What should I eat (epic conclusion) The only 2 Supplements you need
Now that we have covered the fact that you need to:
- Eat more- mostly protein, and more carbs then you thought you would
We can move on. Since carbs are unfairly easy to load up on if need be: throw some oatmeal in your breakfasts, some bread in your lunches, and some potatoes in your dinner and your done.
The higher protein load that your muscles need can be a little trickier to get a hold of. When we are talking upward of 200g + in a day, we are talking about pounds of chicken and eggs every day which can quickly become tiring and overkill on your poultry loving sensibilities.
And that is where additional supplementation comes into play.
SUPPLEMENT 1: WHEY PROTEIN ISOLATE
I am NOT going to talk about ALL the different wheys (get it?) you can get protein since these days you can pick up PEA protein from the local grocery store, which means if you are lactose intolerant and can’t take whey, you have a multitude of options to choose from,
Instead I am going to just stick with the big one most people go with, the WHEY PROTEIN! DUM DUM DUM.
This is an excellent protein and is frankly what almost everyone uses. You will find it in the big barrels all over your local big box stores. And while any good whey supplement will really do the trick, we are going to try to get something just a LITTLE BIT BETTER, called:
WHEY PROTEIN ISOLATE
This is like when you have a really good soup, but it is just too watery, and so you reduce it and it gets thicker and better. And that is essentially what they do with WPI, it is a better, more efficient form of whey, will likely carry fewer carbs, less lactose and more protein in each gram, so really it is just more efficient.
Now, there are more than a few options when it comes even this super premium blend, and of course you should only pick THE MOST EXPENSIVE OPTION WITH THE BIGGEST LETTERS ON THE BARREL!!
Haha, only kidding! No really, that would be just silly. Whey protein isolate, whey protein in general and the other supplement we will get to need not be fancy schmancy, and I will in fact give you my recommendations at the end. But really, if you are paying more than $12–14 a pound you are overpaying no matter what the label says.
SUPPLEMENT 2: CREATINE
Yes, this has sort of chemically sounding techno-robot name, like maybe an arch enemy in a young child’s animated series. But really. You need, I need it. Everyone should really be taking it.
Creatine is something that is in your body, it is in red meat, and it is one of the best things to start taking when trying to stress yours.
To keep things simple, your muscles, like everything else, need energy in order to keep doing the wonderful things that they do, when they get tired and run down which will happen especially when being stressed with heavy weights (short duration, high intensity exercise), they run out of energy, and that is when Creatine steps in and says “hey, let me help you friend, take my hand”. And your muscles look up, and see Creatine, and they wheep tears of gratitude, and take it’s hand! And by hand I mean Phosphate so that it can create more energy (ATP) from it’s existing ADP stores, obviously.
Enough of this, if you want to read more, here is an excellent article all about the beneficial qualities of our buddy Creatine.
And again, Creatine is Creatine is Creatine, so get some and don’t pay much. One byproduct of being incredibly good for you is that it tastes like battery acid mixed with lead, and so I really can’t stress getting caps instead of raw powder.
You should be taking about 5g of this a day. (2 capsules of a day if you follow my recs at the bottom)
So, in total that’s it. Really, don’t get dragged into all the other stuff floating around for the time being. It is a lot of nonsense for the most part, and these are the BIG HEAVY HITTERS that will really benefit your body every workout every day.
Again, keeping things cheap and easy, and of course on Amazon, right?
Here are my recommendations for WHEY PROTEIN ISOLATE and CREATINE.