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Weight LossProtein Myths Exposed with Angelo Keely
June 11, 2024 By
Leanne Vogel
June 26, 2024
In today’s episode of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, we’re diving into the incredible world of protein myths with our returning guest, the ever-knowledgeable Angelo Keely. In this episode, we’ll uncover the latest advancements in essential amino acids (EAAs), shedding light on how they stack up against traditional protein powders and whole food proteins like lean beef. Get ready for some eye-opening revelations backed by recent studies, including the groundbreaking 2020 research revealing how less than half the protein from steak can be as effective as a larger portion when it comes to muscle synthesis.
Angelo Keely is a fitness enthusiast who emphasizes the importance of balancing fat loss with muscle retention. His approach centers on incorporating a variety of exercises, such as strength training, pilates, and yoga, which all contribute to sculpting the body. While he acknowledges that cardio exercises like running are beneficial for heart health, he focuses on activities that enhance physical appearance. Angelo also advocates for a high-protein diet and the use of essential amino acid supplements to support fat loss while preserving muscle mass. His holistic method offers a practical guide for those seeking to transform their physiques effectively.
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Transcript
Angelo Keely
What we want is we want to lose fat and we want to maintain our muscle. And in order to achieve that, it’s about doing things like exercise, whether that’s strength training or pilates or yoga. I mean, it can also, I think cardio type stuff like running is more for your heart, it’s less for your. Making your body look a certain way. But doing those types of activities, it’s eating high protein, and it’s thinking about if I’m going to try to lose fat, supplementing, supplementing with something like essential amino acids in that period, and then you can really change your body.
Leanne Vogel
Hello and welcome back. Today we are talking about protein, my favorite topic right now. I. I love that through the course of my life, I have focused on each individual macro in their own right to overcome the misconceptions I had around that macro. We did the fat thing. I feel so comfortable eating fat. I know how nourishing it is to my body. We did the carbohydrate thing when we did all the juicing many, many years ago.
Leanne Vogel
And now we’re into the protein thing, truly understanding what protein does for our bodies, and a huge misconception around protein. And I feel like all of us need this reprogramming from each individual macro so that we can develop the macro balance that works best for us. Now, myself, personally, I’m kind of doing an even macro split at this point, keeping macros pretty balanced across my fats, protein and carbohydrates. Whereas with the ketogenic diet, it was more fat focused. And with more of the vegan diet, it was more carbohydrate focused. So it’s fun to see this progression and whether you land on more of the vegan diet, to the keto diet, to a macro balanced approach. Understanding the benefits of protein in addition to each individual macro is so key. Protein is really the way forward for so many of the goals that I hear women share over and over and over again in my one on ones, the same things.
Leanne Vogel
And so we’re going to be talking about fat loss without muscle loss, improving physical training outcomes, maintaining muscle and functional fitness with aging. These three things I hear time and time and time again. So we’re going to be covering protein, the misconceptions. And if you want to go a little bit deeper or even have an intro to this kind of conversation around protein, another great episode to listen to is episode 446 that launched on the show November 7, 2023. If you’re looking for more on this topic now, today we’re going to be talking a lot about essential amino acids, or eaas, as they’re commonly referred to, and the continued growth that we’ve seen in the popularity since sharing that episode, we’re going to be considering the growing interest of the conversation on essential amino acids versus bcaas and just the supplemental protein industry. Now, myself, personally, I do rely on a little bit of protein powder throughout the week, but I really, really, really try my very hardest to focus solely on whole food proteins with a mixture of eaas, or essential amino acids mixed into my day, generally before and during my workouts. Now, we know that eaas are up to six times more effective than protein powder. So if you’re trying to figure out, okay, how do I bring in more protein other than whole food sources for just the convenience factor and the performance factor, essential amino acids have really replaced a lot of my protein dependence.
Leanne Vogel
Now, my personal favorite, essential amino acid, is from Kion. They have eight times more essential amino acids than whole foods. And so we’re going to be talking about what that means, what that does for you, and the absolute essential thing, which is to continue to eat the whole food. If you follow me on Instagram, eon vogel, every couple of weeks, I share what it looks like, like a day in the life of what I’m eating. And you’re going to notice that all of it is whole food. In fact, a little story time here, and it’s kind of a vulnerable moment. I was on Instagram a couple of days ago, and I follow a lot of fit influencers, and many of them share a what I ate in a day. And there’s nothing more unsettling than seeing how little these individuals eat and how sad looking their plates are.
Leanne Vogel
It’s just, there’s no color. There’s. There’s protein powders and supplements, and just. It just looks like dead food. And though their bodies might look fit and healthy, I’ve not personally worked with an individual that ate like that in my 16 years in this industry and had all their markers come back beautifully. My goal is to use whole food as the fuel that does 95% of everything in my life. Now, there is that 5%, I think, that comes to supplements, and then a bigger scope is understanding the root causes that might be standing in your way. And this is really what the helpful Pursuit podcast is all about.
Leanne Vogel
So when it comes to the essential amino acid conversation, I want you to hear today’s conversation from the lens of in addition to a whole foods diet and what that looks like. So we’re going to be talking about essential amino acids versus creatine and the benefits of taking it every day with or without meals. We’re really going to get into it. If you decide after today’s conversation that you’re like, I want to give essential amino acids a try, maybe I want to replace them with protein powder or just add them to my whole food diet. You can go to getkeon.com keto to save 20% now. When I reached out to Kian for the first time, just chatting with them about their essential amino acids and how they worked and whether or not I wanted to give them a try, I ended up as a customer using this product for quite some time before I started sharing it publicly. Your opinion of the products that I share, really, really, really? I take this very seriously. I will say that with essential amino acids, they don’t taste great.
Leanne Vogel
Your initial time that you take them, they might taste a little bit bitter. And this can be just like, do you remember when we did the whole exogenous ketone thing and I was like, I’m gonna tell you the first couple of times, not the best. It’s really the same with essential amino acids. So once you get over that taste, usually the first or second time that you try it, I personally don’t notice that taste anymore. It’s very similar to when we started electrolytes and we started learning just how beneficial electrolytes are for our overall health. And they tasted so salty initially, and now personally, I do not even taste the salt. I can add a significant amount of salt into my coffee and water and I’m not tasting the salt. So it’s very much the same thing with essential amino acids.
Leanne Vogel
Before I just chat your ear off about this exciting topic, let’s get into our conversation with Angelo on everything protein and essential aminos. Hey, my name is Leanne and I’m fascinated with helping women navigate how to eat, move and care for their bodies. This has taken me on a journey from vegan keto high protein to everything in between. I’m a small town holistic nutritionist turned three time international bestselling author turned functional medicine practitioner, offering telemedicine services around the globe to women looking to better their health and stop second guessing themselves. I’m here to teach you how to wade through the wellness noise to get to the good stuff that’ll help you achieve your goals. Whether you’re seeking relief from chronic ailments, striving for peak performance, or simply eager to live a more vibrant life, this podcast is your go to resource for actionable advice and inspiration. Together, we’ll uncover the interconnectedness of nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, and mindset, empowering you to make informed choices that support your unique health journey. Think of it as quality time with your bestie mixed with a little med school so you’re empowered at your next doctor visit.
Leanne Vogel
Get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn about your body and how to care for it healthfully. Join me as we embrace Vitality, reclaim our innate potential, and discover what it truly means to pursue healthfulness. Hey Angelo, how’s it going?
