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I'm doing F1 and H1 on M-Tu-Th-F, and was wondering if Josh's peri-workout nutrition plan would still be appropriate (warning: major elaboration below). I've never liked the idea of supplementing with protein shakes for several reasons: 1) I've always preferred the idea of eating real food, and 2) I always associated protein shakes with fat bodybuilders who only cared about being "huge" despite how ridiculous they looked. In fact, the main reason I got into GST in 2005 was because I preferred the gymnast ideal of being lean and muscular over the bodybuilder look. That being said, after looking into it today, I've come across at least a couple of references showing that supplementing with whey or skim milk (500 cc immediately post then 500 cc 1h after) not only increased lean mass, but also decreased fat compared to placebo or soy protein (here's the paper for the skim milk study http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/2/373.long). Despite the papers, old biases are hard to get rid of, so I have a few questions. As I said above, I work out 4 days a week (4-day F1 split each one followed by H1), but the workouts aren't *that* intense in that I don't sweat much, and though today I had trouble finishing my 9th pushup on my 4th set (I'm on week 6), my entire workout only took 25 minutes, and that includes H1 which I don't consider a strength workout (I'm on PE1 for everything except for HBP and RC where I'm on PE2). So on to the questions: 1. Given the short duration and only moderate intensity of my workouts, would the kind of supplementation that Josh advocates or that the milk paper used (1L of skim milk post-workout) be too much? My question really is whether it'll just end-up making me gain fat. 2. What do you think of that milk study? Is the protein and carbohydrate content of the milk relatively equivalent to Josh's PWO recommendations? 3. Rather than skim milk or whey powder, could I use ricotta cheese and fruit instead? Ricotta is made from whey, and I can find some that doesn't have funky ingredients such as guar gum etc... If so, how much protein should I aim for given my above workload? I weigh just under 150 lbs by the way and am 5'8" with about 10% body fat. 4. Coach's gymnasts are doing pretty well despite not supplementing. Is it unreasonable to think that I could get the same results by only using F1 and H1 without supplementing? Actually typing this question out makes me realize just how ridiculous the notion would be given their young age, and the fact that they train so much more than I do including rings, pommel horse, etc... Anyway, I think that's it for now. I don't mean to be a skeptic, it's just that I've never done this kind of thing before and don't want to make a mistake that I'll later regret such as taking waaay too many calories for the amount of work I do. In terms of other exercise I do, at the moment, I cross country ski a few times a week (anywhere from 1 to 4 hours/week), and only dream of being able to go back to training BJJ regularly (I had to stop once my son was born due to scheduling conflicts). Any response (even partial ones) is appreciated. Thanks, Dave