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Supplement Question for Health People

4K views 90 replies 18 participants last post by  _Kyle_ 
#1 ·
I'm sure there are at least a few people around here that can help out. . .

I'm looking for recommendations on a good supplement for my workouts. Right now i've been hitting my colleges rec center about 5 times a week for 30-45 min of cardio each time, and some lifting about 2-3 times a week. Main goal is to ditch some of the extra weight (fat) i've gained sitting at a desk and to build some more upper body strength. I've already been watching what I eat pretty closely and skipping all the unhealthy shit, besides some beers on the weekend, but not counting down to the calorie.

A buddy of mine recommended the TeamBeachBody Shakeology drink (P90X people) and said he really enjoyed it. I'm curious as to if there is something better I should look into buying or if that would be sufficient.

Any diet/food tips are also appreciated - being a college student makes it kinda hard to eat well sometimes..
 
#2 ·
Id skip the protein shakes... Being healthy is something that doesn't happen in a month, stick with it.. at least attempting to be healthy and being aware of what you eat is a good start- get your exercise but don't over do it and burn yourself out.

Ive lost probably 25+lbs in the last 2 years- just adopting a healthier lifestyle, and getting some exercise in every other day. I feel great- and am probably in the best shape ive ever been.
 
#3 ·
Yea, im not trying to over do it, but I don't really have too much else to do, hahah. Lots of gaps between my classes and stuff so I have to do something.

I can definitely tell a big difference in how I feel - sleep well and feel pretty good each day and not really exhausted by the end of the day.

I haven't done too much reading, but what I did browse seemed to lead me to believe that protein was something necessary to increase fat burn (i.e. weight loss), as well as muscle growth.
 
#5 ·
hah, not really a resolution. I've been meaning to do it for some time now. But I couldn't justify the ridiculous cost of a gym membership in DC while I was there, especially when I just plain didn't have the time to go there. But with college, I get unlimited visits to our rec facility with full weights, full cardio, full machines, giant pool, hot tub, and shit ton of other stuff. I was hitting that everyday when I visited home from DC.
 
#7 ·
Eat healthy
Stick to a routine
Pop some cinnamon
Drink lots of water
Get regular sleep

All that other crap they sell is for people who lift things up and put things down.
Pop some cinnamon? Say what?

Working on watching what I eat and cutting out the garbage, hard sometimes to grab a fast bite, even at home, though. Routine is in progress as I get back into the groove of things with school. Been drinking 2-3 bottles of water a day, if not a little more when I can. Sleep regularly from about 12am-7am or so. :thumb:
 
#12 ·
Yea, eating less calories seems to be the most common consensus but a lot of things ive read also point to eating the right about of protein as well...which is hard to come by with food.

Protein is good. Dont skip it, muscles need to recoup. If your cardio hits a platau strenght training is the next thing you need. Remember, its about body compisition. More muscle = more fat and calories burned, night or day.
See above, lol.

Turkey dogs or brats and whole wheat buns feels like junk food but really isnt.
Definitely need to keep that in mind.
 
#17 ·
I'm not a professional body builder or anything but I always thought those supplements were just expensive pee. When I was a bit more of a gym rat when I was in the Marines, I tried a few different ones over the course of 3 or 4 years and every time I would ween myself off of them, I would quickly lose a bit of muscle definition. It seemed like you need to really keep up with them perpetually or you lose any of the gains quickly.

Besides, if your stated goal is to lose weight, I don't think supplements that are meant to help you bulk up are going to give you the results that you want.

When I got married I wanted to lose another 15 pounds before my wedding - basically my love handles and a little bit off of my gut. I already had been running and doing some weights for years but needed something else to change it up. I started doing an hour of spinning twice a week, switched one of my days of lifting each week to a day of interval training with little rest between each station/set, and added interval training to one of my runs each morning.

I also cut out my daily bowl of Cap'n Crunch and some of my sugary/salty snacks and replaced them with stuff like Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, whole-grain breads, and peanut butter. In the end I lost about 10 pounds and a bit off of my love handles and gut and was very happy with the results (I've never been able to lose my love handles completely, even at the end of boot camp when I looked like a holocaust survivor I still had them).
 
#18 ·
Eat heavy in the morning and make your meals smaller as the day goes on, quit eating at night, and as the day goes on eat less carbs. Supplements are a joke for the average guy.
No soda pop or energy drinks at all, no milk, doughy stuff, rice, bread only at breakfast, and lot's of raw veggies. Fresh fruit should be your desert. Lean meats are good, and yes i mean beef.

write down everything you eat and what time you eat it for a week. then post it
 
#19 ·
write down everything you eat and what time you eat it for a week. then post it
Very good advice. Even if you don't post it up, tracking everything you eat for a week and the amount of calories and fat (and salt and sugar if known) is very helpful. It gives you an idea of just what is in some of the things you eat most often and helps you make better choices afterwards.