Angelo Keely
Good, Leanne. It’s good to be back.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah, it’s been a hot minute. I’m so glad we have more to chat about, all to do with eias and what they are and why they’re doing the things they’re doing and how they’ve helped me so much. So I’m so glad to get into this because the podcast has taken kind of a shift in direction, talking more about these intricacies when it comes to shifting the way that our body looks. So I’m excited and feels and operates. So I’m excited to get into this today with you.
Angelo Keely
I can’t wait to do it.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah. So what’s kind of like new in the realm of essential amino acids right now? Like from the time you came last time, I think that was around like November. What has kind of shifted in that space since then? Anything?
Angelo Keely
I think, I mean, like big picture is the science hasn’t shifted. The science continues to say very similar stuff to what we talked about last time, but there’s probably some like cooler, there’s some cool updates I can give you about some newer studies. The biggest thing I think that happened is there’s something called the International Society of Sports Nutrition, the ISSN, and it’s an organization of academics who study all these different types of supplements, basically, and foods and their impact on body composition, performance. They also do a lot of stuff with aging populations, and in that group they do reviews of supplements and research, etcetera. And they actually published a really important position paper in October of last year that basically said eaas are incredible. I mean, they basically, basically, honestly, like a lot of the people that are in these organizations, they’ve been doing protein and essentially amino acid research for 20 years. But to have a bunch of different academics that all, you know, they don’t all agree about everything, that’s one of the cool things about these types of organizations. They come together, they critique each other’s research, they summarize things.
Angelo Keely
The summary is just, it’s pretty amazing. I mean, like, headlines from it are that basically essential amino acids can be six times more effective than protein powder. There were some studies with older women showing that these women were just adding essential amino acids two times a day, and they were added ten pounds of lean muscle in three months. Like, just really awesome, mind boggling stuff. And also some really good summaries of the research just around why. Like, how is it just the essential amino acids that are also in protein powder and also, like, in beef? Why would they be more effective if they’re taken in a supplemental form and they really explain it a lot more and make it more accessible to more people? And so I think in that context, it’s stuff like maybe I was familiar with and people that are really deep in the world, but it’s basically made the science more available to more people, like personal trainers, nutritionists, doctors, who, you know, who are not necessarily nerding out just on every single essential amino acid paper that ever comes out.
Leanne Vogel
I feel like maybe that’s you.
Angelo Keely
That is me.
Leanne Vogel
Okay. Because the stars in your eyes were like, the nerding out piece.
Angelo Keely
Yeah. So it was a pretty big deal. It was like, yeah, it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool to make the information more available to more people.
Leanne Vogel
So, like, major teaser, and we’re going to get in there a little bit later, but, like, why are they more effective than the protein powders and the beef and what’s why?
Angelo Keely
Yeah, so, I mean, maybe we’ll just do, like, a quick summary. I know we went into way more detail last time about, like, what protein is and how it functions, but just to, like, give a basic explanation. So what makes protein so unique in general and different from carbohydrates and fat is that carbohydrates and fat, their primary role is to be a fuel source. So it’s like buying natural gas or electricity from the electric grid to fuel your house, to make your dishwasher run, to. To run your house. In the same way we eat carbohydrates and fat and we convert them as fuel sources, and you can choose which one maybe works better for your body and which one you like better. Proteins. Different proteins, more like, hey, I want to remodel the bathroom because it’s old, it doesn’t look good anymore.
Angelo Keely
Or like one of my kids, like, ran into the wall, made a big hole in the wall, and I got to repair the wall. Right. Do you actually need materials to help rebuild it? And that’s what protein is in the body because our bodies are made of proteins. All of our lean, all of our lean muscle. I think most people are familiar with that. But also all of our organs, our heart, our kidney, liver, you know, all these organs, our skin, our hair, our eyes, things like our hormones, enzymes, all of these are made of proteins. And the way that proteins work is that they don’t last forever. Every little protein in our body lasts for a certain amount of time, and then it gets old and it literally breaks apart into these little amino acids.
Angelo Keely
And the older ones, you pee them out, the ones that could still be reused, you actually utilize them to build new proteins to help. So you have a little piece, you have a little protein in your skin. I mean, your skin’s made of millions of proteins, but one gets old, it breaks apart into little amino acids. You pee out the old ones and you want to rebuild that skin tissue. Well, how do you rebuild the skin tissue? You have to consume amino acids in your diet. And the way that we do that through whole foods is through things rich in protein, because proteins are made of these amino acids. So that just a reframing of like, that’s why essential amino acids and like protein, or we’re even talking about them in the same context, because essential amino acids are this active component in the protein, why you’re eating the protein. So why would it be that if I take, say, free form essential amino acids, something like key on aminos versus a whole food protein, why would it be different? So there’s a few different reasons.
Angelo Keely
The one, like, one major important reason, and this is like, more generally about even just evaluating protein sources, is how digestible is a protein source. And animal proteins are typically more digestible. Like, you can actually get more of the amino acids out of them than you can from plant proteins. Similarly, what’s the profile? So are there more of the essential amino acids? Proteins are made up of, like the non essential ones, the ones that aren’t as important, and the essential ones, the ones that are really important, they’re the active ones. So are there more of those? And then the third thing is like, well, what’s the concentration of it? Like, are there more? Just a ton of those essential amino acids. So if I just compare a piece of beef to freeform essential amino acids, the beef is only like, the protein in the beef is only half essential amino acids. The other half is the non essential. And the non essential actually don’t stimulate any protein synthesis, whereas the essentials stimulate all of it.
Angelo Keely
But here’s the interesting thing. Here’s like, the really big difference. It’s how digestible it is and how quickly it hits your bloodstream. And this is some of the more recent research since like 2020. There’s a big paper that came out in 2020 in nutrients. But more and more research has been done on this for the military, for all different types of third party groups. And basically what they determined is 70 grams of protein from steak, from beef, protein as part of a mixed meal. So this is like a twelve ounce steak, basically, that’s how much protein you would get from it.
Angelo Keely
And you’re having like broccoli and potatoes or whatever else you’re going to eat in this mixed meal stimulates as much muscle protein synthesis as less than half of that 30 grams of just beef. You take the same beef, but you have less of it, but you eat it on its own. And it stimulates more muscle protein synthesis by simply consuming that steak as part of a mixed meal because it gets mixed up with the broccoli and the potatoes and whatever else you’re eating. Your body is not, it’s not as easy for your body to break it down and basically get these higher concentrations of it in the blood quickly. And the higher the concentration of the essential amino acids in the blood, the more protein synthesis spike you get throughout your whole body. Not just muscle, but like rebuilding skin tissue, rebuilding heart tissue, rebuilding joints, like everything that is made up of these proteins. So you just get that. Like, if I literally just eat lean beef on its own, I can eat half as much and it stimulates as much muscle protein synthesis.
Angelo Keely
But here’s now the next trippy thing. If I compare that lean beef, 30 grams to whey protein powder, whey protein isolate, the whey protein isolate is three times the muscle protein synthesis of just that beef and be like, well, why would that be? Well, like a whey protein isolate doesnt have carbs, doesnt have fat. Everything else has been stripped away. Its basically much easier for your body to digest because it just breaks it down and it hits your blood much more quickly. And the profile, it has certain essential amino acids that are higher then when you compare that to freeform essential amino acid supplements, something like key on aminos, where theres basically, theres no digestion. You consume the essential amino acids. You don’t have to break them down. You have to break down the protein and get the amino acids out of it.
