supplements that improve body recomposition

[CCS]

carnitine aids fat burning by carrying the fat to the muscles. but if you eat enough protein, you get plenty of carnitine. If you bought the supplement, take it before your morning fat burn, I guess. Dairy products are a good source of carnitine. most people eat 100g per day. or that is how much they produce. It is made from methionine and lysine, both low in vegetarian diets.

drinking milk after a workout has much better effects on fat and muscle, compared to the same calories of soy, or the same calories of a sports drink. Maybe it is the liquid protein with way/caesin combo, maybe it is what is in it, maybe it is the protein/carb ratio.

HMB is definitely good if you workout hard, often, and don't eat a lot. If you don't do those, you don't get as much benefit over placebo, except while you sleep or during a morning fat burn. Whereas carnitine caries fat to the muscles to be burned, HMB protects muscle from cortisol. HMB costs a lot more than carnitine.

whey protein is good because it has lots of branch chain amino acids and is quickly digested, which are catabolized in heavy workouts. If you eat lots of plant protein, you definitely do not need to supplement with arginine or glutamine. If you eat lots of protein, you probably don't either.

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Garbage:
Creatine
Glutamine (unless you are cutting and on low calorie intake)
Arginine

 

[CCS]

some of you will laugh at this, but I read many study abstracts and saw many poorly designed ones that lead to many of the popular beliefs. I read many bb.com articles too. Those bb.com articles are good because they put 8 studies side by side, and describe the full text of the study.

 

[Harie]

Garbage:
Creatine
Glutamine (unless you are cutting and on low calorie intake)
Arginine

Bullshit. Creatine is the most researched most studied supplement on the planet. It works. Period...All-be-it you don't need the super high doses that the manufacturers recommend

Arginine is a precursor to NO2. Some people respond very favorably to NO2 supplementation.

Glutamine...Well, that is a POS.

 

[CCS]

none of the studies campared long term results, especially after the creatine users came off creatine. Many included just 10 people split into 3 groups. None that I've seen actually looked at protein gain. They just look at non-fatty body weight, which of course includes water. And when they did biopsies, they did not measure how much protein there was per gram of muscle. They just looked and saw that there was more mass. Again, that included the water weight. It is well known that creatine increase burst speed and endurance 10% on the higher doses. It does not increase muscle endurance. That is because it is just like storing more ATP in the muscle. Once it is used up, you still have the same muscle there that is not in better shape and does not produce more energy. The lack of benefit to distance runners hows how useless it really is.

Creatine has many studies because the huge industry pays for them. I've not seen one convincing study. It sells because people love seeing that 5-10 pound water gain right in their muscles, and the 10% increase in strength, and hate seeing it leave afterwards. These are transient effects.

Maybe the extra creatine can help recovery by 10% or so. But if you are going to spend $30 on creatine, get HMB or some carnitine instead.

 

[CCS]

Hairy,

show me one study with at least 30 people where the creatine users actually put on more protein mass, or they kept a significant amount of their strength edge over the placebo group even a month after coming off creatine. Or show me one where they gave a strength test after the creatine users gained their water weight and 10% strength, and the creatine users improved faster from that point on than the placebo group was improving. I've looked at dozens, on google, pubmed, and bb.com. None of them looked at those simple factors. It is obvious the scientists were paid to make it looke like the creatine was better when it is not. Don't waste your money.

 

[Harie]

The lack of benefit to distance runners hows how useless it really is.

Of course Creatine won't benefit distance runners, that's absurd. Good read on creatine...When to use, how much to use, what days to use. http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459369

Personally, I don't use Creatine. I use Kre-Alkalyn since it doesn't seem to make me retain any water compared to Creatine Mono.

 

[CCS]

if it is more fat soluble, then it won't hold as much water, or stay in your muscles, but you will be able to store more. do what you want man.

 

[Harie]

if it is more fat soluble, then it won't hold as much water, or stay in your muscles, but you will be able to store more. do what you want man.

If you read the link, it says you can't uptake much creatine at all...And if you dose on days you don't workout, you're just wasting creatine. Your muscles can only hold a minute amount of supplemented creatine...

 

[CCS]

I read other articles that said similar stuff. They said most of what is taken is not absorbed, and the best time to absorb it is right after a work out. Even at optimal dosing, muscle creatine is only increased 20%.