Best Post-Workout Supplement for Fat Loss

Maximizing post-workout recovery and repair is key to both muscle gains and fat loss.

• We take pre-workout supplements to maximize exercise performance.
• Intra-workout supplements to sustain exercise endurance.
• Post-workout supplements to recover from all that supercharged performance enhancement.

In a way, post-workout supplements work as pre-pre-workouts, considering that they help expedite recovery and reduce soreness attributed to exercise to ensure a strong, vigorous return to the gym tomorrow.

Whether you’re looking to build muscle mass or burn fat (or, likely, both), having an effective post-workout supplement available is key to maintaining enough high-intensity consistency to see your plans through to fruition.

Unlike traditional fat burners that directly stimulate thermogenic fat loss in a pre-workout context, post-workouts indirectly assist with fat loss by supporting:

1. A consistent return to the gym.
2. Anabolic muscle gains.

After all, one of the best ways to burn fat is to build muscle.

And so, with that in mind, the Best Post-Workout Supplements are first-and-foremost a bodybuilding tool for building muscle, the downstream benefits of which entail a heightened resting metabolic rate (RMR) that’s key to sustaining long-term fat loss.

Here’s a quick glance at the best all-in-one post-workout stack for sustaining high-intensity exercise performance, anabolic muscle growth, and long-term fat loss:

Why Take a Post-Workout Supplement?

The main reason why people take post-workout supplements is simple: to boost post-exercise muscular recovery and muscle building.

Though requiring an exceptional amount of daily energy expenditure, a highly active lifestyle is, paradoxically, energizing.

Poor metabolism and fatigue are more commonly associated with a sedentary lifestyle than an active one...

...After all, as Newton observed, an object at rest stays at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force.

Even so, exercise acutely drains the body of energy and nutrient resources, leaving you feeling drained and totally wiped out after a high-intensity workout.

This is especially true when you’re first getting into working out, which is why many people turn to workout supplements to both kickstart and sustain their healthy, active lifestyles.

Typically, workout supplements fall under one of the following categories:

• Pre-Workout: performance enhancing supplements taken immediately prior exercise, typically to increase energy and circulation.
• Intra-Workout: energy- and nutrient-replenishing supplements taken during exercise to help recharge muscular strength and endurance.
• Post-Workout: supplements immediately after exercise to kickstart anabolic muscle growth, repair, and recovery, typically to reduce onset of muscle fatigue and soreness.

Another sports nutrient category that often overlaps with the post-workout category is maintenance, which includes a range of supplements that help sustain a muscle and strength boosting physiology during off-days from the gym.

All workout supplements, whether pre-workout or post-workout, assist with thermogenic fat loss via direct and indirect pathways.

However, unlike, say, pre-workout supplements, which acutely promote exercise-related calorie-burning, post-workout supplements may offer more long-term fat loss supporting both exercise- and non-exercise-related calorie-burning through the promotion of both a consistent workout schedule and enhanced calorie-burning muscle mass.

How a Post-Workout Supplement Can Help You Lose Fat

Rarely does a supplement work towards only one specific health or fitness goal.

Any supplement that significantly improves one aspect of performance typically affects, whether directly or indirectly, many other aspects.

In the case of post-workout supplements, by boosting muscle recovery and growth, an effective post-workout formula may foster a calorie-burning metabolism and a fitness lifestyle that are both conducive to greater fat loss.

The fat-burning mechanisms involved in supplementing a post-workout stack are contained in the following points:

Reduced Soreness Means More Gym-Time

After a long slump, you hit the gym hard for the first time in who-knows-how-long, you leave the gym feeling satisfying whooped, and then, the following morning, you wake up feeling not-so-satisfyingly whooped.

You’re sore, everything hurts, and bending over to pull on your socks seems an impossibility, let alone hitting the gym again.

This is a common barrier for many exercisers, whether newcomers or veterans. However, by combatting muscle fatigue and soreness, by replenishing muscle tissue and rapidly expediting muscle recovery, a post-workout supplement may help you maintain a consistent, daily exercise routine.

By reducing muscle soreness, post-workout supplements encourage more consecutive workouts for greater calorie-burning potential.

