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As you may know from many of my previous posts, I have a bittersweet relationship with food supplements! You could say that I love to hate the supplement companies.

Or, I hate to love them sometimes!

There are a ton of useless supplements on the market. But there are some tried-and-true nutritional supplements, too. Supplements I wouldn't attempt to live without.

Okay, I could live without them, but my muscle-building and fitness-related goals would seriously suffer. Supplements make things easier. And, I daresay, better.

I've come to fully believe in something I call "supplement layering." It's a modular system of food supplementation that makes it super-convenient and easy to take the right supplements at the right times. All without "burning out" on supplements.

Base Level (aka, Maintenance Level)

My base level consists of the following supplements. I take these day in and day out, with one exception: Every Thursday & Sunday, I take nothing. I don't necessarily fast, but I do eat much less than normal and I take NO SUPPLEMENTS. This practice works hand-in-hand with the cycling, or periodization, principle I employ in my training.

• Multivitamin/mineral tablet or pak
  
• Joint complex of glucosamine, condroitin, and MSM
• Calcium complex consisting of calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, and Vitamin D
• Vitamin C
• Fish Oil
  
• Ginkgo Biloba
• Prograde Longevity
  

Mass-Building Level

I add in the following when attempting to pack on mass. This is detailed in 5 Supplements for Building Muscle.

• Creatine Monohydrate
  
• Whey protein powder
• Desiccated liver tablets
• Branch-chain amino acids or BCAA
• Other "aminos" – ornithine, arginine, glutamine

Fat-Burning Level

When trying to cut weight and/or "rip up" I remove the Mass-Building supplements and substitute these for fat-burning instead.

• Prograde LEAN
  
• Prograde Metabolism
  

Power & Strength Level

I combine the Base Level (x2 – yes, I double the dosages) with the Mass-Building Level and add in the following. The idea here is to get a blast of quick protein and carbs delivered to the muscles prior to working out and right after.

• Workout Drink

I use this drink both before and after my intense weight workouts.

That's it folks. It's simple & effective nutritional supplement usage that will allow you to reach any given goal faster and with more confidence.

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"No freakin' way" is what I've heard virtually all of my life, pre-teen years included. This is why the "Bulk up and cut down" training systems are what you hear about all the time.

It's an easy sale, too. Your body is much more adept at building muscle OR cutting fat than it is trying to do both at the same time. In fact, cutting up and building muscle at the VERY same time is impossible.

However, that is not to say that, over the course of six weeks, you cannot gain muscle and lose body fat. You can start out at 200 pounds at 15% body fat and wind up at 200 pounds at 10%.

You see, you split your training into cycles. I've talked about this before. Interestingly, you can break up the cycles into even smaller chunks than I did in that old post – we're talking intra-day stuff here, folks.

When you do your weight training during the day, your muscles break down and are ready to build back up again immediately after your workout. They are super-efficient. This is the time when you run a calorie surplus (more on surpluses and deficits in a moment, and NOT of the federal budget variety!).

Most of the rest of the day, if you want to cut up, you can run a calorie deficit.

Over the course of a 24-hour period, you may need 3,000 calories, depending on your weight, activity, metabolism, etc. However, each hour is not simply 1/24th of a day, in caloric-need terms. At rest, you may need only several hundred calories for an 8-hour period.

During your peak activities, you may need A LOT more calories.

When you're running a calorie deficit, if you do it right, you're burning fat. Conversely, when you're running a surplus, you're setting the stage for anabolism (muscle growth).

You have to know how to do this. Timing, as they say, is everything.

And Vince Gironda was right after all – successful bodybuilding is 85% nutrition!

For more info on this, check out The Holy Grail. It's free, for a limited time, but with a catch. But, in my opinion, it's worth it.

Food supplements can be very expensive. Whey protein powders are all the rage. They’re made from milk, are easily digestible, and hit the bloodstream very quickly. However, they are fairly expensive. For the guy or gal who wants to build quality, lean muscle mass, the typical guideline is to take in at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, preferably 1-1/2 to 2 grams in a mass-building or bulking up phase.

Without breaking the bank (and all the banks seem to be broken right now, yes?), you can consume this much protein only by consuming a ton of milk (see the “Gallon of Milk a Day” program, or GOMAD for short), beef, poultry, fish and…

…the incredible, edible EGG.

How to Consume More Protein Without Supplements

Eggs are a complete protein, containing all the “essential” amino acids, and provide about 6 grams per egg. As far as food goes, eggs offer the highest “biological value” protein there is (this is a fancy way of saying that the protein is easily assimilated by the body).

In short, eggs are a MUST HAVE menu item! Especially if you’re laying off on the expensive supplements. But how do you eat enough eggs to make a difference?

Hard boil them.

Here’s How to Hard Boil an Egg

Take a dozen eggs and a really big pot mostly filled with water. Place your oven on high. Put in the eggs and bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling, cook the eggs for 10-12 minutes. Then, pour out the water, replace with cold water and let stand for 15-30 minutes. Refrigerate.

