Does anyone have questions on bodybuilding supplements?

He's dumping that into multiple threads. Branjen, plz read the forum rules so you can stop breaking them.
 
I have a question

Im a fat guy 6'2 255lbs and I wanna cut a bit of weight alot I suppose any good supplement suggestions..........oh yeah I dont wanna exercise because I work alot and have virtually no freetime
 
Kind of a generic question. I've gone from 125 to 151 in the past three months. It's really been nothing more than eating a lot. Skinny people like me need to realise the difference b/n eating till your not hungry and eating till your full. I also know that drinking a beer or to shoots my appetite through the roof at dinner.

But anyways my question is what supplements would work best for gaining muscle that would be fairly easy to maintaine when off the supplement. Thanks
 
Pharcyde said:
I have a question

Im a fat guy 6'2 255lbs and I wanna cut a bit of weight alot I suppose any good supplement suggestions..........oh yeah I dont wanna exercise because I work alot and have virtually no freetime
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Well the only supplements that would really help with your goals would be fat burners, and possibly protein if you're not getting enough to support your current lean mass (presuming you care about preserving it).

Fat burners are (typically) stimulant based pills that will help a (pretty tiny) bit with increasing metabolism/fat burning, but will definitely help keep energy levels higher and decrease appetite (2 key attributes while dieting). However, the overwhelming majority make claims they cannot meet and are priced ridiculously.

I'd recommend pure stimulant ingredients any day over 'diet pills'. Most gas stations have ephedrine tabs at the counter, and caffeine (just pure caffeine powder or pills) are so cheap they may as well be free.


*But*, losing fat is going to be a simple game of calorie balance. You'll need a calorie deficit to lose fat. Exercising like crazy won't even necessarily burn fat if you're taking in too much food still. However, in your scenario, you won't be exercising much - but that's not that bad. Because it's a calorie deficit you seek, there's no need whatsoever to accomplish that through exercising - you can just eat less. The calorie deficit can be made by eating normal and burning off a ton, eating far less and not exercising, or combinations in between those extremes.

Tracking your food is very important for getting a solid idea of your daily intake so that you know "x calories / day = z pounds lost / week". Once you do this for a bit you'll get a feel for the calories you're consuming (fitday.com is great/free for this purpose, couldn't recommend it more), and will be able to tweak that # to lose the ideal rate of fat each week. Keep in mind that you'll lose more in the beginning, and also that if you lose too quickly, you'll be (extremely likely to) lose more muscle with the fat.
 
Lucky SeVen said:
Kind of a generic question. I've gone from 125 to 151 in the past three months. It's really been nothing more than eating a lot. Skinny people like me need to realise the difference b/n eating till your not hungry and eating till your full. I also know that drinking a beer or to shoots my appetite through the roof at dinner.

But anyways my question is what supplements would work best for gaining muscle that would be fairly easy to maintaine when off the supplement. Thanks
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Unsure about your 'eating til hungry v. eating til full' comment - satiety is largely irrelevant compared to knowing the #'s of calories you need. Of course you can just go way past that level easily, but you'll put on more fat in doing so.

As far as supplements for gaining muscle, there's not a ton of amazing stuff by any stretch, so it's better to tailor things to your particular routine. For instance, I *personally* find stimulants to be useful, for instance taking a good dose of caffeine before training.

If you have issues with soreness, microlactin works pretty okay for doms/delayed onset muscle soreness.

If you're not sleeping properly you will not gain muscle properly, so sleep aides may be useful for you if you're having issues getting a proper # of sleep hrs.

Nutritional supplements are, IMO, a good idea as an insurance policy in case your diet isn't fantastic (in terms of *quality* of your diet - a shitty quality diet with the proper calories/macros will still produce results). Generic multivitamins (w/o iron if you're a non-vegan/vegetarian male) and fish oils are what I'd recommend here.

Creatine is worthwhile if you're buying pure monohydrate powder - any fancy formulations are completely NOT worth it imo. Creatine will make you retain some water but that will stop within a week and shouldn't be more than a couple pounds or so. Daily doses @ 5g/day here, if you'd like to you can do multiple doses for the first ~3-7 days.

Arginine, tribulus, eurycoma, glutamine, zma formulas are not worth buying, pretty much regardless of price (lol that list isn't even 1/100 complete, just listed some of the more common sucky products).


