If I'm you, I'd stay FAR FAR FAR away from weight/mass gainer.

Its too expensive and not worth your time in KL. It is "cheaper" than whey but that's because 50% is sugar and dextrose - rubbish carbs to increase cals.

The only way it would be worth is if you have a super-fast metabolism or a pro-athlete training schedule and need huge amounts of calories.

Just buy whey and go eat nasi lemak special later - cheaper and whole food provide a better boost. Or alternatively go buy a huge bag of white sugar and mix few scoops with your whey shake - it comes out the same macro wise plus Govt subsidised your shake too.

Ok its true that not ALL mass gainers are 50% sugars. Guilty as charged.

But the ones most common that people use (ie Serious Mass, Super mass gainer from Dymatize, etc) have at least 50% sugar/dextrose.

Take Serious Mass for example. Out of serving size of 330+g, 250g is carbs. Ok, not all of it is sugar, but still - That's a lot of sugar!!

Dymatize is excellent.

Buy the elite whey not the ordinary one.

Or buy the ordinary one, vanilla flavor, toss in a few tbsp of milk powder + 1 scoop milo and mix. Works for me...........

Chocolate peanut butter. Yumm yummm and vanilla.

But have since switched to Myo cos I love their CnC as well as Bannana perfection.

Usually, I buy from Eji but since his stock disappearance act I have been buying from MuscleMania Club but only on COD basis.

I did some pre-order from EJI (a big amount, more than RM500) and havent received stock yet so fingers xed he will deliver.

Nah I'm not upset with EJI - at least not yet........
He's promised delivery by June 20th-23rd and I can wait a little cos I still have some Myo left. If he comes thru, kinda worth it for those prices.

If you bought from GNC I think u just got suckered.

Leucine is the important supplement. Probably better than creatine IMO.

All I know is, Animal Nitro was more effective for me personally than creatine.

They do work differently.

But with a lot of bb supps you need to cut through the hype. For me personally, I saw little difference with creatine but leucine really gave me a huge boost in recovery and post workout appetite.

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Added on June 18, 2012, 12:13 amShould be enough.

Fears of catabolism are overblown. IMHO.

I trained for 3 years first thing in the am. With a breakfast of a PB sandwich and a pwo protein shake + carbs fuelling me until early lunch at 11 and never had issues with catabolism.

This post has been edited by DJJD: Jun 18 2012, 12:13 AM

Yeah.

With creatine:
Little change in terms of growth rate (eating more or less the same pre/post creatine).
No change in terms of strength (gains still slowed as expected since was nearing a "peak" over the 6-mth period I was taking creatine).

Maybe a little change in recovery? But definitely too little to be directly quantifiable to the creatine. So its hard to say.

Disclaimer: I try to eat plenty of red meat though - Pork (Cheap and good)/ Beef / Lamb whenever avail. so maybe that attributes to the lack of effect on me.

For our muslim forumers, creatine may be more useful especially if surviving on diet of chicken+fish since beef costs a lot. I couldn't say personally.

Also, I took egonutritions creatine - the cheapest brand. Maybe the import brands would be better due to being purer/other ingredients added? Can't say.


As always - with supplements its kind of a mix of arts and science.

I'd have to say I am little sceptical of it working for me after trying so far.

Of course I can afford Green Mag (and yes I've heard good reviews) but I think I don't really need it so far till the gains slow down.

My money better spent on the Animal Line - I like Animal Nitro, Flex and thinking to try UN EAA Nitro as well.

Same but different. Sceptic in me thinks is part of a marketing ploy to sell one higher end "premium" product and another lower end. Hehe.

Anyways, if you believe the marketing:

Animal Nitro: Crafted pack containing not just EAA but also various other vitamins and minerals (kinda true though) in a perfect ratio to help the body grow. In pill form and no fuss cos you just take 1 packet per day.
UN EAA Stack: Just contains EAA (main ingredient of Nitro) but in budget form for lower cost to put into your shake.

Stock: Ordered 2 tubes of Nitro from EJI last time (give or take RM150 a tube at the time) to last me ard 6-9 mths.

EAA Stack: So far I've seen only sold by EGO but relatively reasonable just around RM110++ a pack.

You seem relatively new though, so I would not advise wasting too much on supplements. Best advice given to me on a workout forum (US-based) when I just started working out is train supp free except whey (and maybe creatine).

Then you would not attribute so much growth to supp and can actually track if you add a supplement (lets say Nitro) in and see if it works for you. If you take Nitro when you just start working out you will see gains that you may wrongly attribute to the supp, thus concluding that you will always need it forever and spend a ton of $$$ unnecessarily.

Taste wise (my personal pref):

Myo Banana Perfection
Myo Cookies n Creme
Nitro-Core24 (by ON) Vanilla
Dymatize Elite Choc Peanut Butter
Myo Choc Mint
Dymatize Vanilla
Dymatize Elite Strawberry
ON Choc (yuck)
Scivation Choc (Tastes artificial a little bit but for the price, I ain't complainin!)

Btw, Scivation may be cheap but it works. I've gone through at least 30lbs of Scivation haha.

I'm using Myo Milk Choc now.

Taste is meh........OK la. I still prefer my beloved Banana Perfection and Cookies n Creme but better than Mint Choc which for me is not my fave.

2 scoop Myo + 1 scoop full cream/low fat milk powder = amazing.

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Added on June 20, 2012, 11:00 amOh f***, forgot about this.

Pls don't ever buy Weider

My first ever whey supp. RM130 for 2lbs. Yeah I got conned big time.

Taste wise SUCKS. Worse than ON, worse than Scivation.

This post has been edited by DJJD: Jun 20 2012, 11:00 AM

Ok, been trying out the Dymatize Elite Vanilla and seems the taste been "downgraded" now. LOL.

All I can say is good taste whey aint cheap, and cheap whey aint good tasting.

Ah well, at least I can console myself that I save RM60 if replacing with Myo.

EJI.
Musclemaniaclub.
Both are reasonable.

Whey taste is quite subjective. I personally prefer Myo above Syntha-6 and havent tried Combat powder (the name sounds damn cheesy tho). ON Nitrocore24 is awesome too.

You must not like sweet stuff.

Myo is absolutely amazing for me, and I love banana and cnc!

Can't get enough of the stuff.

Try adding more water if you find it too sweet.

And why cardio after lifting? If you wanna burn fat, fasted cardio is king!

For 20g of excess protein, the weight gain will most likely be very minimal.

In fact, looking at calories is very deceptive. The process for storing 1 cal of protein, fat or carbs as excess body fat are all different, with carbs being the easiest and fat being the hardest (in a very simplified manner).

So long as one does not heavily overeat carbs or go overboard (like >>1000 cals surplus) body composition should not be heavily affected even if you eat slightly more or less.

A lot of it is slick marketing and meaningless.

Think of many of the BBing advertisements and blurbs on the canisters as Apple ads.

They hold just about as much truth.

ETA: Let's face it, using BSN True Mass will not make you Ronnie Coleman no matter how many kgs you ingest a day.

This post has been edited by DJJD: Jul 13 2012, 12:14 AM

Hmmmm leg days of all the days is when I need the extra calories most.

Climbing the stairs in my office the next day feels like climbing Mount Everest.