Recovery drinks vs Diet?
 

After hitting a massive wall for a few weeks in a row, I decided that I may not be recovering properly after a ride. And by that I mean I really wasn't taking *any* steps to recover. I decided to try out some Hammer Recoverite for the last week, and so far I've been feeling a little better. Not perfect, mind you, but last night was my 4th night in a row riding and I felt stronger than I normally do by day 4 (incidentally, Day 3 was complete pain, but I was low on electrolytes so I think that was my problem that day).

I believe the recovery drink helps. The only problem? It's got a fair amount of calories. 2 Scoops runs me an extra 170 calories per ride, and if I do 3 scoops for an extended ride that'll be 250 calories. Additionally it's got a high level of Maltodextrin in it. While Maltodextrin isn't a simple sugar, it's actually got a higher glycemic index than sugar, so it's really got the same effect of sugar on the body. This is the part that concerns me, since high-glycemic foods tend to make you store fat. The Hammer nutition site mentions that it's ok because you're refueling your muscles after a workout, but I get the feeling that this advice is really geared more towards professional athletes who are already at a comfortable body weight. So basically I'm wondering does anyone here have any experience with recovery drinks while maintaining a steady regimen of weight loss? Am I alright here or should I just go back to plain water?

Additionally, I do weight lifting workouts twice a week; would a 3:1 carb:protein recovery drink be useful for these at all or do I want to go with more protein?

I was just reading some stuff on preparing for long rides, such as Ride Across Indiana, they have some links on the webpage for that. The one article said there was a 1 hour window to refuel after a workout. I know from past reading that some body builders strive for a slight sugar spike in a recovery shake, that must be the reason for the Maltodextrin ??

I know if I eat oatmeal and sit in a chair the last time I checked it would spike my sugar to 180-200, but if I eat them and go for a 1 hour ride when I get home it is 105. Have not yet had the chance to check what would happen if I ate them after a ride.

I show some type 2 symptoms if my weight is up, none at all as it gets back to a more reasonable number....maybe that is denial on my part as to actually being a "Type II Diabetic"....dunno.

Just some facts I have found that seem to apply to me, they may or may not apply to you :-). If it was somehow material I am 5'10" right now, born in 1964 and 269.2 lbs the other day, drops 3-5 a week consistently :-).

Here is the article I mentioned................
Ultracycling: Distance Training For Beginners

And here is the index of articles, LOTS of cool stuff in there :-).
Ultracycling: Articles



Bill

How many calories are you burning during your ride? How long do your rides take?

Personally, I don't worry about recovery unless my power meter indicates I've done more than 1000 KJ of work (= 1000 calories burned and 2+ hours of hard riding). When I do eat or drink something to aid recovery, I tend to avoid carbs and focus on protein (and fat) instead. When I was lifting weights, my typical recovery drink was a protein shake blended with 2% milk and ice cubes: lots of protein, a few simple carbs, and a bit of fat. That seemed to work well for me: my strength increased without adding a lot of excess body fat.

I'm not sure how long you've been riding, but the other thing to keep in mind is that you might be exercising too frequently. At the start of the riding season, I always give myself a day off between rides. Once I've established a base level of fitness, I'll decrease my daily distance (or exercise intensity) slightly and start adding more rides. Generally I'll add 1 ride a week/week, do that for a couple of weeks, then add another. It's important to build fitness gradually rather than trying to make huge gains overnight. Increasing total ride distance by 10%/week is a number that's often mentioned as being a good target.

I agree with a lot of what sstorkle says.

Since January I've been on a lifting/riding routine (though lately my schedule hasn't been very friendly and the lifting has suffered a bit).

Regardless, I'm down 21 pounds, and stronger than ever. That said, my legs do get tired when I ride back to back to back (I commute 3-4 days a week). Generally speaking I ride in the morning on an empty stomach, after I get here I'll have a bottle of chocolate milk (proteins!). I also track food on MFP and aim for 2,100 calories a day.

Then after work I'll go lift for a half hour, and ride home. My commute is 12 miles one way. When I get home I'll often have a whey protein powder "shake" made with Silk Almond Milk (unsweetened) between the time I arrive home and the time I eat dinner. The whole shake costs me about 140-160 calories and there's a noticeable difference in my recovery when I'm not doing that.

The way I see it, the protein aids in muscle recovery, and pairing it with the almond milk saves me calories. Throw in plenty of water throughout the day and I feel pretty good. Like I said, sometimes toward the end of the week I feel a little muscle fatigue, but generally after I warm up I feel great

First are you diabetic? If not then and not pre-diabetic then my next question would be can you maintain your weight loss goals with this recovery drink added in. If the answer to that is yes and it makes you fell better then it might be worth giving it a fair try. My recovery drink is a hoppy wheat beer and I fit it into my daily calorie goals. keep in mind I ride daily so that I can enjoy meals and still lose weight, and eat back nearly all my exercise calories. Before someone says that does not work, trust me it is working for me. I'll agree that for many it does not work.

