Stacking Creates Peace of Mind
In this series, I’m going to share some recipes for supplements. When you combine simple ingredients together like an apothecary, you’re “stacking supplements together.” There are many advantages to taking the time to do this.
As I’ve said repeatedly: Food should be your first and best source of nutrition. First concentrate on maximizing your progress with The 8 Patterns of Fitness. If you find you still need to fill gaps or get an extra boost, that’s when it’s time to look at pills, powders, and potions.
There are many pitfalls to avoid when buying supplements. You often don’t know, or cannot control, what you’re taking, since most products come pre-mixed “for your convenience.” Stacking gives you control, because you purchase only those ingredients you want from sources that you trust. You then decide on the serving size, and combine only what is useful and safe.
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By now you’ve probably heard about how much more affordable it is to eat at home, rather than going to restaurants. It’s one of the fundamental ways to get your cost of living down. Another advantage is that you have more control over what you eat, because you are choosing it yourself. However, this part of the advantage can easily be undermined, if you select items that are heavily processed.
Stacking for good health
With food in mind as the most obvious example, let’s look at what stacking is within the context of fitness and wellness. When you go shopping, if you want to know exactly what’s going into your meal, you purchase individual ingredients. Ideally they will be as natural as possible. A soup that you make from scratch is practically always going to be better for you than a canned product. You did it with broth, fresh veggies, and individual herbs and spices. You know what you used. It was water, bouillon, seasoning, fresh raw veggies, and the rice you steamed yourself. That’s pretty much it. Compare that simple list to the ingredients on commercially canned soups. Good luck with understanding all that!
If you concern yourself with what is going onto or into your body, you need to know what companies put into your meals and other products. Go for the choices that have fewer ingredients. Purchase the brands that use mostly, or only, ingredients you can pronounce and identify readily. Use this same standard for everything, not just food.
Skin products
Your skin is your largest organ. It’s permeable, and nearly everything that gets on your skin will get into your body to some degree or another. With that in mind, do you know what is in your shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, lotion, and deodorant? We take for granted that the items we throw casually into our shopping carts are safe and healthful. But you should not presume that.
Obviously it isn’t always convenient to make everything you need. What next? Am I going to ask you to milk a cow and churn your own butter? I understand anything can be taken too far. I’m not suggesting you make everything from tree bark and sweat like a 19th century Oklahoma settler. But when is it easy to make your own concoctions?
I’m glad you asked! Can you imagine it? I have an answer for you!
Recipes to come!
Back to the title of this entry. Over the course of the next three parts of this series, I will offer suggestions for blending your own stacks. Expect entries for building muscle, burning fat, and skin care.
I would like to point out something before I publish the next entries. Collecting the ingredients for a stack can be expensive up front; however, once you have the ingredients, you not only know what you’re working with, you’ll have a fair quantity of each component of the stack, and you will thus be able to make multiple batches. This means you will save a great deal of money over the longer course of use.
Not only will you be more confident about what you are using, but you will also protect yourself from unspecified proprietary blends that contain who knows what. You’ll also get much more use from the ingredients you have handy, which will greatly reduce the price per portion. If you can stomach the initial costs, stacking will definitely bolster your efforts to improve or maintain wellness.
Recent Updates
Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load
This score indicates how damaging a food will be to your blood sugar levels. Foods that score 0-55 are rated low impact (and thus presumed to be better for diabetics and those looking to maintain healthy weight and/or body fat ratios), but this is not the whole picture.
Caffeine: 14 better options to ease SAD
Nearly a year ago to the dot, I wrote an article about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but there I focused on the importance of getting access to a full range spectrum of light. Here I’d like to focus on caffeine and sleep’s effect on SAD. I’ll also offer suggestions for what to do to help you feel better on the dark days.
Avoid fish oil supplements
I don’t generally promote supplements. Most of them play to specific, isolated points of medical research to serve as a magic pill. One remarkable example of this is fish oil.
