Month: September 2020

There are a lot of choices for protein powder out there. If you’ve looked into your options at all, you know whey protein is one of the most common. Whey is the liquid part of milk that separates when cheese is made. And just like you may be tempted to toss out the creamy liquid sitting atop a container of Greek yogurt, cheesemakers once discarded whey, too — until they realized it was a nutritional powerhouse. Now, once whey liquid is separated, it’s processed to extract the proteins and turn them into powder form.

However, when you go to buy whey protein powder, you’ll find that it’s actually sold in two different varieties — whey protein isolate and whey protein concentrate — and the difference between the two is more significant than you might think. Here’s a look at how whey protein powder is made and which type might be the best choice for your workout.

What’s the Difference Between Whey Protein Concentrate and Whey Protein Isolate?

The difference between isolate and concentrate is in their processing. Once whey liquid has a sufficient protein concentration of 80 percent, it’s dried to make whey protein concentrate. Carbohydrates and fats make up the remaining 20 percent of the powder. Different steps are then taken to process whey protein isolate, which removes more of the carbohydrates and fat, resulting in a protein powder that’s approximately 90 percent protein and little else.

According to Healthline, a 100-calorie serving of whey protein isolate provides 23 grams of protein, compared to 18 grams from whey protein concentrate. That’s almost an additional egg’s worth of protein. Whey protein isolate also contains fewer carbs and fats — one gram and zero grams, respectively. While the differences in these two nutrients are small (whey protein concentrate contains only 3.5 grams of carbs and 1.5 grams of fat), they can still have an impact on your workout.

Which Whey Protein Powder Should You Choose?

Making the choice between whey protein concentrate and whey protein isolate depends on your physical activity, dietary needs, and budget. “Protein concentrate yields a product that is lower in nutritional value but is a more affordable product,” Jessica Nelson, a registered dietitian nutritionist, told POPSUGAR.

Now, whey protein concentrate isn’t bad for you by any means. It’s still a great source of protein, and if you’re doing higher-intensity workouts, your body actually needs those extra post-workout carbohydrates to replenish its glycogen stores. On the flip side, the small amount of fat in whey protein concentrate can slow digestion and delay your body from getting those nutrients as quickly. Thankfully, you have a two-hour window to refuel after a workout. And if you’re just choosing whey protein concentrate as a healthy snack, the extra carbs and fat will help with satiety and flavor, making it a solid, flexible, and budget-friendly choice for most athletes.

However, if you’re looking for a pure source of protein without additional fat or calories, whey protein isolate is the way to go. “Isolate means the protein comes from a whole food source and is filtered to remove trace contaminants or other components, giving you a very pure form of protein,” Nelson said. It often costs more because you’re paying for more protein and more processing time.

If it fits in your budget and extra carbs and fat don’t fit with your health goals, whey protein isolate might be the best choice for you. It also has less lactose, so if you’re lactose sensitive, isolate is probably worth the extra cash. Whichever you choose, know that you’re getting a complete protein with all 20 essential and nonessential amino acids and great post-workout fuel.

Image Source: Getty / Jamie Squire

Riley McCusker is a featured athlete in YouTube Originals’ Defying Gravity: The Untold Story of Women’s Gymnastics from Main Event Media and in partnership with Glamour magazine. She’s a member of the women’s senior national team and is a 2018 World team champion. McCusker pulled out of the chance to represent Team USA at last year’s Worlds because of rhabdomyolysis, which is the breakdown of muscle linked to overexertion or injury and can cause kidney damage. Notably, she took home gold on bars at the 2019 Pan American Games — and she does a unique bars dismount (we’ll get to that later).

Where Does Riley McCusker Train?

McCusker grew up in New Jersey and trained with now-barred coach Maggie Haney at the gym MG Elite. At the beginning of 2020, the 19-year-old gymnast moved to Arizona to train with fellow national team member Jade Carey at the Arizona Sunrays facility in Phoenix, AZ. McCusker is now coached by Carey’s father. Back in April, Haney was given an eight-year suspension by USA Gymnastics on accusations of verbal abuse and mistreatment of athletes.

Is Riley McCusker Doing College Gymnastics?

McCusker is committed to the University of Florida, but she deferred until the fall of 2021 due to the postponement of the Olympics. “Starting my life as a Florida Gator in 2020 has been my ultimate goal for the past five years,” she said in a statement in May. “But, when the world quarantined to protect humanity a few months ago, another big goal of mine was delayed.”