Now, about maintaining muscle when off the supplement, that will be pretty much automatic with any of these. For instance, let's look at creatine. You take it for 6 months and put on some good size and strength. The creatine has been giving you a small boost in strength, say 4%, and has made you retain some water, let's say 1lbs. You lift for those 6 months and put on 15lbs of muscle (no fat whatsoever in example). When you stop the creatine, you won't lose your 15lbs of muscle - you'll lose the water retention weight. You won't go back to the strength you were initially upon starting, but you'll lose that 4% the creatine was giving you. But as long as you keep lifting and keep your calories in place, you'll keep the muscle you gained while on creatine - it's just that going forward you won't have the help of creatine (did that make sense/have coherence? lol).
 
^^^What are the caffeine doses you are taking? Do you find it less efficacious over time (i.e tolerance)? The problem ive had with caffeine is that because of the low quality of the CNS stimulation, i find myself jittery and not focused, which in turn makes me quite nervous when handling heavy weights (i rarely have a spotter). Perhaps its dose related...

Ephedrine is no longer available legally, and amphetamine is simply too potent an anorexic. The best stimulant (in regards to pre-workout stimulation, not so called "thermogenesis") ive found is dextro-methylphenidate (the d,l just wont work), but again the anorexic, GI, and mind alterting effects are less than desirable.

Again, what doses of caffeine do you take (mg)?
 
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I've just started working out to train for my 400 mile sea-kayak expedition.

So far I've put on 3 pounds in 3 days (measured 3 times a day and that was the average).
I'm 18 and now 9 stone 6 pounds.

I've been taking these Weider bodybuilding blocks.

Nutrition information per serving (10 tabs [10 grams I think]):
Energy - 36Kcal/154 Kj
Proteins - 7.4g
Carbohydrates - 0.8g
Fat - 0.4g

Amino Acids (g) per 100g Protein:
L-Isoleucine 5.7g
L-Lysine 7.9g
L-Phenylalanine 2.8g
L-Tryptophan 2.2g
L-Cysteine 2.4g
L-Arginine 3.4g
L-Histidine 1.6g
L-Tyrosine 2.4g
L-Alanine 5.7g
L-Leucine 8.9g
L-Methionine 1.6g
L-Threonine 6.1g
L-Valine 5.3g
L-Aspartic Acid 9.3g
L-Glutamic Acid 15.6g
L-Glycine 5.5g
L-Proline 7.3g
L-Serine 4.5g

I take 5 tabs with breakfast/lunch then 5 more immediately after exercise.

I'm not doing free weights at the moment, I've been using the machines such as: butterfly, lateral pulldown, seated row, lateral push, leg curl etc.
I also do 5 mins on the cross trainer before my workout to warm up, and 10 mins on the rowing machine after to warm down.
For the machines, so far I've done:
1st day - 20 reps of 10 kilo, rest 30 seconds, 20 reps of 10 kilo. I'll do that on all the machines, then start over - takes me about an hour to an hour and a half.
2nd day - repeated day 1
3rd day - 15 reps of 15 kilo, rest 45 seconds, 15 reps of 15 kils. Same as before, and takes me about the same time.

Now that I've started to build up some muscle, I want to move on to more intense shorter work outs.
I've got over a year to train.
But what's a good workout for me to quickly gain some nice upper body muscle?
Should I take extra supplements? - I used to drink Body Fortress Super Muscle and Weight Gainer when I played a lot of football, but haven't gotten round to buying more.

Cheers.
 
still waking a bit so pardon incoherence, and sorry for the bullet form response :)

- don't weigh in during the day, in fact daily weighins are really pointless (people tend to associate normal ups/downs with bona fide progress and it misleads them, which many times leads to improper diet tweaking). Weigh ins are only appropriate (when determining your truest weight) in the morning, before you've eaten, after going to the bathroom, with the same scale you always use, wearing what you always wear. (actually, just for fun, go ahead and do that, then weigh in again right after breakfast or lunch and see the extra couple pounds :)).

- that supplement is a waste, unfortunately. It's an amino acid pill, but the sad part about these is that a scoop of protein powder would just give you a million times more aminos than those pills, is easier to take down, and is far cheaper. I actually use your body fortress brand as well (just for whey - I mix it 50/50 with quik powder :) ), and if I'm recalling properly, it lists the aminos per serving. I'm not gonna do the real math, but just glancing at the #'s, seems a serving of protein has several servings' worth of what those pills have.

- I'd stop the machine stuff unless you had specific reasons for it (injury, easy access to that which you don't wanna not use, etc). Free weights, especially compound movements, are prime for building size and strength. As for upper body, the bench press, pullups, standing barbell rows, overhead barbell presses, these are some of the best moves insofar as anabolic efficiency goes.

