Hi,
Good question. I know that there are many people that believe in supplementation and many that do not. Here is a bit of information for both sides so you can make an educated decision....what is great is that the final decision is yours! No one will push you to do one or the other.
No supplements:
If you would rather not take any supplements, you want to have an excellent diet of fresh, whole foods. The reason is because you want to make sure that you are getting the correct amount of nutrients in your body. With weight training, weight loss, stresses, etc that are put on our body, it is very important to make sure that you have the correct levels of nutrients in order to handle everything you put your body through. Years ago it was very common to have multiple layers of soil to grow food, that would provide high levels of nutrients in the food. Unfortunately that has changed slightly and soil is not as nutrient enriched so our food does not receive as many nutrients in the growing process. You also have to be careful because a lot of times a company will pull the fruit or vegetable off the vine before it is ripe and put it in a green house for the last few weeks/months or add dye for the coloring. This also decreases the amount of nutrients in the food. An apple bite 50 years ago was so much more flavorful and juicy than it is now. So when you pick out your food, keep that in mind and try to stay as organic and natural as possible. Another thing to consider in order to not decrease the amount of nutrients received is how you prepare your food. The "fresher" the food, the more nutrients that will be available. As we boil and microwave our food, we are actually depleting it of the nutrients. Those are just a few things to keep in mind to help you if you want to not supplement but still get good nutrition.
Yes supplements:
Supplements are exactly as the word says, they are meant to supplement where your diet cannot fully contribute. With the above challenges that our food system has now, it can be difficult to get the nutrients needed. I can completely understand a lot of the posts that state that supplement companies are just trying to make money and it does not really work. That is true for a lot of supplements because a person needs to realize it is not the supplement that they are taking that matters, but the form of absorption that they are receiving of the supplement that matters.
Take for example a pill, it has to go through a very harsh digestion process in our stomachs with a lot of acid working to break the pill into a form that our small intestine and villi can absorb. This is an intense process and a lot of times that pill can stay whole during the process and not allow for any nutrient absorption to occur. In hospitals, it is often called bed pan bullets because the pills will just be excreted out. In those cases, the absorption and bioavailability is not present, so the person is not receiving any benefit from the money spent.
A person must take an isotonic-capable supplement to get the highest amount of bioavailability for supplements. An isotonic-capable supplement is in powder form and when mixed with the correct amount of water and drank on an empty stomach, within 5-10 minutes there is 92-98% nutrient absorption (similar to an IV where absorption is immediate). This is because the science supported mixture is the same concentration as the blood and other fluids in our body so it can skip the digestion phase and go straight to the small intestine and villi for absorption. So it really comes down to how a person is absorbing the nutrients and how much bioavailability is offered. A vitamin C pill will have the same nutrient content, but not the same bioavailability as an isotonic vitamin C, thus giving you a higher absorption and benefit at the end of the day.
A lot of information here, but I like to make sure that people have information before making a decision because there are so many different opinions and options available. Hope this helped!