Nutritional Supplements We Like

A Human Being Is Primarily a Bag for Putting Food Into

“A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into.”

George Orwell

Young alpha male, shown in the featured image, on a quest for muscle and strength.

Born Skeptic, Not Anti-Supplement

I am not anti-supplement, but I am a born skeptic. The nutritional supplement industry has always been rife with hyperbole, outrageous exaggeration and outright false advertising. A famous supplement maker, a professional acquaintance, made millions with his “revolutionary” muscle-building / fat-burning product. His genius was in advertising. He used before-and-after pictures of “transformed users,” regular folks, and created a stampede of buyers.

He once bragged to me that the entire supplement industry was “completely” corrupt and bogus. He smirked as he related that he had a cost of two dollars per unit, “high-gloss packaging, filler and fluff,” invested in a product that he sold for $45 a pop. He insisted the entire supplement industry was cynical: the sellers knew their products were worthless because they “assembled them.” It was all about sales. No one, he maintained, could get results from the products of that era because none of the products contained any nutrients with any nutritional value.

His sales approach bucked the trend. For decades, supplement ads were all about muscled-up dudes, scantily clad bikini babes and “big lie” promises. My acquaintance jolted the complacent industry with his ads that featured dramatic transformations of regular people. He flooded the muscle mags with two-page ads. Each page would have thirty or so small before-and-after photos of regular folks. The transformations were visible and profound — and fake. Each “before” image was made a little fatter and each “after” image streamlined. This was in an era when photo manipulation was not yet a household word. He later died in his New Jersey mansion of a drug overdose.

Old Muscle-Magazine Supplement Hype

In my opinion, most of the nutritional supplements sold in the muscle magazines of my youth were worthless. Later in life I discovered that many protein supplements sold back in those days used anemic, low-grade soy protein. The soy-protein era began to lose its grip when Rheo H. Blair helped popularize milk-and-egg protein and ran lengthy ads extolling the virtues of milk-and-egg protein while explaining why soy sucked. That was an industry game changer.

Fast forward. The hyperbole continues and, while anemic products are still common, unlike yesteryear there are quality nutritional supplements available. I have used certain nutritional supplements with great consistency my entire adult life. There are other nutritional supplements that I have used with varying degrees of success, periodically and sporadically. Overall, there is a need for the intelligent use of nutritional supplements on a limited and targeted basis.

How is someone to sort through the supplemental haystack to find the golden needle, a supplement, or supplements, that factually and measurably improves physique and / or performance?

Supplements Supplement; They Do Not Supplant

A supplement is meant to supplement, not supplant or replace, the expert use of regular food. The eternal foundation of power nutrition is the consumption of nutrient-dense, seasonally appropriate, locally sourced proteins and produce. Organic is excellent when available, affordable, and practical. But the deeper point is not a label. The deeper point is food quality. The human body runs best on real food consumed with regularity and purpose.

Square up the nutritional content. There will be “gaps” in the diet. Usually, the hard-training athlete is unable, unwilling or too busy to consume the optimal amount of a particular nutrient, trace element or protein allotment from food alone. Nutritional supplementation can address shortfalls when used intelligently.

Potent supplements used correctly can amplify results and act as a force multiplier. Supplements can make life easier for those dedicated to the consumption of nutrient-dense food. Caloric shortfalls, protein shortfalls and certain micronutrient shortfalls can sometimes be addressed with expert use of regular food augmented by targeted supplements. Medical deficiencies, anemia, medication concerns, or disease states are a different matter and should be handled with qualified guidance.

Clean Up the Diet Before Adding Supplements

The first order of business is to clean up the content of the diet. Jettison the bad stuff, heavy up on the good stuff. Chips, sodas, cakes, pies, beer, and whatever comes in a wrapper, package or can, are easy to overconsume. Highly processed food can drive calories up, hunger up, and discipline down. Repeated high-sugar or high-glycemic eating all day long can make body-fat control harder.

Do not turn insulin into a cartoon villain. Body composition is governed by total diet, total calories, training, food quality, sleep, stress, and adherence. Still, be smart: if eating higher-glycemic food or drink, combine it with protein, fiber and, most particularly, fat. If insulin-producing foods are consumed in combination with protein, fiber, and fat, the severity of the blood-sugar response is often reduced.

