Do weight training supplements do anything -- good or bad?

July 9, 2008 12:14 PM

I'm looking to shake up my workouts, shed the excess poundage, and get some more definition -- basically, I'm bored, not making much headway, and would like to get over the hump to better health/muscle shape. Since it's hard to tell the difference between the shills and the real online reviews, advice, etc., I need some Mefite first-hand experience with hydroxycut or similar supplements.

YANMD. I am not looking for a magic bullet. However, I've had a few friends who used creatine-type supplements in the past to get big/cut/etc, and while I'm no more vain than the normal person, it would be nice to turn some of my muscle into more defined muscle.

I'm not normally a supplement/pill/insert fad here, but I'm stalled in my workouts, and would love to get a little jump start to reinvigorate my drive to keep it up.

This is also potentially part of a reinvigorated calorie reduction and healthier eating pattern (stupid night-time snacking), so I do have the long view in mind, as well.

FWIW, I'm 34 and in good shape, other than carrying more weight that I should be -- no significant health problems of any kind (knocks wood).

posted by liquado to health & fitness (11 comments total)

What do your diet and workouts look like? Supplements are almost never the answer; diet and lifting are. Do you have the basics right?

1. Calculate your BMR, multiply by an activity factor, and subtract 500-1000 calories. That is your daily caloric target.


2. Aim for a balanced macronutrient ratio, such as 40/40/20 (40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fat) This almost always means eating way more protein than you would normally.


3. For carbs, stick to fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Low glycemic index (GI) for the win.


4. For fats, get healthy fats from olive and canola oil, nuts, avocado, and fatty fish. Avoid trans fats but don't be scared of saturated fats.


5. Perform heavy resistance exercise 3 or more days a week.


6. Low reps with heavy weights are the only way to go. Do not do high reps with low weights. By "high" I mean more than 10-12 reps.


7. Incorporate compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows, overhead presses, pullups, dips, cleans, and snatches. These are far better than isolation exercises like preacher curls and tricep kickbacks.


8. Make sure you get enough rest between workouts. You shouldn't work any one body part twice in 48 hours. You should also plan on taking a week off every couple of months to let your CNS recover.


9. Change your workout routine every 6-8 weeks to keep your body guessing. If you keep doing the same exercises you will stall once your body adapts to them.


10. Within an hour of each workout have a high-protein meal or shake with high GI carbs like dextrose (sugar) or milk. The carbs trigger an insulin response which promotes protein synthesis. This is the only time you should have high GI carbs.


11. Cardio is great for an extra calorie-burning boost, but it is not necessary for fat loss. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is superior to low-intensity steady state (LISS) cardio for body recomposition—it's quicker, works your heart better, and burns just as many if not more calories.

In order of importance, the keys to success are: diet > diet > lifting > HIIT cardio > LISS cardio > supplements.

If—if—you are doing all of the above, then I would think about supplementation. But you're not doing all of the above, are you?
posted by Khalad at 12:41 PM on July 9, 2008 [11 favorites has favorites]

And yes, I listed diet twice. If you have a crappy diet you will not get the results you want. Do not try to make up for a poor diet by working out harder, okay? That does not work.
posted by Khalad at 12:45 PM on July 9, 2008

Couple things here:

Hydroxycut: This is intended to tweak out your metabolism and force you to burn calories more quickly. There are two version of this out there, pre and post ephedra ban. This stuff just hurt my stomach and made me jittery. I have not tried it since the ephedra was removed but I cannot imagine that would _help_ the effectiveness.

Creatine: Totally different thing, Creatine is a supplement that converts ADP back in to ATP after your body has derived energy from the opposite reaction. It essentially allows you to "re-use" a small amount of available chemical energy in your muscles. The idea here is that your body is then able to do harder/longer workouts before total fatigue.

Fish Oil: High quality fish oil is like a wonder drug. It increases your metabolism, decreases muscle inflammation, improves your cholesterol, and promotes brain health (there are studies supporting but I am ignorant about the details there). When I work out, I don't even take ibuprofen anymore, I just take fish oil.

There are lots of things out there that claim to do this or that. The most important part is staying active and eating right (the latter of which is easily the hardest thing I have ever tried to do). Put in lots of protein and as little garbage as you can stand to be without, and stay with whatever type of activity you choose. After you do that, you are most of the way there, and in time you will be where you describe your goal to be.

