Essential Nutrients

It’s a bit daunting when listed, but the good news is most of these items can be found in a normal, healthy diet.

Many of the others are needed only sporadically – your body can store them – and in minute quantities.

But when you are cutting calories and exercising, it’s easy not to get enough so it’s worth taking the time to understand how much you need of each nutrient.

The exact amounts you need are very controversial – scientists, doctors and physical fitness experts are constantly at odds over how much of and which nutrients and vitamins you need.

Actually, this is understandable since scientists and doctors look at a normal person’s needs and fitness experts look at the needs of somebody physically active.

Many vitamins and supplements claim to give you all you need, but medical and fitness experts agree that it’s better to try to get natural forms of these nutrients from a healthy diet rather than take expensive multivitamins and supplements.

The reasons are twofold: first, your body has adapted over millions of years to absorb what it needs from the natural foods we eat – not multivitamins or supplements. Many studies have shown that despite the ingestion of large amounts of a given vitamin, little or none is absorbed by the body due to the form in which it is administered – i.e. multivitamins. Your body simply is not adapted to absorbing vitamins from a pill. High quality vitamins – the expensive ones – are said to get around this by using a form the body can absorb.

Secondly, since you are already getting most of the vitamins from the food you eat, taking a multivitamin may inadvertently be “overdosing” your body. For this reason the American Cancer Society does not recommend multivitamins since high levels of a given vitamin has been shown to provoke cancer or make it worse.

The problem with multivitamins is that they work using the “shotgun” effect without taking into consideration your normal diet.

The good news is that most multivitamins contain low nutrient levels, so it’s hard to overdose unless taking more than the recommended amount. But remember: more is not better.

But what about the physically active person? Shouldn’t he or she be getting more nutrients to compensate for the exercise they do? The answer is: not always.

It’s all dependent on the level of intensity of your workout. For amateur and professional athletes, multivitamins and supplements may make sense, but for somebody who works out less than three hours per week and eats a well balanced diet filled with fruit and vegetables, it’s not necessary.

Even body builders who want to build muscle mass can get all the protein they need from a proper diet that’s high in low-fat protein – foods like fish, chicken, and diary produce. Protein supplements like whey protein powders might help, but they are no substitute for a balanced diet.

If you do decide to take multivitamins, don’t take more than one per day and you can even cycle them – one month on, one month off – to insure you are not getting too much.

Avoid additional vitamin supplementation – more than one multivitamin per day - unless your doctor recommends it and monitor closely the effects. What may be tolerated by one person could be toxic to another.

Educated yourself as to which foods contain the nutrients you need and make sure to get them at least once per week. Probably the most neglected are the green, leafy vegetables that contain many important macro nutrients and trace minerals.

Whatever you do, don’t try to eat more to get the vitamins you need – this will only make you fatter, not healthier.

Your body is also an expert at getting the right nutrients if you’d just listen to your hunger pangs – when you are missing a particular nutrient, you body instinctively looks for the food item that has it.

One thing is for sure – supplements or not, they will make little difference to your fat burning program. Take in fewer overall calories, eat right and exercise. These are the true keys to burning fat, not the highly-hyped multivitamins and supplements.

Here’s some helpful links to help you find out what foods have which nutrients:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

This link has a great article written by doctors on vitamins and supplements:
http://www.medicinenet.com/vitamins_minerals_and_nutritional_supplements/index.htm

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