On the flipside, though a somewhat inaccurate measure of health and fitness, the body mass index (BMI) does correlate with exercise-related muscle damage: a higher BMI is linked to a greater degree of muscle damage after exercise.

While reducing soreness may increase calorie-burning gym-time opportunities, the decrease of excess fat mass may, in return, lower excess muscle damage and soreness after exercise.

As a result, it's definitely worth planning what to eat after a workout to lsoe weight and build muscle. 

It's something to look forward to, if you feel that post-exercise soreness is a common barrier to your consistent gym routine.

Hydration is Key to Weight Loss

If we’re exercising hard enough, we’re depleting two things:

1. Water
2. Electrolytes

This is why simply drinking water after exercising isn’t sufficient to combat dehydration: we also need to replenish the trace mineral levels (electrolytes) excreted via sweat to sustain hydration.

Considering the importance of hydration to both muscle gains and weight loss, a post-workout supplement that “recharges” the body, so to speak, with nutrients and trace minerals may help keep the body hydrated and metabolically primed.

Broadly, the association between chronic dehydration and heightened levels of angiotensin II (AngII), a hormone linked to obesity and cardiometabolic disorders, suggests that increased hydration can be associated with weight loss, not to mention other various measures of health and fitness.

In the context of resistance exercise, one clinical study observed a link between hydration state and strength, power, and performance, with the researchers finding enough evidence to conclude that “hypohydration attenuates resistance exercise performance”.

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To sustain strength and performance, you’ll need to sustain your hydration levels with an electrolyte-charged post-workout stack.

Increased Fat-Free Mass (FFM) Boosts Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)

A common fat loss recommendation: get more protein.

This is because protein intake correlates with lean muscle mass growth, otherwise known as Fat-Free Mass (FFM), a key determinant of our resting metabolic rate (RMR). Here’s a better explanation of these terms:

• Fat-Free Mass (FFM): also known as lean body mass, refers to all your body components, with exception to fat; however, in a weight management context, FFM typically refers to muscle mass.
• Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): this measures the total number of calories burned when your body is completely at rest—i.e., while not exercising.

As the main determinant of RMR, lean muscle mass is perhaps the single most important factor involved in sustainably shedding excess fat.

Too many fat-burning regimens overlook the importance of increasing muscle mass to reducing fat mass. These regimens have a too-literal outlook on fat loss, as the proponents of these regimens forget that lean muscle mass is the main determinant in long-term fat loss and even in appetite regulation.

By encouraging the growth and maintenance of fat-free mass, or lean muscle, post-workout supplements may help boost your resting metabolic rate, so that you may burn more calories while not exercising—i.e., during the majority of your day.

Top 5 Post-Workout Ingredients for Fat Loss

Now that we better understand the importance of muscle gains to fat loss, as well as the post-workout supplement’s role in promoting muscle recovery and growth, we can identify the Top 5 Post-Workout Ingredients for Fat Loss based on which post-workout supplements work best for promoting lean muscle mass.

With that in mind, here are the best post-workout ingredients you can take to naturally sculpt a lean, mean physique:

1) Creatine

Creatine is a bodybuilder’s best friend. Unlike caffeine and other popular stimulants, creatine is a non-stimulatory energy booster, meaning that this ergogenic aid enhances athletic performance without negatively impacting your cardiometabolic health.

Instead, creatine works by saturating muscle tissue with cellular ATP energy, the basic unit of energy required for:

• Athletic Strength and Performance
• Muscle Stamina and Endurance
• Anabolic Repair, Recovery, and Growth

And many other metabolic factors related to athletic health and performance. Creatine’s ability to energize, strengthen, and nourish exercising muscle tissues makes it a top ergogenic for both pre-workout and post-workout supplement formulas.

As we exercise, we burn through our natural creatine reserves. Restocking our muscle tissue with ATP-producing creatine helps support muscle performance and recovery after exercise.

Though the benefits of supplementing creatine daily at any time of day are well-documented, taking creatine immediately post-workout seems particularly advantageous for improving body composition and strength. As one clinical study observed, “creatine supplementation plus resistance exercise increased fat-free mass and strength” and that “consuming creatine immediately post-workout is superior to pre-workout vis a vis body composition and strength.”

