When it comes to your daily fitness and beauty routine, supplement powders should be a part. You might be skeptical about the power of supplements, but they’re are a few that can help increase your metabolism, reduce the aging process, and assist in your workout recovery. Yes, a healthy diet is key, and can never be substituted, but adding a few supplements can put your health on overdrive slay mode. Here are five magical supplement powders that can make your life better – well maybe not your life, but at least improve your workouts, fast track your weight loss and but a halt on the aging process!
Here’s 5 Supplements to Amp Your Health into Overdrive SLAY MODE!
Supplement #1: Protein Power Blends
Protein is an essential for maintaining and building a lean and curvy body. High protein diets, improve your body composition – by increasing the proportion of lean muscle and reducing body fat. Higher protein diets have been shown to have a satiating effect, reducing hunger between meals.
Protein also has a thermogenic effect which means the body burns more calories just digesting it, versus other foods of the same caloric value including carbohydrates. Although you can get majority of your protein needs met through a good diet plan, protein powders can help reach your daily intake of protein.
Whey Protein is considered a high quality protein supplements, which provides a rich content of the essential amino acids. These can only be obtained through your diet. Essential aminos are the building blocks of lean muscle, as well as silky hair, glowy skin and strong nails! When choosing a protein powder go for a whey blend that uses only grass fed and hormone free ingredients and provides roughly 25 g of protein per serving.
Not a fan of dairy? Try a plant based protein that uses a combination of pea, hemp and brown rice. Veggie blends veggie blends can help get your essentials aminos met, but they’re not as bio-available to your body as whey. That means they won’t get absorbed as much as a good whey protein, but can still be effective.
Protein powder can be consumed in a fruity smoothie, added to almost any baked good recipe including your weed brownies, or even blended into an overnight oats recipe– yummy.
Supplement #2: Super Food Green Blends
Plant based products are definitely a must and for good reason. Greens products are typically a blend of super food ingredients including fruit and vegetable powders with a concentrated dose of phytonutrients. These are the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and most importantly antioxidants found in plants. It has been shown that supplementing the diet with an abundant amount of vegetables and fruits can increase the body’s antioxidant status.
Why is this important? Antioxidants help decrease the harmful effects of free radicals produced in the body through processes of oxidation brought on by life stressors, the environment or even a tough workout. By binding to active receptor sites on free radicals, antioxidants act like scavengers, neutralizing their damaging effects in the body, helping to promote cellular re-generation, increase circulation – for glowy healthy skin, and reduce inflammation – for faster post workout recovery!
Common antioxidants can be found in vegetables and fruits we eat, however supplementing with a greens powder, offers a much more potent and concentrated dose of these nutrients, without the added calories. Look for greens powders that don’t contain fillers and preferably use organic ingredients. Common ingredients found in greens powder include spirulina, wheat grass, carrot, barley grass, spinach, kale, as well as fruit such as berries, acai, pomegranate, tomatoes and mangosteen.
Supplement #3: Collagen Protein
This protein is essential for promoting skin elasticity and structure, helps hold together bones and muscles and provides structure to joints and tendons. Although our bodies produce collagen, it does slow down with age and without the building blocks to support collagen development, you will see wrinkles and sagging skin over time. Ewww.
Supplementing with collagen protein may help to decrease wrinkles and appearance of fine lines. Women who supplemented with a collagen supplement had noticeable improvements in skin elasticity and a reduction of wrinkles. In addition, supplementing with collagen can also improve the appearance of dreaded cellulite. In a 2015 study, women given collagen peptides for 6-months had clear improvements in skin texture and a reduction in skin waviness. Collagen protein can be added to a smoothie, similar to protein powder.
Supplement #4: Matcha Green Tea Powder
This antioxidant rich tea has some serious benefits when it comes to weight loss. Extracts of Green Tea have been found to significantly increase metabolic rate and have a direct effect on your body’s ability to burn fat. These extracts contain the active ingredient catechins, which are found in the tea at smaller doses.
In one study, a specific extract was found to increase overall energy expenditure or calorie burning by 35%! Additionally, Green Tea seems to have an effect on burning off that hard to burn belly fat.
Green tea can also have positive benefits on the skin, protecting against the sun’s damaging rays. It can also help keep blood sugar levels in check!
There are many supplements that contain green tea extract, but not many that contain the correct amount. Choose a product that contains a standardized amount of 90% polyphenols and 45% epigallocatechin gallate, also known as EGCG. You can also use a green tea powder, which can be added to smoothies, lattes or even your yoghurt!
Supplement #5: Creatine
Creatine is by far the most researched and effective supplements when it comes to your fitness regime. Although it is found naturally in our bodies, creatine is not at high enough amounts to elicit its muscle energizing effects.
Supplementing with creatine increases the body’s creatine stores. As a result, more phospho-creatine is available for use by our muscles, which means more phosphate is available to ADP to help regenerate ATP – our muscles primary energy source. The effect of supplementing with creatine is not only longer sets and more reps but also gains in lean muscle and strength.
Creatine can also increase anaerobic threshold – or increase your time to fatigue. That means you can – run further, last longer in the gym or have more power in the ring!
Most women fear using creatine, because it can increase weight – both muscle and water weight. However, research has shown that women do not tend to gain weight from creatine loading. Instead they see just performance enhancement from use. It’s also a great recovery agent and helps preserve the lean muscle you’ve already built. Women also tend to store more creatine naturally and therefore don’t need as much. For maximum results use 3 g daily for a minimum of 8-weeks to see results.
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Until Next Time,
Be Fierce & Rule the World,
Lauren Jacobsen
References:
Rawson ES, Volek JS. Effects of creatine supplementation and resistance training on muscle strength and weightlifting performance. J Strength Cond Res. 2003. 17(4): 822-31.
Schunck M, et al. Dietary Supplementation with Specific Collagen Peptides has a BMI-Dependent Benefitical Effect on Cellulite Morphology. J Med Food. 2015. 18(12): 1340-48.
Auvichayapat P, et al. Effectiveness of Green Tea on Weight Reduction in Obese Thais: A Randomized, Controlled Trial. Physiology & Behavior. 2008. 93(3): 486-91.
