First of all, hi everyone! I'm new to this forum.

I'm 26, I live in Brussels and I've started body building a few weeks ago.

A little background information about me:

I measure 1m75 and used to weigh 125 kilos. I've lost 40 kilos (almost 100lbs) over the last 15 months through intense diet and daily cardiovascular exercise.

I'm now down to a healthier 85-87 kilos, but the consequences of such an important weight loss left me with a silly-shaped body, elastic skin (not hanging flabs of skin, but slightly disgraceful) and weak muscles.

I haven taken up body building 3 weeks ago, and do it 4 to 5 times a week, quite intensively (sessions of 2 to 3 hours).

So far so good (I had a decent physical condition to start with thanks to the cardio training that I never stopped doing), I can see my muscles shape up slowly.

This brings me to my question. My trainer suggested that I get protein supplements to build my muscles faster. As I am starting to increase the weight I pull on all the machines I work on, I decided to follow his advice and bought myself one of those big tubs of whey protein powder.


Now, my trainer advised me to take a serving about an hour before my training session, and another serving about 30 minutes after.

Here are my two questions:

1) Is this the correct way to take it? The way I understood it is that those kind of supplements were used for muscle recovery through the action of amino-acids, rather than as an energy builder that you would use before going to exercise. Would I benefit for taking some before working out, in order to prevent my muscles "locking up" in the middle of an exercise (I get that a lot -during an exercise, my muscles just becoming completely deprived of energy within seconds whereas I was perfectly fine pulling the same weight only a few seconds before-, probably due to my muscular endurance not being top-notch yet)?

2) Is this even useful at all for me? And are there possible side-effects? I suffer from heart palpitations and somewhat irregular heartbeat (almost never during exercising, I've had them on my day-to-day life for over 8 years) but I know they are not dangerous (I've had LOADS of tests done). Is there a possibility that this would increase those palpitations?

I do not want to become a hunk, I just want to have shaped, nice muscles and carry on losing weight while toning up my skin.

Also keep in mind that I only properly eat every two days (the days that I do not exercise usually) and that I would use this powder on the days I do not eat proper meals (I usually eat low-fat ham, or salmon and such a couple hours before exercising). Another thing to keep in mind is that since starting to exercise, I have GAINED 3 kilos. Not through eating more, so I can only assume that this is due to muscles building up already?

Thank you very much in advance for all your advice!