SUPPLEMENTS ARE NOT REGULATED by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For this reason, new companies are sprouting up each year with newer and better products “promising” more energy, more muscle and weight loss.
Companies and popular fitness figures market supplements by targeting to arouse the emotions like a “herd mentality” seeking to entice the public to jump on the bandwagon in order to win the conclusion that the marketed supplement may give us more energy, give us more muscle, and make us leaner.
Many retired bodybuilders have discovered the supplement industry as a lucrative business because it appeals to the admiration and vanity of having a muscular and ripped physique. The argument is to look like someone you admire you must buy the supplements he takes, eat what he eats, and train the way he trains. Let’s get real. You are NOT going to look like your favorite athlete just by simply taking a supplement that he or she markets for a company that sponsors him or her.
Supplement companies, bodybuilders, and popular fitness figures manipulate the attitudes and emotions of the general public to incline them to accept popular claims of supplements that have not been established. It is the claim that certain ergogenic and thermogenic “performance enhancing” aids are “clinically proven” to build muscle and burn fat. It is no wonder that the supplement industry is a multibillion-dollar business! It profits from the emotions of the general public.
Do supplements work? Ask yourself: “How do ‘muscle building’ and ‘fat burning’ supplements work to assist with my goal?” If they don't work, then why not? What factors must be present that influences or contributes to the efficacy of such highly marketed supplements? Must I supplement my exercise and diet plan also with a marketed product that “may” help with enhancing my performance and altering my physique?
Taking a protein powder supplement to supplement one’s nutritional needs may or may not augment protein food sources for the day. The kind of protein powder (concentrate, isolate, whey, plant, beef, soy, egg) may be a personal preference based on one’s own body, research, and taste buds. But instead of buying a marketed protein powder supplement, why not create your own protein shake yourself? Simply mix some oats, milk or water, fruit or peanut butter, yogurt, and maybe even ice cream, for a delicious drink!
Anyone can build muscle without the use of muscle building supplements so long as the proper training environment is created to “stimulate” muscle gain. This is what people did before supplements were created and were ever “known.” In addition, anyone can lose weight and transform his or her physique without the use of caffeinated supplements, so long as the proper training environment is created to “stimulate” fat loss.
Following the right training routine, using proper form, exercising with the right amount of intensity, eating the right foods often, having the right attitude, and repeating this routine progressively builds up a healthy habit toward acquiring a mindset to make a physical transformation and beyond! You cannot win the war against what is popular to believe, if you cannot win the war against your own mind to think otherwise. Augment your mind with innate knowledge and work ethic to work hard, work harder, repeat, and never give up!
To say that muscle building and fat loss supplements work is an oxymoron. Putting one’s work in necessarily comes first. It is moving forward with one’s own momentum! That IS the driving force! And with the right focus, success is inevitable. It is learning how to use and control one’s energy and channeling it more effectively.
Some might argue that it’s not about what kinds of foods are consumed, but how much the body absorbs. A probiotic is suggested to get the gut working first. But then again, eating cleaner and often in smaller amounts can help with better absorption. Again, it starts with you. Getting healthier and fitter is not rocket science as some make it out to be by using technical jargon.
The late competitive bodybuilder, Jeff Everson, was an innovator, fitness model, former husband and trainer of 6x Ms. Olympia Cory Everson. Jeff railed against the supplement industry that came with bodybuilding. He wrote in an editorial, “Fifty percent of our supplement-industry revenues are earned selling horseshit – nothing less than hogwash. The whole industry is saturated with too much snake oil slithering down the toilet bowl… [but] if the magazines only printed workout information, they’d go out of business.”
The general populace looks for an easy way, a magic formula if you will, to get healthy and fit. Fad diets and social networks are quite successful at arousing the emotions of the crowd to be associated with a trendy name, social group or following.
Some, if not most, jump on one bandwagon and fall prey to marketing tactics that sell magic formulas, such as, “Lose weight fast, guaranteed!” But they cannot follow a formula for long, which is why, for example, there are so many different diet and fitness programs and supplements being sold, generally to the same people. Others jump on another bandwagon and look to the admiration of athletes for having a muscular and ripped physique. The reasoning is to look like someone you admire, you must buy the supplements he or she takes, eat what he or she eats, and train the way he or she trains. But just because you do what he or she does, doesn’t mean you will look like him or her.
It is interesting to note that Joe Weider’s net worth was only 35 million at the time of his death in 2013. He was 93. First, Joe Weider established himself as the “trainer of champions” of bodybuilding and founded the first sports nutrition company in 1936. Second, Joe Weider co-founded (with his brother Ben) the Mr. Olympia contest in the mid-1960s. Third, Joe Weider launched successful magazines including Muscle & Fitness, Shape, Men’s Fitness, and Flex. But the biggest reason why Joe Weider’s net worth was only 35 million is because his sports nutrition company was bought out by a German food company called Schiff Nutrition International in 2012 for 1.4 billion dollars! This is how much supplement companies have sway over their claims and the public’s purchasing power.
When the proper training environment is created, supplement(s) may enhance the work that a person already does in the gym. But if one cannot or is unwilling to create the proper training environment by training with the proper intensity first, then marketed supplements that one already might take will be to no avail and money will be wasted. Putting in one’s own work comes first. When one improves the mind-body connection, results will inevitably follow.
The bottom line: Don’t waste your hard-earned money on marketed supplements. Let’s get real. Athletes, models, entrepreneurs, and social media influencers may or may not take “supplements.” Athletes, most likely, yield to taking performance enhancing drugs to give them that strong and ripped physique for the purpose of appealing to the emotions of the public to gain admiration and monetary support.