Creatine’s boost on fat-free mass gains makes it one of the best post-workout supplements for sustaining long-term fat loss.

Look for Creapure® pH10: as a 99.5% pure creatine monohydrate form, Creapure® pH10 is a clean, effective creatine supplement that’s more readily absorbed than cheaper, standard creatine forms. Creapure® pH10 is also pH-balanced to optimize bioavailability, which lowers the dosage requirement of this creatine form and, thus, reduces the bloating and gastric distress side effects typically associated with creatine supplementation.

2) L-Glutamine

The most abundant amino acid in the body, L-Glutamine is also most highly concentrated in muscle tissue, making this amino of key interest to exercisers and bodybuilders.

In muscle tissue, L-glutamine plays a distinct role in protein metabolism while also functioning as a nitrogen carrier for the assistance of muscle energy, growth, and repair.

For training and athletic performance improvements, L-glutamine works by:

1. Increasing serum growth hormone levels to produce glutathione, a naturally synthesized antioxidant used by the body to combat exercise-related oxidative stress and immune challenges.
2. Protecting anabolic muscle growth against the glutamine depletion associated with high-intensity exercise.

Without sufficient glutamine levels, muscle tissue may atrophy, severely impacting the anabolic gains of your exercise.

In addition to providing anabolic support, L-glutamine also seems to possess significant fat loss potential as well. As one pilot study observed, body weight and waist circumference significantly declined with glutamine supplementation, leading the study’s researchers to conclude that “glutamine is safe and effective in favoring weight loss and possibly enhancing glucose metabolism.”

The combined weight loss and metabolic benefits of L-glutamine qualify this amino acid as one of the top bodybuilding post-workout supplements for fat loss.

Look for Ajipure® L-Glutamine: by Ajinomoto®, a world leader in amino acid supplementation, Ajipure® L-Glutamine is a pure, non-GMO amino acid type made with Ferment-A-Pure technology, a patented, eco-friendly process that derives amino acids from gluten-free vegetable carbohydrates.

3) Pomegranate Extract

Pomegranates aren’t only a fun food to eat. Pomegranates are also effective as ergogenic aids, thanks to their high concentration of polyphenols, a class of antioxidants with various cardiometabolic health benefits.

Pomegranate polyphenols benefit athletic health and performance by:

• Enhancing muscle circulation
• Combating muscle-damaging free radicals
• Soothing achy muscles and joints

And yes: by stimulating fat loss.

Pomegranate extract supplies a potent concentration of antioxidant polyphenols that simultaneously protect muscle gains and promote thermogenic fat loss.

In a review on the effects of polyphenols on thermogenesis and mitochondrial biogenesis, polyphenols were recognized as “molecules capable of modulating pathways that regulate mitochondrial biogenesis, ATP synthesis, and thermogenesis, among others.”

This combination of thermogenesis and ATP energy output amounts to a greater increase of energy expenditure in toto. For both managing weight and protecting muscle tissue in the context of high-intensity training, pomegranate extract is one of your best post-workout supplement options.

Look for P40p™ Pomegranate Extract: supplying a potent extract standardized to 40% punicosides and 50% total polyphenols, P40p™ is the best pomegranate extract brand for exercise recovery. For point of reference, 100 mg P40p™ supplies the equivalent antioxidant activity of one whole pomegranate, except in a convenient, easy-to-carry pill form.

4) Brown Rice Protein

If you’re exercising, odds are you’re taking a protein powder.

Even amateur weightlifters are well aware of the sports nutrition benefits of taking a protein supplement. Briefly, the benefits of protein include:

• Increasing muscle gains
• Enhancing strength
• Improving endurance
• Supporting recovery
• Curbing cravings and hunger

And more. However, specific to this article, protein uniquely improves fat loss, based on the plethora of research linking protein intake to weight loss.

Throughout the recent decades, many dieting strategies have emphasized increasing your protein consumption to lower your weight. Studies have backed this recommendation by showing remarkable improvements in weight loss, fat mass loss, and preservation of lean muscle mass when exercisers switch to a higher-protein diet.

