The #1 Supplement You Should Use If You're On a Budget

When you're low on cash, the continual cost of supplements can seem like an unneeded expense, so what do you do if you can only afford one supplement? Now, I'm sure many of you had your favorite supplement come to mind as you read that, but a while back I spoke with Jeff Anderson and his answer to that same question was most likely a lot different than yours.

Should you let Jeff's opinion sway yours? Well, he was a Master Fitness Trainer for the US Military, and he's a well-known bodybuilding consultant, so it wouldn't hurt to at least listen to what he has to say. And luckily for you, I've typed out his response below...

You open up any muscle mag and it's filled with lots of choices for supplements, and people tend to read the really sexy articles. You know, the ones that are really flashy, like How to Build Massive Amounts of Muscle in the Shortest Period of Time... or How to Burn Massive Amounts of Fat. But really the ingredients in the supplements they'll have you taking might not necessarily be targeted to that goal, they just want that final image of how you want to look in your mind, as you read the title.

But if I could only get one supplement, and this isn't going to sound sexy, but I'm going to make it sound sexy here in a second... it's got to be protein, and again most people are probably tuning out now. Like OK, obviously everyone wants protein powder, but the problem is is that there are so many different kinds of protein powder out there. And unfortunately the way the supplement industry wants you to purchase may not necessarily be what you should be purchasing. I'll give you an example of that...

One thing that's a real big trend right now is labeling everybody as a hardgainer, and then telling them that what they need to be eating or consuming, in the way of protein powder, is a casein protein. Now, like I said, there are different forms of protein powders that are out there. So, you have casein, whey, whey concentrate, whey isolate, whey hydrolysate, and all these different forms of whey protein. Now, this gives really good fuel to the supplement industry to kind of sell you on why you should be ordering different ones, and how they can make more profit off of them.

Because if they sell you a cheap supplement like a casein protein, well that's really inexpensive to make. There's not a lot of processing that really goes into it and they can get that out very very quickly. And their goal is to tell you that casein protein actually feeds the amino acids to your muscles through a much slower process, so for hardgainers it gives you more amino acids, more muscle building protein, over a longer period of time. But there's a problem with this...

The enemy of that slow process is what they call the fast-digesting proteins, like whey protein isolate and whey protein hydrolysate. And what they claim is that if you take these higher quality proteins, which are more expensive, then what it ends up doing is it enters your bloodstream very very quickly, it's digested very rapidly, it sends amino acids into your bloodstream very rapidly, but it's gone very rapidly as well. So, the general advice is to use a casein protein throughout the day, and before bed, but to only use these other proteins, like the whey protein isolate, immediately after your workout. Well, they're wrong!

Here's why...

Yes, the higher quality proteins, like whey protein isolate, are digested rapidly and they do put amino acids into your bloodstream very rapidly, but there have been studies done where they took tests about 3 hours after consumption, to find out how much of the amino acids were actually sticking around, and how many of them weren't. And what they found was that, when they compared all the casein, whey protein concentrate, isolate, and hydrolysate, whey protein hydrolysate had the highest concentration of amino acid pools 3 hours after consumption, even more so than the casein protein that everyone's telling you that you should go out and buy.

Now, the reason they're telling you to buy this is again because it's very cheap for them to produce, and they can charge a lot for it if they're telling you that this is what you should be buying. So, this is what you need... this is what you should pull out your credit card for.

So, my advice for everyone is to choose a high quality protein for all of your meals, because it's going to allow you to actually have more amino acids available for muscle building. You don't have to go with the very expensive whey protein, like a hydrolysate, but my recommendation is to instead use whey protein isolate. Whey protein isolate is just one level below whey protein hydrolysate, and it's a little bit higher than whey protein concentrate. It's the most economical protein for you to take, and it still gives you those high levels of amino acid pools after consumption, but it's less expensive than buying a lot of the casein proteins, and much much more efficient when it comes to helping you with mass building.

Now, whey protein isolate probably isn't the first supplement that popped into your mind when you read the first line in this article, was it? Like Jeff said, it's not that sexy, but it's cheap and it gives you access to the building blocks you need to construct a body you can be proud of.

Want more supplement advice? Well, part 2 of the interview is where Jeff reveals a little trick he learned from his backyard swimming pool... Find out what helped him burn fat, build muscle, and live longer!