- about extra supplements, creatine is usually a good choice. I'd only recommend pure, 100% creatine monohydrate though, anything else is so damn overpriced (and offers insanely minimal, if any, benefits over pure creatine mono). If you like the creatine blends, which are usually creatine+dextrose or maltodextrin (+a bunch of pointless ingredients for labels' sakes), then you can mix raw creatine powder with the bulk gatorade powder from walmart, and you've got your knock off cell tech for like $20 :) (for a shit-ton of servings too!). Supplements to fortify your diet are a good choice for general health imo, although not as crucial for muscle gains. But seems like given your goal, health is pretty important right? A generic multivitamin (like centrum, and go w/o iron if you are a meat-eating male), and some fish oils (if you don't eat a ton of fish) would always be a good insurance policy. Aside from creatine and backing up the diet a little bit (if needed), the only other supplements I can see you using would be the food supplements (protein powder, weightgain powder) to meet your daily calorie/protein goals. It's largely irrelevant how you train and how intense you are, if your total calories/total protein levels are not there for the day. You don't eat enough and you won't grow. I'd suggest fitday.com for tracking diet if you're not using another system already. Not really needed as a long term thing, most people can 'get the feel' for it after a couple weeks and don't need to do daily enterings anymore.

- regarding shorter workouts, the compound moves mentioned earlier will absolutely allow that. I can be in / out of training so fast it's not even funny, but it's all 100% compound stuff like that. Oh and I only mentioned upper body stuff as you had asked for, but if you don't have a specific reason why you're not training your legs, you'd probably better. Deadlifts, squats, good mornings, lunges, etc are great compound leg / posterior chain moves.

- about weightgain, the 3lbs in the beginning isn't a 'pure' gain if you increased food to go with it. By this I mean, for example, say I start a bulk tomorrow. I wakeup, have a bigger breakfast, squat in the afternoon, drink a ton of water, huge post workout shakes, and then weigh in on the next day. I'll likely be a couple pounds heavier, but this isn't muscular gains, it's the extra food/water in my system. So yeah, the scale can deceive a lot in the beginning, *especially* if you're doing middle of the day (and daily) weigh ins. Weighing in once or twice weekly is all that's needed, and aiming for around a pound of muscle a week (generally speaking, many factors can swing that up or down a bit, specifically your natural recovery rates/anabolic potential, shit like that). If you're gaining, say, 2lbs a week, keep a damn close eye on your fat levels because it's quite likely that's not 2lbs of muscle!

- if I knew more about this expedition I could maybe help some more. The reason I say that is because something is jumping out at me - the fact you're mentioning training for what sounds to be more of an endurance activity, but training for it with heavy work to build muscle. If that's the case, it's improper training (you wouldn't bench press to run a marathon, for instance). Not that having some more muscle is necessarily bad, I just know jack shit about what your actual goal there is, so knowing that more (and how much you want your training specifically aimed at that), could allow further refinement.
 
Thanks for the info.
I'm going to Holland and Barrett tomorrow, what brands should I get for pure protein and creatine powder?

I'll start doing benchpress etc, I just wanted to get some initial muscle development so I wouldn't look so silly.

While my expedition is a long one, I will need a lot of upper body strength for sprints across rough patches of sea. The 400 miles will be divided up by no less than 1000 islands (although we won't stop off and camp at all) so there won't be lots of long distance kayaking.
- The most dangerous part of the trip will be a 12 mile open sea crossing (in the direction of Italy, so no islands around to calm the water) where we'll most likely see 6ft waves and will take us no less than 4 hours (unless particularly calm). So we need the strength to keep on our course, yet keep it up for a long time.

I've just bought a ton of salmon steaks to fry up before and after the gym. And take vitamins already. I'm in good shape.

Also, I have a toga party in 2 weeks.. so will it be possible to have defined pecs and general upper body muscle in that time?
 
negrogesic said:
^^^What are the caffeine doses you are taking? Do you find it less efficacious over time (i.e tolerance)? The problem ive had with caffeine is that because of the low quality of the CNS stimulation, i find myself jittery and not focused, which in turn makes me quite nervous when handling heavy weights (i rarely have a spotter). Perhaps its dose related...

