When taking daily, multivitamins are you a little more "free" with what you can eat?

[Anonymous]

as long as you're not consuming a ton of fat and calories, will the nutrients from the multivitamin allow you to eat even a little less than normal and snack a little more if you take them?

I've been taking vitamins most days, the past few weeks, and I pretty good, better than before I started taking them, and I'm eating a bit less and in these last couple of weeks especially, it feels like I'm losing a little bit of weight. I feel thinner. and yes I've eaten a little more junk food, at least more regularly. I'll even have a bottle of soda everyday. sometimes I'll eat a couple of cookies later in the evening. but still. Not sure.

Any thoughts?

[peace-love-couture]

Absolutely not, but I think you're over analyzing a bit

A multivitamin should simply be used as a "backup" just in case you aren't receiving all or close to all of the vitamins and minerals you need. It's always best to receive most, if not all(although impossible in many cases) to receive all of your nutrients from natural sources, i,e. foods.

It's OK to indulge, there's nothing wrong with that, but when it comes to losing weight, it's important to make healthier lifestyle changes as opposed to going on these little diets that include temporary dietary changes that you won't be following months or years from now.

Too many people mistake multivitamins and supplements for health and that's not the case. While it's meant to supplement your diet, it isn't meant to be the majority of it. You'll have better results eating healthier foods more often as they're often lower in calories, have carbs to give you energy(but so does pasta and rice heehee) and it's just healthier.

So no, if we're speaking technically, that's not the purpose of multivitamins but unfortunately many people happen to think that's the case.

[Asker]

I do still try and get plenty of nutrients from food. I just wonder if what I'm doing is OK considering that I don't indulge too much.

[peace-love-couture]

Moderation is key to everything.

If you're indulging every once in a while, that's fine. But if you're binge eating or it's becoming a regular part of your diet, that's obviously not healthy.

[madmisskelly]

Multivitamins usually don't have much to do with weight loss although they will make you feel a bit better if you were deficient.

I would definitely stick to eating healthy though- don't use multivitamins as an excuse to eat crap food. You still need to eat enough potassium and iron as well as making sure you get your B vitamins.

[WoIIie]

When I was doing marathon sessions at the gym, sometimes beforehand I would order a chili cheeseburger for the "calories" since I would need the fuel. While the "fuel" would be there, my performance would suffer both physically and mentally because it just didn't go down as well as say, an organic salad would have.

Sometimes I even had two donuts before playing basketball at the gym for a few hours. While they gave me adequate calories, I performed like an absolute scrub and was just not into it. The point is, you have to take into consideration more than just "vitamins" and "calories". How well you digest them is just as important.

Good job on losing weight.

[Asker]

Thanks for the answer. I don't need to lose a lot, but I still have a bit to go. It's been very little if anything. I'm not doing a whole lot physically either, just walking when I go out. I don't eat a lot of red meat though so I rarely have something that's hard to digest in my stomach.

[Asker]

and thank you for the compliment. Hopefully I can get down to where I want to be.

[rachiee]

Definitely not. Junk food is junk food. You should still replace them with healthy snacks. Multivitamins aren't magic pills, they just give you vitamins that you may not get with your daily diet.