Is Riley McCusker Going to the Olympics?

McCusker said Tokyo 2021 is her goal. “I’ve been working for it my whole life, and honestly, I’m going to put everything I have into it,” she stated in Defying Gravity. Ultimately, four gymnasts (not the usual five) will be selected for the team competition, and two will be selected for individual spots to vie for medals outside of the team competition, meaning they can vie for medals in the all-around or specific events, according to NBC Sports. Carey, for example, thanks to her floor specialty World Cup results, has technically qualified for one of those individual spots, the outlet reported.

It remains to be seen who will be picked for the team competition at this point, especially given the fact that 15-year-olds who weren’t eligible for the Olympics in 2020 now have eligibility in 2021. The field is competitive.

Watch Riley McCusker on Bars

This is McCusker’s routine from the 2018 World Championship, and you’ll see here that her dismount is essentially a double backflip (in a tucked position) with a half twist in the beginning of the skill (a half-turn into a double tuck). According to experts in Defying Gravity, she is only one of two people in the world who does this dismount. It’s referred to as “The Fan,” a dismount named after Fan Yilin of China.

McCusker is now training a dismount done by gymnasts such as 2008 Olympian Nastia Liukin, where the half twist happens on the second flip off the bars as opposed to the first (so it becomes a double forward tuck, half out). We’re impressed, to say the least!

We can’t wait to see McCusker and other elite gymnasts like Sunisa Lee, Morgan Hurd, Simone Biles, MyKayla Skinner, and more compete for a chance to represent the US in Tokyo. Though the Olympic trials next summer are a ways away, they’ll be here faster than Biles can do a triple backflip.

Netflix’s sports docuseries The Playbook starts with a riveting episode on NBA coach Doc Rivers, who led the 2008 Celtics to their first NBA championship in 22 years. But as Rivers recalls in the episode, the 2008 title was far from a foregone conclusion. In fact, the Celtics were coming off a 24-58 season that had fans calling for Rivers to be fired. To turn the tide, the franchise traded for a core of superstar players — Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett — but even that came with its own challenges. “The concern was that all three were leaders,” Rivers explained in the episode. “I told them, if we’re going to win, we’re going to have to sacrifice. You’re going to have to change . . . That was the challenge: getting them to buy in to being a team.”

Enter Ubuntu, an ancient African philosophy that ended up uniting the entire team. As Rivers tells it in the documentary, he learned about Ubuntu by coincidence. A longtime board member at Marquette University, Rivers was leaving a meeting one day when a colleague came up to him. “Your team is gonna be amazing,” she said, according to Rivers. “Have you ever heard of ‘Ubuntu?'” She urged him to look up the concept, telling him, “It’s not a word, Doc. It’s a way of life.” Rivers researched the word and realized it was “perfect,” he said, a philosophy that could bring his star-laden team together. (In other interviews, Rivers has credited his discovery of the term to Kita “Thierry” Matungulu, founder of Hoops 4 Hope, a South African organization that introduces kids to sports and teaches life skills.)

What Is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu comes from the Zulu phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which translates to, “a person can only be a person through others.” According to South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “Ubuntu is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong.” It was a concept championed by Nelson Mandela and referenced by Barack Obama in his 2013 eulogy for the legendary South African leader. “There is a word in South Africa,” Obama said during the speech. “Ubuntu, a word that captures Mandela’s greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us.”

How Was Doc Rivers Inspired by Ubuntu as a Coach For the Celtics?

Under Rivers’s leadership, this concept unified the Celtics. To him, the philosophy meant, “I can’t be all I can be, unless you are all you can be. I can never be threatened by you because you’re good, because the better you are, the better I am.” It was the perfect concept for their team, turning a group of talented yet disparate players into a single, tight-knit unit.

Rivers still had to get his team on board. He did so by recruiting his rookie players as the messengers, urging them to spread the message through the organization. Slowly, it caught on. “Our team started living Ubuntu,” Rivers said. The team used it as their pregame chant as they turned in a winning season and made their run through the postseason. After winning the Finals, the team had the word Ubuntu etched into their championship rings.