Angelo Keely
It just absorbs them, immediately hits the blood. And you can get the proportions just right. So you can have higher proportions of leucine, isoleucine, valine, lysine, and when that happens, you can get in a young adult three times the amount as the whey protein powder in a older person, six times. So when you start comparing this to like lean beef, for a young adult, it’s going to be like 14 times the amount of protein synthesis as beef as part of a mixed meal. For an older adult, it’s like over 20 times. So the short answer after nerding out on you for five minutes is that like, basically it’s just the active component of the protein, the essential amino acids, they’re in very specific ratios and the digestion, they’re just immediately bioavailable. Like there’s no digestion that’s not getting mixed up with anything else. And when it hits those really high concentrations, it goes to your blood and it just communicates to your body.
Angelo Keely
Hey, rebuild proteins.
Leanne Vogel
So my mind went through, I always try to listen to our guests from a listener’s perspective of as you were talking, like, okay, so I’ll just go carnivore and then just eat all the protein by itself. And then, no, no, no, wait, maybe I need to up my whey protein. Oh no, no wait. Why don’t I just eat what I am eating right now but just add essential aminos? So it was like the progression.
Angelo Keely
I like your final solution. I think that’s it. I think that’s the final solution. Because for real, it’s like we’re in isolation. We’re talking in isolation about what these essential amino acids do. Whole food proteins have other good micronutrients in them. They have vitamins, they have minerals. And also if you’re doing types of exercise or training like lifting weights, youre stimulating protein synthesis already and youre getting the amino acids from the protein just to help fulfill that process.
Angelo Keely
But if you think about taking the supplements, basically youre getting these additional stimuli of muscle protein. Its almost like little mini weight training by taking the essential amino acids on their own. Even outside of training days when youre not even training, youre telling your body to build new muscle in ways like on days when you train. So rather than like replacing your food, instead thinking, hey, how do I just eat good quality meals? And then what are ways that I can supplement and fill in that support my overall training and health and adaptations?
Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
And that’s really where I’ve used essential amino acids. I mean, initially, I’ll say that I was pretty skeptical, like, why do I need this? I feel like we covered it so much in our last episode, and after we chatted, I was like, I’m gonna. I’m gonna bump it up and see what happens. And it was interesting, right after our episode went live, actually, I went into from a bulk period. I went into a cut period. And then after our episode, I went into a maintenance. So I was eating maintenance calories, continuing to lift the same program. And about four months in, having increased my essential amino acids, my trainer started saying, like, what are you doing? We haven’t changed your macros.
Leanne Vogel
I can see your body changing. It should be changing, but not this drastically like what happened.
Angelo Keely
Changing. Like, more muscle definition.
Leanne Vogel
Yes, more muscle definition. Way stronger. I was the same weight. My weight was not changing, but I physically looked different, and I was able to. Like, for example, in a very short period of time, I’ve advanced in my pull ups to three, like, perfectly perfect pull ups in a maintenance phase, which, I mean, we can expect some body recomposition to happen in maintenance, but not to the level that I’ve been able to shift in a short period of time. And my macros have remained. I track them every day. There’s not a day that I do not track my macros, and it has leveled up my body.
Leanne Vogel
And so it took me a little bit to realize that that was what had occurred because I was like, I don’t know, I don’t feel like I did change anything. And then when I was working, I was going through things. I’m like, right track when I add my aminos and I probably should to my tracker and that, that was the missing link. And as soon as I realized that, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense. That’s really awesome. So more muscle. And therefore, like I had to have lost fat because the scale did not move. And better progression in my workouts since November when I started adding more because I think when you came on, I was saying I was having maybe one scoop every other meal, but now I’m doing like two scoops three times a day.
Leanne Vogel
Sometimes I’ll add in a couple before and after my workouts, depending. But that, that progression was so cool.
Angelo Keely
That is so cool. And that is like, I think you’re such a great example too, though, of like what good supplementation can actually look like. It’s not like you’re thinking, oh, I’m just going to take this thing and it’s going to like change everything about my life. It’s like I’m eating well, I’m exercising, I’m now adding this thing and like, wow. Like when I’m stacking these good habits on top of each other, that’s when I can actually start to see like real change and something sustainable. Because, you know, people could just like starve themselves for two weeks and lose a bunch of weight on a scale. But like after a few months, what does your body look like and feel like? It’s not gonna be great. You probably lost a bunch of muscle, you’re not as strong, whereas like you’re actually having this experience of like wow over the course of months.
Angelo Keely
Observationally, from you and your trainer, you’re stronger, you look fitter, you clearly have more muscle, you’ve clearly lost some fat. But it’s like, it’s like a sustainable thing. And I think, yeah, I just, I love the model of what you described where it’s like you’re not, you’re doing multiple good things in your habit stacking. So you’re great model for us, for all of us.
Leanne Vogel
It didn’t start this way. It did not start this way, let me tell you. It has been a progression. But I think the big, like the big thing and you touched on it and I really want people to hear this because it’s mostly women listening. When we see that scale move all of a sudden, there’s this, yay, like, I’ve lost weight, but we really need to shift our perspective. Like, what I’m saying is from November 7 of 2023 to, like, it was around May 5 of 2024, I lost zero pounds. Like, my. The scale maybe went up and down by 0.51 pound.
Leanne Vogel
Like, nothing really changed, but my body looks totally different. And so we can’t use the scale as a means of progress in a lot of ways, because you said if you’re jumping on the scale and you’re doing things drastically, you’re losing muscle. Can we talk a little bit about muscle and its role? Like, why we should care about this muscle thing? Like, why is it important to maintain this muscle? Why don’t we want, you know, weight is weight. Let’s just get it off. Why do we need to change that conversation?
Angelo Keely
So I think there’s two big elements to it. One is, like, we can just talk straight vanity. Like, how I look and how, which I think is a legitimate thing. How do I look? How do I feel about how I look? Is this what I was imagining of myself, of my body? And then the second one is, like, what is actually really healthy for me now? To be able to have a really good functioning immune system and to be able to participate in activities and not feel fatigued and have good hormone regulation and, like, feel vibrant in life and also age well so that, you know, 20 years, 30, 40 years from now, I feel good. And I think they’re actually the same conversation and they’re the same solution. They’re not at odds with each other. And muscle really is a key factor of it. It’s not the only thing, but it is.
Angelo Keely
It is a big key factor of it, because just like we’re saying, you, your weight didn’t change, but if you replace some of that fat, you replace a pound of fat with a pound of muscle, simply having that muscle, because the muscle itself, like I said earlier, it’s made up of proteins, and the proteins break down and have to be rebuilt. That is, that requires energy. It actually takes, you have to eat food and burn energy to replace the proteins in your muscle. Even when you’re not exercising, if you’re just, like, laying at rest, you burn more calories. You have a higher metabolism simply by having a pound more of muscle and a pound less of fat. So overall, it just. It, you maintain a higher, like, burn rate. You’re just burning more calories in general.
Angelo Keely
And then when you exercise, you burn even more calories. So it fulfills itself. It supports itself to maintain. To maintain itself and maintain like a leaner, you know, more tone figure in that way. But more importantly, when you have that kind of muscle, you’re stronger. You can do, you can do three pull ups now, and not that, like, everyone needs to want to do pull ups, but it does say a lot, I think. I’m sure it gives you confidence. It makes you feel good about yourself.
