Hey Alex,

Thank you for the kind words and for sharing your story!

That’s incredible.

And yes, protein powder isn’t the magic powder for weight loss or for reaching your health goals. Discipline and commitment is. But whey sure does make it easier to stay on track. You made a good point about whey protein replacing cheat meals, and in general, from reaching for those sweets. The sweetness itself, as well as what you are able to mix it with can be a great way to treat yourself on a diet without having to be guilty for it.

And yes, pricing is relatively cheap. But it’ll never (nor should) replace a good whole source of protein 🙂

Cheers!
Darren

Joke is, while I was losing weight I trained myself to eat less so much, meeting my daily nutritional needs via conventional food is quite difficult now. I can’t eat every 3 hours, and shoving large amounts of food makes me feeling heavy, I want to snooze, and my brain demands a time-out. Even easy to consume healthy food is still a little bit too much. I can’t force myself to consume more, even beloved quark/twarog or derivatives made of them met by “no vacation” sign from my stomach.:)

Therefore, for me protein shakes are very convenient way to add required protein to my daily “package”, so to speak. Besides, I can’t eat many eggs or some other traditional protein-based foods, so my options are narrower than those of other people. I am not complaining, I quite like what I eat. And funny part – I ate mostly same stuff while I was fat, but obviously I ate just too much of it:).

In addition, I think (well, my personal experience) that “slow” proteins, such as Casein are very convenient way not just to slow your “night time catabolism”, but to somewhat replace your traditional dairy foods when you on the move. For example, I’m construction worker (and avid fisherman) and often we work at remote areas for prolonged periods of time, where it is impossible to find quark – too short shelf-life, and nobody brings low-fat cheeses there, as majority of people find them inedible. I don’t have portable fridge I can shove to my backpack for couple of weeks, so I can’t bring a lot with me when I go fishing. Not that we eating only MREs, but any nutritional doctor will probably go banana all over our menus.
But I digress. On a daily run, when I understand I’ll be far from normal food, I can bring some some low-sugar flakes or dehydrated oatmeal (self-made “freeze-bag” MRE-like food) and add said Casein (or Whey), it creates quite nice carbohydrates+protein meal that could last for ~ 4 hours. Easy to carry and it won’t spoil even in summer sun, as both components are dry.

When it comes to whey, I usually consume 2 “doses” – one early in the morning, generally before exercising (yes, for me it’s easier to do them earlier), and then one after. Given how tasty Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard is, honestly, I don’t get why would anyone want a separate cheat meal. Yes, I am the guy who loved sweet cakes, candies, chocolate bars, soft drinks, you name it. Yet I don’t consume them any more. I can’t say I have iron will, but if I can avoid those foods, I don’t really get why other can’t.
In case you still want some solid meal, make some pancakes with protein (also works outside, when you hiking). It’ll make them tastier (and will remove need for additional sugar), there will be a measure of protein, and slow carbohydrates (depends on flour and other additives really). Sometimes that’s my morning “scoop” of protein, in addition to other foods. Hate pancakes (you, monster!:p)? No problem, make biscuits, cookies, cakes, bake a bread loaf with it, for crying out loud! Some combos are so tasty, even my picky relatives manage to eat most of what I’ve been preparing for myself. And they are very picky and make a lot of jokes on me and my nutrition. Regardless, there is huge list of products you can add protein too without ruining either them, or protein. No, I am not crazy on protein, just give ideas how you can add it to your favourite “cheat” meals to make them a bit healthier, without ruining the flavour. After all, this powder is indeed simply quite convenient food.

Regarding price. As calibrations… I mean calculations (but calibrations too, actually) are part of my daily work, I compared stated “table” values for protein content in various conventional foods and found that in the area where I live, only two products are actually cheaper per gram of protein than protein powder (at least Optimum Nutrition’s, that is). Everything else is more expensive. No, I don’t mean you have to throw away your “normal” food and chug a mugs of protein shakes instead, but I gave that table to my mates around the globe, and to make long story short, unless your local sport nutrition store went overboard with pricing, protein powder prices are not that high, generally they are within lower middle range. So unless it’s not true for anyone, I think we are worrying too much. Which is understandable, 5 pound tub costs somewhat more than turkey breast, but compare protein value for sake of protein value (not flavours or nutrition) and you may realize it’s not that expensive.

As final words, I’d like to personally thank you for this site, as it is interesting (and very thorough) way to describe flavours of proteins for those who haven’t tried them. For the most part I totally agree with you in description of them. As for lesser part – I haven’t tried those flavours. 😀

Keep up the good work and stay safe.