Other considerations would be what do you do after your ride or workout? Do you sit around and watch tv? Do you stay on your feet and clean your bike? Do you stretch? Do you buy into the idea of a metabolic burn after exercise, if so then maybe adding a small amount of carbs is not that big of a hindrance.

Not the OP here :-).....but I hesitate yet to eat back any of my cycling calories, the actual calories burned is open to much debate it seems.....if/when I do I will ease into that gradually, enjoying the higher rate of loss actually :-). The last 30 days is about 1.5% a week so not anything terribly drastic, and there were at least 115 miles of riding in June.

Bill

spinning off a new thread....

You ARE going to start a new one, or suggesting I should ?? :-).

Bill

Took me a while to type it.

I somewhat agree with sstorkel. I think most folks never even approach their athletic ability. I do agree that it is wise to gradually build fitness to avoid injury, burnout, and fatigue. The first two weeks of increasing activity are hard and do lead to fatigue but working through it can work. I think it is hard efforts that need recovery time.

Hammer says the window is 2 hours, not sure it makes a huge difference as I've been trying to do it almost immediately after stopping each time.


When I ride with my power meter, my Garmin typically tells me I do 50+ calories per mile. I am averaging 5 days a week at 130 miles each week, so about 26 miles per ride, works out to around 1300 calories per ride. Now weeknight rides are on the lower side, staying around 20 miles each at peak summertime, and the weekend rides make up the difference.

I've been riding since March this year, which is a later start than usual for me, but we had bad weather. Started off at around 20 miles a week and gradually increased it to 130 over the past 4 months. 130-150 seems to be where I hit a wall.


As far as I am aware, no. My Blood Glucose always comes back fine at the doctor. I ride in a club so I drive to my rides each day, and after the ride I'll drive home for 20-45 minutes depending on where it was. I don't really know a way to avoid the drive home aspect, so I guess I am fairly sedentary immediately after a ride.

I'll have a bottle of recovery drink only if my IF (>0.90)or TSS (>180) values has shown that I've earned it. The recovery drink of choice for me is 5th quarter fresh

What Is 5QF - 5th Quarter Fresh

I'd say most of what is going through your mind is the same kind of addiction craziness smokers go through when they quit cigarettes. And I've done both... quit smoking and then later cycled myself thin. I know what your going through brother... don't let the crazy addictive thinking run you into a XXL early grave.

If you really think you need something to bump up your blood sugars.... why not try what we did in football practice... just short of a million years ago. Cut a orange into quarters (4 wedges) and eat one wedge. That should be plenty enough to get your electrolytes back in order (and help vitamin C as well) all for about 16-17 calories.

An orange, or apple wedge is the type of healthy snack that real actual healthy people eat. It's a learning process.

I just use my regular sport drink, Cliff Drink. Only 80 calories with 2 scoops and it does good enough. However, I don't usually use the drink unless I ran out of water or it was a particularly hot and sweaty day, or I decided to increase my distance much further than before(when I went from doing 25 miles to 50 miles) and I need some other stuff that is in the drink and replacing that quickly helps me feel better, otherwise, I'll eat something. Food seems to take a bit longer than the drink as well as having to make the food Vs. mixing the drink.

Recovery drink for a 26 mile ride? On Friday I will be starting a nine-day, fully loaded tour in the MT mountains. My recovery drinks will be water and wine.

We mostly follow the south beach / glycemic index mentality, and what caught my attention was the 'no simple sugars' label on Hammer products.

As of the 2014 season, we use recoverite after any workout exceeding about 45 minutes, or 30 minutes swimming. That's probably too low of a threshold for many, and we'll likely adjust it as we go. Over the past year I've tried several different things - water, G2, 2% milk, Builder's Bars, handful of almonds, combinations of all the above. For me, recoverite seems to be working about the best - least amount of soreness the next day (I used to need an aleve a few times a week) and an immediate 'fix' of hunger pangs after we get done riding and before we get cleaned up and make dinner. Only downside is the cost.

I haven't noticed any ill effects on the scale. I'm holding my target weight fine and am slowly losing size as I firm up.

Builder's Bars, by the way, also worked great but DID show up on the scale. I may have well as eaten a Snickers' bar.

