Nutritional Supplements Don’t Replace Food!

I answer many emails each week that people write to me asking advice about nutritional supplements. Lately I have been noticing a worrying trend, people are taking too many supplements and not eating enough wholesome foods.

I am a firm believer in using nutritional supplements to compliment your diet to help achieve your goals, whether that would be just to be healthy, fit, or gain/lose weight. Unfortunately most people don’t understand how to use supplements correctly (which is one of the reasons why I started this blog).

Today I’m going to give out some pointers about using nutritional supplements correctly. If you have any questions about any of the tips in this post just leave them at the bottom of this page and I’ll post up an answer.

Tips On Taking Supplements Correctly:

1. Supplements are just that, supplements. Supplements are not there to replace a healthy diet. As a general rule, always correct your diet before taking supplements.
2. Less is more. Taking more nutritional supplements than is recommended on the label does not equal more effects. In most cases, this is simply a waste of money and can be harmful. Take vitamins for example, if you take too much vitamins your body will simple excrete them. So you’ve just wasted good vitamins plus added additional stress on your kidneys.
3. If you have the choice between food and supplements for a meal, choose food.
4. While whey protein might be the ultimate source of protein, it still lacks many other nutrients that high protein foods contain. So essentially, 40g of protein from chicken breast is better than 40g of protein from a whey protein shake.
5. Don’t take more than 1 multivitamin per day.
6. When using weight gain supplements try to limit yourself to 2-3 shakes a day. Any more than that and you’ll be getting too many of your daily calories from supplements and not food.
7. Don’t buy cheap supermarket vitamins. These supplements are made to be cheap, so their flax is that they are poorly absorbed by the body. You’ve better off getting your vitamins online or from a health food store.
8. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetable daily. Although you might be supplementing with multivitamins, you should consume the bulk of your vitamins and minerals from food and nothing contains more than fruit and veg.
9. Increase protein in foods by adding protein powder to ingredients. You can buy stuff like Optimum nutrition’s Any Whey protein protein which is flavorless and can be easily mixed with other foods.
10. Don’t rely on energy from supplements for your training! You should be eating slow release complex carbohydrates for long lasting energy to keep you going through your through workouts.

If you have any questions about today’s post feel free to post in the comments below!