Working out - Supplements

 You started working out and now you think about reaching your goals faster; speeding up the process. You start searching the web and you get thousands of results for supplements and pills and protein bars and so on.

You talk to someone at the gym who points you to another person who has “the best stuff”. Usually, this “best stuff” is dangerous and, in some places, illegal. Yeah, I’m talking about steroids. 

There are only a few cases where you should take steroids and that’s only when prescribed by a doctor! If you have health problems and that’s what the doc gave you … fine; however, I’d say 99% of people working out and taking steroids DO NOT have a good reason for doing so.

Do steroids work? Apparently yeah … just search online for famous bodybuilders who took this sh*t and see what they have to say. 

The point is that for regular people, average Joes like you and me, steroids = very bad feng shui! Don’t do it … seriously, don’t touch that stuff.

Now, going back to supplements. 

Some people believe that if you take a protein shake after your workout you will miraculously double your muscles’ size and triple your strength, hulk style. Umm … no. They are called supplements for a reason - they should SUPPLEMENT your normal/regular (and hopefully healthy) diet, if NEEDED!

If you are eating well, you get enough sleep and you just want to stay in relatively good shape, I’d argue that, at most, you will probably want to look for some sort of whey protein supplements … if you tolerate whey that is; if not, there are plant based protein supplements. 

Next on the list are vitamins and minerals. Again, if you are eating well (diversified, at regular intervals, you eat vegetables and fruits etc.), you will probably need very little in terms of extra vitamins and minerals. 

Now let’s be real - few of us actually get enough vitamins and minerals from what we generally eat. If you don’t do any kind of sports, it’s still a good idea to take vitamins and minerals from time to time. 

If you are seriously working out - say you want to build 20 pounds of muscle - I’d say that adding supplements in the form of vitamins and minerals is a must. Also, you should definitely take some whey / plant based protein supplements.

“Why are you gym-rats so obsessed with protein powders & vitamins?!”

Well … because they work. I’ll keep it real simple. When you are lifting weights, you are damaging your muscles - you create micro-fissures/tears in the tissue. This is normal and expected. The body will regenerate and rebuild the damaged tissues so that it can better withstand the type of effort that it faced (muscle growth). In order to do that, the body needs the fundamental “building blocks” for this complex operation - proteins + vitamins and minerals!

Just to give a few examples, some of the best vitamins for bodybuilding are vitamins C, D, A and the B-complex (3, 6, 9 and 12); for minerals we have Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Zinc.

Again, that’s just a veeeery simplified, but accurate, way of looking at things 😀 

“What about pre-workout supplements?”

That’s more of a subjective decision. For example, in 99.9% of cases I don’t take any pre-workout supplements. I drink some coffee, about an hour before I start working out. That’s what works well for me.

Did I try pre-workouts? Yeah … did they do a lot? Umm … not quite … I didn’t feel a big boost or anything of the sort. But that’s just me. For you, they may work wonders, I don’t know 😀. As I said, it depends on the individual. 

So, let’s do a small recap. 

What are your goals for working out?

If you just wanna stay in shape, without or with small interest in building muscle, I’d say that you should consider some protein supplements; if you eat well and, let’s say that an hour after your workout you have a stake … then I’d say ignore the supplements. If not, maybe get some sort of whey / plant based protein powder. 

If you want to build muscle, I’d go with protein supplements + vitamins and minerals, alongside a healthy diet. How much protein should you take? Well … the golden rule is to have a daily protein intake of around 1.5g - 2g of protein / kg. So, if you weigh 80 kg you should target around 120 to 160 grams of protein per day. 

On average, a good protein shake has around 50g of protein; the rest should come from your food. Now, depending on your size, obviously, you may want to have 2  or more protein shakes / day. 

If you are skinny as a toothpick and you want to bulk, there are hundreds of mass gainers or mass builders or mass w/e. Just be careful because most of them have A LOT of sugar added. It’s probably a better idea to try to eat more healthy food instead of pumping your body full of sugar.

My advice would be to stick to the same protein supplements + vitamins and minerals as I mentioned above; however, in this case, you could add an extra shake and/or some protein bars to your daily diet. If you are to add calories, instead of sugar, let’s add proteins, shall we? 😀

Oh, and a final word before you go …

! DON’T DO STEROIDS !