Angelo Keely
And as you get older, it seems really easy right now and simple maybe to like, you know, push yourself up, I don’t know, like, grab onto the sides of your chair and push yourself up. It’s not going to be as easy in 30, 40, 50 years. It’s going to be harder. And by building that muscle now and building the ability to, like, move yourself around and take care of yourself, it’s going to, it’s like an insurance policy for the future. But also going back, like, to now, when I. People don’t realize this muscle is like, the primary thing that regulates your blood sugar. It absorbs like 80% of the sugar that you consume. So if you have more muscle than even when you eat something that has any kind of carbohydrates in it or sugar, it’s what helps absorb it and actually, like, process that.
Angelo Keely
And so even if you’re on a very, very low carb diet, the ability to modulate and just deal, mediate the impact of any kind of carbohydrates, like muscle is what does that for you. Helps you maintain this much healthier insulin response now, which affects mood and weight gain and hormones. But long term, it supports you, like, avoiding being pre diabetic or diabetes or other types of, like, health issues. So I think just, you know, you just think from, like, that perspective, it’s, it’s core to your health. But here’s, like, I think the biggest risk, and I go back to that example earlier with, like, just starving myself in the moment, you know, and, like, think, oh, if I, if I get the scale to go down, then I’m going to be happy. I think that most people, when they envision what they think is going to look good and people have different visions of that. It could be thinner, more less than it could be more muscular or less muscular. But I mean, people, I think generally are thinking, like, not lots of excess body fat and tone muscles.
Angelo Keely
And that could be like, oh, I like the way people who do pilates, look, or yoga or I don’t know, like the woman who teaches my HIIT class or, you know, like, or whatever. And maybe if you’re a dude. It’s like some want to look more swole and big or whatever, but it’s like, for most people, there’s some, there’s some amount of muscle. You know, definition, when you restrict calories by just 30%, and this is a more recent study from the last few years, and they’ve been able to replicate it when you restrict calories by 30%. So let’s just say you kind of an average sized woman, you are active and you burn around 2100 calories a day. And let’s say you want to go into a cutting phase and lose some fat. And so you cut out 30%, which would be approximately 700 calories a day, by cutting out 700 calories a day in about five days, if you’re cons, in about five days, ideally you would lose about a pound, a pound of fat, right? Because it’s about 3500 calories in a pound of fat. But you can lose a pound of muscle with a 750 calorie deficit, so much less.
Angelo Keely
So what starts to happen is if you just starve yourself really quickly and starving is maybe too strong of a language. If you restrict how much you eat with the goal of making the scale go down, you are not just losing fat, you’re going to lose a lot of muscle. Because for every 30% restriction of calories, you have a 300% increase in need of essential amino acids. So that’s like eating three times as much protein. Or if you supplement it with, with something like essential amino acids, it could be significantly less than that. You have to eat way more than that simply to not lose muscle. And so when you do that kind of cutting, you’re losing fat and you’re losing muscle. But like I just said, when you lose the muscle, you’re losing the definition of, like, probably the way you want your arms or legs, whatever you want to look.
Angelo Keely
You’re losing the muscle that’s helping regulate your blood sugar. You’re losing the muscle that’s going to help you do that pull up, you’re losing the muscle that’s going to help you live longer and be stronger. And so I think we really have to get in our mind. I’m not just trying to get the scale to go down. My vision for myself is that I’m trying to build lean mass that’s appropriate for the body type that I think I want to have. And I’m trying to maybe lose some fat if that’s, if that’s a goal of yours. But it’s, you really don’t want to just be losing weight, because the idea of losing weight is just. It’s at odds with long term health.
Angelo Keely
It’s at odds with your current health, it’s at odds with your. With your vanity. I promise. Like, just the sense of how we want to look like it just. It’s not actually what we want. What we want is we want to lose fat and we want to maintain our muscle. And in order to achieve that, it’s about doing things like exercise, whether that’s strength training or pilates or yoga. I mean, it can also, I think cardio type stuff like running is more for your heart, it’s less for your.
Angelo Keely
Making your body look a certain way, but doing those types of activities, it’s eating high protein, and it’s thinking about, if I’m going to try to lose fat, supplementing, supplementing with something like essential amino acids in that period, and then you can really change your body, or even, like, you in a maintenance phase, you were actually able to not change your caloric intake, but increase the amount of these essential amino acids. And through training, you ended up burning, because you were utilizing those amino acids to build new muscle. And that was energy intensive. You ended up burning fat at the same time. And so you actually could transform your body. And I have an amazing example of someone in my office who. He injured his shoulder. He’s 40 years old.
Angelo Keely
He injured his shoulder. He couldn’t really train for a while, but he was really wanting to lose some fat. And he just, he tracked what he ate, and he went into caloric deficit, but he significantly increased his daily Keanu Aminos intake. He was taking, like a few servings a day, like a couple servings a couple times a day. And in three months, he lost 25 pounds of fat and lost no muscle. Zero. And he took. He took body scans.
Angelo Keely
So it’s like he can show it. He can prove what happened. That’s pretty unheard of, that being possible, but it’s because he was eating. He was eating good quality whole food meals. He was cutting calories of the things that were actually going to contribute more to fat. And then he was upping his essential amino acid intake, and that enabled him to maintain that muscle. And then once his shoulder was better and he get into training, now he’s just put on more and more muscle and he hasn’t put on any fat.
Leanne Vogel
This is such a hard thing for ladies to really absorb in their brains, this whole concept, because I’m just thinking of, you know, many, many, many of my clients who come to me, they’re 200, 250, sometimes even 300 pounds, eating 1416 hundred, maybe 1800 calories a day, like Max. And they’re like, but if I can just lose the weight first, then I can build the muscle, then I can, you know, do all these things. And I really hope that this episode lands on the ears of these ladies who are just really spinning their wheels because this is a constant thing that’s happening. And I truly believe to the fiber of my being that the protein piece is lacking in all of our understanding of how to support our bodies. And in the early two thousands, it was, we’re lacking in fat because we’re coming from a place of margarine and these low fat diets, and we need to talk about the quality of fat. And I think we’ve dialed that in really nicely since the keto thing happened. And I think what’s really lacking now is an understanding of how this protein and how muscle development and support is going to move us forward. Like, yes, as a cool, of course, it’s amazing that I can do a pull up.
Leanne Vogel
I never, ever thought in a million years if somebody pushes me off a cliff, I can actually save myself, which is too cool. But you’re right, it’s so much more than that. It’s like the aging process. It’s hormone regulation, and also it’s hitting those goals. And we talked about this in the last episode of just the fear that women have about getting bulky. And you don’t accidentally get bulky. It takes people years to attain that look. And so when we’re talking about increasing protein, we’re talking about supplementing with essential amino acids.
Leanne Vogel
Don’t worry. You won’t wake up tomorrow looking like the hulk. That is a very intentional thing that people work years to achieve. And so I don’t want somebody to not give, give protein a try and to not take this seriously with fear that they will wake up ginormous. Any thoughts to add to that, Evan?
Angelo Keely
I mean, I think you said it really well. I would just emphasize again, like, it’s hard to get bulky. It’s really hard to get bulky. It’s not just going to happen. Honestly, it’s not going to happen without very specific training protocols from a personal trainer that is helping you to get bulky. Like, you are not going to eat more protein and take essential amino acids and lift weights on your own and suddenly get bulky. It’s just, it’s not going to happen. Like, you’re going to have to work with someone that specifically knows how to program your training.
