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Post-Workout Drink:

Email Follow-up

Subject: Post Workout Drink

>Hi Gary!

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for your article Post-Workout Drink. I have been researching post-workout drinks for months now ever since I have decided to start mixing my own from scratch. I too have had the exact experience with dextrose but couldn't put my finger on what it was until I read your article. I never knew what it was in some of these post super workout drinks that I have tried out in the past that was making me fat and bulgy. I always thought it was just too many high glycemic carbs all at once and have been experimenting with it for a while now.

I accidentally put Tablespoons instead of Teaspoons of Dextrose recently while making my post workout drinks and was blown away at how big I got in a matter of days. I just figured it out today that I was doing that. Must have done it at least 3 days now. At first it looked like I was gaining mass but as the days went on I would freak out every time I stepped in front of the mirror as my waist got larger and I could see my body jiggling when I walked looking fatter and fatter by the day! I also seemed to feel full right after I would start to eat my meals and could not eat near as much as I normally did but still kept getting fatter. My metabolism has been incredibly slow compared to how it usually is, especially after a good high intense cardio session which I also have had plenty of.

Tomorrow I am going to mix my drink with straight Maltodextrin (and whey, taurine, creatine, stevia, water, and Glutamine/Vitamins A & C a little while later for transport reasons) without the Dextrose. I did catch it in time today as I was mixing my post drink. I dumped it right down the drain and re-mixed it to the proper ratio as I meant to in the first place:

Maltodextrin - 2.6 TBL
Dextrose – 3.75 TBL ---- This was wrong! should have been 3.75 tsp - oops!
Taurine 1/4 tsp (1g)
Sea Salt - A little less than 1/8 tsp
Whey – 1 scoop
Stevia - Tiny scoop
Water - 16 oz

Total = Calories 242, Protein 24g, Carbohydrates 32g, Sugar 16g, Sodium approx. 250 mg, Fat 1.5g, Taurine 1g.

I can already see the fat coming off. The reason I can tell where the extra fat came from is that I have been eating exactly the same as I always do outside of the "3 hour post workout window" so I knew it had to be somewhere in there. Your article pinpointed it head on for me as I had the exact same symptoms as you described during your experience with Dextrose.

So tomorrow's will even be way lower in sugar and about 3 grams less in carbs seeing I will not be using Dextrose (Drats! just bought a 50lb bag of the crap too!)

Anyway, thanks for posting your experiences. I was actually going to stop eating white potatoes thinking they were the culprit (I only eat them within the 3 hour post workout window) but I remembered that when I once tried Creatine HCS by AST Science I had the same problem so between remembering that and your article, it's all clear as mud now!

Thanks again & God bless you!

Sincerely,
Tony
7/24/06<

Thanks for email me. I hadn't heard of anyone else having the same problem with dextrose, so I was thinking it was just me. But it's good to know someone else has the same problem. Makes you wonder how many other people out there have gotten fat despite their best efforts to exercise, never realizing it was the post-workout drink causing the problems. Also makes you wonder why all the "experts" recommend dextrose and why so many companies sell dextrose-based post-workout products, along with creatine products with dextrose in them like the one you mentioned.

But I should mention that do not use maltodextrin anymore. I have found two things that seem to work even better. The first is brown rice syrup. I discuss this relatively healthy sweetener in my God-given Foods Eating Plan book. Unlike most sweeteners, it contains all carbs that are effective for muscle-glycogen replenishment.

Other possibilities that I mention are Rice Oligodextrin and OatMuscle, available from ProteinFactory.com. These are both low-glycemic carb sources. I know that most "experts" recommend high-glycemic carbs post-workout. But since switching to using the Rice O, I have found that my metabolism has definitely increased. I am eating more than ever and still struggling to keep my weight up! And both products retain the naturally occurring nutrients in the grains they are made from, unlike maltodextrin, which is highly refined.

Also in my book I discuss the issue of the post-workout drink in further detail than in that article and give my own recipe.

Nutrition and the Bible

    These three books look in-depth at what God give to human beings for food and what the Bible teaches about diet and nutrition. They also compare these Biblical teachings to scientific research on nutrition and degenerative disease like heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

The above email first appeared in the free FitTips for One and All newsletter.
It was posted on this site June 21, 2007.

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