The simplest and most important thing that a person can do when wanting to get in shape is just getting up and going to the gym or going outside and starting a workout. It’s much easier for a person to wish that he/she would just instantly be in shape than to actually go about changing various parts of his/her lifestyle to achieve the goal of getting in shape. But many times, it’s just the thought of how much a person will have to do to achieve his/her that prevents that individual for starting in the first place. Whether one may worry about all the aspects of getting in shape like eating more healthily, eating less, or simply time management; there is truly nothing more important than actually starting the workout. Once a person gets into a routine of consistently working out a few times each week, it becomes incredibly easier to start changing those other aspects of his/her life. But while this may be true for beginners, other intermediate and experienced people may have far different problems.

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Intermediate and advanced weightlifters have a far different kind of problem that beginners; it’s not about getting themselves in shape, but is about improving their bodies more efficiently and noticeably than they have improved in prior months. This problem emerges after months of getting larger and larger muscles, but eventually hitting a plateau caused by the body either getting used to the workouts or an imbalance of nutrition in the body. A huge issue with this problem is that there is one simple yet extremely dangerous catholicon to that will allow the person to grow more quickly than any natural weightlifter on the planet, and that is an anabolic steroid. According to Boundless, anabolic steroids increase protein synthesis within cells, which results in the buildup of cellular tissue (anabolism), especially in muscles. This not only causes the user to have larger muscles, increased endurance, and decreased fat by increasing the person’s BMR (basal metabolic rate), but also necessitates a shorter recovery period. To any weightlifter who is no longer seeing the same results that he/she used to, anabolic steroids would certainly seem extremely enticing. But of course there is a downside. Steroids cause irreversible changes to a person’s body like stunting the height of growing adolescents, masculinizing women, and may even lead to premature heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure.

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The negative health consequences that emerge from taking steroids obviously don’t outweigh the ephemeral physical rewards for the majority of the population. But one may ask, “are there other ways that I can increase my performance in the gym that aren’t accompanied by permanent damage?” The resounding answer is YES. There are countless other ways to help a person grow muscle beyond simply going to the gym and eating healthily. These mainly come in the form of supplements, and hundreds/thousands of these have little to no negative health effects. One such supplements that I use daily is creatine. Creatine is a white powder that is naturally produced in virtually every living creature and helps to supply energy to all cells in the body, primarily muscle. According to Men’s Fitness, consuming creatine can help your muscles build phosphocreatine, which gives you the ability to perform better at shorter, intense, strength-building exercises. A New Jersey study found that following a 10-week resistance training program, participants who took a daily creatine supplement significantly increased their resting testosterone levels. Aside from benefits that occur solely in the gym, there are other ways that creatine can help you in nearly every aspect of your day. Creatine has also been shown to improve mental acuity, productivity, and even act as an anti-inflammatory in the body. There is research being done on the benefit of giving creatine to patients with diseases like Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease, as well as mitochondrial disorders and brain pathologies. There are studies that are beginning to show how creatine can slow down the aging process in some adults because of its ability to allow people to maintain lean body mass and cellular energy.

Another major benefit of creatine is its ability to stay inside the user for weeks after he/she stops using it. This allows for the individual to be able to forget to take it every once in a while without it completely leaving the body. But one downside of creatine is that it usually causes the user to gain some weight initially, although it is nowhere near as a bad as it seems. The user will not gain weight from fat, but rather from water weight because creatine helps the individual retain water more efficiently. Initial weight gain could also be attributed to gaining muscle if the individual is someone who frequently goes to the gym. But as with all supplements, creatine is not for everyone. I hope that everyone reading my blog posts takes my information with a grain of salt and does his/her own research about the topics I discuss before going out and trying them for oneself. All in all, if you have been thinking about getting in shape lately, I seriously recommend that you convince yourself to go to the gym just one time and you’ll see that it’s not only incredibly easy to start but even easier to continue once you have!