Vitamin D Helps With Weight Loss
Categories: Jonny's Take, Diet & Weight Loss
Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.
People whose vitamin D levels test high before they go on a diet experience significantly better results on that diet than people with low levels of vitamin D, according to a new study, suggesting that vitamin D plays a part in weight loss and that increasing your intake of this incredibly important nutrient just might help you drop additional pounds.
We already know that vitamin D deficiency is associated with obesity, but it's not clear which comes first -- are people obese because of inadequate vitamin D or does obesity cause vitamin D levels in the body to somehow drop?
In the current study, presented at the Endocrine Society's 91st annual meeting in Washington DC, researchers measured blood levels of vitamin D in 38 overweight men and women before putting them on a calorie-restricted diet for 11 weeks. Here's what they found: Higher levels of vitamin D predicted greater success on the weight-loss diet.
In general, most of the subjects had insufficient levels of vitamin D in the first place. But for each 1-ng/mL increase in the active form of vitamin D, subjects lost nearly one-fourth pound more weight. Baseline levels of vitamin D -- the levels measured before the subjects went on a diet -- actually predicted how much weight they would lose on the diet itself, with those with the least vitamin D losing the least amount of weight on the diet, and those with the most vitamin D losing the most.
In addition, the researchers measured body fat distribution on all the subjects using a DXA (bone densitometry) scan. Higher baseline levels of vitamin D also predicted greater loss in troublesome (and more dangerous) abdominal fat.
"Our results suggest the possibility that the addition of vitamin D to a reduced-calorie diet will lead to better weight loss," said Shalamar Sibley, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.
People whose vitamin D levels test high before they go on a diet experience significantly better results on that diet than people with low levels of vitamin D, according to a new study, suggesting that vitamin D plays a part in weight loss and that increasing your intake of this incredibly important nutrient just might help you drop additional pounds.
We already know that vitamin D deficiency is associated with obesity, but it's not clear which comes first -- are people obese because of inadequate vitamin D or does obesity cause vitamin D levels in the body to somehow drop?
In the current study, presented at the Endocrine Society's 91st annual meeting in Washington DC, researchers measured blood levels of vitamin D in 38 overweight men and women before putting them on a calorie-restricted diet for 11 weeks. Here's what they found: Higher levels of vitamin D predicted greater success on the weight-loss diet.
In general, most of the subjects had insufficient levels of vitamin D in the first place. But for each 1-ng/mL increase in the active form of vitamin D, subjects lost nearly one-fourth pound more weight. Baseline levels of vitamin D -- the levels measured before the subjects went on a diet -- actually predicted how much weight they would lose on the diet itself, with those with the least vitamin D losing the least amount of weight on the diet, and those with the most vitamin D losing the most.
In addition, the researchers measured body fat distribution on all the subjects using a DXA (bone densitometry) scan. Higher baseline levels of vitamin D also predicted greater loss in troublesome (and more dangerous) abdominal fat.
"Our results suggest the possibility that the addition of vitamin D to a reduced-calorie diet will lead to better weight loss," said Shalamar Sibley, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
u262f 7-20-2009 @ 6:05PM
In this case, establishing that baseline vitamin D is a predictor of success in weight loss still doesn't prove anything about whether ingesting additional vitamin D is going to help. As far as I can tell, there hasn't been anything to suggest that ingesting vitamin D will lead to a higher baseline level of the active or "hormonal" form of vitamin D in the body. In recent years, the assumption that "you are what you eat" has been challenged in many ways.
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