I was 10 mins into listening to a podcast I usually quite enjoy and one of the guests was discussing nutrition and mentioned the following lines at least three times and made me switch it off and delete straight away –

“post workout gainz (always with a Z) window”

“blunt morning catabolic metabolism by consuming protein”

I had to push that delete button because the guest continually threw out these phrases that promote nutrition fallacies that have been debunked time and again.

Many people spend far too much money on supplements in the false belief that they are going to make a significant difference to their overall goal of getting e.g. leaner, stronger, more muscular etc, they tend to be quite young, impressionable and possibly new to the fitness or health game. Some people will even go so far as spending more money on supplements rather than simply asking themselves is their training program optimal?

Ask ANY guy or gal in great shape that has been consistently training for 15+ years and I guarantee they’re not taking a laundry list of supplements. They’ve realised what is really important and they combine them with real food for optimal results.

Another case in point is that if you can’t go away on holidays or a long weekend break and train very little, eat what you fancy (but not to major excess) and return in pretty much the same shape you left then that means your nutrition and training on the other weeks of the year truly sucks or you are incredibly weak and have very poor conditioning or fitness.

A break in your training and nutrition SHOULDN’T make a significant difference at all when you have built up the capacity to do pull ups, chest to floor push ups, squat and deadlift over body weight and do a metcon that involves some burpees (e.g. 20mins as many rounds as possible – 400m run, 8 burpees, 16 kettlebell swings, 24 squats) without ending up in a total mess and have you waving your white flag after 5mins of a 20min piece.

So what matters more than making sure you slam that protein shake post workout to ensure you don’t miss that anabolic window? (And don't get me wrong, there are some protein shakes I recommend and use myself often) but the following trump's that:-

1. Sleep – all the supplements in the world ain’t going to matter a jot if you’re not sleeping 7+ hrs per night. If you have sleep problems, visit your doc to rule out any medical condition and if it's stress related can I recommend starting with a good stress management book or app - there are loads out there, We love the CALM book.
2. Eat for your goal – you DON’T need a nutrition plan that tells you what you need to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner! You need to go calculate how many calories YOU need, not what your friend told you, and then calculate how that breaks down to carbs, protein and fat daily. It’s all explained here. It’s up to you to determine what to eat at each meal and NOT be limited by what foods to eat as there are so many foods that fit perfectly into ANY nutrition/macro breakdown. Eat real good is a good rule and try some simple recipes with a range of variety options. For example, I could look at ANY general cook book e.g. Leon, Jamie Oliver etc and find a fange of recipes that will give me a good balance of protein, carbs and fats or I can very simply adjust the recipe to make it more balanced for my needs. (Usually swap out the pasta or potatoes for more other veg if our goal is fat loss). It it is a highly restrictive 'Diet' you will fail to enjoy the process and have any lasting success because we need a range of foods to keep things interesting as opposed to the same ten foods daily. Still don’t believe me? Well then go listen to this sort piece by Danny Lennon on his podcast Sigma Nutrition , which will help you to understand why meal plans have their place but for many they foster dysfunction about food and don’t teach you how to integrate a healthy approach to nutrition into your life.
3. Your training plan – this part is simple, if your training approach is not getting you closer to being able to do single or multiple pull ups, press ups, squat and deadlift, NOTE – I’m not a big fan of pushing deadlift numbers up much for some people as we have all seen trainers posting videos of their clients pulling huge deadlifts but deep down we can all see Mary/Joe is clearly overweight and maybe there is a point where strong would have been strong enough and the priority should be shifted elsewhere.

So overall, regardless of your training approach you should be getting stronger, more mobile and fitter.

Yes protein, it’s intake and timing CAN matter but only to the extent you’ve nailed down the three points listed above. If you want a comprehensive examination of protein and it’s importance then I recommend doing further reading here and here.