Combine Resistant Starch with Whey Protein and burn Fat (*study)

You already know that adding a resistant starch to whey protein is a great idea. We started using this combination on ourselves back in 2011, and launched 3Fu3l officially at the 2012 CrossFit Games.

We made it for ourselves, to fuel our performance and recovery, but one of the first things we noticed was its effect on body composition. Simply stated, it doesn’t just fuel performance, it burns body fat faster than anything we’ve used.

This is no surprise, since all of the ingredients seperately are known to do this. However, it’s always nice when we can point to a study to confirm what we’ve already seen with ourselves and the athletes we train. Recently, the Human Nutrition and Metabolism Laboratory at Skidmore College studied the effects of whey protein plus resistant starch (the same kind of RS4 we use in 3Fu3l), on fat oxidation and fullness. [Click to read the full study]

In the study at hand, they actually tested the RS + whey against just the resistant starch itself, against regular waxy maize with whey, and against waxy maize without the whey. When these scientists the RS + whey combination ffor its ability to oxidize fat and spare carbs, it crushed everything else. It even produced less of an insulin response. All of those things are good for performance, and so long as energy output and input are optimized, you’ll be repartitioning your body in favor of more muscle and less fat.

Instead of making a shake with the carb and protein, they made a pancake with it – but as you can see, the amount of whey protein is similar to what you’d find in 3Fu3l, and the amount of resistant starch/carb (as HDP waxy maize, the same exact resistant starch we use in 3Fu3l) is double:

If you want to follow this recipe exactly, instead of using one of our previous recipes, we’ll be releasing an unflavored version of the carb before the end of this month, December 2015 (you can also add it to shakes). And yes, it’s hdp waxy maize, and yes, it’s called 3Carb.

Quoting from the study:

“Each meal consisted of three pancakes that were cooked on a non-stick griddle until golden brown.”

Yum. But more importantly:

“In conclusion, we found that a meal containing RS4 and whey protein significantly increased fat oxidation…”

So basically, the scientists gave their test subjects a pancake meal made with one of these protocols, and watched what happened with various biomarkers of metabolism and substrate utilization. Both the thermic effect of the meal (TEM) as well as resting metabolic rate (RMR) were measured by hourly venous blood samples:

Fat oxidation was highest in the group who consumed the resistant starch + whey protein (RS + WP):

Percent change in fat oxidation in the 180 min period immediately
following the four test meals; WMS waxy maize control starch meal;
WMS+WP waxy maize control starch and whey protein meal; RS
resistant starch meal; RS+WP resistant starch and whey protein meal

But that’s not all – the RS + WP group also oxidized less carbohydrate than the other groups – despite ingesting the same amount of carb as the waxy maize + whey protein group:

Sparing carbohydrates is vital to sustaining energy in longer events, or simply in maximizing the ecomomy of the carbohydrates you’re consuming (especially if you’re limiting your intake).

And finally, the RS + WP also produced less of an insulin spike than the RS group alone (suggesting a high degree of synergy, or at least a mechanism that we have yet to fully explore, as whey alone is more insulinogenic than the RS):

All of this is, naturally, tied together – lower insulin levels and a carb sparing effect will often go hand-in-hand with increased fat oxidation, as does increased performance. But this is the first study (that we know of) to use the exact combination of ingredients we use in 3Fu3l, and show that it outperforms the individual ingredients, plus regular waxy maize starch.