Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin
Dr. Michael Ormsbee: Food Timing, Nutrition & Supplements for Fat Loss, Muscle Growth & Recovery
Wed, 02 Apr 2025
My guest is Dr. Michael Ormsbee, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition and integrative physiology and the director of the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine at Florida State University. We explore how pre-sleep nutrition affects fat metabolism, muscle growth, performance, and recovery, while helping individuals meet their daily protein goals without causing weight gain. We discuss what to eat at night, including different protein sources—whey, casein, and plant-based proteins—or carbohydrates, and explain whether whole foods or supplements are more beneficial. Additionally, we highlight the importance of resistance training and sufficient protein intake for long-term weight loss success and how collagen supplementation may reduce joint pain. We also examine the potential benefits of lesser-known supplements, including betaine, theacrine, and butyrate postbiotics. Whether you’re an athlete or simply looking to improve your health, listeners will learn how to optimize nutrition for enhanced performance, recovery, and weight management. Read the episode show notes at performpodcast.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/perform LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/perform Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/perform Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/perform Timestamps 00:00:00 Dr. Michael Ormsbee 00:01:42 Hockey, Triathlons; Nutrition 00:07:36 Sponsors: LMNT & Eight Sleep 00:10:20 Pre-Sleep Nutrition, Resting Metabolic Rate, Tool: Protein Intake Before Bed 00:16:51 Sleep, Microdialysis, Fat Metabolism 00:25:18 Pre-Sleep Nutrition, Metabolism, Protein Synthesis, Daily Protein Intake 00:32:18 Obesity, Weight Loss, Resistance Training, Reduced Muscle Loss 00:37:35 Sponsor: Momentous 00:39:13 Tool: Protein Requirements, Weight Management 00:43:30 Pre-Sleep Nutrition, Performance & Recovery, Nighttime Exercise 00:48:05 Protein Type, Whole Food vs Supplementation, Protein Synthesis 00:53:55 Pre-Sleep Nutrition & Age; Alpha-lactalbumin 00:59:10 Meal Size, Digestibility, Calorie Threshold & Sleep; Long-Term Fat Loss 01:06:00 Sponsor: AG1 01:07:25 Carbohydrates, Super-Starch, Performance & Pre-Sleep Nutrition 01:18:47 Research, Variables; Resistant Starches 01:24:59 Evaluating Research Types; Collagen, Joint Pain, Vitamin C 01:37:39 Collagen Supplementation, Exercise; Collagen Dose 01:44:19 What is Collagen?, Digestion 01:49:13 Glycine, Betaine, Thermoregulation, Exercise, Firefighters, Dose 01:56:46 Betaine, Hydration, Heat Tolerance & Future Research Directions 01:59:25 TeaCrine, Caffeine, Performance 02:04:23 Creatine, Vascular Health 02:06:45 Postbiotics, Gut Health, Butyrate, Sleep 02:10:24 Female Athletes, Recovery, Muscle Damage, Supplements 02:15:18 Upcoming Studies; Travel, Sleep & Performance 02:18:29 Research Grants & Funding, Conflicts of Interest, Data Evaluation 02:26:09 Courses, Testing Facilities 02:30:11 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Subscribe & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Social Media, Perform Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Michael Ormsbee and what is his background in sports and nutrition?
the science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today, I'm going to be talking with my longtime friend, Dr. Mike Ormsby. Mike is a professor at Florida State University.
He is the director of the Institute of Sports Science and Medicine. Mike is a world-renowned expert in all things exercise physiology, supplementation, sports nutrition, and a whole host of other important and interesting topics that we'll get into in today's conversation. Mike has done a tremendous amount of work over the last 15 years, specifically in the area of pre-sleep nutrition.
And I could promise you we're going to get into some things that are Mike's lifelong passion and career that are counterintuitive to what most people think about what to eat and what not to eat prior to sleep. In fact, I'll give you a little bit of a spoiler alert.
He has some pretty compelling evidence over multiple studies that eating specific items in specific amounts prior to sleep is advantageous for not only sleep and recovery, but multiple other things as well.