Now, you can eat these just as they are (without the shell, of course) or you can add them to virtually anything, like salads, sandwiches, and as additions to your meals and snacks.

If you’re trying to add weight, eat them whole and eat 2 eggs with every snack. That will get you 6 eggs a day, or an extra 36 grams of protein per day. This, in effect, replaces about one protein shake a day. Of course, your snacks ought to add up to between 20 and 30 grams of protein (depending on body weight), so you’ll have to supplement with milk. Lots of it! In fact, to get to 20 grams per snack, you’ll have to eat 2 eggs plus one 8-ounce glass of milk.

All other things being equal, you can replace 3/4 of a cup of milk with each egg while on the GOMAD program. Which means that you can really cut back on your milk consumption! (This is a good thing, for the most part.)

Alternatively, you can keep drinking your gallon of milk a day PLUS the eggs and you’ll gain more weight than ever before. If you do spring for some whey protein powder, you’ll be even farther ahead of the pack.

In the “old days,” trainers like Vince Gironda prescribed dozens of eggs a day for his pupils during their mass-building phases (3 to 6 weeks at a time, tops, plus every 4th day, go to a regular diet — see Cycling for more information on this important concept). Eggs seem to have an extraordinary anabolic effect on the body, increasing growth hormone production, and driving your gains like crazy.

A few notes:

• Eat the whole egg. Don’t throw anything but the shell out.
• Space your meals to be 2 hours or so apart.
• If you do use food supplements, invest in digestive enzymes. Eating more than a couple eggs a day gives a lot of people some serious gas problems. The aid in digestion is worth the money. Your co-workers will thank you too.
• Don’t fall for the “organic” nonsense with eggs. There is no proof that there is any difference between eggs produced by chickens in pens, free range, no hormones, or “extra hormones.” I have this theory: Chickens fed growth hormones probably pass those hormones to their eggs and consequently to those who eat them.

I do believe you can make serious gains without supplements. However, like anabolic steroids, you can “get there” faster with supplements.

If you want to learn how to make your own supplements for pennies on the dollar (literally, no hype), check out Homemade Supplement Secrets.

One of the most often overlooked training principles is that of cycling. Also known as Periodization, cycling is perhaps your greatest tool to continued gains in the gym. It also works great on the diet, whether you're trying to gain mass or lose body fat. Either way, changing things up, in a strategic way, can really give you an edge in your bodybuilding and/or body shaping efforts.

There are varying degrees and flavors of cycling. There are microcycles, mesocycles, and macrocycles. I'll define these by way of examples.

Microcycles are characterized by their shortness of duration and their frequency. A microcycle might best be understood by thinking in terms of days whereas a macrocycle might be thought of in terms of months.

• Microcycle => Days
• Mesocycle => Weeks
• Macrocycle => Months

Your training split could be thought of as a microcycle. You don't train the same body parts, using the same exercises, sets, reps, and weights every day; you cycle your workouts. Generally speaking, a 4 day split routine really is nothing more than a microcycle of 2 workouts followed by a day (or two) of rest. Guys on a "Hardgainer" program might have a microcycle that consists of a 3-way split, cycled over the course of a week (legs on Monday, chest and arms on Wednesday, and back and shoulders on Friday, for example).

I personally cycle my nutritional supplementation, too. Every Thursday and Sunday, I lay off them completely, even if on a heavy phase.

A mesocycle may be one where your general workouts change over a 3 to 6 week period. I almost never have the same workout, but I keep the same split and generally keep the same or similar exercises (it's the weight, reps, and sets that vary); however, after about 6 weeks, my mind (and probably body) starts to get bored and I need a change (as you know, all progress – and failures – start at the brain). Such a change is actually positive on a few counts.

First, the aforementioned mind problem. Second, the body has little time to adapt to a workout if it's changing every 3-6 weeks. Finally, your muscles are better stimulated (think "all around") with a variety of exercises, sets, reps, and weights. Different muscle fibers may come into play with different workouts.

Finally, a macrocycle could be thought of as a pre-contest, contest, and post-contest training (if you're a competitive bodybuilder or VERY serious about your bodybuilding). Generally, bodybuilders train for many months, attempting to add mass; then they get into contest mode, where they're shoring up small weaknesses while stripping themselves of as much body fat as possible. Then, there's the post-competition training and dieting, where they might go on a break and then resume with their pre-contest program.

Personally, after every 3-6 weeks, I like to take off a week from weight training. I don't become a couch potato, of course. I don't want to see all my hard work vanish. What I do, however, is take a week off from the gym. I may go on several bike rides or hikes. I take along my hobbies, too. For example, I like photography. I will carry my trusty digital SLR with me on a hike up Half Dome.

Every year, I also take off a month from "regular" training. I might take up some "Caveman Training" or some body weight exercises. I may take up some very low volume powerlifting. Nothing that will kill my joints (the idea here is to rest the body and mind, let them heal from nagging injuries), but just experience something different.