Healthy Weight Loss: 5 Benefits of Multi-Vitamin
Permanent and healthy weight loss is easy, when you have an excellent nutrition plan to help you meet your weight loss goal. You may already know that a balanced whole foods diet can help you lose weight, but did you know that most holistic weight loss experts also suggest you take a high quality multi-vitamin supplement? Here are five reasons why.
5 Benefits of Multi-Vitamins
1. You Are Not Getting Enough Nutrients From Your Food
Modern diets high in processed foods and sugars do not nourish you: worse, they can rob your body of valuable nutrients. Even if you are currently eating very well, your body may still be affected if you previously ate poorly. In addition, experts say modern farming practices have stripped trace minerals from our soils, and this has diminished the mineral content of our food supply.
And considering that government sponsored surveys have shown that 60-95% of the population is deficient in essential nutrients, common sense dictates that you should take a high quality multi-vitamin/mineral to ensure against deficiencies.
2. Do You Have Food Cravings? Do You Overeat? Here’s One Reason Why…
When your body senses that is it lacking important nutrients, it will send signals to your brain to eat, even if you are not hungry. In addition, certain deficiencies can cause particular food cravings. If you crave chocolate for example, you may actually be deficient in magnesium (75% of the population is). If you crave sugar, you may have suboptimal levels of B vitamins.
As long as you are deficient, you will continue to eat and eat and eat. However, when you eat a nutrient dense diet with a high potency multi-vitamin, you may find that you can feel satisfied on half the food you’d normally eat and your food cravings disappear.
2. Dieting Can Cause Nutrient Deficiencies
Many weight loss diets can cause nutrient deficiencies. Take the Atkins low-carb diet for example. Atkin dieters are told that they MUST take a multivitamin and a potassium supplement because you are likely to lose valuable minerals because of the excessive urination on the diet.
Another example is Weight Watchers Flex Plan. On the Flex Plan you can eat any foods you want as long as you stay under your point allowance. If you eat any junk food for your food allowance (this includes many of the Weight Watchers processed snacks like their bars and desserts), you may not take in enough nutrients your body needs for the day. Furthermore, the sugar in these foods will actually leach valuable minerals from your body.
Some diets are calorie restricted where you eat 1,200 calories or less. Again, most people require many more calories and nutrients than this, so if you’ve tried a low calorie diet for any length of time your body may be nutrient deficient.
3. High Stress Can Cause Weight Gain – A Multi-Vitamin Can Help
A multivitamin helps counter the negative effects of stress. Hectic work and family schedules and a lack of downtime affect almost everyone, and the process of being on a diet can stress the body further, resulting in nutritional deficiencies. A high quality multi-vitamin/mineral contains all the nutrients most often depleted by stress, including beta-carotene, vitamins C and E, and the B complex group.
Look for a supplement that also contains a wide spectrum of antioxidants that support the body in times of stress, such as lutein and lycopene, as well as green “superfoods” like spirulina and chlorophyll that are said to have detoxifying, protective, and restorative properties.
4. A multi-vitamin contains specific nutrients that aid in healthy weight loss.
Vitamins and minerals are essential for enzymatic reactions in the body that convert food into energy. If you do not have all the necessary vitamins and minerals present, your body may end up storing a greater percentage of the foods you eat as fat. Although all of the vitamins and minerals help with weight loss indirectly by helping the body stay healthy, we will provide a few specific examples.
Chromium— plays a role in sugar metabolism and blood sugar stabilization
Zinc-- helps with appetite control and in the manufacture of thyroid hormone.
5. Do You Want Improved Sleep, Increased Energy, and Better Moods?
A multivitamin can benefit the whole body in ways you may not expect.. People who take multi-vitamins/mineral supplements on a regular basis often report benefits such as improved sleep. Getting a good night’s sleep is important for weight loss because if you are sleep deprived, you will have an increased appetite and find it difficult to lose weight.
Moreover, if you have fatigue you probably won’t have the energy to exercise and prepare healthy food. And if you have mood swings, you may find yourself reaching for high carb snacks and meals to boost the serotonin levels in your brain.
If you can eliminate these roadblocks by giving your body the nutrition it desperately needs, you are much more likely to stick to your weight loss program.
About Professional Grade Supplements
For the greatest benefits, look for a professional grade multi-vitamin/mineral supplement. Manufacturers of professional grade products are committed to the highest standards, and their products are endorsed by health professionals who trust the supplements to be reliable in terms of quality and safety.
You can count on professional grade products to be formulated properly, easily absorbed and utilized by the body, and pure (high quality supplements will be free of additives such as magnesium stearate, a hydrogenated oil added as a lubricant and stabilizer to some products).
You now know why you should take a high quality professional-grade multi-vitamin/mineral, and what type of product to look for. Go ahead and add the right multi-vitamin/mineral to your weight loss plan, and you’ll be on your way to achieving your goal!
Our recommendation for the best multi-vitamin is Whole Foods Multi-Vitamin. This multi contains a high amount of vitamins and minerals that are chelated for better absorption in a base of 25 different vegetables, herbs and other super nutrients to assist you in getting the maximum number of anti-oxidants from whole food sources for superior absorption and metabolic function.
About the Author:
Dr. Kendra Pearsall, N.M.D. is a Naturopathic Medical Doctor specializing in natural weight loss and food addiction. She created Enlita.com to help millions of people achieve optimal health, natural weight loss and life success with her free weekly e-newsletter (sign up at the top of this page.)