Angelo Keely
So there’s like this progressive overload in a specific way and it gets harder each week and it’s like, it’s just not, it’s not going to happen. And so with that in mind, yeah, just emphasizing again that actually investing in the consuming enough protein, which at its heart is consuming enough essential amino acids and making that the priority of your day, like in nutrition wise, I think specifically for weight loss. So if we are trying to like simplify things, what I would say is theres a lot of reasons why you would eat different types of foods for different types of micronutrients and like, you know, like just overall health. But if your goal, if your goal is to lose fat, focusing on protein first, like protein and fiber, those are the things that are going to just make it easier. Like, and its not going to solve every single health thing, but like thats whats going to help with the fat loss. And then also it seems counterintuitive. It’s like, oh, I think I just need to get on the treadmill or I need to do this like cardio type stuff. Like those activities will burn calories in the moment.
Angelo Keely
But you’d be surprised. It’s actually not that many calories. Like it really doesn’t burn that much. If instead you spent that time doing some type of strength training either with weights. And I give the example of yoga and pilates because those are a form of strength training as well that I think for some women maybe feels more accessible or something. It’s like those type body weight based training, those activities on a consistent basis combined with focusing on protein, you’ll be transforming your body from the inside. And I don’t mean like transforming from your heart or your soul, I mean like literally you’ll be, you’ll be replacing pockets of fat with pockets of muscle on the inside and you’ll start to see your body actually change the way that it looks versus. Yeah, just doing the opposite.
Angelo Keely
Right. Trying to like run a lot and trying to like eat, you know, not eat protein. It’s just, it’s like the opposite. It’s just like the opposite direction of what will actually make the change I think most people and women are looking for.
Leanne Vogel
Yes. Since we’re on the topic of exercise, I want to go into a little bit around why essential amino acids can be helpful to take, like before, during, after exercise recovery. Just like understanding this, I’ve started adding two or three scoops to my bottle that I drink while I’m exercising. And I’ve noticed, actually I went to Italy. I just got back last week and I ate a significant amount of carbohydrates. Like, there were pizzas, multiple a day, gelato twice a day. Like it was, it was epic. And I noticed I was quite hypoglycemic when I got back, which, fair enough, like, I just annihilated my body.
Leanne Vogel
And I found during my workouts, I’ve been going hypoglycemic a little bit in a response to Italy and just eating all the carbohydrates. It’s interesting when I have my aminos and I start drinking them in my workout, my glucose will regulate as I’m working out and I put on my little CGM because I’m like, is this happening? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So I found that really interesting. And I want to touch on more around the workouts. What’s the fueling recovery? Why essential amino acids are helpful?
Angelo Keely
Absolutely. So, first point I make is, I think lots of times people associate taking essential amino acids with exercise and just, I just want to repeat again, they make so much sense to not take during exercise, like other times of the day, first thing in the morning with meals. Like, there’s all these other benefits, but they are also really awesome with exercise. And here’s why. When you will talk about like a weight training type exercise, first, when you lift weights, you’re basically stressing the muscle tissue and you’re communicating to it that you want there to be muscle protein turnover. You want to break down old proteins and rebuild new ones, which is inherently saying, I’m going to stimulate new protein synthesis. When you take essential amino acids, and this is what makes them so uniquely different than, say, just like eating meat before you work out, right? It does the same thing. It tells the body, hey, I want to build new proteins.
Angelo Keely
So when you combine them together, either by taking them before exercise or during exercise, it’s like a multiplication effect. You get much more protein synthesis and new. Replacing muscle fibers is a simple way of thinking about it than you would taking either one of them on their own, just doing the weight training, or just taking the essential amino acids, they’re both good on their own, but when you combine them, it’s basically a mo. It’s a multiplication of the two factors when you do that. Also, what happens is taking the essential amino acids before, during exercise helps to limit the amount of breakdown. So it actually promotes more of the new muscle fibers being created and less of unnecessarily breaking down, like still currently functional ones. And when you have less of the breakdown, it reduces the amount of like recovery that you need. So basically you’re not getting as sore, you’re not having as much of those types of issues when you take the essential amino acids after exercise.
Angelo Keely
Some people dont realize this. When you lift weights, it promotes all this muscle protein turnover, not just when youre doing it, but like for the next 24 hours. So the next 24 hours you continue to get the benefits of having done that strength training, which is more fundamentally different than just like traditional cardio exercise. You dont get the same amount of benefits for the next 24 hours from going on a run than you do from like lifting weights. So when you actually take the essential amino acids after the exercise, it also helps to prevent as much of the breakdown and supports more of the new protein synthesis. And again, it supports your recovery. What I would say though, overall is if you, if you’re only going to take it once around exercise, it’s better to take it before or during, but it’s still great to take after. And if you’re like very.
Angelo Keely
So it’s like, if you, if you want to save it more as like a treat for afterwards, that’s totally fine. Like, there’s not, it’s still highly effective. It’s like, it’s one of those supplements where it’s like, it’s so good in so many contexts, there’s not a bad time to take it. It, it’s just. Are there more, you know, if I have a limited amount, when’s the most optimal time? It’s more optimal to take it before or during. But yeah, if you have, like, if you’re just going gangbusters and it’s like, I’m really committed. I’m eating super clean, I’m cutting out calories, but I really want to maintain my lean muscle and I want to burn fat. Take it before you exercise.
Angelo Keely
You could be drinking it during and take it after. Like, it’s. And you’ll get the benefit from all of those.
Leanne Vogel
I feel like I need a gangbuster t shirt then, because that’s you. That’s me.
Angelo Keely
Well, and you see it. I mean, you got the benefits. I mean, like five months, six months. That’s pretty, it’s a pretty short period for a trainer to make those kinds of remarks to you.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah, it takes time.
Angelo Keely
Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
Oh, it takes so much time. I think that’s another piece is like, all of us are looking on Instagram and seeing these progression pictures and we think it’s been like two weeks. And sometimes people will say that it was two weeks because they’re selling some magic juice that’ll help you look totally different in two weeks. But generally speaking, these things are taking years. It’s not an overnight kind of thing. There was one piece that you touched on and it just made me think, when you’re talking about after exercise and taking essential aminos, would this replace a meal instead of having a meal post workout? Because I feel like a couple of listeners probably thought, oh, cause. So this could just replace my post workout meal then.
Angelo Keely
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. So what I would say is specifically for the benefits of supporting your muscles, right. And muscle protein synthesis, if you take it right after you exercise, you don’t have the need necessarily to eat right then if you don’t want to, like you’re getting a lot of benefit just from the essential amino acids. That said, you might be hungry then, right. And so, like if you are hungry then and you like to eat, then it’s totally fine to take the essential aminos and to eat like you won’t lose. You won’t lose the benefits. And more recent studies in this last year have just shown that after training theres like what we thought was a previous upper limit to how beneficial protein and kit could be is its much different than we thought. Like you can, you can get a lot of benefit from, from eating.
Angelo Keely
So if you took one to three servings of essential amino acids right after you worked out and then you dont want to eat for two, 3 hours, youre good. If on the other hand you want to take it and then you want to go and have a meal in the next like 30 minutes to an hour, youre good. Like both of those things are fine and theyre so supportive of your training. So I think either way.
Leanne Vogel
We know that we lose muscle as we age and that this loss massively affects our ability to function. Like, I’m talking basic tasks here, muscle is important for protecting our joints and also keeping our metabolism revving. Basically, you want muscle and unfortunately, a lot of us just don’t prioritize muscle maintenance or see it as an important. And you may also be cringing at the idea of going to the gym and being able to maintain that muscle consistently. Yes, active moving is super good and there’s really nothing like it when it comes to the mood boost of pumping iron. So when I share about urolithin a, I am not saying just to do this and you can maintain your muscle without movement. Well, like I am saying that because urolithin a does do that, but I think pairing urolithin a with exercise is likely the best path forward. So I started taking a product called mitopur to boost my performance and improve muscular strength.
