IM OVER-40 FITNESS
Expert advice for over-40 athletes about training, supplementation,
nutrition, hormones, and more.
By Jay Campbell and Jim Brown
Leonard: Please list the pros and cons
of high-intensity cardio for an over-40
individual.
High-intensity exercise can be beneficial for
aging athletes when rapid fat loss is neces-
sary in the shortest time possible. However, it
can also be counterproductive to individuals
with less muscle mass. Remember, it’s crucial
to retain as much lean skeletal muscle as
possible to maintain an optimal basal meta-
bolic rate while at rest.
Frank: Isn’t all protein the same? Why
should I spend the extra money on “pure”
protein versus products that have propri-
etary blends in the big-box stores?
Learning how to read a nutrition label is a
must if you are truly trying to optimize your
health. You will have to supplement your food
with certain minerals, vitamins, and likely pro-
tein. One of the tricks of the trade is putting
ingredients into a proprietary blend. Yes, it’s
a way for a company to protect its formula
from being copied and fueling competition.
In many cases, however, it’s used to enable
a company to use less than clinical dosages
in a formula and still claim the ingredient on
label. This is done to save the company from
investing in costly raw material.
To better understand what we’re talking
about, let’s look at protein first. There are
three main classifications of whey protein.
TYPE PROTEIN LACTOSE COMMON APPLICATION
Whey Protein
Concentrate 25-89% 4-52% Protein beverages and bars, confectionery and bakery
products, infant formula, and other nutritional food products
Whey Protein
Isolate 90-95% 0.5-1% Protein supplementation products, protein beverages,
protein bars, and other nutritional food products
Hydrolyzed
Whey Protein 80-90% 0.5-10% Infant formula, and sports and medical nutrition products
As you can see from the chart above, if you
are buying whey protein concentrate (WPC),
you could have a product with 25 percent
protein in it or 89 percent. It won’t specify on
the label. You can try and find out by looking
at the serving size in grams versus how many
grams of protein you get in that serving. That
is, if the label is honest. WPC is a decent
choice if cost is a major issue; however, in
today’s world you can find a quality whey
isolate without going broke.
When looking at a nutrition label, ingredi-
ents are listed in order of amount found in the
product. Meaning, the product will contain
more of the first ingredient listed than the
following ingredients, and so on. In a protein
formulation that does not rely on a proprietary
blend, we know that it’s mostly WPC followed
by WPI and then soy protein and flavor, etc.
92 APRIL 2017 | ironmanmagazine.com
Ingredients: Whey protein concentrate,
whey protein isolate, soy protein, natural and
artificial flavors, sugar, sodium, xanthan gum.
With a proprietary blend, however, manu-
facturers can throw parentheses around the
ingredients and circumvent the spirit of these
labeling laws. The blend is listed first as the
largest ingredient by volume, but the items
in the parentheses are not. The product in
the example below could potentially contain
more maltodextrin than hydrolyzed whey, but
that’s hard to detect from the label.
Ingredients: Super-Duper Whey Blend
(whey protein concentrate, hydrolyzed whey,
powdered milk), natural and artificial flavors,
maltodextrin, sucralose, xanthan gum
Tony: Will intermittent fasting slow down
my muscle gains? If used in conjunction
with a nootropic/preworkout, will it help
clear brain fog and curb appetite?
Intermittent fasting is definitely misunder-
stood in the realm of fitness and bodybuild-
ing. The human body is extremely efficient,
and “fasting for intermittent periods” will not
catabolize muscle tissue. It could, however,
slow down lean-tissue gains depending on
whether the person is eating the neces-
sary calories (over his maintenance intake
amount) during his feeding window. In an-
swer to the second component of the ques-
tion, there are many different thermogenic
and nootropic supplements that suppress
appetite and increase focus. So the answer
would be: yes, in theory. That said, we per-
sonally do not perform resistance training in
a fasted state.