My post-workout no powder protein shake —and a theory on powders
The Pumping Iron way of eating... today!
I was watching Pumping Iron the other day (yearly watch for me; prepping for an interview with a bodybuilding guy) and was struck by how different things were back then compared to now. It’s a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger working out in the 1970s. What jumped out the most was how different the food was that the lifters in the movie ate then. How the food all seemed incidental. Cheese sandwiches, House of Pies, maybe a rotisserie chicken. There was not any whey powder, or preworkout (poison caffeine drink), or anything north of a hard boiled egg. There were no shots of the guys drinking tan sludge from a shaker. They just kind of ate what was available, but tweaked to their requirements—high protein, lower everything else—in an era in which food (all food) was not sold in as many places as it is now.
Hence the discipline. Not for everybody, but that’s cool, because not everybody wants to be that big. (Who wants to?) Cut to today: things are different. If you like… have internet access you probably vaguely know about high protein. You “need” it, it’s important, it’s good for your muscles and for aesthetics. And so often you get it through whey powder, which is made from the liquid left over when milk is made into cheese. And now, there are shakes and bars and even protein potato chips (they aren’t bad), and a resultant protein supplement industry that, last year, was valued at $26 billion. That is so much money and so much whey protein.
But yet in this flick, these lifters, who were at the top of the food chain for their entire industry (see above) and who had crazy high protein requirements and dialed-in diets, and, who for the purposes of this newsletter… look kind of normal… decent skin, non-demonic eyes…. didn’t go through the most convenient and easiest to solve way, through “isolated protein,” or powders. They stayed away from them. Here is Arnold’s bulk diet from the 1970s:
In which “nonfat milk solids” is liquid whey. Note the half a cup of ice cream. This is a bulk diet—when you eat a little bit more calories so you can gain weight—there are “cut” diets that have fewer calories; Arnold’s was similar, with not as much bread and carbs.
To be sure, they were limited: you couldn’t really buy protein like you can now back then. But if you could get whey protein then, it’d be these guys who could. And there’s barely any in there. Ultimately… Arnold’s meal plan… feels almost primitive… old school, definitely…. but also novel. If it’s good enough for this guy… who says we need these powders? It’s definitely doable to have a diet free from “supplementation”… especially if you don’t want/need to be a giant person. Like if you just want to be healthy….
And so this idea is in the air. I’ve tried it… I’ve been off powders, I would say, for a year. It is swag. And a bunch of the roving and nameless dark nutrition influencers also eschew them—including the chick who whispers everything and drinks like a glass of raw milk and dates after a workout:
She’s cool (her voice is crazy). And Stan Efferding, a titled bodybuilder and scholar (straight up), says to eat steak, after a workout, instead of whey. (He’s as big as Arnold if that matters to you… more relevantly, the chick above and 1970s Arnold have identical hair.) So there’s something there. The theory… the theory is maybe you don’t make a supplement the most important (athletically) part of your diet. As an idea. And while the post-workout nutrition solution in the dark energy sphere, by these people, and others, tend to be just eating steak after the gym, or a dozen eggs or something…
that is not as practical for normal people who work out at gyms far from home and go to work right after. Or for people who don’t want to cook meat for breakfast. There is a reason shakes work. They are convenient. Anyways, after some experimentation, I’ve figured out a protein shake that has good macros—55 grams of protein, bunch of vitamins and nutrients—and has no powders. It is an actual protein shake made from real food. Nothing weird, nothing confusing. It is the key to my diet. The recipe is below:
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