Why I Stopped Taking Supplements

Supplementation History

I lifted extremely inconsistently from around my junior year of high school until just after graduating from college. At that time, I became familiar with Creatine and Protein powder. During my lifting phases, I would take both. When I stopped going to the gym, I would stop taking both. In December of 2024, I started lifting again, and I had the most consistent year of my life. I ended up at Planet Fitness just shy of 300 days, and I would lift at the gym at my office because it had a barbell. I consistently supplemented during this time.

Why I Stopped

I had a series of events happen that slowed down my gym progress and lowered my consistency quite a bit. I got into a relationship, and now I stay up later, wake up later, and that made it difficult to get into the gym before work. I also got laid off from my job, which made me reprioritize my life a bit. Finally, I pulled some muscles in my back during a squat, so I was out of the gym for a couple of weeks. With all of these things happening, I stopped taking protein and creatine consistently. For those familiar with creatine, consistency is hugely important because you need to saturate your system with it.

Now What?

Well, I'm not planning to resume supplementation anytime soon. Thats not to say I won't start again, but my goals have changed. At the time, I wanted to be as big and strong as I could naturally get. I still want to be bigger and stronger, but now I want to be healthy. That isn't to say supplements are unhealthy, but my focus now is on nutrition and lifting more controlled. I eat mostly whole foods in my cooking. A day of eating for me would look like oatmeal with almonds, raisins, and cinnamon, an apple, carrots, celery, tilapia, rice, avocado, and cooking some of those items with olive oil and a touch of salt. This has given me lean protein in my diet along with a good serving of fruits and vegetables, and better carbs than bread and sweets. So now I don't really care about protein timing or getting an extra 25 grams from a scoop of powder because I just want to live a generally healthy lifestyle; I'm no longer interested in optimizing my life towards building a physique.