Past that, after cleaning up content, feel free to use whatever clean content you desire. Go keto, vegetarian, lacto-vegetarian, whatever content you pick, keep it clean and serious. Supplements are not the foundation. Food is the foundation.

The Nutritional Supplements I Actually Use

Protein Powder

Protein powder is my most consistent supplement. Hardcore athletes need extra protein. The easiest way to bump up protein intake is to drink it. I use whey and caseinate, 30 to 35 grams of protein per serving. Protein powder is not magic. It is convenience. It is a clean way to hit a protein target when eating another whole-food meal is impractical.

Sports Nutrition Bars

I love the ease and taste of sports nutrition bars. Clean calories, a meal in a wrapper, a legal taste treat. I use a higher-calorie sport bar for bulking winters and a lower-calorie sport bar for leaning out in summer. Read labels. Some “nutrition bars” are candy bars in a singlet. Others are genuinely useful.

Pills: Vitamins, Minerals, Fish Oil, Aminos, and Liver

My wife makes me take them. When I am serious, I take vitamins and minerals, fish oil, amino acids, beef liver and the usual assortment. I am not as consistent in this as I should be. Pills make sense when they address a real shortfall or support a specific goal. Random pill-popping is not sophistication.

MCTs

Medium-chain triglycerides have gotten positive press in recent years. MCTs are calorically dense, roughly 100 calories per tablespoon, and are metabolized differently than many long-chain fats. I am a big fan of MCTs. That said, calories are still calories. MCTs are not a license to pour fat into every drink and pretend the body cannot count.

Creatine Monohydrate

Creatine monohydrate is effective when the athlete is seeking to add lean muscle mass and improve repeated high-intensity effort. Creatine helps saturate muscle creatine stores and often increases water retention inside the muscle, improving leverage and training capacity for some lifters. It works best when hard training, food and consistency are already in place.

Workout Replenishment

It makes perfect sense to replenish that which has been consumed during an intense training session. I use a half-protein / half-carbohydrate mixture and drink it three-quarters of the way through a workout. This is not needed after every casual exercise session. It makes sense after a hard session that actually creates a replenishment demand.

Bottom line: take a hard look at your diet. Look to tighten up the purity of the content. Do you have an overarching physique or performance goal? Classically, once a concrete athletic goal is identified, a timeline is established. The athlete then works toward the goal, taking small sequential steps. Training and nutrition are synchronized and coordinated. Nutritional supplements are then added with precision and purpose. Results, or a lack thereof, are logged and monitored. You do not have to be cynical about supplements, but you need to be skeptical. At some point, assuming you have done your part, supplemental results need to be forthcoming.

Safety Note for Nutritional Supplements

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW strength-nutrition perspective and firsthand supplement use. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, dietetic, supplement, rehabilitation, or programming advice.

Dietary supplements can have side effects, interact with medications, contain multiple ingredients, or include substances not clearly expected from the front label. Competitive athletes, tactical athletes and tested athletes should use extra caution and consider reputable third-party certification programs that test for banned substances.

People with kidney disease, liver disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disorders, pregnancy, eating-disorder history, medication concerns, minors, or significant medical conditions should seek qualified medical or nutrition guidance before using supplements, high-protein diets, creatine, MCTs, stimulant products, hormone-claim products, or aggressive replenishment strategies.

Supplements should fill a gap. They should not create a new problem.

Training Tools That Create the Demand

Supplements are most useful when they support real training. The training creates the demand. Food and carefully chosen supplements help answer that demand.

For the strength side of the equation, lifters and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, dumbbells, plate-loaded leverage gym equipment, and selectorized gym equipment.

A serious free-weight setup might include the Iron Cowboy Powerlifting Bar, IRON COMPANY urethane Olympic grip plates, or Intek hybrid cerakoted steel dumbbells, when those tools match the lifter, room and training purpose. For conditioning, compare treadmills or a curved treadmill such as the Assault AirRunner Classic.

The equipment does not make supplements work. Hard training, food, sleep, consistency, and intelligent supplement selection make the plan work.

Related Supplement Reading

For more Marty Gallagher on belief, placebo and old-school supplements, read Placebo Power Part 1 and Placebo Power Part 2: Nutritional Supplements.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.