Ephedrine is no longer available legally, and amphetamine is simply too potent an anorexic. The best stimulant (in regards to pre-workout stimulation, not so called "thermogenesis") ive found is dextro-methylphenidate (the d,l just wont work), but again the anorexic, GI, and mind alterting effects are less than desirable.

Again, what doses of caffeine do you take (mg)?
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Caffeine doses are between 100-~700mg in a day, completely dependent upon tolerance at the time. I've always found it to be a very fast tolerance buildup, but also build-down. A 300mg dose will have me pretty damn wired if I hadn't been using any. I can't give exacts because I use pure caffeine powder which, if you've played with, you'll know getting anything more than a ballpark estimate is difficult (with normal kitchen measurements... basicaly I aim for ~1/4 of a 1/4tsp, which is about 200mg, since overshooting sucks as you mentioned). Definitely gets me jittery and nervous if I take even a 'normal' amount, I guess I just accept it as a necessary evil. On larger doses I cannot stand it, actually I may have a thread here from a few months back where I accidentally took a way too large dosage and was hating life (basically felt like coke, only w/o the tiny euphoria I get from coke). Ended up going nuts trying to find shit to turn it off (namely muscle relaxants and sedatives, the combo worked well but I'll refrain from listing it since it probably wasn't the smartest stuff to pair..).

Ephedrine's cool too, I dunno what you mean about illegal, I just got a new pack from the gas station in the past week. Always the 25mg ephedrine hcl/200mg guafenesin <sp?>. I typically take a half or a whole, a whole is only taken if I've done halves for a day or two before (otherwise the same issue w/ too much stimulation).

I like amphetamine in this regard, but crazy low doses, like less than 5mg (with no tolerance, usually dextroamphetamine from adderall when I had access to the stuff.. one thing that sucks when you leave college, no overabundance of adderall!!). I guess I view it like caffeine/ephedrine here, insofar as they're all good for energy, but too much is detrimental. Moderation's key.
 
Been a couple of hours, but off to bed now.. Hopefully you'll post before I go into town.
JW, why is caffeine good to use?
 
jw= just wondering?

and yeah I set an alarm in my phone to respond to that. Alarm went off, I'm sitting there drinking jim beam, kinda just cancelled it :). I'll reply in the am, not really the kinda thing I can get across properly while drinking!
 
US or UK am?
JW= Just wondering, yes.

If you could just say some brand names as I'll be long gone if your talking about US am. Cheers
 
Looks like I'll be doing the gym before buying proteins etc.

What kind of weights and how many reps should I do on the benchpress? - Obviously you don't know my strength, so should I be doing lots of reps on medium weights, or as many reps that I can manage on a heavier weight?
 
What's the best weight to rep ratio on freeweights and benchpress etc.?

Lets say:
x = light for you personally
y = medium for you personally
z = heavy for you personally

If you want to get defined muscles (is it possible in two weeks?) efficiently, is it best to do:
Loads of reps with x weight (endurance)
Medium amount of reps with y weight (best of both worlds)
Small amount of reps with z weight (explosive)

Which one?
Thanks
 
eDDe9 said:
Thanks for the info.
I'm going to Holland and Barrett tomorrow, what brands should I get for pure protein and creatine powder?

I'll start doing benchpress etc, I just wanted to get some initial muscle development so I wouldn't look so silly.

While my expedition is a long one, I will need a lot of upper body strength for sprints across rough patches of sea. The 400 miles will be divided up by no less than 1000 islands (although we won't stop off and camp at all) so there won't be lots of long distance kayaking.
- The most dangerous part of the trip will be a 12 mile open sea crossing (in the direction of Italy, so no islands around to calm the water) where we'll most likely see 6ft waves and will take us no less than 4 hours (unless particularly calm). So we need the strength to keep on our course, yet keep it up for a long time.

I've just bought a ton of salmon steaks to fry up before and after the gym. And take vitamins already. I'm in good shape.

Also, I have a toga party in 2 weeks.. so will it be possible to have defined pecs and general upper body muscle in that time?
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As far as what protein/weightgainers to get, here's the best way to explain since I won't know the brands you'll see.

Protein: Preferably a whey or casein based protein, and I personally look for whatever gives me the most protein per dollar (be careful when comparison shopping as some brands list a serving as 1 or 2 scoops, so protein/serving will vary due to this, and although tubs are usually 2 and 5 pounds, sometimes they're 3 and 6, so keep that in mind too. But I just go for whatever is cheapest per gram of protein, if you want (and know which one is) a better tasting one sometimes it won't be the cheapest, but that's your call. In terms of quality/results, the top of the line isn't giving you benefits over generic stuff.

