Fitness 101: Supplements Pt. 1

Hi all! Welcome back again!

I hope you enjoyed the nutrition and movement parts of the fitness 101 series!

Now let's talk about supplements!

I like to think about supplements as filling in potential gaps or enhancing what we are already doing! Supplements aren’t magic, but they are helpers if you will!

Some of the reasons we might use supplements:
- Health & Wellness
- Muscle & Strength
- Performance

Many of the most impactful changes we make in our fitness, lifestyle, and body composition comes from nutrition and movement! Supplements can aid us in different ways.

For example, a multivitamin and a greens supplement will help to ensure that you are getting your RDA of nutrients that will help you perform and function optimally. Why would you want to do this?
The modern diet plus how food is grown, processed and handled can lower the number of vitamins and nutrients in the food so to make sure we are truly optimizing our health through both our food and our supplements, a multi and greens are beneficial! This would be Flyte VITA and LIFE to fill in the gaps of a lacking diet!

I personally like both of these products for health and foundational in my regime.

There is a misconception in the fitness and supplement industry that taking products is what yields results, however, this is not true. When we think about the hierarchy of fitness, supplements comes after we optimize nutrition, the movement first, which is where we truly make changes and use supplements to enhance!

Supplementing for performance would be using products like a pre-workout to enhance endurance, focus, stamina during training because of ingredients like beta alanine which improves the ability to maintain performance at high workloads like in FUEL.

Supplementing for recovery would be using products like BCAAs which may help accelerate recovery and stimulate muscle growth intra, post-training or throughout the day like in BOLT.

Whey protein helps supplement protein in our diet to help raise our nitrogen balance, promote muscle growth, and muscle recovery like WHEY

A test booster may also help improve strength, build muscle, and help improve sleep like FUSE and TEST.

Creatine may help improve strength, and endurance during and after training, improve regeneration and even beneficial for the brain.

Caffeine in supplements like a fat burner or pre-workout may also be helpful to stimulate the central nervous system which will encourage the body to use more fat for fuel, giving you more energy, delaying fatigue and may preserve muscle.

SUPPLEMENTS are NOT to replace hard work, diligent work ethic, progressive overload, persistence, consistency, and dedication. Also, supplements do not replace a diet sufficient in vegetables, fruit, and nutrient-dense foods.

This is a list of some supplements you may want to use, why to use them and as always this blog is aimed to help you eat, move and live better!

-Charissa

Charissa Sutliff is an Online Fitness & Nutrition Development Coach, a Competition Prep Coach, Certified Personal Trainer, and holds a B.S. in Kinesiology. She also holds an M.A. in Higher Education Administration. She is enthusiastic about faith, working out, healthy nutrition, meditating, learning, growing and coffee!