Part I of this article covered the right and wrong reasons to use dietary supplements. This second part looks at supplements I would never buy and supplements I would not want to do without. It also describes how, why and with what you can put together your own pre-workout.
Supplements I would "never" buy
There are types of supplements I would "never" buy. I put "never" in quotes because even I can sometimes fall for a sharp deal and think: "Well, for ten or fifteen euros I might as well try it." But there is so much you could try that way that the costs add up quickly. Especially if you already buy a few supplements whose usefulness you do see (see below).
Supplements I would avoid in any case:
- Supplements that do not state how much of each ingredient is in the product.
I already had a problem with the fact that in many cases you cannot see how much of each ingredient a supplement contains. Take creatine, for example: it is so well known that almost everyone who uses it knows that around 5 grams a day is needed for it to work. If you then see a product that lists creatine but not the amount, how are you supposed to know whether that amount is useful or just a few grains?
"Proprietary blend", "pixie dusting"
I only realised how much worse it gets after watching the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster, which I recently drew attention to. It makes clear that under the name "proprietary blend" manufacturers can mix tiny amounts of otherwise fine ingredients that do nothing at those doses. Then they pad it with a lot of rice flour. Rice flour does have interesting properties for someone who wants to build muscle, but normally that comes at a fraction of the price you pay for these products. Many pre- and post-workouts in particular like to invent beautifully sounding formulas that contain so little of each substance that you get little or nothing out of them.
Personally I therefore prefer products with only one ingredient. If I do buy a product with several ingredients, I usually only do so when the dose of each ingredient is listed.
- Weight gainers, only when "really needed", and then preferably mixed yourself.
Weight gainers can work very well. In fact, my biggest recent gains in muscle came with weight gainers. So why the semi-negative verdict?
The reason I suddenly saw more growth without feeling I had to do more for it was that I had been given about 12 tubs of weight gainer by someone who could no longer sell them because they were just past their date. So no desire to make them last: just 3 to 4 shakes a day on top of my normal diet. That raised my total calorie intake by almost 40%, so I finally had a calorie surplus.
That does not speak in favour of weight gainers, though. It is mainly a criticism of myself that I apparently could not get those amounts in with normal food.
Weight gainers are often at least half carbohydrates. Those are easier to get in large amounts from normal food than protein. So it should be doable. That may sound odd from someone who has just admitted struggling with it himself, but I still see that as a personal shortcoming. Besides, I was already happy with my physique before those weight gainers. If you are not, and you truly cannot get enough from normal food, weight gainers can be a good option. Just be careful not to replace more and more of your food with them. And realise that if you mixed them yourself from carbohydrates and protein, you would be cheaper and have more control over the ingredients.
For example, combine 60 grams of oat flour with 30 grams of protein and optionally creatine (the last depending on any creatine you already use alongside).
Choose a house brand instead of a well-known brand
Choose the house brand of a large online supplement shop. Such a shop buys in large volumes, works with a lower margin, has lower costs than a physical store and saves on marketing. You see that advantage in the price.
More importantly: that a supplement carries a well-known brand name says even less about its quality than with clothing or electronics. With a clothing brand you know the quality is poor if it is worn to shreds in two months. The quality of a supplement, however, can be checked in a lab. I recently wrote about Craze, a supplement in which a variant of methamphetamine was found. I showed several examples of contaminated supplements that in almost every case came from large, well-known names in the industry.
In short: a supplier's name says little about quality (unless quality is precisely that supplier's main selling point, as with CreaPure® and the purity of its creatine). If you know nothing about the quality anyway, why not simply go for the cheapest option?
Which supplements do I need that actually work?
First it should be said that science keeps producing new insights that contradict, confirm or put earlier findings in context. There can be many supplements that work, but whose effectiveness has not yet been shown enough in independent studies. I therefore stick to supplements whose usefulness has been shown repeatedly. Those are the ones from which you can, so to speak, expect "the most grams of muscle per euro".
First I explain which kinds of supplements I recommend and why. Plenty of options remain when it comes to brand and shop.
Recommendations:
- Protein in general. Although the amounts are endlessly debated, the added value of protein for both muscle building and fat loss (for example as calories replacing carbohydrates) has been shown. As stated earlier, though, it is hard to get the amounts most people advise (between 2 and 3 grams per kilo of body weight) from normal food.
- Specific, isolated protein sources. As I said, one advantage of supplements is that you can take some substances in isolation. I already mentioned casein and whey. Whey is often used right after training because of its absorption speed. Casein is often used before bed because of its gradual release. That can be a reason to want casein and whey separately.
- Hydrolysed protein. Another mentioned advantage is pre-processing some supplements to increase effectiveness. The protein hydrolysates mentioned earlier are a good example. They are absorbed even faster than whey and also faster than free amino acids. Personally I take hydrolysed protein (instead of whey) right after training to send amino acids to the muscles as quickly as possible to build, followed about half an hour later by casein to limit breakdown in the hours that follow.