Weightgainer: Same general approach as protein only in this scenario, you're main difference is gonna be quantity of protein (levels vary from like 50g of protein per 500 calories, to 50g protein per 2000 calories, so it's quite the spread). Now, you'll usually pay more to get a higher protein % in there, but if you're buying protein separately, keep that in mind to see what weightgainer is the smartest choice. Most will be maltodextrin based which, although *technically* a complex carb, is the nutritional equivalent of sugar. This isn't inherently bad, but not so great either. (digests way faster, basically. Some nicer brands will use much slower digesting carbs, this can make the shake not 'hit' you as hard as some others, and has the benefits of a lower-glycemic product).

Getting ready for a party in 2 weeks isn't something I would ever recommend. Yeah, you can lose a okay-ish amount of fat if you do everything right, and you'd wanna cut water a day out, but you'd feel like complete trash so much so that I cannot imagine it'd be worth it to you (especially if you plan on getting drunk there, rolling up all starved and dehydrated won't help your case =D ). I mean, don't get me wrong, I wrestled for 8 years and have seen some really large cuts in 2 week periods, only if I advised you on how to do that it'd basically start with "put on a sauna suit, forget about food, and start running", and would continue with that general principle for the 2 weeks (with a special twist towards the end to get out as much water and waste as possible. But having been around this, I know people are hating life so much when they hit the scale for weigh ins - not the way you wanna feel at a party lol).
(just fyi, you mentioned defined pecs for your party and probably thought that'd involve building muscle. You would never build any appreciable muscle in 2 weeks on your pecs, maybe a miniscule amount you'd notice, but nobody else would. Definition, however, is highly influenced by bodyfat levels, the path to definition is to lose fat, not gain muscle. Gaining muscle will help but, w/o losing the proper amount of fat, the muscles will always have the layer of fat over them).
 
eDDe9 said:
Looks like I'll be doing the gym before buying proteins etc.

What kind of weights and how many reps should I do on the benchpress? - Obviously you don't know my strength, so should I be doing lots of reps on medium weights, or as many reps that I can manage on a heavier weight?
Click to expand...

eDDe9 said:
Lets say:
x = light for you personally
y = medium for you personally
z = heavy for you personally

If you want to get defined muscles (is it possible in two weeks?) efficiently, is it best to do:
Loads of reps with x weight (endurance)
Medium amount of reps with y weight (best of both worlds)
Small amount of reps with z weight (explosive)

Which one?
Thanks
Click to expand...
heh none of those for 2 weeks ;).

Put your hand on your stomach and flex your abs. Do you feel both the muscle, and the thin (or large lol, dunno what you look like) layer of fat between the muscle and the skin? Now, you may think that, if you only built up your abs a bit more, they'd be bursting through and showing a lotta definition. Unfortunately this isn't really the case. If they were waaaaay bigger, with the same amount of bodyfat obscuring them, they'd appear more defined just out of relativity. However, the proper way to get the definition you're speaking of is to minimize that fat that's there. To do that, you need to reduce calories to less than what you're burning off, so you lose fat. Your body has, more or less, a genetic predisposition for fat storage, so no, doing a bunch of situps wouldn't be the path in this example, it'd be heavy (well, heavy is relative only to the time frame you're talking about) calorie cutting and maybe (preferably) exercise to further expend calories, creating the proper caloric deficit to lose the fat obscuring the muscle.

Out of your examples there, none are more or less likely to give you definition, as none have much/any effect on your bodyfat levels.

Also, the idea of gaining definition requires a calorie deficit, while gaining muscle requires a surplus. You need to make the choice on which one to pursue, as you cannot have both simultaneously (unfortunately).

(((specifically though, on the note of getting bigger, anything strong, like something you can't get up more than like 7-10 or so of, is a good weight. But, keep in mind, that if you train that way only until your voyage, you're going to have quite a lot of anaerobic strength (ie you can move something heavy for a short period of time) and won't have as much of a capability for longer muscular endurance/aerobic work. If you want to put on muscle/size, then just doing cardio isn't gonna help ya too much, but just putting on size won't help a ton with your voyage, if that makes sense. You should also be training specifically, or only, for the voyage. I'd be doing lot of longer length gpp (general physical preparedness) type activities, or just specifically what you'll be doing out there if feasible, because if you only work towards a big chest and a big bench press, that won't help you a whole lot with a hard 4hour, rough water trek.))))
 
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