I have an app on my iPhone that I used to do this for about 8 or 10 days a few months ago that was really helpful. Originally I planned to do it for a month but it got to be too much of a pain so I gradually stopped but even now I still remember the values of certain foods and snacks and the impacts that they might have.

This is one of those cases where knowledge is power.
 
#21 ·
Ditch the white bread, get whole wheat non processed bread. Ditch the bacon for a higher protein less fat option.

add a small snack between lunch and breakfast

Lunch - ditch the ham for turkey, wheat bread.

Snack before dinner

dinner-cheese and peperoni? lasagna? Try a chicken breast, or a pork chop, a fresh steamed veggie and a baked potatoe.

portion size and the amount of calories you eat need to be calculated for your age, weight, etc. Google any simple bmr calorie calc.

Brio Calorie tracker for Black berry. Once you start using it it's super simple as you can store your foods in it and pull them up any time, once you have a few weeks in the only time you need to input a food is when you are eating something totally new. I also have a calorie count food search engine on my bb, but I don't usually use either of them because I suck at being that anal about keeping track of my food. And I am down 10 lbs since December 1st anyway, so I am ok with that.
 
#25 ·
I gotcha on the easy fixes, mostly i'm finishing up leftover stuff in the fridge and going to the store tomorrow anyways. What do you recommend for breakfast replacements? I also occasionally grab a bowl of oatmeal.

For snacks i'll try to fit in some carrot sticks or something between classes or whatever. I just feel like i'm eating a lot/more/too much if I snack between meals and stuff. Never really snacked too much.

Dinner has just been winged this week since I'm still trying to work out my school schedule and what fits in where for the rest of the stuff I need to get done in life. I do need to see what simple/easy/quick things I can figure out for dinner as I don't usually plan that far into my day, hahah.

Calorie/portion wise, I don't think anything is really out of control. . .but I can say its a 100% improvement over what I was eating/doing the past 7 months I spent in DC.
 
#27 ·
I dropped about 30 pounds in a couple months by doing an ECA stack and running 1-2 miles a day. Google "ECA Stack", but be warned, that shit is NOT for the faint of heart. When I first started taking it I felt like I was on crack and could bench press a school bus. There were days I could run 5 miles no problem and want to run 20 more.

I lost a shitload of weight, decided I was too skinny, and wanted to do a lean mass routine. For the past few months I've been lifitng weights 5 times a day, an hour a day. On certain days if I'm bored I'll do cardio too. I do a NO-XPLODE before my workout, and 3-4 protein shakes throughout the day.


I've seen VERY good results and would HIGHLY recommend the protein shakes. The recommended protein intake for my body mass and where I want to get is like 250g a day or something like that high. It would be hard as SHIT for me to do that with just food.
 
#40 ·
I change it up constantly, I rotate my days based on how my body feels, and when I can get to the gym.

My rotation looks something like this. (I follow a more powerlifting/total body type mindset)

I rotate these days at the gym.

Bench Press/push-ups. (on these days I focus primarily on either increasing strength, power or endurance, so I may do a heavy day which would be low reps (less than 6 for all sets, approximately 13-18 sets of "work" and then 2-3 sets of 10 reps for chest, followed with 2-3 sets of 10 for triceps, on a power day I focus on explosive movements, push press, clap push ups, etc 13-18 sets of work, done as explosively as possible, 3-5 reps, endurance days will look like pushups until failure, light bench in sets, 30/30 sets (30 seconds of reps, 30 seconds of rest, 5 minutes total, total number of reps, same weight week to week and I just try to improve the number of reps in that 5 minutes)

Deadlift
Again, Strength (High weight, low reps, lots of sets, deadlifts, rack pulls, Rows etc), power (cleans, snatches, high pulls, etc), endurance (last night for example I deadlifted 135 25 times to warm up, then loaded 225 on the bar and went for 50 reps as quickly as possible, rested as needed but completed 50 reps)

Squat
Again, I rotate between strength, power, and endurance.

Total Body.
DB, BB complexes, 30/30's, some cardio, core work, etc. These days are always about "cardio lifting" ie complexes. Usually I keep track of my total time on a complex and compare back when I do one again (i rotate about 10-20 different complexes so it may be 6 months before I do the same thing again) and see how my time compared.

Those are strictly my gym days, which I can get to 3-4 days per week, that rotation never changes, if I can go to the gym, I do my next day in that order.

so the order may look like this.

Bench Power
Squat Strenght
Deadlift power
"Cardio lift/Complexes"
Bench Strength
Squat Endurance
Deadlift Strength
"Cardio lift/complexes"
Bench Endurace
Squat power
Deadlift Endurance
"cardio Lift/complexes"

So last night was deadlift endurance, the next time I am able to get to the gym I will do cardio lifting and complexes.

