Nutrition Advice: Dieting and Vitamins

When people diet they tend to eliminate certain foods that they either think is unhealthy or don't want to "waste" the calories on.  Unfortunately when we eliminate certain food groups from our bodies we tend to get deficient in certain vitamins.  Now actually a lot of people walk around with some sort of low level of vitamins, but dieting can send some from just being low to being deficient.  What people don't realize is that being vitamin deficient can actually hamper weight loss and or muscle gain.  Lets take a look at a few of the most common vitamin deficiencies and how they can effect weight loss. 

Zinc:  Helps the bodies immune system, enzyme support and can effect the thyroid.  The thyroid can affect your resting metabolic rate (RMR) and being deficit in zinc might cause a plateau or slow weight loss down.

How to get Zinc?:  Red meat, beans, nuts, dairy and whole grains.  Even fortified cereal has it.

Iron:  Now this is most common in females, but dieting could cause a deficiency in anyone.  Iron helps transport oxygen in the body.  Working out and have trouble catching your breath?  Maybe Iron deficient.  It can also cause muscle weakness, low energy levels and many other problems.

How to get Iron?:  Red meat, beans, dried fruit, dark green leafy vegetables and cereals again.

D:  Vitamin D we get from the Sun.  Now you would think this wouldn't be something people lack, but they do.  Vitamin D also helps the thyroid and just like Zinc the thyroid does regulation RMR.  It also impacts bone health and immune system health. 

How to get Vitamin D?:  The sun is the easiest, but also milk, egg yolks, liver and fish.

Now the list above is by no means all inclusive or even all that could cause weight loss problems.  It is important to eat a balanced diet that includes a little of everything.

You can find a lot of information on vitamins online by just googling it, but I found this and I kind of like the look of it.  This isn't my list either.