Leanne Vogel
And Mito Pure has 500 milligrams per serving of urolithin, a postbiotic shown to have major benefits to significantly increasing muscle strength and endurance with no other change in lifestyle. Yes, you heard that right. I just said that it has major benefits to significantly increase muscle strength and endurance with no other change to lifestyle. It gives your body the energy it needs to optimize its cellular power grid through boosted mitochondrial health without changes to lifestyle or diet. Now imagine what it could do with your low carb diet and a walking goal or a lifting goal a couple of times per week. It took me a long time, like a couple of months, to introduce mito pure to my day because it’s so strong. Every time I took it, I almost had too much energy, so I really had to titrate up. Mito Pure is the first product to offer a precise dose of urolithin a to upgrade mitochondrial function, increase cellular energy, and improve muscle strength and endurance.
Leanne Vogel
They’ve created three ways to get your daily dose of 500 milligrams of urolithin a in their product, mitopure. They’ve got a delicious vanilla protein powder that combines muscle building protein with the cellular energy of mito pure. Now, this product does contain whey protein, and then they have a berry powder that easily mixes into smoothies or just about any drink. This is dairy free. And finally, the softgels, which is what I prefer because it’s just easier. This is also dairy free. I love the starter pack idea, though. If you can handle the dairy, the three forms of mito pure to play around with, which one is your favorite? Top notch.
Leanne Vogel
So, timeline the creators of Mito Pure is putting together a sweet little offer for you. 10% off your first order. So if you go to timelinenutrition.com kdp and use the code KDP, you’ll get 10% off your order. Again, that’s timeline nutrition.com kdp. I recommend trying their starter pack with all three formats and picking out your best format. Again, that’s timelinenutrition.com kdp. What I found super helpful for those that need, like, more of a structure is I just say to myself, I’m going to eat every four to 5 hours. So if I eat and then I work out pretty much directly after, after my workout, I’m giving myself a little bit of time until I get hungry, especially on those days I’m taking my eaas, like during my workout, after my workout, and then I just wait until I get hungry.
Leanne Vogel
But if there’s a day where maybe I’m working out in the afternoon, it’s been two to 3 hours since I ate. Then I do a workout, I’m immediately going home and I’m eating. And so that can be just a good, like, if it’s been more than four to 5 hours since your meal and a workout was somewhere in there, it’s time to eat. Just kind of regulating that. And I find that to be really helpful for myself because sometimes I can overthink things, like, should I eat now? Should I not eat now? And so just the four to five hour rule just helps me know when, when to eat.
Angelo Keely
I think that’s a great, very simple advice. I would support that, Leanne. And I think overall, just trying to think, having protein every four to 5 hours is like, it’s ideal.
Leanne Vogel
Yes, totally. So we’ve talked a little bit more about strength training, but what about, like, the cardio type of individuals, the aerobic exercise, running? What about that? Where does it fit in? Same or different?
Angelo Keely
I can’t tell you. Like, I literally cannot count or tell you how many marathon runners have told me that taking key on aminos and essential amino acids have entirely changed their race day experience and their training and their recovery. And ill explain why that is the case. And so it makes so much sense with cardio as well. So two things go on. One is when you do cardio, especially any kind of like extended cardio, youre not only burning up the energy sources of carbohydrates or if youre fat adapted, like your keto and youre burning fats to fuel it, you do start burning more amino acids. So theres actually, theres a constant, steady state of amino acids in your blood. And when you eat, do you take a bunch of, like, say, keon aminos? It floods the blood with it and its like, oh, we got to use these, and then it starts to rebuild proteins and muscle, etcetera.
Angelo Keely
But if you didnt take any amino acids and you just have amino acids in your blood and you start to run and you do really intense training, after a while, you start burning up the amino acids that are just available in like whats called, theres a pool basically of amino acids in your blood that are available to help rebuild tissues and enzymes and hormones and all these things you have this need for. But as you exercise, you increase the utilization of those amino acids. And now you dont have enough in your blood. And so what happens is you have to do something to get more in your blood. And what you do is you tap into the reservoir called your muscle and you start breaking down lean muscle to supply the blood with amino acids to help fuel the body. And thats both fueling the body as an energy source because it does use some amino acids as energy, but also amino acids play the, this really important role of actually theyre like, theyre facilitators of the conversion of fats and carbohydrates to ATP at the level of the muscle. So they actually, they help facilitate that at the level of the mitochondria. And so you need more amino acids for that.
Angelo Keely
So when you dont, you know, take amino acids which you dont have to, before you go for a run or before you do some kind of cardio, theres only so many that you can utilize in your blood before you start breaking down muscle. And once you start breaking down muscle, youre going to have muscle fatigue, like naturally, right? Like you’re taxing your muscles even more. But also when you start to have this kind of, this lower level of certain amino acids, particularly leucine, you get more tryptophan in relationship to leucine in the blood. And tryptophan is the amino acid that when it goes through the blood brain barrier, it converts into five htp, which converts into serotonin, which converts into melatonin. But it’s really the serotonin that makes you feel kind of like soft and, and sleepy and like, so they call it, actually it’s the central fatigue hypothesis that by burning up the amino acids in your blood, particularly the leucine, you end up with more tryptophan and it makes you feel tired. So just purely by taking amino acids before cardio, it will support reducing muscle fatigue and overall giving you a greater sense of energy and alertness, et cetera. But when you actually just talk about also say like, hey, when I go for a run, and this is true for strength training, but going for a run or swimming or hit class or whatever, I want to get the most out of that exercise that I can. And when you, it’s same as the strength training.
Angelo Keely
When you take the essential amino acids, it does spike in your blood and create this, this new protein synthesis. And you combine that with the training and you basically get more out of the training. You are amplifying the impact of the training to replace more muscle fibers and make them more functional. And you’re going to reduce the amount of the breakdown, which thus is going to reduce the amount of recovery period of feeling sore, et cetera. So what I hear so often from marathoners is they don’t necessarily take it when they go, like on a short run, but they typically go on longer runs. They’ll take a serving every hour and they’ll take a bigger serving every hour of running. Basically of intense running. You’ll burn through the amino acid pool and you’ll have to start breaking down muscle.
Angelo Keely
And they take a larger serving afterwards. And they say again and again, like, I broke all my old records and afterwards I wasn’t sore the next day. Literally totally different than, than what it was before, because for many of them, they’re just thinking like, oh, it’s carbo. I, you know, I run on carbohydrates like many endurance athletes, but it’s not just, it’s not just carbohydrates. The amino acid pool is really important.
Leanne Vogel
You just listed off so many reasons why I stopped running because I just couldn’t get get it right. Now I’m wondering, could I start running again and using essential amino acids? Oh, boy. Next time we talk, I’m going to be running. Oh, no. Oh no.
Angelo Keely
Honestly, running is, you know, quickly while we’re on running. I think for body composition, running is not. If that’s what you like, then go running. Like, I think the first thing I say is whatever exercise you’re willing to do, do that exercise, because adherence is the most important thing. But if you really want to, like, change the way your body looks, like, don’t run. Yeah. I mean, weight training is going to do it faster than anything else. That said, there are real benefits to long term heart health that you can get through running.
