The Number 1 Supplement to Fight Winter Weight Gain – Vitamin D

     If we were bears we’d go into hibernation.   However, since we are human, we just seem to eat as though we are hibernating!   With the beautiful leaves comes the rich warm foods, the desserts, and the gatherings.   Not only do we tend to skip our daily workouts, we also go to bed earlier, and it’s harder for us to wake up everyday.   One of the biggest contributors to our lack of joy de vive is the lack of sun.   With sun comes vitamin D.   You can get vitamin D from foods, but in a lot of cases it can be degraded or not get processed by your body correctly.   The number one way to get it is through the sun.  Your body will then transform the rays of sun on your skin into vitamin D.   So what’s so great about vitamin D??

Check out what Women’s Health Had to Say About Weight and Vitamin D – Shocking!

Meanwhile, receptors in your brain need D to keep hunger and cravings in check, as well as to pump up levels of the mood-elevating chemical serotonin. (Good thing, since dieting often comes with a heaping side of crankiness.) D even optimizes your body’s ability to absorb other important weight-loss nutrients, especially calcium. When your body lacks calcium, it can experience up to a fivefold increase in the fatty acid synthase, an enzyme that converts calories into fat. In a 2009 study published in theBritish Journal of Nutrition, obese women who were put on a 15-week diet and took 1,200 milligrams of calcium a day lost six times more weight than women who followed the diet alone. The end result: By fueling your body with the D-rich nutrients it needs to get out of a fat-storage state and into a fat-burning one, you could potentially speed weight loss by up to 70 percent.Benefits of Vitamin D – Combat Winter Weight Gain (source).

Benefits of Vitamin D

• Leaner abs – Studies found that people who drank orange juice that was fortified with vitamin D had less body fat around their midsection in comparison to those who drank regular orange juice (source).

• Better Immune System –  A study found that participants with lesser amounts of vitamin D in their bloodstream were over 30% more likely to have had a recent infection than those whose blood tests indicated higher levels of vitamin D.  It also helps the intestines absorb nutrients, including calcium and phosphorus. This ensures strong bones and a strong immune system.

•  Protect Your Muscle  – Vitamin D prevents osteomalacia and rickets. Osteomalacia, which causes weakness of the muscular system and brittle bones, is most prevalent among adults with vitamin D deficiency. Rickets is a skeletal deformity mostly seen in children with vitamin D deficiency.