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Alcar is some pretty awesome stuff, the effects on cardio vascular endurance are the tits. Its been touted as a fat loss supplement, I've read studies saying it helps to oxidize fat cells, but I've personally never seen it.

Use a gram pre cardio for a week, you'll see what I mean.

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I don't do this for my family, my friends, women, accolades, pride, or ego. I do it for me and no one else, its just part of who I am.

dp

I love lamp...

And quit dragging dirt's good name through the mud! Wait, I suppose after you add it to water it is mud... nevermind. Quit dragging dirt through itself!

Seriously, deciding which supps are better to take is a little like picking which color will make you run faster. Just my opinion, and I'm waiting to meet the person that gets strong or huge based on their supplementation plan. Well, you know, stronger or "huger" than they would have been given the exact same amount of time and effort in the gym sans supplements. But there is always that plausibility that it was the creatine or the sawdust that helped, and we would never REALLY know what you would have been like had you just lifted for a few years without it.

i def need to shave some fat so i might try alcar

Andrew i agree that the supplement industry is fucked up, and your right that most (if not all) supplements we can do without. We can see gains, losses or whatever without the use of this powder or that pill. But the part your forgetting is that its fun to alter yourself, and its fun to experiment with these things. As long as you do it safely, I see no reason why you shouldn't have a little fun seeing what any one of the supplements I listed can do for you.

there is no substitute for good training/diet/rest ... but some of these things are cheap, and proven to work, so why not play a little?

Sam, I would think ALCAR indirectly has an effect on fat loss simply because it makes cardio easier from a breathing stand point. It really made a difference to me, plus its like 7 bucks for over a months worth, so it wont break the bank if you decide to try it.

I guess it is all about perspective. I buy tools that will have an absolute impact. For instance, I might buy a new barbell. That tool, though pricey, will continue to give me long term growth so long as I use it. If I would like to get a different type of bar, a SSB let's say, because it is the last bar I purchased, then again, it is money well spent. It doesn't do crap if I do nothing, and I am not trying to take a short cut by purchasing one. I can't place blame or faith in the bar. If it fails, I have failed. Not because I'm a hard gainer or any other excuse, if it fails to deliver, I failed to work it hard enough. Supplements are, even if "proven" still this strange belief that a non-FDA evaluated or supported powder can make you skinny, can make you muscular, can improve your endurance. There are medications out there that will absolutely do these things. But they go WAY beyond "supplement" in nature.

I bag on creatine as worthless, and yet of everything out there I would say this has the most legit claim to having some actual helping quality. Still, in being "legit" it is still such a small player on the grand scheme of human performance.

I suppose that most of my animosity comes from supplement companies cranking out staggering quantities of "new" supplements that have no value. Now, if the supplement industry stopped being able to sell snake oil, and MAYBE conducted some real research, and I'm not talking about some stupid single blind study with ten people, which has NO statistical value at all, ever, in any existence... then MAYBE you would get some real science applied to the industry, and they might have to work to put out a product that delivers results. As it stands, any money spent playing is money wasted... and supports an industry that is allowed to get off scott free because their customers are willing to ingest anything that doesn't kill them.

It is a problem, and supporting indescriminate playing simply allows that problem to continue.

^^ I agree with a lot of that, but i dont advocate indiscriminate playing, as you put it. I think that there is a very large problem in the supplement industry that you have outlined, but I wouldnt call dropping 8 bucks on two months worth of creatine or other such supplements money wasted at all.

Would i rely on supplement X to make me big/strong/lean? No, do i play with supplements, experiment, and research what they do and how they do it, yes all the time, cause its fun to me. And I have never once researched a supplement, and not come away with a better understanding of how the body works.

It really is what you make of it, some people want short cuts, and that is understandable. I personally find it fun, but if you want results everything else must be in order before you start playing with supps.

I think the problem with the understanding you get from supplement research is that it never takes into consideration the body as a whole. It is like saying the digestion time of whey is... 'X.' Sure, in some kind of test tube study it is, but when you get the stuff in a real person all kinds of other factors come into play. Just like supplements. In a test tube it acts one way, but when you subject the same chemical to an actual dynamic system, who knows what the heck you get.

Part of me thinks that if you had a chemical that would actually cause you to drop fat, it would be regulated and available by prescription only. Can you imagine the consequence of taking a medication that would cause you to burn fat as the primary fuel source? God only knows what it would do to you if abused (and people would abuse it). But that is what makes supplements safe, I suppose. You can literally eat as much as you want, because the stuff you buy has the malicious properties of chalk dust