So you’ve started working out, and eager to make progress, you ask yourself when should you start taking supplements? Depending on your personal level of health and nutrition, this is going to vary from individual to individual. Are you taking in enough protein and nutrients through your diet to compensate for your increased level of activity?
If you’re a newbie, or an intermediate bodybuilder who’s increased your workload recently, chances are, you should be supplementing some portion of your diet.
Why should I take supplements?
Protein:
When you’re increasing the amount of weight-bearing activity in your life, your body needs to adjust its ability to synthesis protein. This is essentially the ability of your body to use protein to heal the microtears you’ve created by exercising. This ability will increase on your current diet if you’ve just started exercising, but you’ll eventually hit a plateau.
The body isn’t a magic machine that is capable of working miracles, intake = output (to a certain degree), and protein is a warranted increase in your diet. Generally, if your bodybuilding, the recommended protein intake is between 0.8 – 1 gram of protein per lb of body weight. So if you’re a 180 lb individual attempting to eat protein in just food, your expenses are going to start to increase.
Protein shakes have the additional benefit of having low calories, so if you want to focus on cutting, you won’t need to adjust your calories to an impossible margin. If you’re looking for professional reviews on supplement products, visit this website to get an expert opinion. Not all supplements are created equal, and by reading personal reviews with the products, you’ll be able to gear your decisions to the appropriate ones.
Creatine:
A lot of bodybuilders shy away from creatine, I’m not sure why as peer-review research suggests nominal side effects. Creatine can increase the amount of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) available in your body. ATP is widely known to be the body’s energy currency, and can increase the amount of weight bearing activity you’re able to accomplish.
Creatine is found naturally in some forms of meat, but the amount that you would need to eat to cause a profitable gain in weight-lifting is egregious. Creatine supplements circumvent this issue by offering you the supplement directly.
Micronutrients:
The vitamins and minerals in your diet can do everything from assisting with a healthy metabolism to altering the amount of energy you have during the day. If you look up a list of all essential vitamins and minerals in the human diet, you’re going to get a long list. It’s possible to intake all of these vitamins by diet alone, but it’ll be a homework assignment to dot your i’s and cross your t’s getting this done.
If you have a general idea of how to eat healthy, but just want to slam down any deficits you might have, using a multivitamin is going to help you.
When should I take supplements?
You can start using supplements to be a healthier, better version of yourself at any time. If you’ve just started working out, you can skirt around the plateau a little bit on your current diet but it’s going to hit you hard eventually.
Using protein powder can increase the gains that you will make during this period of time, and have the added benefit of offsetting when you’re going to reach your next plateau. You’ll gain more in a faster period of time by supplementing what your body needs.
Creatine is not a necessary supplement but will help you achieve your goals within a quicker period of time as well. If you don’t think you’re getting all of your micronutrients currently there’s no reason you can’t supplement this deficit with a multivitamin either.
Do I need to take supplements?
If you can afford the calories during the day, and the finances associated with purchasing all of the food necessary to meet these deficits, by all means go ahead. You definitely don’t need to take supplements to meet your goals (aside from maybe creatine), but it’s going to be a lot of added expenses and homework to meet them.
Supplements offer just that – a supplement to your diet. They help circumvent the issues that can come with trying to fit all of your nutrition into a few meals in a day. If you’ve increased your weight bearing activity without a proper adjustment in your diet, you’re going to end up running into a plateau.
Supplements are tools used to accomplish your goals, and they can greatly increase your performance in the gym when used properly.