Every championship team builds its own legend, and Ubuntu was a part of the Celtics’ in 2008. Rivers even brought the concept with him to the Los Angeles Clippers when he left for LA in 2013. But it was the 2008 Celtics who brought Rivers his only championship, and by his own words, Ubuntu was instrumental in doing it.

Image Source: Courtesy of Molly Burke

Molly Burke’s YouTube channel is full of fun videos about fashion, beauty, and everyday life. Burke, who has amassed over two million subscribers on the platform and hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok, respectively, also posts informational footage about her blindness — some address misconceptions and others discuss steps to making the world more accessible for those who are disabled.

Burke was legally blind from birth but lost the majority of her sight at age 14 due to retinitis pigmentosa, the breakdown of cells in the retina. She was diagnosed with situational depression, short-term depression that results after a traumatic life event, which differs from clinical depression, after losing her vision. “My situational depression was triggered by my vision loss and the bullying that I was experiencing because of that,” Burke told POPSUGAR. “And it led to me dealing with suicidal ideation.” Burke attended five different schools growing up in Canada in the hopes of getting the best education for herself as a blind student and to escape that bullying.

“The bullying was a constant throughout my life, but once bullying was coupled with my vision loss, it just all became too much,” Burke recalled. Being 14 is an overwhelming time for most newly-minted teenagers as it is. “You’re getting ready to transition to high school, and you’re going through a lot of self-discovery, figuring out your own sense of style, starting to date, having puberty and hormone changes,” she said. “So to then also be going blind was very difficult for me.”

The journey to recover from that situational depression was exactly that: a journey “with ups and downs,” Burke described. Working on all facets of health — “mind, body, soul” — was key. She found spirituality and started seeing a nutritionist “to fuel my body with foods that really built me up and made me strong.” She also turned to fitness and yoga, specifically, and she went to therapy, her “safe space,” to seek guidance from a psychologist, which lasted until she was 21.

Burke’s outlet for her depression — a healthy, positive way to express her emotions — was writing music, singing, and being in a band, leading her to connect with fellow musicians. “We were a good ol’ angsty punk rock band,” she added (we both laughed at that). She worked through her depression, too, by learning to embrace herself, “so really exploring my own self, my interests, my likes and dislikes and owning them instead of doing what you’re supposed to do to fit in.”

Burke was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after an accident a few weeks following her 20th birthday where she almost broke her neck (she fell off of a stage during a soundcheck for one of her speeches). “I was a full-time motivational speaker at the time, so the thing that I did every single day, all day, for a living suddenly became a source of trauma and fear for me,” she said. To help heal from her PTSD, she specifically turned to talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Also at 20 years old, Burke was diagnosed with generalized anxiety with OCD tendencies. For her anxiety in particular, she copes through breathing techniques and making sure she gets proper nutrition (when her anxiety is triggered she often has trouble eating, she explained). She went on and off anxiety medication up until recently as well.

Through it all, finding purpose has been a big component for Burke in tending to her mental health. This purpose, to her, is to “educate, motivate, or inspire one person every day with my story.” She wants to break barriers for people living with disabilities because, she said, “I realized that I cannot be angry at society’s ignorance towards me if I’m not willing to do anything to actively educate society to stop it.”

Burke began public speaking when she was little, and she currently speaks on topics such as accessibility, bullying, and the social model of disability. This model of disability, which she learned at age 16 from a special education teacher, differs from the medical model of disability that essentially tells those who are disabled that they are the problem. “The medical model of disability really puts a lot of the blame or the burden of guilt on the disabled person themselves, when really there’s nothing we can do,” she explained. “For many of us, it is incurable, and so to add a burden on top of an incurable condition, to feel like it is your fault, is very damaging.” The social model says, instead, that it’s society that is the problem.

Burke continued, “I think it’s very hard to cultivate young, strong, disabled leaders if that’s the mindset we build into them versus the social model that completely takes the burden, the guilt, the blame off of us as disabled people and says, ‘You know what? It is us as a whole, as a society, that needs to improve and simply become accessible to all needs.'”

When it comes down to it, “the reality is waiting for a cure isn’t living. Accepting who you are is living,” Burke said. “You can accept who you are by walking away from the medical model and accepting the social model. It’s just a far more empowering way to live.”

If you are feeling anxious or depressed and need help finding help or resources, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (1-800-950-6264) have resources available. Also, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline has several resources and a 24/7 lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (slated to change to 988 in the future).