I've been following this thread interested to learn, so my comments are as much questions as comments:
I don't believe I burn 50 calories per mile, closer to 20 or 25, so I'm gonna say your estimate is overstated.
I don't believe it's necessary to do anything special to recover from a 26-mile ride. I just eat lunch at lunchtime or whatever.

Mithrandir's burn although is an estimate is about as close to what he is burning that can be had given he is deriving the numbers based on a power meter. To get more accurate data would require a controlled lab environment. I'm thinking his "estimate" is not overstated. I agree that a 26 mile ride does not require special recovery however it depends on the athlete, course, and effort as well as training schedule. Then there are goals to consider. Although maybe not required it may help and if it does not hurt why not.

Just so there's empirical evidence to back my claims up, here's my most recent ride with a power meter, from Friday: Bike Ride Profile | NFBC - URF* (*contains no URF) near Erie County, NY, USA | Times and Records | Strava

1027 kilojules per 19.5 miles = 52.6kJ/mi

Strava does a 1.115 multiplier on kJ to determine calories. Obviously the multiplier is just an estimate, the real number is going to be different for everyone. I've read that cycling ranges anywhere from 20-25% efficiency, so let's do some math.

52.6kJ = 12,571.7 (small c) calories = 12.6 Calories of energy, per mile, that reaches the pedals. Multiply by 5 or 4 (20-25%) to get the range, and the number of actual calories per mile ends up being somewhere between 50.3 (assuming 25% efficiency) to 62.9 (assuming 20% efficiency). It looks like Strava assumes that I am 24% efficient. The power meter calibration test at this site (http://www.cyclepowermeters.com/powe...check-76-c.asp), performed using a 20 pound weight on a 48/11 gearing showed that my PowerTap is around -3 to -4% inaccurate, meaning that if anything, the numbers it's reporting are actually low.


I really push, on every ride I do. That 20 miler on Friday made it very hard to walk up stairs for the next few days. I really don't know if a recovery drink will help me out, which is why I'm trying it out (and I'm only 5 days in so far), but so far the general consensus here seems to be that protein is actually far more important for recovery than the carbs, is that a fair assessment?

This may be where you are going wrong and what may be impacting your recovery. If you keep going down this path you will push yourself into the realm of overtraining which will really screw any progress you have made. It is much better to push hard every second ride and use the in betweener as a recovery/easy spin ride. The biggest impact to any exercise routine is rest. You must rest for your hard outputs to benefit you properly. Taking every second ride at a more relaxed pace should actually increase the benefit of the hard rides. Hammering tired muscles day after day is not a good practice.

On the recovery drink, I would look at something else to consume, not get rid of it altogether. When I really started pushing my training levels up, I found that my legs would stay sore all week. I was doing track training Mon/Thurs, track race Fri nights, road race Wed evening (20km), hard road ride/training Sat morning~45-50km (Fri track seriously affected my output on this ride~I could go way harder if Fri racing was called off), Sunday recovery/coffee ride. I had done a lot of reading about increasing my protein intake and started taking protein isolate exclusively and hey presto, it worked a treat! By PI exclusively, I mean a protein isolate powder that didn't have any of the other added ingredients. A lot of those protein powders are marketed for the body builder types and those like the Hammer seem to be aimed at the serious already fit cyclist. For a big guy, you don't need or want the carbs and sugars if you can avoid them, they don't really help with the recovery unless you aren't eating properly. I tried other methods of protein intake via foods, but they just don't work as well as a protein drink. You want to be taking around 20g protein max in one hit. I had a meeting/chat with a sports nutritionist from our national sports institute (AIS) and they were studying the usage of protein intake. What they were finding was that irrespective of what the top level athletes were doing sport wise, irrespective of their size/build, they were not using any more than 19g of protein in post exercise intake. So If you took say 30g of protein after your exercise (as per a lot of protein isolate recommended doses) you were essentially peeing out 1/3 of what you took to no benefit. That's good marketing to get you to use your protein quicker.

I have been on protein supplementation for around 3 1/2 years now. I have tried whey PI and am now on pea PI and also tried taking extra protein in via diet. The diet thing never had even remotely improved impact on my recovery. The protein hit via drink is what works for me. I stopped taking WPI after reading a lot of conversations relating to it being bad for your kidneys in the long term. So I searched for an alternative when my WPI ran out. I read about the benefits of spirulina which is 60% protein. It's a funny assessment of it's benefits. It makes you FEEL good, but taking it is like drinking swamp water. Absolutely ghastly to consume in powder form, but it really does give you a good on the inside feeling. So from that I went to pea PI and am still taking it. I haven't been able to find any bad reports on it's longer term use and it's way less processed than WPI is.

