Most of us do not routinely take vitamin and mineral supplements, although it is increasingly recognized that many of use are deficient in important vitamins and minerals and our health would likely be improved by taking vitamin and mineral supplements. But what specifically should you take if you are embarking upon an effort to lose weight and become healthier and fitter?

I believe the straightforward answer to that is that we should probably all be taking a multivitamin that is comprehensive and includes all the specific USRDA coverages that are outlined below.  This comprehensive multivitamin would include all of the water soluble vitamins, as well as the fat soluble vitamins, and an appropriate amount of the trace minerals that are needed including zinc, iron, selenium, iodine, copper, manganese, chromium and more.  In addition, people who are at risk for calcium and vitamin D deficiency, osteoporosis or bone loss, should be taking a calcium vitamin D supplement.

Increasingly, we have discovered a high proportion of patients with vitamin deficiencies even though they are significantly overweight.  Deficiencies in vitamins such as B12, vitamin D and iron tend to cause symptoms like fatigue, loss of energy and depression.  Vitamin D requires sunlight for conversion to its active form, so many people who do not get outside much develop severe vitamin D deficiency leading to symptoms of bone loss, fatigue and depression.

Another specific group of people are those who have previously undergone weight loss surgery and I have written about their specific vitamin and mineral needs on an earlier post.  People who have undergone the most common type of procedure, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure, are more likely to develop deficiencies of vitamin B12, vitamin D and iron than the general population, as well as some additional trace elements, B complex vitamins and rarely others.  These should all be supplemented regularly.

For most people though, who have decided to lose weight and are making an effort to become healthier and fitter, I would recommend the following multivitamin and based on the science developed over years of studying overweight and obese individuals, our weight loss center, the International Metabolic Institute, played a key role in formulating what we think are the best vitamins for anyone who is undergoing a weight loss program, and they are available through iMetabolic.  I highly recommend that you try the vitamins from iMetabolic that are specifically formulated for anyone needing to lose weight and please give feedback to the folks at iMetabolic about what you like and don’t like about them including the taste, effects, price, packaging, or anything else.  It is our goal to constantly provide the best weight loss products avialable and we cannot do that with your continued input.

Okay, so here are the vitamin constituents that I recommend:

Multi-Vitamin

Tags: vitamin, weight loss supplements

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Weight Loss Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.