The conversation was wide-ranging, but we'll cover many other things like a handful of supplements that people have not heard of that have interesting implications for a wide variety of performance and health-related outcomes. And so it was a fascinating conversation. I learned a lot from it. I've known Mike for a long time. I've known his work for a long time.
But there was a lot that I did not know about the work he's done and will be doing in the future. So here we go with Dr. Mike Ormsby. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Dr. Mike Ormsby, thank you so much for coming out. I know it was a long trip this morning and I have a bunch of stuff I'm excited to talk to you about. But first, thank you so much for coming out.
You're welcome. Welcome. I've not been able to come over here and do some podcasting and hang out on this side of the country for a while. So for me, it's a pleasure. I appreciate the offer.
I love your research. I love a lot of the stuff that you've gotten into. So when we decided to officially have guests for Perform, I was like, Mike has got to be on the list and stoked to have you out here.
Appreciate it. I can't wait to get into some of this stuff because I love it. It's what I do day in and day out. And speaking to a bigger audience is a pleasure.
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Chapter 2: What are the benefits of pre-sleep protein intake for fat loss and muscle growth?
So you come in and we say, OK, how much did you sleep last night? Was it good or bad or usual? And then in that simple measure, we saw no differences whatsoever. And then we brought them into the laboratory and like, oh, well, surely that's not going to be great for sleep. It's a different environment and all these things.
And we made it again, pen and paper, no difference in what we're finding in terms of just asking them that question. And so then we now I'll fast forward to kind of what we're getting to in a few minutes. But now we're purposefully designing for an outcome of sleep. where we've never done that before. We've always measured it for recovery.
We've measured it for metabolism, not for the outcome of sleep as our primary aim. But we'll talk about that in a second. One of the things that I think really helps us now is that we introduced in some of our studies a technique called microdialysis.
Now, that's something that I learned in grad school from a guy named Professor Bob Hickner, great friend, excellent researcher, my mentor, just a phenomenal human.
I visited his lab a couple of times a long time ago, but a ton of great work over the years.
Yeah, consistently just excellent work.
And you eventually drug him down to hang out with you in Florida State.
I did. Yeah. That's a whole other story. But it's fantastic because I have like the godfather of microdialysis in our backyard. And it's great. And that's a technique I learned in my PhD program as well. So we started implementing this microdialysis.
Walk us through what that is really quickly. Yeah. It's exactly what it sounds like, but –
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Chapter 3: How does pre-sleep nutrition affect metabolism and fat burning during sleep?
You're going to lose so many on that kind of a diet. And you just think about like weight recidivism and the people who are probably going to struggle with this. And now you're at a place with lower lean mass and you still have trouble with these things and you're still working on being taught the right things to eat.
So to me, that was a fabulous study that really showed the powerful impact that resistance training with protein can have.
You will see regularly strength training for folks that are trying to lose weight and to keep it off for a long time. So you said the retention recidivism of that body composition. Yeah.
you can't make a strong argument that strength training burns us ton of calories we were talking about that before we started going like that's not your way to go one could even argue then or people have used that argument then as a fodder to say that hey exercise doesn't help you lose weight completely ridiculous of course but from a strictly caloric expenditure perspective it's not very high however if you look at that side of the equation
Who holds more muscle mass? And then because of that, the associations between strength training and successful long-term and permanent weight loss is really, really high. And we've seen this from a bunch of different lines of research. That paper specifically, I think, just absolutely crushed that conversation.
If you want to lose weight and keep it off, strength training is a very, very, very good idea if you want that to last for a long time. Not going to be the thing that burns you your calories right now, but it's the thing that is going to arguably lead to longer-term success.
Yeah, I think if you skip that part, of a weight maintenance or even a weight loss program, it's just not setting you up for the ideal outcomes long-term. But it is hard because you do, like if you're going out for a walk or a jog or a bike, like you sweat and then you feel like maybe you're doing more work. And so then you get in your mind about, maybe this is better for me for my goals.
