Sixty Day Body Reshaping Challenge with Herbalife Protein Shakes and Exercise- Day 38

Herbalife Protein Shake Discovery After 37 Days

1 March 2023

Friends after 37 days I made a very important Herbalife protein shake discovery this morning; to be more specific, a discovery about how much protein can our bodies absorb and use.

As you know from my earlier blog posts when I just started out on this sixty day body reshaping challenge, working out my body’s daily protein requirements was critical. The general rule is that for a sedentary person you simply take their weight in kilograms and that will be their daily protein requirements. So a person weighing 80kg will need 80 grams of protein per day.

If however the person is moderately active, exercising 3-4 times a week at least, which is highly recommended for an active healthy lifestyle, you multiply your body weight by 1.5. Therefore, an active person weighing 80kg will need about 120 grams of protein per day. This Herbalife article, How Much Protein Should I Have Each Day? is a good guide.

As you know, I worked my protein needs out to be around 150 grams per day.

How do you consume your daily protein needs?

It’s hard, let me tell you. If you don’t supplement, chances are very high that your diet is protein deficient. With protein shakes and protein supplements you can easily work out a daily diet that gives you the required protein. But. And there is a big but. I think I was the big butt! 🙂

You see, a normal Herbalife protein shake, whether it be the normal Formula 1 soy protein shake, the H24 Sport whey protein shake or the Formula 1 Select rice and quinoa protein shake, will give you about 20 grams of protein per serving if mixed as recommended on the label of the product. For the whey and soy Herbalife shakes, about 9 grams of protein comes from the two scoops of Herbalife shake powder and about 10 grams from the skimmed milk. However, a lot of people don’t like milk, or they are lactose intolerant, so they prefer to mix their shake with water or some other liquid that they prefer like almond milk, rice milk etc.

So what did I do?

You guessed it. I loaded my shakes. I made my shakes with water. Not because I don’t like milk and not because of an intolerance, but because I thought I can cut my calorie intake by using water and just add the extra protein from the Herbalife products, and my aim was to get as much protein into one shake as possible. To assist me in doing this, I bought some other Herbalife protein supplements like the Personalised Protein Powder and the Protein Iced Coffee Mocha and Caramel supplements. So for the last month or so, every shake I drank had about 40 grams of protein. Three of them per day, plus my third meal’s protein, would then put me in the range of my required 150 grams of protein per day, right?

This morning, being the 1st of March 2023, I had to urgently re-order my Herbalife supplements, as I ran out of some of the crucial stuff the last couple of days. I only ordered the same products I used the last month, and realised I have to order slightly more, as I do not want to run out in March. Where my usual personally purchased Herbalife order is just over 500 volume points per month, this order was over 1,100 volume points! Granted, I buy the Herbalife products at a 50% discount from the base price, but this is still a huge jump out of our budget.

[A Herbalife volume point is a universal point value that is assigned to each Herbalife product to ensure equality around the Herbalife world, regardless of the currency you are purchasing it with. So 500 volume points of products in Australia and 500 volume points of products in England would be the exact same amount of products, but the amount of pounds paid in England and the amount in Aussie dollars, would be different.]

My protein discovery

One of my fat burning tips I discovered during this sixty day body reshaping challenge with Herbalife is to have a quick 20 minute walking and slow jogging session early in the mornings. So this morning after I placed my Herbalife order for March 2023, and whilst being on the treadmill, my mind was trying to figure out how this is possible. I was beginning to think that I was using way more Herbalife products than other Herbalife users.

Then the all important question popped into my mind: How much protein can your body absorb and use per hour? Now granted, this is not a simple question, because it will depend on the type of protein you are consuming. Now in my Herbalife program I mostly consume whey and soy protein. Whey protein gets absorbed and used by the body the fastest. That is why Herbalife’s sports nutrition products contain whey protein and the recommendation for recovery is to drink your Herbalife shake within 20-30 minutes AFTER your exercise.

In my research I discovered an article published by the National Library of Medicine in the Journal of International Society of Sports Nutrition asking the question: How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle-building?

In their experiments they used whey protein. You can read the article yourself, but the crux is that the body can use about 20 – 25 grams of high-quality protein per sitting, meaning that the muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is maximised at this rate in a 1.5hr to 2hr period. Anything above this amount turns out to be a waste! Now luckily excess protein is not turned into fat, but the body does need to get rid of it, and this can put extra pressure on the kidneys.

In an interesting study they got a bunch of resistance training athletes to consume 80 grams of whey protein under three different conditions: 8 servings of 10 g every 1.5hrs; 4 servings of 20 g every 3 hrs; and 2 servings of 40 grams every 6 hrs. Results showed that MPS was greatest in those who consumed 4 servings of 20 grams of protein.

What do you know? I peed out about 10-15 grams of protein after every 40 gram protein shake I made that my body did not use!!! What a peanut, right?! 😀

This discovery will hopefully prevent me from burning through my monthly Herbalife products, saving me some much needed $$$. 🙂

It also means that I will have to focus extra hard on making sure I still get my protein needs met, by consuming my Herbalife protein shakes and protein snacks at 2-3 hourly intervals, i.e. consuming up to 6 (six) normal Herbalife (20 gram protein) shakes and or 20gram protein snacks per day.

My Tanita results this morning:

• Weight 97.7 kg (up 200g from yesterday; over all down 4.8kg)
• Body fat percentage 26.5% (down 0.5% from yesterday; over all down 7.3%)
• Body fat mass 25.9 kg (down by 400g from yesterday; over all down by 9.3kg)
• Visceral fat 13 (same as yesterday; overall 3 down)
• Body water percentage 50.7% (up 0.4% from yesterday; over all up by 2.3%)
• Muscle mass 68.3kg (up by 600g from yesterday; over all up by 2.8kg)
• Metabolic age 57 (down 2 years from yesterday; overall down 12 yrs)

Thank you for reading this far. Hopefully you learn with me in this process. At least you don’t have to make the same mistakes that I’m making in this sixty day body reshaping challenge with Herbalife and exercise.

Until tomorrow.

Much love.

Will

Tags: herbalife protein shakes, how much protein can your body use, lose weight, Weight Loss