Welcome to the Get Fit Guys' quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

By stepping through the doors of your local nutrition supplement store or navigating to the nearest fitness website,

you can easily be whisked away into the wonderful world of muscle-building supplements.

Giant cans and bottles of powders, liquids, and capsules feature pictures of enormous biceps

muscles, abs you could do your laundry on, or butts as hard as concrete.

Well, many folks would certainly like to have muscular arms or a more toned butt,

or perhaps the ability to drag a tow truck with their teeth. The question is, do these muscle-building

supplements actually help? Or do they just make expensive urine? You'll find out in this episode,

which is the first in a two-part series that will focus on the four most popular muscle-building

supplements on the market, protein powder, creatine, nitric oxide, and alanine.

In the article, How to Build Muscle, which I'll link to in the show notes, you'll learn

that muscle is generated by an increase in the size or number of muscle fibers, and this increase

happens in response to loading

and subsequently tearing and rebuilding the muscle. Most muscle building supplements are designed to

either, A, allow a greater load to be placed on the muscle by increasing the ability of the muscle

to produce a force, or B, increase a muscle's ability to recover, rebuild, and form new fibers. A muscle building supplement

is not the same as a fat loss supplement, which is designed to increase the metabolism or

decrease appetite cravings. To learn more about fat loss supplements, check out the episode or

read the article, do weight loss supplements work, which I'll also link to in the

show notes. Now, let's start with the most common and easily attainable muscle building supplement

and the one that has been used for the longest period of time, protein. When you eat protein,

...