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So you’re embarking on a weight-loss journey, ready to upgrade the quality and balance of your food choices, and start ramping up your daily movement and structured exercise to stimulate changes in your physique. Which — if any — supplements will support your progress?

As a registered dietitian, I’m a big fan of getting as many nutrients as you can from food. But in my experience, it’s pretty difficult — if not impossible — for most people to even come close to meeting their vitamin and mineral needs through food alone. Reviews of the research suggest that micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) inadequacies are widespread to a point where they could be hurting our chances of maintaining optimal health.

Even among healthy people with relatively well-planned diets, it’s not always possible (or likely, in my experience) to get adequate amounts of all essential micronutrients to avoid the chronic nutrient shortfalls that can lead to health problems.

Some researchers refer to this conundrum as “hidden hunger,” because we can so easily consume enough — or too many — calories before we achieve adequate intake of several vitamins and minerals.

On top of these challenges, there’s the consideration that weight-loss efforts almost always require prolonged periods of cutting back on calories, which often means cutting back on nutrient intake.

And there’s evidence that suggests it could take between 2,425 to 5,000 calories per day to supply the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA*) for 21 of 27 essential vitamins and minerals, depending on which type of diet you choose.

(*Note: the RDA is the amount of a given nutrient required to prevent deficiency syndromes, not necessarily the amount you need to achieve optimal function.)

If in order to lose weight, I asked you to eat 5,000 calories per day of the DASH diet — selected as the best overall diet by a panel of experts several years in a row —  you’d probably think I was completely off my rocker. But that’s how many calories of the “best diet” it takes to meet the RDA for just 21 essential nutrients.

So how do you make sure you’re getting enough nutrients to support your efforts?

Start With a High-Quality Multivitamin

Although recent reviews of multivitamin studies have questioned the effectiveness of multivitamin supplements for preventing chronic disease and mortality, they also recognize there is “moderate to strong” evidence that multivitamin use be considered to improve micronutrient status, and to enhance cognition, memory, anxiety, stress, or depression.

As one group of researchers argues:

Inadequate micronutrient intake, sometimes at borderline levels of deficiency, has been linked to stunted growth and neurocognitive deficits, as well as increased risks of various symptoms and conditions. Most nutrients act in all tissues, and all tissues need all nutrients; therefore, inadequate intakes may adversely affect every body system, but with more pronounced effects in some than others.”

 

So what could happen if you just “take your multivitamin” like you may have heard at some point from your mother, doctor, or trainer?

A six-month, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of obese Chinese women showed the multivitamin group lost the most weight, reduced waist circumference, lost the most fat, retained lean mass, increased resting energy expenditure, improved fat metabolism, decreased blood pressure, lowered fasting glucose, reduced fasting insulin, and lowered total cholesterol and triglycerides more than the other groups.

All of these changes we attributed to simply having a consistent supply of essential vitamins and minerals from the multivitamin/mineral supplement.

Another eight-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study showed simple micronutrient supplementation increased fat oxidation, total energy expenditure (metabolism), and improved vasodilation and cerebral blood flow during cognitive performance tests.

The cool thing about this study is that the subjects were considered to be “healthy” and at a nutritional status representative of the average population — the very folks that many doctors may not encourage to take a multivitamin.

Perhaps the wide variety of multivitamin formulations and extreme variations in quality of ingredients are preventing researchers from observing the possible benefits of multivitamin use for overall metabolic health or disease prevention?

At Life Time, we feel it’s our responsibility to offer the most efficacious forms of the nutrients in our formulas. We use vitamin and mineral forms that have shown superior absorbability (i.e. methylated folate and B12 instead of synthetic folic acid or cyanocobalamin for B12, and minerals such as bisglycinate chelates to name a few).

We also make it a point to package our multivitamin formulas in easily digestible capsules that don’t require the use of binders, fillers, or “pharmaceutical glaze” (shellac) to hold them together.  

Omega-3 Fish Oil

Omega-3 fatty acids are frequently in the news thanks to their health benefits (or doubts about their benefits). Two types of omega-3 fatty acids in particular — eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docohexaenoic acid (DHA) — are known to be essential fatty acids.

“Essential” refers to the fact that our cells need these fatty acids in order to function normally. But the body cannot make them from other fats, which means it’s “essential” that we supply them in our diet or through supplementation.

Just as it’s important to supply our cells with adequate vitamins and minerals to function, it’s also imperative that our cells have adequate omega-3 fats to maintain cell-membrane health — the part of the cell responsible for allowing nutrients in and letting waste products out.

Most U.S. adults fail to consume adequate amounts of foods rich in EPA and DHA on a regular basis (at least 8 ounces of fatty fish per week is recommended), while consuming too many omega-6 fats in comparison (soybean oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, etc.).

This imbalance of omega-3s to omega-6s can have a negative effect on inflammation patterns and may also be implicated as a contributing factor to other processes related to cellular metabolism, hormone signaling, and even weight regulation.

So, whether it’s a low intake of fatty fish or higher than optimal omega-6 intake, there’s enough good reason to recommend taking supplemental omega-3 fish oil, especially when weight loss or fat loss is the goal.