Angelo Keely
And it doesn’t have to be like hardcore running. It’s like zone two. It’s like you’re jogging at a very slow pace. You can be able to talk into the person next to you. You do that for at least 20 minutes. But if you could do it for 40 minutes, an hour, you know, a couple times a week, it doesn’t have to feel like pushing. Do I feel like I want to throw up? Like, it can be more leisurely and. Yeah, and you can just really support long term heart health.
Angelo Keely
So quick plug that. Like, running doesn’t have to be as terrible as you thought it was.
Leanne Vogel
Exactly. Exactly. So we’ve talked a lot about exercise. What about those individuals that are just not interested in the exercise thing yet? And even the caloric restriction part, like what? What benefit do essential amino acids have for the people that those two topics are just really boring for them.
Angelo Keely
If all you did was start taking essential amino acids every day, like you simply added that, you would scientifically be increasing the amount of protein synthesis, whole body protein synthesis, and you change nothing else in your diet, you just started taking one serving a day, you’d be increasing the amount of protein synthesis that occurs in your body every day. And that would be encouraging you to rebuild skin, rebuild different tissues, rebuild, you know, organs, but also be increasing, you’re slightly increasing the amount of lean muscle that you’re developing over time and again, it’s not going to happen if you take it one time. But if you literally just started today and you start taking it every day, it would have an impact to improve whole body protein synthesis and improve muscle. Now, you know, if you don’t do anything else, you don’t change anything else in your diet and you’re not really doing, you’re not exercising, you’re not doing anything, you’re going to see less benefit. But on its own, it will provide that benefit. And if you took more than one serving, if you took two servings at a time and you took it twice a day, you’ll have about four times the impact of taking it that one serving once a day. So for someone who’s just like really not ready to commit to any type of additional exercise or diet, it’s a solid choice of a starting place. I think you’ll also notice likely less fatigue, less mood imbalance.
Angelo Keely
These are things, particularly if you’re just not eating enough protein, you’re going to feel this change from consuming the essential amino acids. But yeah, you’re just, you’re immediately going to, like, probably like feel a little, not immediately, but like over the course, like a week, couple weeks, you’re going to start to feel better just in general from it. And then I would just say, once you got that. So if I get the key on aminos, I start taking it once a day. Or like, I like this, I can take this twice. I listen to him, I’ll take it two servings twice a day. And this is my thing. And you start doing that for a couple weeks and you start to feel, give a little bit more energy, you feel a little bit better.
Angelo Keely
Just add walking and whatever works for you to walk. And whether it’s like walking around your block or, you know, you can get up to walking a mile a day. Like, you just, you just get into walking. If you could just, just add the essential amino acids and add some walking is a significant improvement over not doing those two things. And then come back, listen to this episode again, and maybe you’ll be inspired to maybe try some weight training or, you know, go for a run or whatever it is. But I think that’s, that’s where I would start.
Leanne Vogel
And as we’re changing these sorts of actions and we’re starting to feel better, our moods are improving, we have more energy. I feel like sleep is also a part of it that we didn’t touch on last time. I have a friend who’s going through immunotherapy and her sleep has been not great. And I gave her some, a whole thing of essential amino acids, an entire tub. I was like, take this. You’re welcome. And she’s sleeping through the night. So can we talk a little bit about essential amino acids and sleep and how that just kind of brings all of it together, too? Because when we’re sleeping well, our energy is going to be better, we’re wanting to move more.
Leanne Vogel
What about sleep?
Angelo Keely
So sleep is a really, it’s a complicated subject, and there’s a lot of variables that play into improving one’s sleep. One of the core aspects of sleep that is important to highlight is that it’s largely influenced by neurotransmitters. So neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers in our brain that are responsible for what we, how we would identify different types of emotional experiences. And those could be, you know, experiences of, like, excitement, feeling stimulated, feeling scared, feeling sleepy, feeling kind of silly, feeling like you’re kind of open to being like, intimate and hugging someone. Like, all of these are actually connected to specific chemicals in our brain. These neurotransmitters. Those neurotransmitters are amino acids or the metabolites of amino acids. So you just get the basic idea.
Angelo Keely
If you supply yourself with a more balanced amount of amino acids through your diet, through food, through supplementation, you can expect to experience changes not only in your mood, but in the way that you sleep. And. Sorry. So what I’ll tell it together is that when you start to fall asleep and your ability to stay asleep, it is influenced by these neurotransmitters and neurotransmitter balance. And so overall, if you can start to nurture your nutrition through amino acids, you could experience differences in the way that you sleep. And there’s even, there’s more in different ways of doing that. Keon we actually have a sleep formula that’s an amino acid formula that’s different. It’s slightly different.
Angelo Keely
It’s higher in certain types of amino acids, but many people simply have the experience of actually using the essential amino acid complex and it providing those types of benefits.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah. Okay, well, I need to try that sleep combination because that’s great. Okay. So when it comes to cost, I know when it, when we just talk about supplementation and all the things people are just trying to coordinate cost effectively. When we look at how expensive, like the expense of essential amino acids versus protein powder supplementation and kind of balancing that out. Any things that you want to touch on when it comes to the cost of this ongoing maintenance. Because if we are taking, like, in my case, two to three scoops, three ish or more times a day, it can get pricey. Does it or does it not? When compared to protein powder supplementation and just protein overall, first thing I want.
Angelo Keely
To say is that many things can be good at the same time, right? So, like, good quality meat can be, and eating that can be a good thing. Buying protein powder can be a good thing. Buying essential amino acids can be a good thing. And they don’t have to be, like, exclusive to each other. That said, you can get a better return on certain types of foods and supplements based off what they do. And so when you go back and you re examine what we were talking about earlier about the impact of essential amino acids, say, versus a protein powder. And the group of the females that I described earlier, where it has six times the impact, it was actually over six times 3 grams had more impact than 20 grams of a whey protein. If I compare similar high quality.
Angelo Keely
So, like, because this all can get, this also can get manipulated. If you’re like, buying a really cheap, you know, gross amino acid product or, you know, or some kind of, like, really inferior meat product, like, just assume, like, these are equal quality tiered products, right? Something like Keanu aminos, I think on a subs. I think, like, I think the discount that’s for your audience, I think it’s like a dollar 33 or something a serving. Pretty sure that’s what it is. Whereas protein powder, which Keon also makes one and I believe in, like, I like it. Like, I give it to my kids. We make it, you know, make waffles out of it. We, we utilize it for.
Angelo Keely
You can add it to greek yogurt. Like, it’s a great. Another tool. It’s not like only amino acids are only protein, but it’s about a dollar 50 a serving. And when I look at how much more of impactful the essential amino acids are versus the whey protein, it ends up being more affordable per serving. If I’m literally just thinking about supporting protein synthesis in my body like it is, it’s giving me a better bang for the buck in terms of how much more it generates. That said, sometimes maybe it’s like, you know, I want to put protein powder in a smoothie, you know, so it’s like, so it’s gonna, you know, I don’t want. I don’t want to take an essential amino acid substance.
Angelo Keely
I want to. I want to take a protein, but if I. But if I don’t care and I’m open to it, and it’s like, I like drinking my keonaminos when I’m working out or I like having it right afterwards, like, it’s a better return. It’s. It has. It’s a better bang for the buck than taking protein after I train like it is, it simply is more affordable. And then I think if you look at the cost of things, I mean, I think we all just have to make decisions about what we want to invest our money in. I think when you think about, like, $1.33 for a serving of something, and I think about maybe what I would pay for coffee if I got it out, or if you choose to have alcohol and have a beer or wine or something, or you choose pack of gum, or like, all these different little micro decisions that we make, I think $1.33 for a serving of something that is going to improve my metabolism, help me have more lean muscle support overall, like, my long term metabolic health and being able to mediate the impact of sugars and carbs, it’s going to support, make me live longer.
