Stronger By Science

The reason I compare it to construction is that at some point, pursing lifting to a high degrees involves putting in the amount of repetitions that amounts to a job with high statistical injury rate. If you follow bodybuilding and powerlifting closely, the amount of people who wash out due to injury is staggeringly high, to the point where an injury free career is anomalous and often credited to great genetics (tendon strength) than smart training. In fact the majority of the injuries happens on routine warm up reps, and because these people are enthusiasts and treat lifting almost like a job, they don't manage healing properly and will often continue training while injured leading to long term detriment. The particularly bone headed people will lift until they break their body and washout, but even smart lifters (who plan stress and fatigue sensibly) will eventually get injured past a certain level. This is like working in construction, people accrue damage over time, small injuries compound or big injuries take them out. The amount of work required in these occupation/hobbies are not calibrated for "health".

[1] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/powerlifting-injuries-results/
>The overall number of people injured may surprise you. Of the 160 people who finished the study (either sustained an injury or made it through the whole year uninjured), almost ¾ of them sustained an injury. That seems to conflict with the finding that injury rates in powerlifting are only ~3-5 per…

> - This guy was eating at a very unhealthy calorie deficit (1000). You should never go over 500 kcal deficit if you don't want to lose loads of muscle in the process. A calorie deficit as high as his is comparable to a crash diet, and is prone to result in a quick upswing in weight once the diet ends, as you will have been starving yourself.

Funnily enough, that is not true. A meta-analysis of 29 studies on the topic [1] has shown that:

"Successful very-low-energy diets (VLEDs) were associated with significantly greater weight-loss maintenance than were successful hypoenergetic balanced diets (HBDs) at all years of follow-up. The percentage of individuals at 4 or 5 y of follow-up for VLEDs and HBDs were 55.4% and 79.7%, respectively. The results for VLEDs and HBDs, respectively, were as follows: weight-loss maintenance, 7.1 kg (95% CI: 6.1, 8.1 kg) and 2.0 (1.5, 2.5) kg; percentage weight-loss maintenance, 29% (25%, 33%) and 17% (13%, 22%); and reduced weight, 6.6% (5.7%, 7.5%) and 2.1% (1.6%, 2.7%)."

Having a plan of what do do/how to eat post-diet (and avoiding binging back to your original weight) is more important than the way you lost your weight. The muscle mass loss is also not as dramatic as people might think, since less time spent in caloric deficit (because of the aggressive dieting) means that more time can then be spent in an anabolic state, and the muscle lost during the dieting phase can be regained very fast. Bearded wonder, powerlifter and now…

Yeah, (1) there is no "war on protein," (2) you do not need to eat very much protein unless you are trying to build muscle and you already work out a lot.

The normal recommended daily intake for protein is 0.8 g/kg. 1.2-1.6 is silly; that's a recommendation for athletes.¹

Starches have been a dietary staple in pretty much every society forever. Sugars have not. It's silly that they treat grains as a "sometimes" food.

There's also the weird boogeyman of "processed food." Almost all food is processed to some degree & always has been. We've been cooking, baking, juicing, fermenting, chopping, grinding, mashing, etc. long enough that it influenced the shape of our teeth. Certainly we haven't been making Pizza Pockets that long, but the issue there isn't processing, it's ingredients. And the reason people buy Pizza Pockets isn't that they think they're healthy—it's that Pizza Pockets only need to be microwaved, and cooking a real meal takes time that a lot of people just don't have.

[1]: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/athlete-protein-intake/

The conclusions aren't any different (it's one of the few thing that helps strength, poses no danger to your hair, and almost certainly does nothing for cognition), but the articles at https://www.strongerbyscience.com/?s=creatine are far more comprehensive, including the famous extremely long podcast episodes they used to do.

The one thing this misses is many supplements are tainted, which skews the popular perception of both upsides and risks. This was especially true in the US prior to 2005 or so when prohormones were still legal over the counter. Anything branded that wasn't just pure creatine was extremely likely to actually be a low-dose oral steroid, which really can make you lose hair and will increase strength quite a bit more than any dietary supplement.

This also misses caffeine as the other a-tier supplement that consistently shows strength increases in RCTs, though of course, caffeine is more frought than creatine because you build tolerance and it can disturb sleep.

If you're just starting out, a newbie walking into the gym, I'd recommend looking at a 5x5 program like Stronglifts. It's an iPhone/Adroid app with a website and a ton of information. It isn't perfect because nothing is but it will give you a basis, a starting point.

You'll have a program of exercises, squat, bench, ... and sequence. You'll do the exercises and learn about form. It's a start.

Taking classes like Bodypump is another approach. You won't learn anything about form and the weights will be more about endurance and tone but it's a start.

I'm assuming you're a complete newbie walking into a gym needing a sustainable start. Do this for 3-6 months then try to connect with a powerlifting program.

If you really want to know a LOT, look at Stronger By Science.

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/

I see everybody talking about the nitrate, but there is another substance in beets that might be relevant... betaine, also known as trimethylglycine HCL. I take about 800mg of this pure in my orange juice in the mornings and it gives me a very noticeable boost. But it is possible that this effect is specific to me and maybe other people who are "under-methylators" (which I think is a somewhat pseudo-scientific concept, but it led me to try betaine and I got results).

Betaine was first isolated from beets, hence the name, and as the other name, trimethylglycine, hints it has 3 easily donated methyl groups, so if you do need those for some reason it may be useful to you. It's also pretty cheap and unlikely to be harmful.

Edit: I found this... https://www.strongerbyscience.com/betaine/