Like any other essential vitamins and minerals, zinc, an essential mineral is very important for your body. Taking it very less as prescribed, you may lose those extra pounds. Obese people can plan to boost dietary zinc intake to lose weight.
Zinc Basics:
Zinc is an essential mineral for proper immunity, to heal wounds and for better sense of taste and smell. It’s present in dark meat, dairy products, nuts, legumes, sea foods, and zinc fortified cereals. So, what’s the required amount of zinc per day? It’s 11mg for men, 12mg for lactating women and 8mg for normal women.
Weight loss:
If you start taking multivitamins, you may gain weight and it’s because zinc is present in it. Zinc deficient people usually eat twice as non-deficient people do. So, does this mean, you should skip zinc? No.
Obese have low levels of zinc and so boosting its intake may help in weight loss. Also obese take zinc supplements with 30mg zinc gluconate daily and lose weight improving mass indices and triglyceride levels.
Zinc Toxicity:
Taking zinc through supplements to lose weight works mostly but however be careful while you take zinc through diet. Too much of it can affect your health resulting in abdominal cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, loss of appetite, etc. The tolerable upper limit for zinc is 40mg/day.
Consuming zinc through diet helps but the number of calories matters a lot when coming to weight loss. Total calories you are consuming and total calories you are spending does matters which decides if you’ll lose weight or not. Zinc may help you lose weight but the intake calorie count should always be less than the outgoing calorie count in the form of exercises. Make sure you consume somewhere between 500 – 1000 calories a day and you target to lose 1 – 2 pounds a week.