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Summary
On episode 54 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan tackles the popular idea that you have to hit a post-workout “feeding window” with a protein shake or bar to get the most out of your training.
He walks through a double-blind, randomized trial on older adults that found no strength or muscle mass advantage from whey protein supplementation, then explains why elite athletes may see a small benefit that everyday lifters don't.
The rest of the episode makes the case for getting protein from whole foods instead of shakes, and for retraining your taste buds off added sugar and artificial sweeteners.
Key Takeaways
- A 12-week controlled trial found no strength or muscle benefit from whey protein in older adults. In a double-blind study of 161 men and women aged 65 to 91 doing resistance training three times a week, the group given 20 grams of whey protein gained the same strength and muscle mass as the group that didn't get it.
- The “anabolic window” benefit mostly shows up in elite, highly trained athletes, not average lifters. Muscle biopsies on competitive athletes do show a measurable synthesis difference, but that same difference doesn't appear in everyday people training for health.
- Excess protein doesn't build extra muscle, it gets converted to blood sugar. Once your body has more protein than it can use, it processes the surplus into sugar, which spikes insulin and can lead to weight gain rather than more muscle.
- Protein needs scale with training load, but most people overdo it. Lifters need more protein than non-lifters, and needs change with age. Allan notes that as he's gotten older, he's had to reduce his own protein intake compared to when he was younger and building more muscle.
- Protein shakes often mean you're skipping better nutrition, not adding to it. Swapping a whole-food protein source for a shake trades away the other nutrients that food would have provided.
- Shakes and bars are often sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners, and both keep you hooked on sweetness. Artificial sweeteners still trigger an insulin response and reinforce a preference for very sweet foods, making it harder to break a sugar habit.
- You can retrain your taste buds to need less sweetness. Allan describes eating plain oatmeal with just cinnamon, no added sugar, and now finding some tropical fruits too sweet, a sign his palate reset over time.
- The marginal benefit of the post-workout window is tiny and not worth the cost. He frames it as a fraction of a percent difference in muscle mass, more noticeable on a large frame than a small one, and says whole foods are cheaper and more effective than paying for processed convenience.
- Focus on the big levers, not biohacking small tweaks. Allan's advice: get your protein, carbs, and fat from real whole foods, drink plenty of water, and avoid added sugar and artificial sweeteners rather than chasing marginal timing gains.