Ya Boi
May 1, 2026
Lets talk supplements
Hey y'all!! Today we'll be talking about supplements. Why you should or shouldn't take supplements. Some useful things to think about before you start taking any supplements, and just some general info. This article is gonna cover some pretty basic stuff, but hopefully you find it helpful. As always my goal is to empower y'all with the skills and knowledge to succeed.
Lets dive on in y'all!
So, first off it's important to know supplements are regulated by the FDA and FTC, but under a different frame work that allows for some shady stuff.
Because of this, it's important to make sure any supplement you take is 3rd party tested. This is very important if you a competing athlete that gets tested; there can easily be banned substances in a supplement. How do we know if a supplement is 3rd party tested and clean? Two main ways, the easiest is checking the label for a 3rd party testing label. The other is way is to visit one of the many websites that will list all 3rd party tested supplements.
Because of the shady frame work supplements operate in, it's common for supplements to under or over dose ingredients. What that means is you can spend a lot of money on a product that's not even helping you. It's also common to see companies use "Proprietary blends", this is another way that supplement companies can hide dosage. Just be carful and take the time to do a little research before taking any supplement.
There's one more important question to ask your self before starting any supplement. Why am I taking this supplement and how does it help me? Okay, maybe that's two questions. You should be able to have a clear answer if you really want to use supplements, or your probably just wasting money. A supplement is just that, it's supplementing what we can't achieve through proper diet or lifestyle. As a personal trainer I typically see supplements as a last resort.
For a serious athlete looking to get a bit of a edge, maybe that's a different story. However, for the average person there's so many other things to tackle first.
Why do you want to take protein powder, BCAA's, creatine, multi-vitamins, fish oils, etc? All those things can be addressed though proper diet. Not only that, but when we're getting these things through diet it's gonna be higher quality and cheaper than buying high end supplements. On that note, it's important to know most companies are using the cheapest, lowest quality ingredients to keep profit margins up. A common example of this is magnesium supplements. Companies will often use magnesium oxide instead of magnesium citrate. One has super bad bioavailability and the other super good bioavailability. Can you guess which one is cheaper and thrown into more supplements?
This is really important to know in general, but when it comes to vitamins and minerals even more so. This because our bodies can only handle so much in a given time frame. Meaning the excess vitamins and minerals are gonna be excreted or stored in fat. So, if you loaded up on a bunch of low quality vitamins and minerals; when you finally take in higher quality stuff it won't matter because your at your limit and it's just gonna be passed through you. Sorry to drag that out, but I really want to drive home the importance of this.
Now, I understand life gets a vote. There's optimal and there's reality, and that's where supplements enter the picture. Maybe because of work or whatever you realistically don't have time for a meal; so we use a protein shake. Maybe you're trying to lose weight, so you take BCAA's to help preserve lean muscle mass without adding calories. Those are real reasons to take a supplement. Doing it because you hear that's what other people are doing, or it make you feel like your doing something healthy for yourself. Those are not real reasons to take supplements. If we are doing everything we can through diet and still coming up short, that's when we want to start considering supplements. Taking supplements will not out work bad diet or lifestyle choices. A lot of voices out there will try telling you otherwise; don't fall for the same tricks so many others have.
Congrats y'all!! You made it through another article, and are the much better for it. The aim of this article is to give you some food for thought, and to give you the frame work for the following article; where we will be going over a number of popular supplements in detail. We just needed to talk about this, before we talk about that. I hope you got something useful out of this. Until next time y'all, peace!!