Good luck!
posted by milqman at 12:54 PM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Remove sugar and grains. Totally. Even whole-wheat grains. The only carbs you take in should be from fruits and vegetables, and you should be eating those (easy on the fruit, heavy on the leafy greens like broccoli, spinach, kale, etc) in tremendous quantities. Provided you are not seriously overeating you will burn fat like nobody's business, though you will be pretty miserable from carb withdrawal for a while.
posted by schroedinger at 1:25 PM on July 9, 2008

Khalad, I love you. You just posted everything I was going to say!

Supplements like Hydroxycut and Creatine get the last 20% of a person and what they're trying to do. If you take supplements like these, without having the healthy habits in place, you're not going to accomplish anything.

If they don't work, you're just going to blame the supplement. If they do work, you're just going to put the weight back on after you're done.

Losing weight is sort of like a spiritual journey. Sometimes it takes years and years to put the pounds on, so it may take a while to take them off. Along the way you have to complete rewire the way you think. If weight loss was easy, you wouldn't have gotten their in the first place. It's a struggle, it's a sacrifice, but at the end of the day, when you look at your rad new bod, do you want to say, "gee, I'm glad the hydroxycut got me there" when you pig out on ice cream, or do you want to have newfound habits that have been forged in the kitchen and tempered by hours at the gym?
posted by unexpected at 1:25 PM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm sure your workout regimen is fine. The one listed above is a bit much.

There are natural fat burning pills that work for me.

These got me past that annoying extra poundage that refuse to go away:

Lysine
Carnitine
Nutraceuticals

Or, I would go to Whole Foods (as they would not sell anything dangerous) and ask for fat burning supplements. Country Life makes good ones. They're all-natural.
posted by Zambrano at 1:43 PM on July 9, 2008

If you want to get cut and lean, you need two things a great diet you can easily stick to and some intense workouts.

For the diet I would suggest the Zone, my current aim is to get cut and im using the Zone quite effectively. Just make sure you are getting those healthy fats.

For your workouts check out CrossFit you will never get bored and this type of working out will get you very defined. Just take a look at some of the videos and see how lean and muscular the guys and girls are.

You can also get loads of info on the Zone diet from the crossfit forums.
posted by moochoo at 1:45 PM on July 9, 2008

You all rule. Khalad, seconding the love. :P

The answers are all what I think my gut told me, but I needed some additional input.

Actually, I'm doing 1, 4, 5-9, and 10 -- but you're right, the diet is where I need to make the most effort at this point.

Schroedinger: you're right, and I've been successful using this in the past, but the unsustainablility (for me) of that makes it less palatable.

Milqman: Gonna try adding fish oil to the mix, but not seeing it as a magic bullet.

Unexpected: you're right -- and you're right. Healthy habits are the real solution. Thanks for reminding me of that.
posted by liquado at 1:46 PM on July 9, 2008

Best diet lesson ever: It's okay to be hungry. It's not really that bad. You might struggle a bit with concentration at work or whatever, but you're not going to do any damage to anything in your body by consuming less of everything. In fact, eating 60% of a day's calories lets mice live much longer (but probably less happy) lives. So knock off that 500-1000 calories of whatever you're eating and you'll be cut/lean in no time. You'll just be a bit hungry for a few hours a day.

Don't starve yourself. Don't eat garbage. Eat food. Mostly vegetables. Not too much.
posted by zpousman at 2:05 PM on July 9, 2008

Few comments on earlier posts
-----------------------------
-I disagree with the 40/40/20 macronutrient breakdown, much of the research I've read suggests more than 60% of the population are ill suited to eat that many carbohydrates. Good fats
should account for at least 30%. Skinfold measurement on the upper back relative to the rest of your body is a decent method for evaluating your ability to tolerate carbohydrates,
generally the thicker it is the fewer you should eat. (It's a good marker of insulin resistance http://pt.wkhealth.com/pt/re/amhj/abstract.00000406-199907000-00025.htm)

-Heavy resistance exercise isn't necessarily the best way to lose bodyfat, but the muscle you'll build with it will help. There has been substantial research on the best type of
exercise to lose bodyfat, the seminal paper was published in 1994 in Metabolism, Jul;43(7):814-8. Tremblay, Simoneau, Bouchard

'The impact of two different modes of training on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism was investigated in young adults who were subjected to either a 20-week endurance-training
(ET) program (eight men and nine women) or a 15-week high-intensity intermittent-training (HIIT) program (five men and five women)'
...
'Despite its lower energy cost, the HIIT program
induced a more pronounced reduction in subcutaneous adiposity compared with the ET program. When corrected for the energy cost of training, the decrease in the sum of six subcutaneous skinfolds induced by the HIIT program was ninefold greater than by the ET program.'

