Walk into any health food shop, and you’ll find shelves overflowing with supplements promising better health, more energy, bigger muscles, improved focus and even a longer life.
I’m going to show you that you don’t need cupboards overflowing with pills and powders. Both with my health and my finances, I think of two things: optimisation and simplification. How can I get the best out of myself while keeping things as simple as possible?
While there are certainly supplements you can (and should) take, they do exactly what their name suggests – they supplement a healthy lifestyle. They are not a replacement for one. Thus, you must still focus on the Four Cornerstones for a healthy lifestyle; sleep, diet, exercise and spirituality.
Since I’m an Athlete of Life (and you should be to) – my goal isn’t to win bodybuilding competitions or run ultramarathons. It’s to build a badass body that can still climb mountains and swim across rivers into my 70s and beyond. With this in mind, there are only four supplements you really need to take:
1. Creatine Monohydrate
Creatine helps replenish ATP, the body’s rapid energy source used during high-intensity exercise. In practical terms, this means it can improve strength, power and recovery during resistance training and sprint efforts. Unlike many sports supplements, creatine has been researched extensively for decades. Thousands of studies have consistently shown it to be both effective and safe for healthy adults.
What’s particularly interesting, is that emerging research suggests creatine may offer benefits in brain function, particularly during periods of sleep deprivation or intense mental effort – as well as its potential contribution to healthy aging (by combatting age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia), maintaining bone mineral density, and preserving cognitive processing speed).
For me, creatine is about preserving strength and physical capability throughout life. I want to be able to lift heavy shopping bags, climb stairs with ease and remain independent well into old age.
I take 4.5 grams of creatine daily, and get mine from wherever’s cheapest on Amazon.
2. Vitamin D
Living in the UK, we have the obvious disadvantage of a lack of sunshine (even though our climate is getting sunnier). During the autumn and winter, the sun simply isn’t strong enough for our skin to produce meaningful amounts of Vitamin D (and it’s often cloudy anyway).
Vitamin D plays an important role in maintaining healthy bones, supporting muscle function and helping the immune system to work normally. Although it’s possible to obtain some Vitamin D from foods such as oily fish, sunlight remains the primary source.
I take 25 micrograms (1,000 IU) of Vitamin D each day outside of the summer months, and get mine from the local supermarket.
3. Omega-3 Fish Oil
This provides long-chain fatty acids which are important components of cell membranes throughout the body, and play important roles in heart, brain and eye health. Ideally, we’d all eat oily fish several times per week, but I generally don’t eat enough to reach this target.
I take a modest daily supplement of one Omega-3 capsule per day, providing approximately 300mg EPA and 220mg DHA. I get mine from wherever’s cheapest on Amazon.
4. Whey Protein Powder
I take 1-2 protein shakes from both of Huel Black Edition and Bulk whey protein powder per day (whatever I can fit into my schedule). They typically provide an additional 50-65 grams of protein each day.
Because I exercise regularly – between running, sprinting and resistance training, my muscles need adequate protein to recover and adapt. While it is absolutely possible to meet protein requirements through whole foods alone, it requires commitment and dietary tracking. Shakes make this much easier – they’re convenient, filling and help me consistently reach my daily protein target without overthinking every meal.
Why I don’t take anything else
There are plenty of other things you can take: magnesium, collagen, multivitamins, greens powders, mushroom extracts… I don’t take any of these, and this is because the evidence simply isn’t as compelling for most healthy people. It’s easy to spend hundreds of pounds each year chasing tiny improvements while ignoring the most important things.
A supplement will never compensate for poor sleep, nor will it undo an unhealthy diet or replace good, honest exercise.
At the end of the day, baseline fitness is built on regular exercise, nutritious food, good sleep and consistency. Staying healthy is built on showing up, day after day, week after week, year after year, building habits that compound over a lifetime.
That’s what being an Athlete of Life is all about.
Other articles you might enjoy:
- How to get a 440% return on being fit
- How to get a Good Night’s Sleep
- The Unexpected Benefits of Lifting Heavy Weights
- How to Build Fitness for a Longer, Healthier Life
- How to invest a lump sum of money in the UK
You can follow me on X, and find me on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook.
Leave a Reply