Calcium plus vitamin D helps shed fat

Taking calcium and vitamin D supplements may help overweight women to lose body fat, but only if their calcium intake from food is already quite low. Researchers from Canada had 63 overweight or obese, middle-aged women go on a calorie-restricted diet. All had been getting inadequate calcium in their diets - less than 800 mg, compared with the recommended 1,000 mg for women aged 19 to 50 years. Half of the women were randomly assigned to take a calcium/vitamin D supplement twice a day, which provided 1,200 mg of calcium daily. The other half took placebo pills. It was found that those who took a calcium-plus-vitamin-D supplement in addition to a lower-calorie diet lost no more body fat over 15 weeks than those given a placebo. When the researchers looked at only those women with a very low calcium intake before the study, the supplement did seem to have a benefit. Among the women - who had been getting less than 600 milligrams of calcium per day - the calcium/vitamin D supplement spurred greater reductions in weight and body fat. While the reason for the benefit is unclear, there was evidence that the supplement helped curb women's appetite for fatty food. During a buffet-style test meal, it was found that women who'd been taking the supplement ate less fat than they had at a test meal done at the study's start. The same was not true of women in the placebo group. While the results from the test meals suggest that extra calcium may help calcium-deficient women curb their appetites while dieting, more research is needed to confirm that. The hypothesis is that the brain can detect the lack of calcium and seeks to compensate by spurring food intake, which obviously works against the goals of any weight loss programme. Sufficient calcium intake seems to stifle the desire to eat more. Some past studies have suggested that calcium helps speed fat loss among dieters. However, the above findings suggest that for overweight people with a very low calcium intake, calcium/vitamin D supplements might be necessary for weight-loss success.