Nutrition Tips

Morning Shake To Build Lean Muscle

What’s up, guys? Dan Garner, strength coach and nutrition specialist, here. I’m going to give you a tip to increase your lean muscle mass and to get over a plateau.

All you’re going to do is you’re going to have 50 grams of whey protein isolate, 20 grams of L-glutamine, 5 grams of creatine monohydrate, and 3 grams of L-carnitine first thing in the morning.

And here’s why – There’s two times when growth hormone’s at its highest. Growth hormone’s important for muscle building and fat loss. The two times it’s at its highest is first thing in the morning and right after your workout, but one thing that runs antagonistic with growth hormone is insulin production. So, if you have carbohydrates at this time, you’re going to produce insulin and you’re going to shut down your growth hormone production when it’s at its highest. I’m in the school of thought where I want to take advantage of this growth hormone. So, don’t have carbohydrates with your morning shake. I want it to just be whey protein, glutamine, creatine, and carnitine.

You have hydrolyzed whey protein isolate because it absorbs the fastest so you’re going to be optimizing your growth hormone the best that way and it’s also going to be in and out of your system faster so you can have breakfast one hour after the shake. The glutamine is in there because glutamine is one of the most well rounded amino acids out there.

You can really have as much glutamine as your wallet wants to because glutamine helps repair the lining in your intestinal wall so it’s going to help you break down and absorb food better in the long run after taking glutamine for a long time. It’s used in a lot of functional medicine practitioners gut repair protocols. Glutamine also improves your immune system and one thing we do know is that building muscle is a direct function of how strong your immune system is. So, if you have a weak immune system, you’re not going to be building that much muscle. If you have a strong immune system, you’re going to be able to build a lot of muscle tissue. So, glutamine’s going to help you break food down a little bit better. In the long run, it’s going to improve your immune system, but one reason why I like to use glutamine first thing in the morning is because it’s an adaptogenic amino acid. So, what that means is it can get converted into other amino acids. So, it gets transaminated in the liver and if you’re low in say, l-tyrosine glutamine can get converted into l-tyrosine. If you’re low on phenylalanine, glutamine can get converted into phenylalanine so, it’s going to help balance out your amino acid pool and do everything else that I already said.

So, we’re going to optimize growth hormone with the whey protein. We’re going to add in the glutamine for all those benefits, your creatine monohydrate for obvious benefits. Everybody knows creatine monohydrate should be taken at this time because, it can be taken at any time and despite old school people in the gym, you do not need carbohydrates. You do not need to spike your insulin. You do not need these pathways. You don’t need carbohydrates to absorb creatine monohydrate. I like to have it first thing in the morning. It’s going to help you improve you strength and performance while training is going to help you put on some lean mass too and it’s the most researched creatine out there. So, why take a new well-marketed form of creatine when it doesn’t have the backing that monohydrate does and monohydrate’s way cheaper. So run monohydrate – It’s where it’s at. And the carnitine is going to help you boost your testosterone. It’ s going to help you boost your testosterone. It’s also going to kickstart that fat loss. There’s a lot of good research out there on carnitine improving neural drive as well, especially in the morning, and it’s actually for shift workers. Acetyl L-carnitine, I find, works very well with shift workers to get them out of a morning funk.

To wrap it up, to get over a plateau or if you’re getting back from vacation and you feel like you’ve lost some muscle mass or whatever it is, if your goal it just to build some muscle mass, 50 grams of hydrolyzed whey protein isolate, so Dymatize ISO 100 or Optimum Nutrition’s Hydrowhey, with 5 grams of creatine monohydrate, 20 grams of pure L-glutamine, and 3 grams of carnitine. That’s going to help you guys out. It’s helped myself and my clientele out a lot in the past. Thanks for watching.

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The Workout Tipster

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