-Your workout routine should be changed every 4-8 workouts, not weeks, research on exercise adaptation shows roughly 70% of the population adapts to a given exercise within 6 workout sessions.

-I would advise against post workout shakes until you're eating 5-6 small, nutritionally sound meals a day, fundamentals first.

-Cardio isn't great for an extra calorie burning burst, as HIIT exercise is superior in every aspect, it should always been done instead of cardio unless you're interested in taking a
roundabout approach to your goals.

Fish Oils
---------
There are countless studies on how fish oil improves every condition from multiple sclerosis, coronary bypass surgery outcome, depression, diabetes, stroke, lower
ldl/vldl/triglyceride/homocysteine levels, increase hd, reduce c-reactive proteins etc etc.

If they're not convincing enough reason to take fish oils, look at the opposite perspective. Try and find a study where fish oils make a condition worse, I have not been able to find
one. The best I have found is some speculation that fish oil could increase the risk of hemmoragic stroke as it seems to be slightly increased in Inuit populations who eat exclusively
fish for 4+ months out of the year; of course it should be noted that fish oil is demonstrated to significantly reduce the risk of ischemic stroke which is by far more likely to
kill/incapacitate you.

Bottom line is that if you're concerned about your health, at all, you should be eating at least one serving of fish a day and taking supplemental fish oils.

The issue of mercury/pcb/dioxin toxicity from fish intank is a very interesting one, but largely irrelevant as the environment has been contaminated since the 70's and it hasn't changed
the outcomes of the longitudinal studies of fish eating populations vs meat eating vs vegetarians. Fish eaters almost always have the lowest across the board mortality.

Diet
----
There are plenty of great diet ideas out there, and we can argue about which is best all day, my thoughts:

1. Get an IgG/IgE/Elisa/Act blood food allergy test, eating things that your immune system has a panic attack about doesn't help you loose weight.
2. Only eat things that don't come in a box/bag or are processed in any way. Stuff as many pounds of meat (ok not like 2 pounds of steak a day, reasonable portions), vegetables, fish, fruits (ok ok not like 10 mangoes) into your face as you can chew and you'll still loose weight.

Workouts
--------
Workout like the athletes you want to look like, as the exercise done dictates the physiological response. Sprinters have the lowest bodyfat because their workouts mostly consist of
short durations of exercise that use the ATP-CP and anaerobic energy systems, while aerobics and endurance training workouts use fatty acids as their primary fuel source. Which group of
athletes are going to store more fat after the workout for use as energy next time they repeat the exercise?

Supplements
-----------
Unless you've already had a blood mineral profile and are sure you're balanced in all the basic vitamins and minerals, don't waste your time on weight loss supplements. Providing your
body with the fundamental building blocks is more important than stimulating your metabolism through ephedra/green tea/whatever.

Look for a capsule based multivitamin that uses high quality minerals (chelated minerals, all 4 tocotrienols and tocopherols, read up on what makes a good multivitamin), I like this at the moment
http://relentlessimprovement.com/catalog/ortho-core.htm

Food Journal
------------
A food journal is the most important thing anyone using weight can do, as it's impossible to decide what changes you need to make to your diet without an accurate record of what you're
eating. I lost 20 pounds after my knee surgery, and was stuck trying to gain weight back, thought I was eating 5 meals a day, enough calories; when I started tracking what I was eating I found
i was skipping 2-3 meals several times a week and lying to myself about my caloric intank.
posted by zentrification at 7:16 PM on July 9, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I have great results with eating five times a day- this will speed up your metabolism. Your common sense about what to put in your mouth is going to go a long way. I also have great luck with Beta Statin as a supplement. I mix it up with some banana, a few ice cubes and a couple of coffee beans. I like this guy's philosophy; he has some great videos at YouTube. Michael Ferencsik has some great videos also which lead to more productive work outs- if nothing else check them out.
posted by bkeene12 at 8:10 PM on July 9, 2008