Another thing to think about is that apparently taking protein powders mixed with milk reduces their effectiveness. Apparently the fats in milk reduce your body's effectiveness in consuming the protein. This heresay and not based on any medical proof that I could find however.

I hope this helps you.

Ok, bottomline is that you do not need special recovery drinks, protein shakes, etc. Most people get enough protein during the day from normal eating even if they are on a heavy lifting routine and require the 2grams of protein per optimal weight kilogram. With me that would be 190grams of protein per day and if I supplement with normal food I can easily get to that.

I don't think a person trying to lose weight requires so much protein. 0.8-1.2 grams per optimal weight kilo should be quite enough and that can be achieved easily from normal food. The body is going to convert unused protein into carbs anyway so why bother with stuffing too much of the stuff.

On recovery, the after workout window is about half an hour after the workout. At that stage the body needs three things in the order of importance: hydration, carbs and protein. Hydration is easy to understand. However why the body needs after workout carbs more than protein is because the body wants to fill the muscle glycogen stores before any significant repair is done. Hence carbs. Protein is of course also required and is good to be had in a recovery drink, but it is less critical since the average person usually has some free amino acids waiting to be used/digested.

Special made recovery drinks hace been shown not to offer any or very little benefit against normal healthy food in recovery or otherwise. Normal people certainly don't need them, even in terms of protein powder since you can always just eat an extra can of tuna or cottage cheese. All the hammer stuff etc. Is just a huge waste of money.

Actually the best recovery drink out there seems to be chocolate milk. And would it not be? It has all the three requirements and tastes awesome as well so one can have another glass. Not so with these gainer pro powders which taste icky.

So, inside half an hour after the workout a pint of chocolate milk and normal healthy food a an hour or few hours after. You can fast before workouts but don't do it after.

You may not need it, but I must not be one of the most because it works for me. You need the carbs after the hard road ride to refill the glycogen, here protein is not so important. If your weights are intense then you need the protein to assist recovery for muscle growth, but you don't need the carbs. It's horses for courses, not one size fits all.

After I went through my first dosage of protein powder and read about WPI being not so good for kidney health I tried plenty of other sources of protein intake. Food protein does not digest quickly, that is a FACT. You may intake that protein immediately after a workout, but your body won't use it for when you want it. Dietary protein didn't work for me because as I lean towards track sprint type disciplines, hard workouts were very taxing on muscle strength. If what you are doing is strength based, then you need the protein and not the carbs. So I guess the question that is for the OP is what are his cycling intentions? If you are hitting the gym and looking to build up some strength, then doing hard road rides is working against your gym sessions and the strength you are trying to gain. If you are toning in the gym and focussed on being a better road rider, then you can possibly disregard most of what I said above and reduce your intake of supplement protein, as your diet should be fine enough that you don't need the extra.

For the OP, you need to clarify your intentions and make sure you are not plugging a hole in a bad diet with supplements that may not be necessary. You should also reassess how you are training and ensure that you are not headed for the regions of overtraining. Overtraining can happen to anyone, not just elite athletes. Make sure you give your body adequate recovery time. Most important is sleep, and active recovery like an easy road ride is also beneficial.

Mithrandir - There seem to be a couple of issues here. If I read correctly, you ride hard five days a week and lift the other two. It sounds like you need recovery time, rather than a recovery drink. You need to give your body time to absorb the work and turn it into muscle; that happens when you're resting. One possible way to do this would be to do a recovery ride the day after you lift. Ride at the same cadence you usually do, but change the gearing so that pedaling is so easy you feel guilty. Don't ride for more than an hour. When I do a recovery ride, my goal is to keep both my power and my heart rate ~100.

On your weeknight rides, you don't mention when you do them in relation to when you eat supper. If you do them before supper, there's no need for any recovery food, you'll get that from your meal. If you do them after supper, either skip the recovery stuff or stick to protein. From what I've read, your body doesn't really care whether it's real food or a designer recovery mix. I go with whey protein powder with skim milk and a banana mixed in a blender. Or chocolate milk. Or a hard-boiled egg. Or a can of tuna, drained, seasoned with freshly ground black pepper and spread between two slices of rye bread. Or something else.

High glycemic index food tends to make sedentary people fat. The drive home after the ride =/= sedentary. Coming home from work and planting your butt in front of the TV until bedtime = sedentary. The amount in your recovery drink will go towards replenishing your glycogen stores rather than your love handles.

I drink chocolate skim milk with my peanut butter and jelly/jam sandwich. I don't always have this after I ride, but PBJ and chocolate milk is one of my favorite food combinations.

