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Yeah, I don't remember hearing about 'roids being in many (maybe 5 total), but even things as small as stevia can be a big thing, since stevia can really upset your GI system.Actually, I've got a fantastic book for detailing evidence based nutritional guidelines: 'clinical sports nutrition' (can't remember the author).
Anyway, a rct within described 1/10 supplements from the us/eu as having a banned/illegal substance within....
Verm just reminded me lol
I'm a pretty small guy, even considering the gains I've made. I just happen to swim literally every night and lift like three times a week. I need the supplements because i would say I only get 50-60 grams of protein from food alone. I literally go to the cafeteria and drink nothing but milk and water. I want to try to get off them, but I'm not big enough to eat that much yet.
Verm, you give me hope for my future self. I want to build myself but I read and hear about taking all these sorts of supplements and stuff. Personally, I want to avoid all that.Snack, if I remember correctly, you said you'd only recently begun to exercise seriously (within the past 6 months or so). If my memory serves me well, then the need for supplements should be nil. As you've seen, I'm a dude of some fair dimensions at 210, 6'3". That being said, even at my weight and height, I personally have no need for supplements.
That isn't to say one shouldn't take them, but I wouldn't worry too much about them. Generally though, supplements are not a good idea, simply because the supplement industry is entirely unregulated and most products will have toxic (yes, toxic--renal, hepatic and many other kinds of toxic) filler in them. Muscle Milk, EAS and a few others, for instance, tested positive for cadmium, mercury, arsenic and a few other nasty heavy metals. In fact, Bodybuilding.com was recently fined $7,000,000 for selling steroid-laced supplements back in '09 or so.
Just so no one thinks I'm bull****ting them about not needing supplements, here's a comparison of me two-and-a-half years ago and about five months ago (right and left, respectively).
When I first started off, I naively took supplements for about 3 months, but I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that three months on a soy supplement while not really even lifting would create results.
So yeah. Hope all that's helpful. It's totally one's choice to do so if it makes them feel better, but hopefully my personal progress is fair evidence that supplements aren't a necessity. I get by on tuna, cottage cheese, oatmeal, milk, eggs and others kind of fish/poultry. I know it sounds nasty, but there're ways to make all of 'em taste amazing. Mix a little fat free mayonnaise into the tuna, put fruit into the cottage cheese and oatmeal and season the meat/eggs as you like. Though, if one were to buy a supplement, they should check all of the ingredients first. Only problem is that the <good> and natural stuff is way more expensive than just getting your protein through normal means. 5lbs for top-of-the-line powder is usually $50-90.
Personally for me, I am better at running that I was before (my calfs are like steel) so I'm now set for setting a vague goal of lifting/fixing my upper body and gaining a phyisque like Verm.
I can totally relate. I'm not a big guy either, and I've always had trouble gaining weight/muscle mass. However, over the past year or so, I've really upped my calorie intake, and I'm actually seriously gaining weight for the first time in a long time. This last sentence of your post really stuck out to me:
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. You think that to eat a lot (or at least, to eat more than you're eating now) you need to be big, but that you can't get bigger without eating a lot, or without taking supplements. But it's a nonexistent Catch-22; you can eat a lot. It really is that simple. More calories=more weight (hopefully in the form of muscle mass). You don't increase your capacity for food by increasing your size; it's the other way around: increase size by eating more food. Start eating more. Eat when you're not hungry. Eat more meals, and eat between meals, and increase portion sizes. It might feel like you can't, but you can.
Very Impressive Never! Congrats on your goal and improvement.
The only things that truly speed up gains are steroids. I'll have to find the article where I read the study, but the difference in gains between a person who used whey for one year, then went without the next, only saw a difference of like 4%. I definitely agree that protein powder can be worked into people's diets, but the issue is that most protein supplements have mostly filler. There's another study I can't cite unfortunately, but hopefully you guys'll take my word on it, that a supplement was made for $1.25 a bottle, and sold for $25 due there being a roughly 90:10 ratio of sugar, flour and filler vs. actual protein isolates.
It can take up to a solid year to start seeing appreciable results. Not to mention, measuring exact muscle gain requires some frame of reference like a skin fold test and weighing at a certain time of day (such as waking up, since you're dehydrated then).
