Protein Shake Tips & Tricks

Posted on August 1, 2024

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Whether you’re a protein shake veteran, mid-term user or newbie, these flavour filled beverages offer some of the most important nutrients for the human body.

There are nine of these crucial nutrients, which are called essential amino acids.

And along with the EAAs comes a host of conditionally-essential and non-essential amino acids to promote optimal health and recovery.

Put it this way, if you’re a protein shake sceptic, you’re reading the wrong blog article!

Because in this blog we are going to examine the benefits of protein shakes until the cows come home- to be milked for the production of whey protein of course.

Not only are protein shakes convenient, bioavailable and cost-effective, these days they come in a range of epic flavours that taste simply amazing.

Whether you're into decadent chocolate, versatile vanilla or something completely different like Violet Crumble Caramel Honeycomb, Cinnamon Roll or Iced Coffee, you can bet there's a flavour to suit.

A quality protein shake, when used appropriately, supports adaptation to exercise, whether you’re into CrossFit, bodybuilding or triathlons.

And this is why we train, right? For that adaptation; to get stronger, faster, fitter and healthier, a process that occurs outside of the gym or sporting area. 

A quality protein shake that tastes great can be the difference between sticking to an energy restricted diet for fat loss and not quite making it.

But there are ways to enhance a protein shake so you can gain even more nutritional benefit from your daily drink.

And with a few tips and tricks up your sleeve, there’s nothing stopping you from attaining that healthier version of yourself.

Enhanced Satiety & Microbiome Health

When it comes to promoting overall health and keeping yourself fuller for longer, fibre powders are an epic addition to protein shakes.

The only caveat would be keeping fibre out of your protein powder if you are wanting a rapid-absorption protein for use post-workout.

This is simply because fibre powders can delay digestion and absorption, which is why they’re so good at improving the feeling of fullness.

Stacking in 5g to 10g of fibre, such as slippery elm powder, inulin or oat powder, can be the perfect way to boost your fibre intake.

In fact, Slippery Elm powder, make from the bark of the slippery elm tree, naturally contains a blend of soluble and insoluble fibre.

These fibres help to regulate bowel health and feed the beneficial bacteria that live in your digestive tract.

Slippery Elm also contains a specialised compound called mucilage.

In herbal medicine, mucilage is said to have a demulcent effect, meaning that it can protect and heal the inner lining of the digestive tract.

Fibre is in and of itself an important dietary component that is often overlooked, with recent scientific evidence pointing towards improved health and longevity when intakes are optimised.

Fortifying Meals & Snacks

Most think of protein shakes as a drink separate from their diet, taken post-workout or before bed.

However, protein shakes can complement meals and snacks quite well when needed.

Hitting a Minimum 25g to 30g protein in each meal and snack is a great way to maximise your body’s utilisation of this macronutrient.

With lower intakes of protein, blood leucine levels may not reach the peak required to activate mTOR.

Once mTOR is activated, the anabolic muscle machinery kicks into gear, ensuring healthy protein turnover and adaptation to your training.

So if you’re not meeting this protein minimum for each snack or meal, your muscle mass may not be able to respond in as favourable way as it could.

Let’s say you’re sitting down to one of your favourite meals and don’t really want to modify the ingredients just to boost the protein level.

This is where a half, ¾ or full scoop of protein can be enjoyed after the meal to ensure you hit your target.

If you’ve never used protein powders in this way before, you’ve been missing out, because it can allow you to fully maximise the protein content of your meal from a muscle protein synthetic perspective.

Magnesium & Going Green

Not only are protein shakes ideal for additional fibre, they can also serve as a way to tackle some of your regular powdered nutritional supplements, like greens powders.

How could you ruin a perfectly delicious protein shake with a gnarly greens or magnesium powder you say?!

Well, many of the nutritional powders these days actually taste quite pleasant, making for the perfect inclusion in a protein drink.

Mint flavoured greens can be super-delicious in a chocolate protein shake, while unflavoured works in most shakes.

When it comes to magnesium powders, berry flavoured seems to be the easiest to mask with a protein shake.

Whether it’s a chocolate protein or berry flavoured, berry magnesium can be a convenient addition so you have to do less mixing throughout the day.

Amino Spiking

The topic of amino acid spiking might provoke some primal emotions if you're a long-time protein enthusiast.

Sure, some of the manufacturers of yesteryear were heavily into some nutritional mischief.

The positive here, however, is that you can spike your own protein shakes from the comfort of your own home!

Hmm … let me explain.

There’s good spiking and bad spiking.

Bad protein shake spiking is when a manufacturer drops a heap of a single cheap amino acid into a protein powder to bolster the protein content.

In doing so, this lowers the quality of the protein powder overall, reducing the biological value and the ability of your muscles to utilise said protein.

It's worth mentioning, this is a complicated topic, as there are ways to enhance the quality of a protein shake with amino acids as well, which we will get to in a minute.

An important part of this of course, is that the manufacturer is completely transparent with the consumer regarding what they’re putting into the product.

If you wanted to drop five grams of micronised creatine monohydrate into your post-workout protein shake, technically this is like an amino spike, and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop you.

This will not detract from the quality of the protein shake. However, if a manufacturer added 5 grams of creatine and counted this as protein, say for a total of 25g protein per serve, would we have enough bioavailable protein to trigger an mTOR response?

Probably not.

You might like to enjoy L-Glutamine in your protein shake as well, or top up a plant based shake with additional BCAAs.

According to a recent clinical trial, plant protein shakes with additional leucine stimulate the same amount of muscle protein synthesis as whey shakes.

Obviously, a pure branched chain amino acid(BCAA) powder will provide the leucine for this, or a pure leucine powder if you can find one.

Another amino acid worth some consideration is L-Citrulline.

Converting readily to arginine as a precursor to nitric oxide, citrulline is a powerful amino acid that probably becomes more important as we age.