Supplement Stack Introduction

How I curate my supplement stack for immunity, cardiovascular health, physical performance, and more. Supplement Stack series part 1/5

Supplement Stack series:

1. Supplement Stack Introduction

2. My Morning Supplement Stack

3. My Lunchtime Supplement Stack

4. My Afternoon (Workout) Supplement Stack

5. My Evening Supplement Stack

I get many questions about my supplement stack. Usually, my response is that while I use several supplements, having a strong foundation is essential before you start haphazardly adding in a bunch of new things. That foundation for me is getting to a solid baseline on the three pillars of health and fitness - Nutrition, Recovery, and Activity.

If you’re not drinking enough water, please start there. Many people are chronically mildly dehydrated and would feel significantly better in terms of energy, mood, and performance just by drinking more water. I personally feel the best drinking around 4 L (135 oz) a day, but a good place to start for most people is half your body weight in pounds, converted to ounces - so if you weigh 180 lb, you should get at least 90 oz (2.7 L) of water in - and an additional 1 L (32 oz) on days you workout.

The supplement industry is also poorly regulated, and quality can vary greatly. I only use supplements from a few trusted companies that I know do thorough testing and produce high-quality products, and I typically avoid anything with a “proprietary blend.” And usually, if it has a name like “Mega Ultimate Animal Burn Intensifier” it’s likely best to avoid it.

With those caveats out of the way, I will share with you what I take, why I take it, and when.

This introduction is part 1 of a 5-part series. I’m going to break it down into:

• Part 2: Morning

• Part 3: Lunch

• Part 4: Afternoon (workout)

• Part 5: Bedtime

It’s important to have a specific goal for any supplement you add. Too often, we see people arguing about which supplement is necessary or better without a clear goal in mind. This is true of any intervention - know why you’re doing it and have some way of measuring its effectiveness. Those goals include things like better sleep, improving performance in a specific type of physical activity, improved body composition, increased energy, and affecting a blood biomarker.

Your goals need to be realistic; you’re not going to suddenly look like the guy clearly on large doses of anabolics just by adding whey protein and creatine, and you’re not going to increase your IQ by 20 points by trying some nootropic. Once you have defined your goals, you need to measure progress towards them, and this is why the Realize Me platform enables users to track their supplementation and tie it to specific metrics to measure efficacy.

Realize Me members are typically enthusiasts and optimizers who already have a solid baseline of health and fitness and are supplementing for specific goals. We see people who take very few supplements and some that spend many hundreds of dollars a month on a wide array of things.

Either way, we understand that supplements are an important component of many of our members’ regimens. We’ve recently established partnerships with two of the best supplement companies in the business, Thorne and Designs For Sport, and offer significant discounts on those products to our members. On average, our members spend $150/month on supplements and have reduced that to less than $100/month (sign up here to join the waitlist!).

I’ll take you through my morning supplement stack in my next post.