Angelo Keely
All these things. Let me train. Help me get that pull up, help me look the way I want to look. I’m like, it seems like a reasonable thing to consider. It’s not like thousands of dollars for, I don’t know, some kind of machine I got to get or I got to pay trainer, you know, I don’t know, thousands of dollars to help me make this change. Like, it’s. It feels pretty accessible.
Leanne Vogel
Yes, totally. I agree with you. I don’t even know what a soda goes for now, but I feel like it’s around the same price. So why, like, kind of. Okay, so last question for you is, when we’re looking for an essential amino acid supplement, because we just went through it for the last hour, what are we looking for? What kind of trigger words are they using that are a marketing ploy. How do we not get deceived lay it on.
Angelo Keely
So the most important thing number one is that you absolutely want all nine essential amino acids. There are some products out there like branch chain amino acid products where there’s only three. There’s some also brands. There’s a lot out there. There’s like this map formula and a lot of people that promote these other forms where there’s only eight essential amino acids and they say the 9th is not really essential. Like it’s just totally wrong. It’s. It’s a lie.
Angelo Keely
I don’t know how else to say it. It’s like not true. It’s like if there was an amino and it’s funny they leave out histidine. If there was one that would leave out that’s the lowest amount. It’s tryptophan. Like even if you look at the science it’s like it’s by far the lowest one. Like you would. That would be the one not the histidine.
Angelo Keely
So it’s just clearly bunk and it’s. It’s not true. So definitely don’t trust anyone who’s selling that currently knowing the science. So you definitely need all nine. Next thing I’d say is you don’t need more than all nine. If they add other things like taurine or arginine or these other types of non essential amino acids, those are not bad things but they’re not related to what we talked about today. They have other objectives, they achieve different things, they play a different role in the body. Oftentimes they’re included in things like pre workouts for certain other reasons.
Angelo Keely
It’s like I think for the things we’ve talked about today and really these core benefits just focus on something that just has the nine because you don’t want to be taking like multiple servings of those other ones and if you’re not taking them around exercise what’s the impact on them? Like essential amino acids taking all nine in the formula im about to describe have hundreds of studies with women also is really important of all ages they have young women athletes, middle aged women, older women like very senior citizen, over 75 plus year old women. Like a lot of studies and its shown that its safe and that it works and it provides these results. Its like buying something thats got arginine in it and its like well how old are you? What’s your activity level like? I just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t go there. Another really important thing is for amino acids specifically don’t buy a product that has a proprietary formula. So if they say for example, 5 grams essential amino acids. And they list them, but it doesn’t tell you how much leucine, how much valine, how much lysine. Don’t buy it.
Angelo Keely
That’s not because I’m telling you that it’s not a good product. I don’t know, and neither do you. And the proportions of the amino acids really matter. They really do matter. And you want an exact proportion because it’s been studied a lot by, again by like many research scientists and across the board. And they’ve, they’ve compared their studies to each other. They’ve iterated on it. And like that we, we know now, like generally, what is a good, what is a good set of proportions.
Angelo Keely
So if it doesn’t tell you how much of each one, don’t buy it, then when you’re looking at, well, how much do you want of each one? The simplest thing, I’d say. And this doesn’t mean you need to buy the key on aminos. I’m out here to like educate. I mean, of course I’d love it. People did. But like, look at the key on aminos label. It’s non proprietary, tells you the exact proportions. Those are the proportions you want.
Angelo Keely
In a five gram serving, it’s 40% leucine. And then the next three, the isoleucine, valine and lysine are all, they’re somewhat close to each other, but basically all the other amino acids were based on the proportions that they are in human skeletal muscle. If we did a biopsy of human skeletal muscle, it’s those proportions. But then the leucine is increased to 40% and those other three are increased to maintain their original proportions and to not basically restrict the amount of protein synthesis that can, that can occur. The percentages are like really weird and specific. So I feel like I would, it’d be too complicated if I told everyone it, but, like, you look at the label and, like, you want that generally, and then you don’t need many other ingredients. So the ingredient, like other ingredients, should be pretty simple. You know, if you’re buying something that’s flavoring, that it’s got natural flavoring, it’s kind of natural sweetener and, and it’s pretty straightforward stuff.
Angelo Keely
So make sure it’s got all nine. Make sure they tell you how much is in it. Get a formula that’s as close to whatever that keonaminos one is. You’ll see the basic percentages of it. And then don’t get something that has a bunch of other weird ingredients. In it because you don’t need other weird ingredients.
Leanne Vogel
And if you want to look at the ingredients, you want to look at those percentages and kind of understand that you can go to get Keyon.com keto for all those details. And on that page, you’re also going to get 20% off if you’re like, well, Leanne likes this stuff. I’ll just get what she really likes because I don’t want to do all the research because I did so. Hey, Angelo, thank you so much for coming on the show again. I learned so much from you. Your passion really comes through, and you’re just great at what you do. So thanks for coming on.
Angelo Keely
Thanks, Leanne. I am so excited for you, too, that you’ve, like, that you’re such a, you’re just so dedicated to, like, to not only sharing the information, but like, your own personal training and working on the diet stuff and trying the aminos and having those changes, but then also going to Italy and having fun. Yeah. And not making it be this thing that, like, makes everything fall apart. You like, come back home and get back to your training and get back on the thing. I really feel like that’s a great model for people to build your health sustainably over time and also get to, like, take a break sometime, go to Italy and have fun and so eat all the pizza.
Leanne Vogel
Awesome.
Angelo Keely
Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
Thanks again for coming on.
Angelo Keely
Thanks, Leanne.
Leanne Vogel
I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Angelo again. That link, if you want to give essential amino acids a try, the one that I personally use every day, it’s getkeon.com keto. That’s getkion.com keto to save 20% off. And if you’re unsure of the link, just check out today’s show notes. We’ll see you back here next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to the healthful Pursuit podcast. Join us next Tuesday for another episode of the show.
Leanne Vogel
If you’re looking for free resources, there are a couple of places you can go. The first to my blog, healthfulpursuit.com, where you’re going to find loads of recipes. The second is a free parasite protocol that I’ve put together for you that outlines symptoms, testing and resources to determine whether or not you have a parasite, plus a full protocol to follow to eradicate them from your life if you need to. That’s available@healthfulpursuit.com. parasites and last but certainly not least, a full list of blood work markers to ask your doctor for so that you can get a full picture of your health. You can grab that free resource by going to healthfulpursuit.com. the Helpful Pursuit podcast, including show notes and links, provides information in respect to healthy living recipes, nutrition, and diet, and is intended for informational purposes only. The information provided is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, nor is it to be construed as such.
Leanne Vogel
We cannot guarantee that the information provided on the healthful Pursuit podcast reflects the most up to date medical research. Information is provided without any representation or warranties of any kind. Please consult a qualified health practitioner with any questions you may have regarding your health and nutrition program.
Hi! I'm Leanne (RHN FBCS)
a Functional Medicine Practitioner, host of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, and best-selling author of The Keto Diet & Keto for Women. I want to live in a world where every woman has access to knowledge to better her health.
