Trying Out Some New Supplements

Hello!

Happy Easter. It's a happy holiday, but I kind of wish my gym still opened up at it's normal time. I've been antsy all morning to get in there and do some cardio. My trainer Julie told me to do 40 minutes of high-intensity cardio 6 times per week, plus four 30-minute sessions separately from that. Sounds like a lot, but it's doable. I'm getting increasingly excited for my competition as the days pass by.

I am still needing to cut down on body fat and drop a few pounds in these last four weeks. I was reading the new issue of Muscle & Fitness Hers magazine yesterday, and I came upon an article called "Kiss Fat Goodbye". It examines several fat-loss supplements, including caffeine, green tea extract, yohimbine, capsaicin (the stuff that makes peppers spicy), and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). The article recommended that people looking to drop fat (i.e. ME!) should take ALL of these supplements daily, and they explained when & how much to take.

I already consume caffeine, of course (what competitor doesn't??), but I do not currently use the other supplements. But with only four weeks til showtime, I took this article seriously and ordered a couple of the supplements from Bodybuilding.com (green tea extract and yohimbine). I will begin taking them when they arrive in the next few days and report back the results.

One thing that had me raise my eyebrows a little in the article was the amount of caffeine that M&F Hers recommended consuming. Most resources online recommend 200-300 mg of caffeine per day. So I've been trying very hard not to exceed that. But the section on caffeine in the article recommends "200-400 milligrams of a caffeine supplement between meals two or three times a day with one of those doses 30-60 minutes before workouts on training days." Hm. That adds up to a lot more than 200-300 mg. I will have to do some more investigation into the caffeine question.

Off to the elliptical machine! :-)