to eat. First and foremost, okay, I know a lot of vegans that eat a shitload of processed food. They buy the frickin' tofu burgers and tofu hot dogs and all these weird, you look at the back of the ingredients and there's like eight million ingredients

and you've completely defeated. You need to satiate. Yeah, well, you defeated the purpose of eating vegan to be healthy. Unless you're eating now, and by the way, I wanna say this straight up now, if you're vegan because you don't like killing animals, you don't like animals being killed

and you're eating them, I have nothing but all the respect in the world for you. I think being able to extend your empathy towards animals to that level is something that I think is pretty awesome. So I will respect people all day long who eat vegan, especially for those reasons right there. If someone tells me that you vegan because it's the most healthy way to eat, then I'm going to debate you a little bit. Because there are health benefits to eating vegan, but there are some drawbacks to eating vegan. One of which, and she said, low fat is the whole fat issue. You can get saturated fats from vegetable sources like coconut and macadamia, however, they're

not present as easily as they are when you eat meats. You need those. You need those cholesterol. You need those saturated fats. They're good for you. Where are the saturated fats coming from? Well, I've always had, I don't know about you guys, but to me that's someone who comes to me

and they tell me that they're vegan like this. They're always the hardest person to write a program for. Because it is. By the way, how do you know someone's a vegan? They'll tell you for that one. Yeah, right away, they'll tell you. It's like the first thing they say,

it's like they're really out. Hey, I'm vegan. Well, that's why I think it's hard to touch on the subject because it is a sensitive subject. I have for'm vegan. Well, that's why I think it's hard to to touch on the subject because it is a sensitive subject I have for those that are like hardcore, you know, that they're it's just it's like anything else this cult like thing because you know It like anything else like south said. There's great benefits This is something actually that I'm actually excited to start implementing into my program that I don't do and I know Sal it does this and he's the one who's given me the idea. I preach all day long about

it does is and he's the one who's given me the idea. I preach all day long about rotating this and changing up and confusing the body. One thing I haven't done because I do like meat and fat so much, I would have never thought to do a day or two of this, but what a great way to do that? Because there are some great benefits to eating vegan, and I can handle it for a day or two in the month and a great way to kind of cleanse out. Well, you know what I noticed when I do that. So when I go vegan, so I'll, first of all, eat more frequently and for the listeners that know I typically will eat very infrequently,

like two meals a day. But when you eat vegan because the calories tend to be much lower, I can't do that. I can't load up on a shit load of, you know, vegetables and one sitting because it's real uncomfortable. So I do tend to eat, you know, four or five times during that day. Number one, number two, I will notice that I'll feel a little more

flat. Like my muscles won't feel as full. However, the day after when I reintroduce me, I get this like boost, like this, anabolic boost. Now, the plus side, I'll tell you, is I feel my muscles and my joints, my joints especially feel so loose, they feel so, the inflammation is gone. And a lot of the inflammatory fatty acids are found in animal fats. Arachidonic acid is one of them, for example, which you don't typically find in vegetables.

And so you get this anti-inflammatory effect. Now, I'll also add this caveat. Some of you guys with gut issues, probably will not do well on a vegan diet. You need those fat soluble vitamins and those really, really nutrient dense, fat soluble foods that you'll get from animal meats, or like bone broths and stuff like that.

A vegan diet all the time for people with gut issues, in many cases, not all cases, because sometimes gut issues are due to meat, but in the cases where they're not, I would say vegan is probably not the way to go. You're not gonna see me on a vegan diet. So I'm gonna ask you both this. You guys can have fun with that one. I'm gonna ask you both this, if you are a healthy individual, you're not allergic to anything, and you're okay with cows being killed, what is your opinion on?

Would you rather be on yourself or put a client on? No, listen, if you eat vegan because you think it's healthier, vegan is much healthier than the typical American diet. That's not saying much. You're right. There's a lot of things fun American diet. That's not saying much. Um, yeah, right. There's a lot of things. That's not saying much. If you eat a well-balanced diet with animal fats and proteins, um, you're, you're probably going to be better off. You're definitely going to be better off. There's certain nutrients. Look, vegans, a lot of them have to supplement with certain nutrients that they can't get from, um, from vegetables. Um, but like

I said, there's some that are very smart and they go out and they really combine. They have to think about it. They have to really think, it's well thought out what they eat and how they combine their foods. As far as protein is concerned, of course, you're not, you know, you can supplement with lots of soy protein and stuff. Getting it from vegetable sources, your protein intake is going to be a little bit lower. Is it most, if not all soy, GMO? Unless you buy, unless it's specifically organic non-GMO, you're going to have GMO, so it definitely.

And you know what, you bring up a great point because of what we're doing to our vegetable sources. People talk about our meat sources all the time. The same crazy shit that they're doing to our meat, they're doing to vegetables. If not on a higher level because for example it's illegal to inject certain things into cows nowadays but they don't have those laws when it comes to you know certain pesticides and stuff that they're spraying all over your GMO plant. So it's all about the presentation at the end of the day. It is. It's like in the supermarket. It is. So they're fucking with your vegetables too. Okay, broccoli does not naturally come the size of your fucking noggin.

That's not natural. No, ahead of broccoli, it's not the size of your noggin. You ever grow things in your backyard and you look at them, you're like, that doesn't look pretty like the one in the grocery store. It's tiny. I bought some strawberries the other day, they were the size of apples. I can't really forget this level. Yeah, no.

No, but there are some health benefits, definitely some health benefits to eating vegan. It will promote certain gut flora. It will replenish certain enzymes. I think unless you have an issue with animals again, you know, killing animals and eating them, if it's for a health purposes, you would be better off rotating.

You would be better off eating things like fish and animal meats and proteins and fats, and having a well thought out balanced diet. So I don't know if you guys wanna add anything to that at all. Justin, you're not gonna go vegan, huh? No way, dude. Love me some meat, sorry everybody. Perfect, all right.

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. For more information about this show, and to get valuable free resources from Sal, Adam and Justin, visit us at www.mindpumpradio.com. Until next time, this is Mind Pump.