In a post-workout context, protein supplementation may specifically assist with promoting lean muscle mass while generally fulfilling the fat-loss requirement of “increasing your daily protein intake.”

Why brown rice protein specifically? Animal protein powders, such as the popular whey protein, typically require extensive chemical processing. Even many plant proteins come stacked with neurotoxic, eco-unfriendly synthetics. However, brown rice protein, namely Oryzatein® (see below), can be manufactured via clean, eco-friendly processes that come at no cost to the protein’s anabolic potential.

Look for Oryzatein®: the only organic brown rice protein patented for enhancing athletic performance, Oryzatein® has been shown to build muscle as effective as whey, with leucine that absorbs 30% faster than whey leucine.

5) Branched-Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs)

Taking a more microtargeted approach to muscle repair and recovery, Branched-Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) encompass a group of three essential amino acids that are partially responsible for the anabolic benefits of protein at large.

In total, the three BCAAs include:

• L-Leucine: the most anabolic BCAA, L-leucine assists with protein synthesis, muscle growth and repair, while also promoting growth hormone and bone strength.
• L-Isoleucine: required by hemoglobin to transport oxygen to hard-working muscle tissue, L-isoleucine bolsters muscular energy and immunity.
• L-Valine: involved in the formation of protein, L-valine optimizes muscle tissue growth and repair while also uniquely supplying muscle energy.

Though leucine is the most anabolic BCAA, all three are important to sustaining exercise performance and combating muscle catabolism (breakdown).

Due to the on-the-spot muscle-nourishing benefits of BCAAs, many exercisers take BCAAs as intra-workout (during exercise) supplements. However, taking BCAAs immediately after exercise may also benefit anabolic muscle growth and fat loss.

In a study cohort including 4429 participants from China, Japan, the UK, and the US, the beneficial effects of BCAA supplementation on body weight were observed, with findings suggesting of an inverse relationship between BCAA intake and obesity. Based on these findings, the study’s researchers concluded that “higher dietary BCAA intake is associated with lower prevalence of overweight status/obesity among apparently healthy middle-aged adults from East Asian and Western countries.”

Look for Ajipure® and NutriGenesis®: not all BCAAs are equal, which is why you should look for Ajipure® BCAAs, a clean, bioavailable source of BCAAs derived from non-GMO, gluten-free vegetables, and NutriGenesis® BCAAs, a nature-identical BCAA complexed with absorption-enhancing natural cofactors, such as probiotics, fibers, and enzymes. Ideally, your BCAA stack should resemble a 2:1:1 ratio of L-leucine, L-isoleucine, and L-valine, which is the same BCAA ratio composition of muscle.

Best Recovery Supplements: Performance Lab® SPORT Range

Any post-workout supplement that assists with lean muscle mass growth and recovery may help you burn more fat in the long run. However, the best post-workout supplements work without resorting to any cheap synthetics and ingredient forms that counterproductively junk up your digestive health and, consequently, your overall metabolism.

With that in mind, Performance Lab® SPORT Post supplies the best post-workout supplements for fat loss, thanks to its use of powerful, yet all-natural ingredient forms. It's a restorative sports nutrition stack for healthy muscle recovery, tissue repair, and lean anabolic growth.

To better understand Post may help you maximize your fat loss, here is a formula breakdown:

Conclusion

Though you burn calories during exercise, it’s the non-exercise-related calorie-burning that matters most when it comes to sustainable, long-term reductions in fat mass. This is what makes post-workout supplements, which assist in the growth of calorie-burning muscle mass, so important to long-term fat loss.

But not all post-workout supplements are equal. Some assist with muscle rehydration and nourishment, others provide amino acids and protein for macronutrient muscle-building. Fortunately SPORT Post may help significantly enhance sustainable, long-term fat loss through the boosted growth of lean muscle mass.

What’s more, the Performance Lab® SPORT Range also carries a comprehensive selection of pre-workout formulas that not only complement SPORT Range’s post-workout selection but maximize muscle performance and fat loss via their own unique pathways.

With that in mind, to get even better results, stack Performance Lab® SPORT post-workout supplements with Burn Lab Pro®, a pre-workout fat burner that kickstarts calorie-burning before the workout has even begun: