Step 1: Detox

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to give out some details for what I'm doing to kick the weight I put on from the holidays.  It's all going to be simple stuff that should get me (and you, if you do the same) back on track!

Step 1: Detox

It's the day after Christmas, and I woke up this morning to a home that looked like it had been used for a holiday frat party.  Unfortunately, this frat party lasted way too long.  There is wrapping paper all over my house, toys scattered from one end to the other, and my son and two cats are having the best time ever.  Under every pile of crap, there is some new adventure just waiting to happen!

Worst of all, there is a pile of food on my kitchen table and more of it stocked in the pantry that any sensible paleo dieter would go green in the face just looking at.

The first step in getting rid of my holiday fatty fun is detoxifying my body.  The protein powder is coming out of the pantry and the vitamin organizers are getting filled up again.  Aside from delicious coffee with a little cream and sugar, and an emergency no-carb-no-sugar energy drink, my intakes of choice are going to be protein shakes and water for the next three days.  This will get my body back into requiring only the things it needs to stay healthy.

This is a good time to do a holiday purge.  Candy canes, fruit cakes (if anybody actually even gets those anymore), pastries, and other sugary carb-loaded foods need to go!

DIY Supplements

Oftentimes, when we get into the world of health and fitness, we can get caught up in all of the jargon.  This is, of course, possible with any subject you speak about.  The difference between other subjects and health and fitness is that this one affects you directly.

I know one aspect of this world that intimidates a lot of people is supplementation.  People can get really confused when they walk into their local vitamin shop and get bombarded with all the possible nutrients they could be taking.

I have had no problem in making a "guinea pig" out of myself.  There aren't many vitamins and nutrients that I wouldn't try, so long as they were reasonable and didn't have any potentially life-altering side effects.  I do this in the spirit of adventure and the quest for truth.  I want to know if something really works or if it's just another gimmick from some company to get your money.

My latest bit of trial and error has been in pre-workout supplementation.  I started out with basic energy-boosters with antioxidants like green tea tablets.  From there, I moved on to thermogenics, which are designed to boost energy and raise the temperature of your muscles for better performance in workouts.  Lately, I've been toying around with nitric oxide boosters.

Nitric oxide is used during workouts as a vasodilator (it causes the veins to get bigger).  Vasodilation during workouts is believed to accelerate muscle growth and increase stamina during workouts.  For me personally, nitric oxide seems to give me a bit of a boost when I am strength training.  I am able to lift more and I don't get exhausted as easily as I do without it.

Initially, I was using a basic supplement recommended to me by a guy in a local GNC store.  It was called N.O. Shotgun and it was a mixture of protein, creatine, nitric oxide boosters, and caffeine (with quite a few other things mixed in).  What I immediately noticed about this supplement was that it wasn't like other drink mixes I was used to.  It couldn't be shaken because that caused everything to turn into foam.  Also, the mixture of so many different ingredients caused it to have an "off" flavor.  Sometimes it was hard to swallow it all down!  I also wasn't a fan of being forced to use creatine every time I lifted weights, as I like to cycle on and off of that supplement.

I used this supplement for about two months during intermittent workouts and had no problems.  However, when I started using it on a regular basis with regular workouts, I noticed that I was getting nausea after my workouts.  I thought that it might have something to do with the flavor of the drink, so I tried switching to a different supplement.

My next trial was on N.O. X-plode.  This was also a powdered drink mix, like the N.O. Shotgun.  This supplement mainly contained nitric oxide boosters and caffeine.  I liked the idea of this supplement better because I knew that I got enough protein from my daily shakes, and I could add or take away creatine as I saw fit.  However, the nausea crept back up with this supplement shortly after taking it, just as it had with the previous one.

After much debate on how to solve this problem of nausea, a friend suggested that I make my own pre-workout supplement.  He reasoned that the ingredients were relatively simple to get;  I actually walked right into a random GNC and walked out with everything I needed.  He told me to survey the forums at Bodybuilding.com and find out what I needed for my supplement.  After some browsing on that site, I found the most common supplements thrown out were L-Arginine, caffeine, BCAA's, and creatine occasionally.  

So far, I have used a combined mixture of GNC Pro Performance Amp Amplified Muscle Igniter 4x - Orange, GNC Pro Performance Rapid Drive BCAA 5000, GNC Pro Performance Rapid Drive Arginine 5000, and GNC Pro Performance Creatine Monohydrate.  The first thing I want to say is that I had a hard time drinking the first mix because, in my opinion the Muscle Igniter 4x tastes terrible.  One review on the GNC website said that one person wouldn't even give it to their enemies.  It was completely my fault for not doing the research on the thermogenic before buying it, because I was only looking for a powder-form thermogenic.  I plan on returning it as soon as possible.

