Between multivitamins, meal replacements and workout aids, the health and fitness industry is filled to the brim with various diet supplements to help us achieve our goals. Although different products will work for different people, here’s a look at some of the best options overall. Depending on your specific diet objectives, shop accordingly.
Multivitamins and medicinal supplements
If you’re looking for a bottle of capsules to supplement your diet, you may be in the market for a simple multivitamin to help keep you nutritionally covered or you may be hunting for more of a weight loss medication. Either way, it’s always safest to talk with a doctor when starting up a new program to make sure no medicine you’re on or preexisting health condition you have will produce negative results when you add your new, over-the-counter diet product into the mix.
Daily multivitamins
Multivitamins have long been heralded as nutritional insurance to help fill any gaps that your diet might present. If you’re counting calories and watching what you eat, hopefully that means you’re sticking to a lot of nutrient-rich foods like vegetables, fruits and lean proteins. A diet like that should cover most of your nutritional bases, but you may still be able to benefit from taking a once-daily supplement based on your gender and age.
Centrum is a full-service brand that offers a variety of multivitamin products to choose from that support metabolism, energy and overall health. Pick a product out that suits your circumstances and don’t forget to take it.
When shopping for a supplement, remember that vitamin D and calcium are both key to managing your weight. Vitamin D helps your body properly respond to insulin, which pushes glucose into cells as fuel for energy. When your body lacks vitamin D, your cells become less sensitive to insulin and more of the calories you eat just turn to fat. The mineral calcium works in conjunction with vitamin D, helping your fat cells store less fat.
Over-the-counter drugs
Drugstore products like Alli have been proven to produce effective yet modest results for helping dieters achieve their weight loss goals. Alli is probably the best over-the-counter option because it contains orlistat, which assists in decreasing the absorption of dietary fat by playing the role of a lipase inhibitor. Such an inhibitor prevents hydrolysis and allows fat to be excreted from the body. Because Alli passes through the digestive tract more quickly than fat, the inhibitor blocks around twenty-five to thirty percent of fat intake from a given meal. A stronger form of the drug is available by prescription and both options are meant to be used in conjunction with a calorie-reduced and low-fat eating regimen.
Although weight loss medications can be effective, side effects from such drugs are a real possibility. They can cause abdominal cramping, loose stools, constipation, frequent bowel movements and liver problems as well as headaches, insomnia and a raised blood pressure. If you can lose weight by putting more effort into cutting your calories while increasing your physical activity, then easily you don’t want to risk the complications that come from medicinal diet supplements. If nothing is working for you in terms of losing weight, however, you may still be interested in talking with a doctor about what options are available.
Meal-replacement supplements
Brands like Slim-Fast and Ensure offer diet supplements in the form of meal-replacing shakes and bars. Designed to aid your weight loss goals by delivering lots of nutritional power in a low-calorie product, these options can be beneficial for many dieters who have trouble putting together their own healthful meals. Consumed in place of a breakfast or a lunch, one of these nutrition shakes often has around two hundred calories, ten grams of protein, five grams of fiber and over twenty essential vitamins and minerals. Top-of-the-line offerings include no trans fat and no partially hydrogenated oil.
Although getting nutrients from fresh vegetables and fruits can be better for your body in terms of bioavailability, using a meal-replacement to supplement a few meals here and there can be extremely helpful in getting protein and fiber while keeping your calories under control.
If you’re on the go and a homemade fruit, veggie and almond milk shake just isn’t an option, these ready-to-go picks may be a perfect way for you to manage your weight. Of course, in keeping your calories controlled overall, dinner should be a sensible, low-fat pick and not a binge session just because you had two nice nutrition shakes earlier in the day.
Workout supplements
A subset of the diet supplements industry is focused on sports drinks, workout bars and muscle pills manufactured to help you maintain the right body composition in terms of preserving your muscle mass even as you shed pounds. Intaking the right amount of protein is crucial for building strength as you increase your physical activity and decrease your calories.
Whey protein, in particular, is a great element for workout supplements because it is easy to digest, it can help suppress your appetite and can also help you build muscle. Other common ingredients for sports performance and weight loss supplements include creatine, amino acids and fat burners to give you all-encompassing assistance for a nice workout and a proper recovery.
Muscle Milk from CytoSport is one of the most popular picks when it comes to sports-oriented protein supplements for everyday dieters. The non-dairy, non-gluten beverage has around 20 grams of protein per serving, which is under two hundred calories.
The brand also has sugar-free offerings that provide fifteen grams of protein for one hundred calories. Muscle Milk protein nutrition shakes come in a wide variety of flavors and can be used as pre-workout or post-workout treatments, but just remember to not overdo it calorie-wise or else your diet efforts may suffer as a consequence.
Regardless of which diet supplements end up appealing to you most, make sure you stick to trustworthy brands and recommended doses so you get a safe, contaminant-free portion of the help you need. Avoid turning to products that make unreasonable claims and do your outside research on the actual effectiveness of specific items.
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