I didn’t feel anything, so I stopped taking it
My CREATINE MONO tub lives next to the kettle. Not because I’m organised, but because if it goes in the cupboard with everything else I’ll never see it again, and if I never see it I don’t take it. Most mornings I’m stood there half awake waiting for the coffee, tub right there in my line of sight, so in it goes.
That’s the whole system. No ritual, nothing to report afterwards. Scoop it, drink it, get on with the day. By the time the kids are up I’ve forgotten I did it.
I bring it up because I get a version of the same message all the time, and it usually reads like this. Bought something, took it properly for a bit, didn’t feel a thing, stopped. Sometimes there’s a half used tub involved and a bit of guilt about the money.
And honestly, I get it. My own brain does exactly the same thing.
Where the feel test comes from
If I take El Chapo before a session, I know about it. It’s a high stim pre workout and I’m not going to pretend I don’t notice it, because I do. It’s a staple in my week and I’m not talking it down here. How much and when is on the label, so go by that, especially if it’s new to you.
So somewhere in the back of my head, that became the template. Take the thing, feel the thing, the thing is doing its job. It’s an easy way to think about supplements and it holds up fine for that one category.
Then you take something daily that isn’t built the same way, you feel nothing on day three, and the template says nothing’s happening. So you stop.
That’s the bit I want to pick apart, because the template is being asked to do a job it was never able to do.
Feeling something is a measurement of feeling something
What I’m not going to tell you is that the tub is quietly working away and you just can’t tell. I’ve got no way of knowing that about your training, and neither has anyone else selling you a tub of anything.
What I’m saying is narrower, and I think more useful. How a Tuesday felt doesn’t answer the question either way. A sensation tells you that you can sense something. It doesn’t tell you a product is doing its job, and not feeling one doesn’t tell you it isn’t.
Stimulants are easy to notice. That’s a fair bit of the point of them. A daily nutrient product was never built to announce itself and doesn’t pretend to be. Same shelf, two different jobs, and only one of those jobs happens inside a window where you’re paying attention.
What the daily ones ask of you
CREATINE MONO is one of them. There’s nothing to notice while you take it, and that’s not you getting it wrong. How much and how often is on the tub, and the tub is the thing to go by rather than anything I say here.
ESSENTIAL AF is the same shape. A daily multivitamin that contributes to your nutrient intake, and the value of it sits in the boring Tuesdays where you take it and think nothing of it at all.
None of that makes El Chapo the loud one and those two the serious ones. That’s the version of this post I didn’t want to write. A pre workout has a job and it does it in the session you take it for. A daily product has a different job and it asks a different thing of you, which is turning up with it on the days you can’t be bothered, including the days you’re not training at all.
Why the daily ones are the easy ones to quit
The quitting isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a feedback problem.
A pre workout gives you feedback inside the session, so you remember it exists. You get no feedback at all from a scoop at the kettle, so nothing in your day nudges you about it. Put it in a cupboard behind the cereal and the decision gets made for you, quietly, over a run of mornings where you never once saw the tub.
Which is why I’m so boring about where it lives. Mine’s by the kettle. A mate of mine keeps his in the car because he trains straight from work and the car is the one place he definitely ends up. The right spot is wherever you’ll trip over it.
A better test for each
For the acute stuff, judge the session. Did the session go the way you wanted it to. That’s a fair question to put to a pre workout, because that’s the bit of the day you took it for.
For the daily stuff, stop asking how you feel and start asking whether you’re taking it. Boring question, but it’s the one you can honestly answer, and it’s the only part of this that sits in your hands.
Keep a training log as well. Nothing fancy. What you lifted, for how many, how the session went, half a line is plenty. A log hands you your training across a whole block instead of your memory of one Tuesday, and your memory of one Tuesday is a terrible witness. Mine tells me every session was brilliant or that I’ve never trained in my life, depending purely on what mood I’m in when I ask it. lol
Where I land on it
If you’ve got a half used tub in a cupboard because you didn’t feel anything from it, that’s fair enough, and I’d rather you knew why it happened than felt daft about it. You ran a test that can’t return an answer for that kind of product. Plenty of people do, me included.
So put it somewhere you’ll see it in the morning. Take it or don’t, but make that a decision you get to make, instead of one that gets made by the tub being behind the cereal.
Mine’s by the kettle. It’s not going anywhere, and I’ll forget it exists right up until I’m stood there waiting for the coffee.
Stay Swole,
Justin 💪
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.