A six week, double-blind study on fish-oil supplementation for body composition showed that the group taking 4 grams per day of fish oil (contained 1,600 mg if EPA and 800 mg of DHA) experienced a significant increase in lean body mass and significant decrease in fat mass compared to a group that took safflower oil (an omega-6 oil).

The fish-oil group also saw a tendency for decreases in cortisol, a hormone associated with belly fat gain when elevated.

Fish-oil supplementation also appears to be helpful for reducing fat mass and improving lipid markers in subjects with type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance as well.

There’s evidence that points to the mechanism behind the effects of fish oil on body composition, showing that fat burning at rest is increased with 6 grams per day of fish oil supplementation; additional research suggests that higher omega-3 levels may be helpful for enhancing satiety during weight-loss efforts.

Other evidence suggests that fat loss may be a side effect of the reduction in inflammation that fish oil can help with. Any way you look at it, supporting your dietary habits with 4 grams or more of fish oil per day is probably a good idea. 

As with other supplements, when it comes to quality, you get what you pay for. Life Time sources its omega-3 fish oil from sustainable fisheries off the coast of Chile. We only use oils from small, cold-water anchovy. It’s molecularly distilled to be sure mercury, PCBs, and heavy metals are reduced to levels below acceptable limits, often undetectable.

If your fish oil brand doesn’t name the species of fish it’s sourced from, or it lists larger predatory species, the quality and purity of the oil could be less than optimal.

Whey Protein

What happens if you ask 90 overweight people to add two supplement beverages per day to their normal eating pattern and not change anything else? One research group found that it depends on what is in the beverage.

Volunteers were asked to drink equal calories of either whey protein, soy protein, or carbohydrate as beverages added to their normal diet for 23 weeks. The whey-protein group ended up losing about 4 pounds while the soy and carb supplement groups saw no change in weight or body composition.

The whey group actually lost an average of 5 pounds of fat, but added a pound of lean tissue. The beverages differed in their effect on appetite-control hormones as well: The whey-protein group had lower levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin compared to the soy and carb groups.

The hunger-curbing effects in the above study are in line with other evidence that shows higher protein diets can reduce cravings by up to 60 percent, and it suggests that adding protein in the form of a supplement like whey can be as effective as the extra food protein.

If you’re afraid of adding extra protein for some reason (the “added” calories or the misunderstood effects on bone health), there’s evidence showing that consuming 5.5 times the RDA of protein doesn’t have any negative effects at all in healthy, weight-lifting adults.

In fact, the data suggest that if you care about body composition and you’re going to overeat, you should eat extra protein since it’s least likely to be stored as fat.

Whey protein use is also beneficial for blood pressure, blood-vessel function, controlling inflammation, normalizing blood sugar, and improving mood under stress.

In strength-training individuals, whey protein has shown superiority to casein — another dairy-based protein — as well. Those using whey protein (1.5 g/kg/day) had greater gains in strength and greater loss of body fat over the course of a 10-week study.

It’s believed that the high branched-chain amino acid content of whey and easy digestion make it one of the highest quality sources of amino acids — the building blocks for protein — that’s available.

High-quality whey should be sourced from grass-fed cows, as it may offer additional health and immune benefits due to its lactoferrin, alpha- and beta-lactalbumin content. Life Time sources its whey from grass-fed cows in New Zealand, where dairy industry standards are considered best in the world.

Of course, if you can’t tolerate dairy, you could substitute with a similar complete protein supplement like our Vegan Protein.

Bonus: Fiber

You were probably expecting the bonus supplement to be some miracle substance sourced from the latest “never-before-discovered” exotic tropical tree. Nope: It’s fiber, another nutrient that many of us consume too little of.

Fibers — especially soluble fiber like pectins, beta-glucans, and guar gum — have been shown to improve satiety significantly enough to help with weight loss on top of the well-known effects fiber has on digestive health and regularity. 

So try to eat an abundance of fresh or frozen produce to maximize your vitamin, mineral, and fiber intake, but consider adding it as a supplement if you can’t get at least 30 grams from food alone.

As mentioned earlier, when it comes to nourishing our bodies toward optimal function, it is great to try and get as many helpful nutrients from food as possible. But for many busy people, it’s tough to beat the consistency of nourishment that a smart supplementation plan offers.

For my clients, their high-quality multivitamin, fish oil, and whey protein are rolled into their grocery budget (instead of considered extra cost) because this is how they get a consistent baseline level of nutrients in addition to their ever-improving food choices.

Of course, there are more supplements that may help individuals achieve their goals, but to decide which others make sense for you, we recommend you assess your unique metabolism through comprehensive lab testing.

References

Keep the conversation going.

Leave a comment, ask a question, or see what others are talking about in the Life Time Health Facebook group.

paul-kriegler-registered-dietician-life-time
Paul Kriegler, RD, CPT

Paul Kriegler, RD, LD, CPT, CISSN, is the director of nutritional product development at Life Time. He’s also a USA track and field coach.

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