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Make Your Own Post Workout Shake

By Thom | March 7, 2009

As a fitness expert, I know the importance of eating well, especially after a workout. During your workouts, your body is literally breaking down. Muscles are being diced up like sushi on a Friday night, your blood is being slung through your veins like a little kid that just found paint and your skin is oozing out water and electrolytes like a old kitchen sponge.

Yum!

So, after your workout, you want to immediately start repairing your body with something easy to digest and palatable so that it will adapt for your next great workout. What you are looking for in a post workout recovery meal or shake is a good number of simple carbohydrates and fast-digesting proteins. The best way to do this ‘naturally’ is chocolate milk (used by a lot of the Canadian hockey teams) or yogurt. Both of these are pretty good, easy to carry, generally taste good, and are fairly cheap and I still do recommend them to anyone to have after their workout.

However, each do have their limitations. The biggest gripe for me is that they aren’t really portable without cooling, so it’s hard to take them to the gym, unless  you like warm milk. The second is chocolate milk is generally composed of milk, sugar, and chocolate. Milk contains whey protein, which is very fast at getting to your diced muscles, but it also contains casein (roughly 80% according to Wikipedia), which is very slow at digesting. Plus, the sugar in most chocolate milk is high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is one of the slowest digesting carbohydrates, which doesn’t help us on recovery very well. Yogurt is very similar, except that it generally has a larger amount of whey protein but still generally contains high fructose corn syrup. I still recommend these two over nothing at all however, as both will provide you with something better than just plain water.

So what can we do to still have a cheap, yet good alternative?

2 things:

- High quality whey protein powder – I reommend ON Naural

- Gatorade (or equivalent) powder

Note: Use Gatorade powder over the bottled drink version because now most bottled versions rely on high fructose corn syrup for their sugar (not good!)

We mix these two so that you a have a ratio of 4:1 carbohydrate and protein mix.

Now, most research studies recommend 1 gram of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight (for me I’m 75 kilos or 165lbs so I’m going with 75 grams of carbohydrates)

Here’s a link to convert your body weight pounds into kilograms

Alright, now we mix those 75 grams of carbohydrates with 25 grams of protein powder and we are all set! It’s very easy to pack in a small plastic container and thrown in your gym bag for after your workout.

End Result

After your workout, you’ll need a big heaping scoop mixed with roughly 16 ounces of water (less or more depending upon your tastes) and a quick stir. Down this as your finishing your workout and you will be on your way to a great recovery.

Note: One scoop (in the big container of Gatorade) is equal to 65 grams of carbs per scoop

Cost:

- Protein powder at $24 at GNC = $0.31 per serving

- Gatorade powder $11 at a warehouse store = $0.36 per serving

Total Cost: $0.67 per serving

Not too shabby for a cheap, yet very good post workout recovery mix.

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