I read through most of the responses to your question and like them. I'd like to add one thought, which may at first seem from left field :) but think about it. In my experience through the years, I've discovered that the content of my diet is very important in recovery times. When I go through periods of high-fat % eating (burgers, stuff like that) then I experience slower recovery times after rides. During the times where I have endeavored to eat less than 10% of total calories from fat (choosing veggies, fish, pasta that have less than 10% fat by calories) my recovery from rides improves a million percent. I have a theory as to why: I think that when we eat low-fat then our blood becomes thinner, because our red blood cells are not coated with fat and do not clump together. When red blood cells clump because of a high-fat diet, they lose surface area to carry oxygen/nutrients and also have more difficulty moving through capillaries. That's my thought, and my personal experience - hope it helps.

If you want to mute the glycemic response a good bit incorporate lentils into your regular diet.

Read up on "First and second meal effect."

First and second meal effects of pul... [Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI

The ?Second Meal? Effect Of Dry Beans and Lentils Offers Health Benefits « Bean Institute

Another good recovery drink for post-ride is chocolate milk. Apparently it has everything your body needs. As far as extra calories in a drink gopes, I just eat a bit less to compensate for them. I do stear clear of diet or other sodas because they're too sweet and don't have a nything other than the sweetner to aid recovery. Infact they'll often make things worse by increasing your thirst as sugar does.

Cheers from Miele Man

Comparing me to you and offering advice is not something I'll do, but to give you a point of reference: I've been daily fasting for the last 1.5 years, I'll do my work-outs and consume nothing, before or after. Maybe some diluted Cytomax for a long workout, just to feel purposeful. Then when I started adding runs, 5k-10Ks to my work-outs, I found I needed to do some recovery for the muscles..so some Hammer powder in water and I'm done for the day. Food at 6pm.

I'm not putting out pro power, but who is? You need much less than you think, unless you are body building; stop obsessing.

sstorkel hit the fat and protein solution. But I really do have to ask the question about rehydration. I'd suggest you aren't drinking enough, not just for the ride, but for the day around it.

Glucometers are very cheap if you want to actually test the effect of high-glycemic foods in a measurable way. They basically give them away for free in order to sell the strips ... and if you're just using it for sporadic tests, rather than routine use as a diabetic would, the strips are not a significant cost.

The correct way to do this would be to test the effects of a non-glycemic food taken while sedentary, then test the effects of the maltodextrin drink taken while sedentary. Then you would have a baseline of good/bad that you could use to evaluate the effects of the maltodextrin drink post-ride.

In my experience, a 250 calorie high-glycemic recovery drink after a 90 minute ride would only be helpful. Personally I would go with more than that after a longer ride. But everyone is different.

Generally, shortly after long exercise, incoming sugar is used to store glycogen. This is the idea behind recovery drinks. It is when we eat sugar that we don't need (when sedentary, or when overeating) that it is stored as fat.

If you burn 900 calories and drink back 250 calories (and don't overeat afterwards), you won't gain fat, regardless of what is in it. Calories in vs calories out still rules.

My personal experience is that I perform better and recover faster from intense rides with recovery-type refueling right after the ride, and with sport gels during the ride.
By "intense" I mean rides where my heart rate is in Z4 and Z5 for a significant portion of the ride (an hour in these zones); or on rides over 3 hours. I do not ride much in Z1 or Z2.

The calories have to be figured into the daily total, but this way they go into refueling the muscles with sugar not into replenishing fat stores. The protein helps avoid desire for a post-ride nap, as does some caffeine.
For evening rides, post-ride is dinner as soon as I get home, with a little larger portion of protein and carbs.
For rides earlier in the day, I will often stop on my way home at a convenience store and get a Monster Coffee Energy Shake drink, Java Monster/Starbucks coffee energy drink or a light Chocolate Muscle Milk (chalky taste) if I don't want the caffeine. These are about 100-250 calories and digest easy when I have no appetite.
During rides I carry a 5-serving flask of Hammer gel that I call "Hill Helper". It doesn't cause the intestinal cramping I get from most sports drinks, easy to consume in desired quantities, does not require refridgeration, and gives a quick energy boost. I will have 100-150 kcals during an intense 75 minute ride or none on a 120 minute easy ride.

I am not in OP's weight class but assume he has these objectives:
Improve health, fitness, and happiness
Lose a large amount of fat
Build muscle strength and endurance (including the muscles cycling doesn't use)
Increase daily basic metabolic rate
Be able to participate in group rides for motivation, pleasure, support and social aspects
Improve cycling abilities
Maintain healthy relationship toward food and exercise
Have a sense of accomplishment meeting health and exercise goals
Have enough energy to enjoy daily life-beyond-the-bike activities