To
Gain
Weight, Whole Foods or Shakes?
After many years of
spending hundreds, and even thousands, of dollars,
after getting sick on them, and after seeing NO KIND OF RESULTS from
them, many have finally realized that they are WORTHLESS.
Yet,
many are still confused if the supplements that are sold as "Meal
Replacements", "Weight Gainers",
"natural supplements", and "amino
acids" have some good use in substituting for some WHOLE FOODS.
Surely
you see them in just about every other page in every-single
bodybuilding / fitness magazine. Everyone at the gym uses them.
Go
to any grocery store and they have them there too. Yes, even you have
probably used them and / or are using them right now.........
Shakes and supplements.
Many
different "meal replacement" powders and shakes, also known as RTD's,
are sold as being a substitute for a real, whole food meal.
The makers claim that they are "just as good, if not better, than
eating a real meal".
They
claim to have higher amounts of protein, lower amounts of sugar, and
add in ingredients such as BCAA's, Glutamine, Creatine, HMB, CLA, so on
and so forth.
They claim that your muscles need a high amount of
this and that, and that you can't get those from just eating the right
foods. .....
That's what the makers claim.
First off, no supplement that is out on the market right now will build
any kind of real, permanent muscle on your body, none!
Not creatine (which makes you gain nothing but "water weight"), not
glutamine, not HMB, not NO2, not any one of them.
If you are skeptical, perform a test on yourself:
For one month, don't change anything about your training routine or
your eating habits.
Measure your arms, your chest, and your waist with a measuring tape and
fat calipers.
Take one supplement, and only one. Use it for that month.
Then take your measurements again.
I
guarantee you that your measurements will reveal that your arms or
chest didn't get any bigger or vascular, regardless of what the weight
scale says.
Yes, some people report gaining 8-10 pounds of weight after one week of
using creatine, but are those 8-10 pounds muscle? No!
They are made up of water and / or fat. The measuring tape and fat
calipers will reveal that to you.
So,
when a meal replacement shake or powder advertises that it is better
than eating whole food because it contains all of these extra "muscle
building ingredients", don't be fooled.
Even if it actually contains those ingredients, they don't work anyway!
Second, meal replacements claim to have a certain amount of protein
grams, carb grams, and fat grams.
Well,
lately there have been several analysis done on many popular
supplements, and it has been discovered that many of them do not
contain the amount of ingredients as printed on the label!!
Just
a while back a report was written that a popular "protein bar", that
claims to taste like Snickers, contained up to 7% less amount of
protein than the label claims.
And it contained much more sugar than stated.
Many
of these makers "skim" on the ingredients to bring the cost down of
making those supplements, while lying on the nutrition labels, just to
make a bigger profit!
Third, the price.
A meal
replacement powder can cost you up to $3.00 PER PACKET, while it would
probably cost you $1.00 or less if you were to eat the same amount of
calories from real food.
I don't know about you, but I rather keep my money in my pocket.
Fourth,
and probably the most important out of all, is that powders and shakes
contain many ingredients that are down-right harmful to your internal
body.
In order to make these "meal replacements" into powders
and to be able to be stored for long periods of time (for shipping and
sitting on the store shelves), many chemicals and preservatives must be
added.
What do you think happens when you are constantly putting
into your body foreign chemicals and preservatives, substances that are
not from nature.
Your body does not handle well those types of unnatural substances.
Instead
of making you gain muscle, all you will get is a BLOATED STOMACH,
DIARRHEA, and EVEN FAT, since your body doesn't digest it well.
How many times have you drunk a protein shake and 30 minutes later you
start to get "gas"?
That's your body's way of telling you that it cannot handle that shake.
Also,
"meal replacements" DON'T contain vital nutrients that are a
"must-have" if you want to grow a healthy physique, such as vitamins,
minerals, anti-oxidants, enzymes, etc.
These powders don't have any of those things.
Don't believe me, read the nutrition labels.
On
the contrary, whole foods are natural, they contain all of the vital
nutrients that your body requires to get big and strong, they are much
less in price, and they won't cause you to go running to the nearest
toilet.
Without a doubt, if you want to gain muscular weight,
forget about those disgusting-tasting meal replacement powders and
shakes, and eat real whole foods, just like our ancestors did back
before the supplement industry came along with all of their lies.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Perez
Cleveland Firefighter
Certified ACE / IAFF / IAFC Firefighter Peer Fitness Trainer
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Perez has
written many articles exposing the many weight training and diet myths
being spread about in the bodybuilding industry and on the internet.
His eBook, "From Skinny
To Muscular!", has helped many naturally skinny individuals gain
muscle size and weight by detailing the training strategies and eating
techniques that actually work at building muscle, instead of strength.
Many of Jonathan's other articles are located here: Read These
Articles To Help You Gain Weight.
Muscle
Building Secrets Revealed
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