Hello there again! If you been following me for a while you know that one of my passions is to move my body. For more than a year I've been doing CrossFit and pushing myself to that rejoicing feeling after a sweaty workout.
As a student, cook, blogger and keeping up with the daily challenges it's important to me to nourish my body and give it the rest it needs weather it's from sleep, foods and supplements.
Let's talk real quick about supplements. The word says it all, it to complement your diet. These are magnificent if you are busy or if you're not getting enough of those nutrients from foods. PAY ATTENTION to your body:
- How are you feeling?
- Are you feeling tired all the time?
- How's your performance?
- Are you increasing your straight?
Starting this year and the semester I kept up with my usual routine, just add stress from school... a lot of stress. I began to loose muscle, energy, strength, motivation. As a nutrition student and fitness amateur I knew something has off and it was pretty obvious. I needed more energy and fuel for my muscles.
I started to read more about fitness and nutrition, for the sake of my health and passion for fitness. The first thing I did is to start increasing my calorie intake since I noticed that unconsciously I wasn't eating enough to fuel my body.
As part of a class we also learned and researched about supplements used by athletes and other fitness amateurs just like me, personally I didn't consume any supplements before, until now, that I want to share my personal experience and share some of the science behind some of them.
For more than a week I supplemented my diet with Vegan BCAA's, and if you are not familiar with those letter I will tell in just a second what they mean, how they work, benefits and how I've been using them.
BCAA stands for Branched-Chain Amino Acids, they are components of proteins (proteins are made of amino acids). This group includes three types of aminoacids; leucine, valine and isoleucine. These are also considered essential amino acids, meaning that your body doesn't make them. We need to get them from our diet.
BCAA's are important for a proper muscle repair and muscle building. If you workout, constantly putting your muscles into that stress it's sure that your BCAA stock is getting oxidized.
Here's were your diet and supplements play an important role if you want to maintain muscle or build. It's now known that muscle is the longevity tissue!
Each amino acids plays a role:
- Leucine in building muscle
- Valine and Isoleucine in energy production plus regulation blood sugar
The research suggest that supplementing BCAA's may decrease the sore feeling after hard workouts or increase your performance compared to placebo groups.
Honestly the research can be very variable, even say that may raise levels of insulin in some cases, BUT HOLD ON! It's important to mention that some studies have been done in overweight people, so insulin resistance may be already an issue for that people. Also, insulin is in charge of taking glucose to the cell and produce energy!
If you are working out and fatiguing your muscles BCAA's will be useful! And I'm here to tell you that my experience after weeks of trying it out, following the instructions of Truth Nutrition Vegan BCAA's:
- My endurance improved in the second day
- The soreness in my muscles reduced noticeable
- I even was in a better mood to workout since I was feeling less fatigued and energized
- Lifted heavier, my old lifting weight felt very light
In conclusion, I can say that if you are constantly working out and fatiguing your muscles supplementing BCAA's will help you! I encourage you to try new things, but test with good quality supplements! Read labels and ingredients!
What caught my eye on these Vegan BCAA's is that it doesn't have any artificial ingredients! The colors come from beets, stevia is the used sweetener and the BCAA come from natural plant based amino acids. Highly recommended!
Here's a drink I've been making as a post workout and before bed to make sure my body is getting enough of these amazing amino acids and electrolytes.
Watermelon Electrolyte Drink
Serves 1
- 1 scoop of Watermelon Vegan BCAA from Truth Nutrition
- 16 oz. of water
- A pinch of himalayan sea salt
- juice of one lemon
In a big glass of water mix all the ingredients. Serve with ice, optional but extra refreshing!
Thankyou to Truth Nutrition for sponsoring this post! It's been incredible testing out these BCAA's and I highly appreciate the quality of them!