How low can you go with your calories if your supplementing with BCAA’s? At what point do the BCAA’s become useless at staving off muscle wasting? Thanks!
I’d like to add another question if I may?
Is it ok to take BCAA’s on an empty stomach in a calorie restrictive diet in the effort to prevent muscle wasting?
They won’t become useless but they will be burned for energy if your caloric intake drops low enough. Kind of a waste IMHO.
Empty stomach? Same thing. Your body will protect brain function at all cost. It’s better to burn the BCAAs than your hard earned muscle though.
The best bet is to lower your caloric intake until you’re just under maintenance levels (-500Kcals or so). Then, use the BCAAs to avoid catabolizing muscle for the needed aminos. Don’t forget that they are absorbed quickly and need to be taken often, especially around workout time!
[quote]Kruiser wrote:
The best bet is to lower your caloric intake until you’re just under maintenance levels (-500Kcals or so). Then, use the BCAAs to avoid catabolizing muscle for the needed aminos. Don’t forget that they are absorbed quickly and need to be taken often, especially around workout time![/quote]
Here’s a question: In the aforementioned scenario, say one took…60 grams of BCAAs per day. Now, since they are amino acids, they are treated as protein when it comes to Calories. So if one were to ingest 240 Calories worth of BCAAs, essentially now they are no longer in a -500 Calorie deficit. One would be operating in a caloric deficit of only about 260 Calories.
Is the reason more muscle mass is maintained simply because the caloric deficit is no longer as drastic? If thats the case, then simply not cutting calories too severely would be cheaper and just as effective as supplementing with BCAAs which are basically protein.
I do think that supplementing with BCAAs will allow one to operate under larger caloric deficits from their whole food intake (greater than -1000 Cals or so), but I wonder how the protective benefits are truly related to the BCAAs and not simply their Caloric content.
Just some stuff I’ve been thinking about, I do use the crap outta BCAAs, but am wondering if using so many is screwing up my caloric deficit.
Comments welcome.
To me BCAAs tell the body to become anabolic, specifically the leucine. If the body thinks it’s in an anabolic state it therefore will not be catabolic. Complicated theory right? haha
As far as how much you can lower calories, why would you want to lower them a lot? The person that eats 2000 calories and using 2500 during the day, does he get any leaner than the person eating 2500 and using 3000? I don’t know about you guys but I’d rather eat more and burn up calories through some other means.
Scott, this is just a thought I had. It is not a super low calorie diet (1000cal) that is making me wonder. Just pure curiosity because it says every where that these keep catabolism at bay and people do use these while cutting… Thanks for the input!
[quote]NewDamage wrote:
Here’s a question: In the aforementioned scenario, say one took…60 grams of BCAAs per day. Now, since they are amino acids, they are treated as protein when it comes to Calories. So if one were to ingest 240 Calories worth of BCAAs, essentially now they are no longer in a -500 Calorie deficit. One would be operating in a caloric deficit of only about 260 Calories.
Is the reason more muscle mass is maintained simply because the caloric deficit is no longer as drastic? If thats the case, then simply not cutting calories too severely would be cheaper and just as effective as supplementing with BCAAs which are basically protein.
I do think that supplementing with BCAAs will allow one to operate under larger caloric deficits from their whole food intake (greater than -1000 Cals or so), but I wonder how the protective benefits are truly related to the BCAAs and not simply their Caloric content.
Just some stuff I’ve been thinking about, I do use the crap outta BCAAs, but am wondering if using so many is screwing up my caloric deficit.
Comments welcome.[/quote]
Finally; an intelligent thought process.
While I think it may be OK to count calories of BCAA’s in large amounts (60g), I would pretty much leave them off of that chart in other cases. As for whether or not that are providing any additional support other than adding calories, their contents - namely Leucine - have a host of other benefits which you may not otherwise obtain from regular food.
Leucine has shown to increase insulin levels; keeping blood glucose levels normal in low carb periods, aiding in protein synthesis, faster repairs to muscle after training, etc. Even if they really didn’t have any better muscle sparing benefits than some calories from food, their ability to help add LBM would still be a good enough reason to take them. I’m sure extra food or protein alone wouldn’t have all these benefits - sure there are BCAA’s present in food, but the amounts available be negligable, especially when compared to such insanely high doses(60g/day).
More in-depth info here:
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1367018
[quote]rsg wrote:
Finally; an intelligent thought process.
[/quote]
Brahahaha, thank you thank you.
Agreed. Those are all of the attributes associated with BCAAs which I was considering when I made my post. One of the reasons I asked specifically is when using such high amounts of BCAAs while following a low-carb, high-fat diet, I thought there might be a risk of unknowingly ingesting more protein calories than fat calories, thus preventing the muscle-sparing effects already inherent in a high-fat diet.
Personally, I’ll do 10-15g 4-5 times a day on non-workout days, with around 45-60 grams periworkout on workout days. However, even on workout days, I’ll sometimes take 10-15 grams between meals…and those are the days when I’m taking in substantial amounts. Now, granted, I’ve had great results doing this; however, I am thinking I may be able to achieve better results if I ensure that my fat calories are equal to or greater than my protein calories, even with BCAAs included.
Thanks for responding rsg, and to the original poster- Sorry for the immense hijack. I have a bad habit of doing that.