Other than that, I felt great when I used this self-made supplement.  Separately, these supplements can be quite costly, but when looking at things from a long-term goal perspective, it is cheaper to do things this way than paying for those pre-mixed supplements that you have no control over.

As time goes on, I will update my status with the quality of my homemade pre-workout supplements.  For the future, I am hopeful that this turns out to be the thing I've been missing.

-Andy

Things That Make You Feel Old - Pill Organizers

Have I ever told you how many vitamins I take?

I take two GNC Mega Men Sport vitamins, two 1,000mg Flaxseed Oil gelcaps, and whatever energy/fat burning/appetite/anti-oxidant supplement I may be trying at the time EVERY DAY!  That's anywhere from four to seven different supplements in one day.

When I first started taking supplements, my kitchen countertop was a mess.  There were bottles everywhere for every thing that I was taking.  My wife decided that she couldn't take the clutter anymore (understandably), and moved them all to one cabinet.  I'm a very visual person, so when the bottles went out of my sight they also went out of my mind.  I found myself going two or three days in a row without taking my vitamins, which I was not a fan of.  When I don't take my vitamins, it means that I forget to give my son his vitamins, so everybody was suffering a little.

The next move I tried was putting them in my backpack.  I figured that since I keep my backpack with me at all times, I would see them at some point every day and remember to take them.  This too, resulted in ultimate failure.  I knew a move back to the counter-top was out of the question, and I needed a quick solution.

Thankfully, a friend (via a Facebook status update) was complaining about feeling old at the ripe age of 26 because of buying herself this:

I'm not going to go on and on about the benefits of a pill organizer.  They pretty much speak for themselves.  But if you are having trouble remembering to take your pills or supplements like I was, maybe it's time to get down like grandpa and break out one of these bad boys.

They worked for me, they work for my dad, they work for my grandma, and they can work for you too.

Standard vs. Custom Installation

How many times do you install a program on your computer, and get the choice between the Standard and the Custom installation packages?  Most of us just choose the standard installation, because we don't want the hassle of dealing with customizing.  But is that always the best choice?  Sometimes, we get mini-programs that come along with the standard installation that we don't want or need.  Sometimes we need something different or better.

The same can be said about vitamins.  

For the past couple of months, I have been taking the GNC Mega Men Sport Vitapaks as my dietary supplement.  They are a great multivitamin package that gives an active man all of the nutrients he needs for a very active day.   But I decided that while they were a great vitamin regiment to be on, maybe they weren't the best for me. 

I did a little research, and found out the GNC Mega Men Sport Multivitamin (included in the vitapaks) is one of the highest rated men's multivitamins on the market.  I decided to start there and build my own custom package for supplements.  The package, as it stands at the time of this writing, includes the above mentioned multivitamin and the Everlast Energy supplement, which is used on a  purely pre-workout basis.

The bonus I got when I bought this bottle of multi's was the free 10-capsule supply of OxyELITE-Pro, which is a very highly-rated thermogenic for workouts and hunger suppression.  I haven't started taking them yet, but I plan to in the next few weeks on a strictly trial basis to see how I like them when used properly. 

I'll report back in about a month's time on my findings!

Reflections from right after the start

I've been taking GNC Mega Men Sport Vitapaks for a while now, before Josh and I started this blog and even the contest between us.  I always liked them because they had that little pick-me-up of caffeine built in to them for the morning.  However, when I was getting to the gym in the afternoons that little burst of energy had passed.  I probably could have switched the time I took these vitamins because all they really required was taking them with food, but then my mornings would have been shot.

I knew it was time to step up to weight-loss supplements.  The first one I tried was Zantrex-3, but I was never really impressed with the results.  Like a lot of supplements like it, Zantrex wanted you to take them daily and on a regular basis.  That was never really what I was needing though, and I certainly didn't need the price that came along with them.  After all, caffeine is a drug that one can get addicted to and if you don't believe me then visit a coffee shop.

After I finished the Zantrex, I decided to start shopping for a new supplement.  I came across these while at my local pharmacy (that also sells GNC products!):

Everlast Energy seems to speak to me personally.  They're a herbal supplement that is meant to be taken only before workouts.  They also do a lot of boasting about their thermogenic qualities, which help you burn fat during a workout.  I'm going to use them for at least the next month to test their effectiveness, see if they live up to what they claim, and check for any unwanted side-effects.  This stuff is still pretty new to the market, but I don't mind being a Guinea pig.  Maybe I'll be one of the first to stumble upon something great!