And it's hard. I think you have to be disciplined in many ways, but to follow a program where you're training and maybe not as sweaty as you might be, from doing a run or even a walk outside or something. So yeah, I feel like in our environment now, we need to be probably medically prescribing resistance training at the root of all this. And that's just not happening yet in most places.
I know some folks are, but I think that's the next step that's going to have to be taken.
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Chapter 4: What types of protein and foods are best for pre-sleep nutrition?
It's for these reasons and many others that I personally take AG1 almost every day. Now, it's of course not a replacement for eating whole healthy foods, but it is a great way to make sure that you're plugging in any gaps in your nutrition to improve your energy, bolster your immune system, and just generally help promote a healthy gut microbiome and more. If you'd like to try AG1,
you can go to drinkag1.com slash perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2.
Well, thank you for giving such a fantastic breakdown of your 15 years of work in the area of pre-sleep and probably most importantly, justifying my, what is basically a nightly routine now, especially when I'm on the road of, I absolutely smash a David Barr. Before bed, all the time. Literally never stop on the road. It's like dessert sort of thing for me, but I feel justified.
And what I'm hearing you say is there's zero problem with that, so I can continue that habit. You got it from me. Appreciate it. I want to transition from protein and talk a little bit more about carbohydrate. You've done a lot of work in this area as well, and there are perhaps... more things we can learn here that are counter to what other folks have talked about or seen in the past.
So walk us through some of the stuff you've done on specifically these resistant starches in your lab.
Yeah. So we got interested in the modified carbohydrate space a while back. And it started with a student who was hyper-interested in carbohydrate.
Isn't that the best?
Yeah. And they drive. I mean, my lab is so fantastic. They're all brilliant scientists. They're so much smarter than me, and I love that because they just have great ideas, and we can weave it into stuff that we can get funding for, and it's just a really good mix.
But I had this student at the time, Dan Bauer, who was a phenomenal student and hyper-interested in all things carbohydrate, and I was kind of protein-based. dominant for all of the work I was into. So it was a great addition to what we were doing there to round out sort of some of our macronutrient profiles that we were interested in.
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Chapter 5: Does pre-sleep protein intake interfere with sleep quality?
Yeah, so by default then you would have probably lowered fat oxidation.
Yeah, and that was exactly what was happening, but perhaps we didn't have – something wasn't right. Maybe the dosing was wrong because even with protein you have to do – the ideal dose is 40 grams, which is bigger than a lot of people are used to because you're going so long until you're using it again. Like all night long you have to have it.
So maybe with carbohydrate we just needed a bigger dose.
One of the things that I appreciate so much about not only the conversation we're having but your research line in general, is you're not only a scientist, but as I mentioned at the beginning, you've run these races. You're an educator. You have courses on this. In fact, I think I mentioned at the beginning that Florida State Educator of the Year, I know, is on your resume as an award.
You're putting these things into practice. You have the literal textbook in the field. You wrote the textbook in exercise physiology. And it's so clear that when you go after one of these studies, you don't just stop. When you're on here, when you're having these conversations, you're not just saying, okay, this is our answer. Because you know if you change one variable, maybe it changes.
And why I'm bringing this up now is you just reminded me that as you said, well, maybe we had the wrong dose. Maybe it was the wrong time. Maybe it was the wrong combination. Maybe it was the wrong person. that's a really hard skill and you rarely hear scientists talk like that because they want to have a capture of an area and they want to have clear answers.
The world wants a clear answer, but in, because you're such a practitioner, you know, that's not really how it works. So I really appreciate that about your perspective, the way that you teach and the way you run your lab, because you're doing 10, 15 years of, Of the same kind of study with multiple barriers changed out to understand the real answer there.
This is not going to influence your funding. This is not going to get you promoted or bring more money. It's really honestly, I'm jumping into your brain a little bit here, but you're generally trying to answer the question and you know that there's real life, there's multiple aspects involved. There's just trade-offs. There's not simple answers.
So another compliment coming your way for your approach.
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