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I'm a sponsored athlete for Adidas.
I'm a celebrity trainer.
My clients include people like Bradley Cooper, Kate Hudson, P.
Diddy, and some of the world's biggest professional athletes.
I'm the CEO and founder of Clutch Bodyshop.
My mission is to change the way you think about your body and
what is possible.
I'm Ashley Conrad.
For anybody who wants to build muscle, lose body fat,
whatever your goal is, supplements are extremely
important, but I think we're in a day and age where they're
becoming increasingly more important as studies are
beginning to surface that the food that we're eating, the
nutrient levels are actually decreasing because of the way
that we're actually manufacturing food.
So studies are showing that we actually cannot get, even from a
vitamin and mineral level, it is impossible to get everything you
need in the day from food.
If you start to think about protein sources and carbohydrate
sources and all those macronutrients, I think there's
been a lot of confusion when people come to the table and
they say, "Well, I'm eating right, so my body's getting
everything that it needs."
But anytime you're putting a strain on the body with
exercise, especially the type of exercise that I put my clients
through, it's so important that you're putting back what your
body is burning through, and that's where supplements are
completely crucial.
My philosophy on supplements has always been to keep it extremely
simple.
In regards to multivitamins, it's extremely important that
the multivitamin that you're taking, your body can actually
absorb.
Now, I know that that sounds really silly, but there have
been an increasing number of studies done on a lot of
multivitamins that are in the marketplace that maybe it has
3,000% of this and this and this, but if your body can't
absorb it there's no point.
So for me, and looking at multivitamins and looking at the
way they're made and the ingredient sources, I like plant
cell ingredient multivitamins.
In studies, they've been shown to absorb in the body, up to
3,000% in some cases, better than the leading USP or
synthetic multivitamin.
In regards to fat-burners, I go completely stimulant-free.
The reason for that is because I don't want to mess with cortisol
levels; I wanna keep cortisol levels completely stable.
So there are plenty of ingredients like CLA,
fucoxanthan, that have been shown to help your body burn
fat, increase thermogenesis without having to speed the
heart rate.
With stimulants, I have this thing that I like to say.
It's science, not stimulants.
Like, there are other ways to burn fat off the body without
having to use caffeine.
In regards to building lean muscle and protein powders,
my--protein powder has been one of the things for me that has
been one of the biggest obstacles because it can be a
blessing and a curse.
When you have somebody on camera and being able to maybe use a
protein shake as a meal replacement allows digestion to
take a break so you can actually shrink the stomach.
But so many protein powders bloat people out.
So it's like you can talk about whey concentrate and casein and
all these different forms of it.
For me, it's always been whey protein isolate.
And it's extremely important that, in dealing with a whey
protein isolate, that it is 100% hormone-free.
You have to actually do your research on what these
ingredients are and where they're coming from.
If you don't understand that as a consumer, you're gonna make
mistakes in buying and you're just gonna throw your money
away.
And I think with supplements, that's been one of the biggest
issues that people have had, is it's like they're a bit
disenchanted, just like all the diet books that are going around
is because people have spent good money hoping to get a
result that actually hasn't delivered.
So when you kind of educate yourself on what different
ingredients do, why it's important that they're sourced
in a certain way, you can't be fooled by paid athletes and a
brand.
You know, you can't be fooled by, you know, gimmicky marketing
anymore.
You know, looking at that panel, whether it's food or a
supplement, you know what you're getting, and you know what you
wanna buy.
And that's extremely important.
I think that for people that don't think that supplements
work, they obviously have not found the right supplement for
themselves.
They haven't found the right line.
Because if, for somebody like me, when I am taking my
supplements, I'm taking them on time, I'm taking them the way
that they're, you know, used as directed, there is a major
difference in my body, a clear difference in my body.
The clients that I work with, the difference between somebody
who's taking supplements and not, they're just not gonna
reach that goal on time.
Supplements are designed to speed the body up, to take what
you have and make it better.
And so that's why it's important to do your research and find
what is the best thing for you and for your goals.
[music]
Supplements are something that--well, for me, they're
completely mandatory, they're completely mandatory for my
clients 'cause I know what they're gonna do.
They're gonna help accelerate the results.
But I think that they're not--they should not be used to
replace good nutrition.
You know, they can't be used as a shortcut.
It has to be the right nutrition program, the right exercise
program, and the right supplementation program to get
the results that you want.
If one of those things is missing, you're just not gonna
get there.
I would recommend a micro filtered cold process,
hormone-free whey protein isolate.
I would recommend a pre-workout supplement that does not have
stimulants in it, but is instead loaded with a ton of B vitamins,
L-citruline, L-arginine, and L-ornithine, L-carnitine, all of
those things make up a great pre-workout sack.
The last one is not necessarily a supplement.
I would find one food product that is healthy, that is low in
sugar, that you can use as a snack, that you can use as a
meal replacement, that you enjoy eating.
So a lot of companies now are coming out with, like, pancake
mixes and these sorts of things, that becomes an integral part of
your nutrition program because it's allowing you at least once
a day to eat something that you love to eat without feeling
deprived.
So keep going to bodybuilding.com, we're gonna
get you the tools, the weapons, the content, the truth that you
need to make that change, and we're gonna do everything
together and it's gonna be fun.