Are Workout Supplements Worth It? The Reality Behind the Marketing

Getting into shape is always a challenge, but there are a number of products out there that claim to make it a little easier. In particular, we’re talking about workout supplements.

There are pre workout supplements, post workout supplements, and even products that companies say you should take as you’re doing the exercise itself. The claims they make are exciting, but do they really work?

We’re going to take a look at some of the things you should think about when considering ways to improve your exercise results. We’ll get down to the bottom of how effective these products are, explore the best workout supplements, and give you some actionable insights on how to get fit.

Hopefully, the information below can give you a little inspiration to kickstart your routine. Let’s get started.

Before we look at the products that might help you increase gains, we have to understand what a proper exercise routine looks like. No supplement will help you increase muscle mass or get healthier without the fundamentals in place.

The difficulty with workout supplement marketing is that many companies make claims that make the process seem easier than it is. You imagine that taking a supplement will improve specific parts of your health or musculature, but forget that there’s a lot of effort involved.

We can break the fundamentals of workout routines into two essential categories. The first is nutrition.

A healthy diet is required to have the energy to complete workout routines that push you past your current state of health. Further, your body needs a few essential dietary elements to produce new muscle and repair the damage to tissue that comes with exercise.

Focusing on each little piece of your diet isn’t something that you might have time to do, though. You could go down the rabbit hole that bodybuilders and athletes go down, examining the minutiae of each food item you consume.

You can measure out precise levels of vitamins and minerals contained in your diet, run those against the energy that you’re outputting, and get specific insights into the amount of muscle and fat that you’re working through.

Those things take a lot of time, though. Further, they require a significant investment in ingredients, resources, and even trainers in a lot of cases.

What should matter the most at first is whether or not you have a healthy and balanced diet that’s grounded in natural foods.

A balanced diet includes a variety of grains, fats, protein sources, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. When you incorporate these elements into your life and do so with a breadth of different foods, you inherently cover the bases that the average person needs to cover.

Without picking through nutritional values, you can be pretty sure that you’re getting the things that your body needs to thrive under normal circumstances.

When you start exercising, though, you have to compensate a little bit for the energy that you’re using up. You also have to consume more to help your body repair and produce muscle tissue.

For energy, you should seek to include more carbohydrates in your diet. These are used up as energy as you workout and you won’t have to pull from your existing stores of energy in your body. If you don’t ramp up carb intake, you will lose more body fat.

That’s a good thing for most people, but there’s a point when your body fat levels are so low that you become stagnant. When you plateau and you’re not losing weight or gaining muscle, it’s time to increase your carb intake.

Adding protein to your diet will help you to produce and maintain muscle mass as well. Those two factors are crucial for those looking to bulk up and experience a muscular transformation.

In a perfect world, you would get all of your dietary requirements through food and you wouldn’t need workout supplements.

The role of these supplements is to contribute to your diet and satisfy unmet needs. If you’re not getting enough protein, protein supplements can be used to offset the imbalance.

The same goes for any other vitamin or mineral that you might be low on. Further, you can use workout supplements to ramp up on dietary elements that you already have enough of. The thinking is that by adding supplements to an adequate diet, you increase your gains that much more.

Supplements do work when they’re well-chosen and used in conjunction with effective exercise.

The thing is, you have to choose the right supplements for your body. You might find that the supplement your friend takes actually makes you sick, and vice versa. You might also find that their supplements do nothing to help your workout results.

The key is to avoid the flashy marketing claims stamped on the packages of most workout supplements. Those claims aren’t going to tell you very much. In some cases, your body and exercise regimen might align to activate a particular supplement in the most effective way possible.

In those cases, you could experience “serious gains!” or “scary-fast results!”

It’s unlikely, though, because there are a lot of supplement packages that display pseudo-science and exorbitant claims about the effects you’ll experience.

The best way to choose the right supplements for yourself is to take a long hard look at the science. Look into the research of particular supplements and see whether or not the data shows that they support athletic performance.

Further, ensure that the supplement improves performance in the ways you’re looking for. You should also make a visit to the doctor and have your blood drawn. Look at the nutrition that you’re providing yourself through your diet as it stands.

If there are areas that need work, try to address them by eating natural foods. When you complete your nutritional needs with actual food, you create an internal environment that’s primed for lasting change. Supplement use can’t be sustained forever.

There is always the chance that you take too many supplements for too long of a time. Your body will start to produce abnormal results in the presence of excess levels of any vitamin or mineral. The human body isn’t built to tolerate concentrated substances in the levels that are available on the market.

Those levels are effective for a while, and they can be used in moderation while remaining healthy. You run the risk of experiencing health complications if use goes on for too long, however.

When you’re exploring your options for supplements, make sure to look for brands that are reputable. Wilson Supplements offers a reliable selection of workout supplements that are safe and effective.

Take a look at the online reviews of different companies and see what users have to say. When you find one that seems like it could work for you, take a look at their website and see if they’re certified to sell these products.

Verification that the company is legitimate is very important. You should also seek out companies that are either large and established or have a specialty product that they sell.

Big companies that have provided supplements to people for a long time tend to be reliable. On the other side of things, companies that are researching and producing a particular product tend to have a higher quality of the product than the others.

Start by avoiding companies that pander to their audience by making grandiose claims. The big and flashy products tend to be the ones that either don’t work or get you sick.

You should also steer clear from products that contain “proprietary blends.” These are blends of vitamins and minerals that aren’t specified on the label. The company tells you the ingredients in that blend, but they aren’t able to specify the amounts.

That’s because these blends are produced in large quantities without taking time to measure the particular vitamins and minerals they contain. That’s a risky way to go, especially if you’re taking the supplement on a regular basis.

Your large tub of propriety blend supplements might have an excess of a particular vitamin. For whatever reason, your big scoop of supplement powder had more of one thing than all the rest, and you’re experiencing health complications as a result.

Many of the workout companies that sell research chemicals and supplements are also ones to look out for. There’s a time and place for research chemicals, but it’s always best to get those products from the researchers rather than someone who’s selling them because they’re popular.

The world of workout supplements is vast, and it can be really effective as you try to build muscle. That said, there are some common pitfalls that people experience as they get started.

We’re here to help you out with more information. Explore our site for more insight into the best pre workout supplements, which things to avoid, and other fitness topics.

This post is originally published at Florida Independent.