CALIBER Team Newsletter: [Day 6/7] Supplements


Published by CALIBER Team on January 28th, 2019 1:46pm. 141 views.


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What if there was a magic pill you could take that would add 10 pounds of lean, solid muscle to your frame overnight…

...all while burning off every last layer of unsightly body fat and revealing ripped six pack abs?

This is everyone's dream…

Unfortunately, that’s all it is - just a dream.

But don’t tell that to the $5.9 BILLION dollar supplement industry, whose sole purpose is to convince you that you can get lean and ripped by popping a few pills or drinking super-charged muscle-building shakes.

The truth is that if you want to develop a lean, muscular body, you have to put in the work.

This doesn’t mean, however, that all supplements are useless and a waste of money…

Even if there’s no magic pill you can take that will give you an instant superhero physique, there are plenty of supplements that can assist you on your way to developing a bigger, leaner, and stronger body.

Here’s what we take ourselves, and what we also recommend to the majority of our personal training clients:

PROTEIN POWDERS AND BARS

Whether you’re trying to build muscle or burn fat, you need a good amount of protein in your diet, and likely more than you’re getting now.

Protein is an extremely important macronutrient.

Your organs, muscles, skin, hair, and many hormones all contain protein.

And adequate protein intake is necessary to build new muscle and keep the muscle you already have - especially when dieting to lose weight.

In fact, we’d say that the biggest adjustment most of our clients have to make when starting up our training program is increasing their protein intake, because we almost always recommend at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.

While it’s completely possible to hit this recommended protein intake with food alone, it becomes a whole lot easier to do on a daily basis if you’re taking protein supplements.

With just a couple scoops of a good, high-quality protein powder like Optimum Nutrition, you can get a quick infusion of 24-48 grams of protein into your diet with an easy-to-drink shake.

We’re also huge fans of Quest protein bars.

Quest uses very high quality sources of protein as its main ingredient. They taste delicious and are easy to carry around with you throughout the day. And as an added bonus, they’re also packed with fiber.

FISH OIL

Fish oil is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids. We’re sure you’ve already heard the hype about omega-3s, and in this case, all the hype is real.

Fish oil has been proven to increase protein synthesis, reduce inflammation, reduce blood pressure, improve insulin sensitivity, improve memory, speed up fat loss, and a whole host of other benefits that are too extensive to mention in this one lesson.

There’s one big problem with fish oil supplements, though…

The majority of fish oil supplements that you’ll find in the store are way, way underdosed.

You’d have to take more than 20 pills a day to get any sort of benefit. That’s why it’s extremely important to make sure that you’re choosing a high-quality brand.

We recommend Life Extension’s Super Omega 3. You only have to take 4 pills per day to get an optimal dosage of fish oil. Other brands we like include Nordic Naturals and Carlson’s.

CAFFEINE

Pre-workout supplements have been getting a lot of attention recently, but our favorite pre-workout supplement is actually the cheapest too - and that’s good ol’ caffeine.

Caffeine has two major benefits as a workout supplement:

  1. It increase the calories you burn by stimulating your metabolism.
  2. It boosts your energy levels and improves your focus in the gym.

Caffeine has also been proven to improve strength and muscle endurance. And if you work out in the morning, it’s great for waking you up and putting you in the right state of mind for weight training.

When taking caffeine as a pre-workout supplement, you can either have a cup of coffee before your workout, or you can buy some caffeine pills (we recommend the ProLab brand).

Either way, we think you’ll find that supplementing with caffeine before your workouts will give you a nice boost in the gym and help you perform at your very best.

MULTIVITAMIN

Your body needs a wide variety of vitamins and minerals to keep you healthy, and it can be difficult to get everything that you need from food alone.

That’s why we recommend taking a regular multivitamin, kind of like an insurance policy, to help you "fill in the gaps" of the vitamins and minerals that you don’t get in large enough quantities from your diet.

We recommend the Life Extension Mix or the Life Extension Two Per Day Capsules. If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re pretty big fans of Life Extension supplements and we think they do a remarkable job producing high-quality supplements for very reasonable costs.

BRANCHED-CHAIN AMINO ACIDS (BCAAs)

A lot of people in the gym will blindly recommend BCAAs to you because they’ve gotten the reputation of helping your muscles grow faster and increasing your performance at the gym.

But the truth is that BCAAs are totally unnecessary if you’re following a regular eating schedule and working out within a few hours of having eaten a meal.

HOWEVER…

If you’re following an intermittent fasting protocol like we talked about in our previous email, then BCAAs become very important when working out in a fasted state - for instance, if you skip breakfast and you regularly exercise in the morning.

In this case, it’s important to take 10 grams of BCAAs prior to your workout to prevent muscle breakdown.

One of the disadvantages of working out on an empty stomach is that it can cause increased muscle breakdown because you don’t have any amino acids in your bloodstream.

Ingesting BCAAs before your workout fixes this problem and allows you to build muscle more effectively during a fasted state by halting muscle breakdown.

BCAAs also have zero calories, so you can take them without any worries about breaking your fast.

We recommend the Scivation Xtend BCAAs because they’re effective and they taste great.

FAT BURNERS

First things first…

We typically do NOT recommend fat burners to our clients.

That’s because most people assume that if they take a fat burner, they will automatically start losing fat and they forget the GOLDEN RULE of dieting, which is… (say it with me now):

Your body has to burn more calories than you take in to lose weight.

Sorry, but there’s no pill you can take that will allow you to magically burn fat without being in a caloric deficit.

In addition, fat burners tend to cause unpleasant side effects for a lot of people, including jittery, uneven energy spikes, heart palpitations, increased anxiety, etc.

Fat burners CAN be somewhat effective, though, if you manage your expectations and don’t expect miracles.

By including a fat burner in your supplement regimen, it will have an effect similar to that of caffeine and its thermogenic properties will cause your body to burn more calories throughout the day.

The amount of calories burned by taking a fat burner, though, is pretty minimal…

...and we estimate that you’re only burning an extra 100-200 calories per day by taking one of these supplements.

To be honest, we really don’t really think it’s worth it considering the potential side effects.

SUMMARY

There are 4 primary supplements that we recommend to almost all of our training clients:

  • Protein powders and bars
  • Fish oil
  • Caffeine
  • Multivitamins

That’s it!

You don’t need anything more than that to build a lean, strong body.

So the next time you step foot into a GNC and the teenager behind the counter is urging you to purchase "the next big thing" in muscle boosting / fat burning awesomeness, just smile and say, "No thanks."

Tomorrow is the last day of THE 7 DAY REBOOT, and we figured we’d conclude this series with a subject that most fitness gurus avoid like the plague…

ALCOHOL!

We’re going to teach you how you can include alcohol in your diet without ruining your muscle building and fat loss efforts.

Yep, you can still enjoy a drink or 2 and maintain a lean, ripped six pack.

We’ll show you how.



All the best,

Chris and Justin
Co-Founders of CALIBER
https://caliberstrong.com