General Health
For optimal performance, it is important to get adequate vitamins and minerals in the diet. To cover all your bases I recommend a comprehensive multivitamin that contains well absorbed vitamins and minerals. An excellent vitamin is NOW Special Two.
Fish oils (or Omega 3 caps) contain the essential fatty acids EPA and DHA and are recommended to people who do not eat lots of salmon or other fatty fish. The North American diet is typically low in the anti-inflammatory Omega 3's, and high in the pro-inflammatory Omega 6's (due largely to consumption of polyunsaturated oils). An ideal ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 is 5:1. NOW Ultra Omega 3 is an excellent fish oil which is enteric coated so you don't get any fishy aftertaste. You'd want to take 2-3 caps per day of the concentrated fish oils (or 4-6 of the non-concentrated).
Weightlifting Supplement Basics
This is the minimum recommended supplementation, without the extra "goodies".
Creatine is typically recommended for its ability to improve your strength. When you are trying to lose fat, creatine can help you lift more in the gym and keep your lean body mass. I recommend taking Prolab Creatine Monohydrate. You should take 1g per 40 lbs of bodyweight (which is about 1 tsp for a 200 lbs individual) daily. As long as you do not load it (take larger amounts at the beginning), and take a weight appropriate amount, it should not bloat you. Note that creatine builds up stores in your system, and it will take about a month to reach maximum effectiveness. It does not matter what time of day you take it, you may wish to take it post workout on workout days, in a protein shake.
The second basic supplement I recommend is protein powder. This is a great way to reach your protein requirements, but remember to get most of your protein from food. It is also helpful to shuttle protein to your muscle quickly after a workout, and is often taken immediately post-workout. I recommend taking Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey. I really enjoyed the Extreme Milk Chocolate, Caramel Toffee Fudge and Chocolate Mint flavors mixed in milk.
Heavy weightlifting is hard on the joints. You may consider taking a glucosamine & condroitin formula such as NOW Glucosamine and Condroitin to help protect your joints. If you already have nagging joint issues, I highly recommend taking
Universal Animal Flex
instead for its comprehensive formula.
Improve Workout Performance
If you incorporate endurance into your lifting (ie. do more than 8 reps per set), or do other endurance activity (eg. running) I highly recommend taking a beta alanine supplement such as Athletic Edge Nutrition IntraXCell. Please note that for the full effects to be seen, you need to take it daily. After several months, you will see a large improvement in endurance. This can help tremendously if you are doing lots of cardio to help with fat loss.
I found taking a pre-workout supplement to be very helpful. When on a diet, it can give you that extra boost in energy that you aren't getting from diet. I highly recommend
Scivation VasoCharge. A creatine-only product is still needed, and you can easily mix creatine monohydrate in with the vasocharge (or alternatively, put it in your post-workout shake).
Improve Recovery
To help with recovery, I highly recommend taking a post-workout supplement such as
Optimum 2:1:1 Recovery which contains carbohydrates, protein and BCAAs. This is very useful if you cannot get in an adequate post-workout meal (for example, if you exercise before work in the morning, or between classes).
Fat Burners
Only add in fat burners after you have a well-established plan that works. Fat burners can increase metabolic rate to help you burn more calories and can decrease appetite helping with dietary compliance.
A couple fairly mild fat burners that I would recommend would be (don't take together)
1)
MAN Scorch
2)
Designer Supplements Adrenalean
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