- Creatine monohydrate. One of the most researched and proven supplements, and also (relatively) very cheap compared with other supplements. That is a problem for manufacturers who want to earn money and stand out, of course. So you get all kinds of "better" creatine variants whose effects in most cases have not been shown, or not shown enough, and which are of course all a lot more expensive than "ordinary" creatine monohydrate.
With these you quickly reach 40 to 50 euros a month. You can only spend a euro once. There are many other supplements whose added value has been shown. So if you still have supplement budget left, I would look at the following.
- Multivitamins and minerals. Some would have put these in the previous list. I did not, because you cannot generally say what effect they have on muscle growth or fat loss. That has been studied for many individual vitamins and minerals. Many of them also only work optimally in the presence of other vitamins and minerals. As an athlete you also have a greater need for these micronutrients for overall health, so you can keep training.
- Omega-3 or MCT oil. Read the articles in the Fats category for more detail.
- Citrulline as an NO booster instead of arginine: read the Citrulline article for more detail.
- Free amino acids. Although you get amino acids via protein, you may want more of some specific ones because they play a big role in determining muscle mass. Think of BCAAs in general and leucine in particular.
"Is that all?"
There will no doubt be more supplements that help you reach your training goals. I use more products myself, but not on a fixed monthly basis like the recommendations above. Looking at my personal budget, it is usually fully used once I have bought the recommended supplements, and completely so if I have also bought everything in the list below. Especially when you realise you do not want to try these once, but use them every month. For well-earning singles there may still be plenty left to try, but for me every extra spend is a comparison with other things, such as a cinema visit or something else the rest of the family benefits from more than my muscle mass.
If I still think I can spend a bit more, or I simply want to try something else, I often end up with the following:
- Beta-alanine: for more energy during training.
- Fast carbohydrates such as dextrose, maltodextrin or waxy maize starch. For energy during training and glycogen recovery afterwards. Vitargo is a popular option for this because it is said to be absorbed even faster. Because of the high price I would never buy it again myself. For the price of one kilo of Vitargo you get 5 to 6 kilos of the fast carbohydrates I mentioned.
Do I need a pre-workout?
Pre-workouts contain fixed categories of supplements. First there are almost always ingredients meant to give more energy, such as taurine, caffeine, beta-alanine and fast carbohydrates. There are also almost always ingredients meant to work as an NO booster to give you the much-wanted "pump" during training. Some pre-workouts also contain creatine. Finally, free amino acids are sometimes included to give the muscles building blocks during training.
So you can also mix these yourself with the products from the recommendation lists. I prefer that as well. You know exactly how much of each ingredient you get. And it works out a lot cheaper. Then again, I also like cooking, so…
Below is an example of how I often put together my own pre-workout, although it can look different from one time to the next. The base often stays the same.
My pre-workout:
- 20 grams of protein hydrolysate (whey hydrolysate or Pepto-Pro; given the price/quality difference I personally choose whey hydrolysate)
- 5 grams of beta-alanine
- 10 grams of citrulline
- 40 grams of dextrose, maltodextrin or waxy maize starch
Creatine is not included because it has been shown to work better when taken after training (11). I have not included caffeine because it conflicts with creatine and limits creatine's effect (12,13).
What about fat burners?
Forget fat burners (I almost put that less politely). The fat burners that worked are now illegal (ephedrine) or contain methamphetamine or other drugs without you knowing, as with Craze and Iomax. For the rest, barely any effect has been shown. Do not believe hypes either, such as Dr. Oz recommending raspberry ketones.
The main reason you do not need fat burners is that losing weight is easy. Before I have angry Weight Watchers members on my doorstep, let me nuance that. Losing weight is in theory much simpler than building lean muscle. If you want to build lean muscle, you are constantly balancing eating enough to build muscle and not so much that body fat rises. In the classic bulk-and-cut method you first build muscle while also gaining fat, then in the cut you try to lose the fat while keeping as much muscle as possible. That is a fine line. Even if a fat burner raised your burn, that would apply to total burn, not only body fat (so also carbohydrates and protein from muscle). You still would not have improved the ratio of muscle to fat. You burn more calories, which reduces body fat, but at the cost of muscle growth.
If it is only about losing weight, that is very easy in theory. Everyone knows the theory: "Burn more than you eat, or eat less than you burn." Nothing complicated about it, except that you still have to do it in practice.
If fat burners work at all, it is simply by raising your burn. You get the same effect by being more active or simply eating less. You could almost compare that to weight gainers in the reverse situation. An important difference is that you know weight gainers work because they really add calories, whereas with a fat burner you do not know whether burn is actually raised.
How objective is FITsociety.nl?
I originally wrote this article for Buildmybody.nl and later moved it to FITsociety.nl.
If you had read all the articles on supplements, especially the reviews, you would notice I am more often negative than positive. When a manufacturer wants to send supplements with a request for a review, I always say it will be done as objectively and honestly as possible. If I think it is worthless, I write that too.
Moreover, I do not sell supplements myself. I started Buildmybody.nl to give people information that makes it easier to reach their goals. I want to continue that same line in my work for FITsociety.nl.
