I can see why people turn to supplements in today’s society. It’s a quick fix for missed vitamins, minerals and macronutrients they simply can’t get from food due to lack of time. I can also understand why people at the minute might be buying certain supplements over food. We are living in an uncertain time where redundancies are nearing an all-time high, and its simply cheaper to buy a tablet or pill that covers all your vitamin and mineral needs than it is to buy the fruit and vegetable equivalent.
If you are like most people, then you probably buy bits and bobs from the fruit and veg isle for the week and get a semi decent amount into your diet, but you also buy a vitamin tablet as well, just in case. The rest of your diet is mainly made up of healthy carbohydrates, some meats, and the odd treat. That is fine, there is no problem with that. The problem arises when you start filling your shopping cart with a lot more processed foods, ignoring the fruit and veg and topping up on the vitamin and mineral pills. The back of the tub states just one of these pills will give you the recommended daily allowance of each individual vitamin and mineral, so surely, it’s all bases covered?
You cannot out supplement a bad diet.
Not quite, and I will not beat around the bush until the end of the article. You cannot out supplement a bad diet. However, you can make a good diet better with certain supplements.
You need to be asking yourself if you are ready to take a supplement. The answer is already no if your diet is poor. This can be either eating way over your calories with the majority coming from processed foods, eating too little throughout the day and therefore the volume of healthy foods just isn’t there, or eating at maintenance but the majority is from unhealthy sources and isn’t well balanced. Thankfully, the fix for this is easy – start eating a healthy diet.
On the flip side, you are probably ready to start looking at supplements if you know your diet is consistently full of healthy clean foods, you are an athlete looking to improve, you know you have a deficiency, you are pregnant or you are sick. However, you now must ask yourself what is the best supplement to help improve your diet? There are literally hundreds of supplements you can buy, so this is no easy decision. The best thing to do is speak to a professional, they can take blood tests, assess your diet and have a look at the vitamins and minerals your body may be lacking. If you don’t want to spend the cash, which is understandable given the current climate, then you can use an app such as MyFitness Pal. On a basic level, it can track all your protein, carbohydrates, and fats that you consume daily. These are called your macronutrients. However, it can also monitor the number of vitamins and minerals you are getting in your diet, so you could assess what you need from a supplement yourself if needs be. If you are an athlete looking to gain a competitive edge, whatever that may be, then Powerbody has a great categories section so you can easily pinpoint the type of supplement you are looking for.
Supplements can be a brilliant addition to an already healthy diet. They can plug gaps where you may have exhausted your diet or environmental and lifestyle factors play a part in making it difficult to get everything in. No matter how hard we try, our diets will never be perfect day in day out. Supplements can help us bridge the gap but should never be relied upon before a healthy diet.