On the days I can not make it to the gym I go down in my basement and do work with my kettle bells for about a half hour-45 minutes, then I do 15-30 minutes of interval work with a heavy punching bag. so I may actually do this three or four days in a row depending on my schedule and when I can get back to the gym.

I may also beat myself down with 3 or 4 hard days in a row at the gym and then have a 3-4 day period I can't make it to the gym, so it gives me time to recover. I try to work out at least 5-6 days per week, never 7. And never more than 6 in a row.

I started lifting in 2002 to train for "strongman" competitions, I was 5-10 160, competed (175lb class) for a while until an injury, and from 2005 -2008 I never set foot in the gym.

I was up to 180-185ish and my % body fat had climbed to 20%, got back in the groove and got up to 185 @ 10% bodyfat, got busy with "life" and didn't make it to the gym in 2010. Went up to 195 @ 27% bodyfat, I started back to the gym in November. I am now down to 180 and my % body fat is now 20%, so I have maintained my lean body weight, but lost mostly fat to this point.

Hope some of that helps.
 
#46 · (Edited)
#47 ·
yeah, thats a good reference as far as knowing what the excersizes are.

Abandon any "focus" on muscles or zones you want to train. Focus on training the main components of your body with movements that incorporate multiple muscle groups.

Example, Do push ups and bench for chest (which also use shoulders, lats, triceps, etc), don't waste time doing cable fly's and dumbell flies, and isolation movements.

Same with legs, do squats (hams, glutes, quads, calves, core, etc) not leg extensions (quads).

You can do cable flies, and leg curls, and leg extensions when you are about to enter your next body building show and your quads need a little catch up, or your inner chest is a bit underdeveloped, until then leave that douchebag shit to the douchebags who want to build fluffy muscles, in the mean time focus on fitness and relative strength and you'll melt away the fat.
 
#49 · (Edited)
Almost every excersize I mentioned in my previous email is a compound movement that has primary and secondary movers (push up, chest primary, delts and tris secondary).

My point is you will see a ton of guys at the gym doing tricep extensions for an entire hour. Why not overload the shit out of your chest, and recruit your delts and tris, and burn twice the calories, and work more muscles in less time? Plus, the only people who really need to isolate muscles are bodybuilders who already have >5% bodyfat and have a muscle that isn't as developed as other groups. OR a competitive powerlifter who is trying to get passed a sticking point (say bench press) he may have week Lat's and can't get out of the hole, or he may have week tris and can't get lock out, or he may have week pecs and gets stuck in the middle....

pm me your email. I will forward you an example of a simple work out routine you can follow. It is more geared toward adding strength, but I will explain how you can tailor it to maintaining your current strength and burning some extra fat.
 
#51 ·
if you are still in transition stage with the new healthier diet - whey protein powder blended into a smoothy or just vanilla yogurt can help cut the urge to snack a bit between meals. or serve as the 'semi-healthy' snack.
 
#53 ·
Keep in mind your weight will fluctuate throughout the day, I fluctuate as much as 5-7 lbs on some days.

I weigh myself daily still, and use it as a barometer to notice trends, If you are trending even or down, then your good. Worry more about your average weight for each week or month, then your actual weight each day.

I still owe you that email, I just haven't dug it up yet to send to you.
 
#55 ·
Before I forget, a good playlist is a must. Listening to this song while I am lifting automatically adds 50lbs and 20 reps to whatever exercise I am doing. :teehee:

 
#56 ·
Before I forget, a good playlist is a must. Listening to this song while I am lifting automatically adds 50lbs and 20 reps to whatever exercise I am doing. :teehee:

YouTube - Metallica - St. Anger [Amended] (Video)
I always take my ipod with me, hahaha.

The weight was for the end of the week, seemed to have creeped down a bit but like I said who knows how accurate that is. I didn't weight myself this morning. But now its not even really difficult to get myself to go. I look forward to it and try to get as much out of it :thumb:
 
#57 ·
Well according to the LiveStrong calculator, for today I consumed the following. . .

Calories: 1511
Fat: 40 g
Cholesterol: 602 mg
Sodium: 2588 mg
Carbs: 147 g
Fiber: 24 g
Protein: 129 g
Sugars: 65 g

and I burned ~600 calories working out this morning. . .

Probably gonna grab some sort of snack here before bed thought, lol.
 
#59 ·
Nahhh, but I spent half the day outside in the garage so I didn't stop to eat too much.

Though what are some other filling yet healthy snacks for during the daytime?

EDIT: Playing with the counter and getting a more accurate serving size puts it around ~2000 calories.
 
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