Vitamins and Supplements Question...

The last time I took a vitamin, I was chewing on those delicious little Flintstones chewables when I was like.... 7. Then, at 18 or 19, I tried taking One-A-Day Women's vitamins and I would dry heave and feel horrible for hours after taking one no matter how much food was in my belly or what I swallowed those pills with. Someone said it may be because of the iron or zinc in em'. I dunno.

Now I'm 22, trying to lose weight and get healthy, and have discovered a mood shift. I'm way more irritable and have a shorter fuse. I don't feel as easy-going anymore. I am not sure if the mood shift is from exercising more and eating healthy, or from a mixture of that + stress. A friend on MFP said that happens to women sometimes when your nutrition changes, because your body chemistry shifts a little. She recommended I take vitamins. I have no idea what to take or if I am lacking in any nutritional department.

If the mood shift may actually be from my healthier food choices and workouts, is there a really good multivitamin for young women that actually is absorbed into our bodies that will help? I've heard about the gimmicks that aren't soluble and are a waste of money. I want something that will balance me out.

My overall goal is to get from 173lbs and 31BMI to around 140lbs and whatever BMI goes along with that (probably around 19 or 20). I workout and do cardio when I can (usually a few times a week at the very least) and I eat well. I rarely go over my weekly allotment of calories.

Please help if you are knowledgeable about this kind of stuff. Thank you in advance!

Unless you have a vitamin deficiency, there's no medical justification for taking a multi-vitamin. That fact does not stop companies from marketing them aggressively in an effort to convince people that a multi-vitamin is necessary. As time passes, we're growing food that's more nutritious and we're eating more food so they have a significant challenge facing them.

Insofar as supplements - ugh. There is zero government oversight about what's actually in the bottle and people take supplements that harm or kill them. Well established firms probably do a good job of actually putting in the bottle what they say is in the bottle but once you go below a "top tier" of firms, I wouldn't trust the label and I certainly wouldn't put what's in the bottle in my body.

The other aspect of supplements is that there's very little evidence that they have any benefit at all. I do accept that there are some supplements that have shown benefit and I do accept that many of them are actually as beneficial as a placebo (and that is important) but, by themselves, most supplements have consistently failed to show a clear benefit.

Might I suggest that you have your bloodwork done?

Go to a weight loss clinic that offers blood tests as part of their program and see if you can have just the bloodwork done (for example Lindora does this in SoCal). There's a fee for it (I paid $80) but, if you get back bad results, it's not in your health insurance file so you don't have to worry about that aspect of it. After you've had a blood test, you will be able to tell what vitamins and minerals you need and it may also give you good guidance on any dietary changes.

As a result of my bloodwork, for example, I've switched to breakfast foods. I think it was my LDL that was a little high so the folks at Lindora advised me to eat oatmeal. That was about a year ago so I'll see how things look in about a month.

And, for guys, here's a benefit of going in to have bloodwork done. My fiancée runs a weight loss clinic here in SoCal. Last year one of her brothers signed up for their weight loss program and when the results of his bloodwork came back, his PSA marker was high. He had surgery soon afterward and is alive and well today.

Wrong. Actually, today's foods are less nutrient dense then they were in the 1950's. How do I know you may ask? Well because there was a study done on today's broccoli vs. DNA from 1950's broccoli. What they found in the results was that today's broccoli has 20-50% LESS vitamin C then the broccoli that was grown in the 1950's.
Think about it... over farming, over population, more additives and chemicals = worse vegetables. Absolutely get your blood checked! That's a great way to make sure that you are not deficit in anything. But a full spectrum multi-vitamin is still one of the best things you can take for health, at least one that you absorb.

OP: whatever vitamin you decide to go with, make sure it is in a liquid or powdered form. Any tablet or chewable has been put through a heating process to get it into that tablet or chewy form. When you heat a nutrient like a vitamin, it becomes denatured and it also makes it hard on the body to absorb. What this results in is that with a tablet, you end up peeing out about 90% of it, and only absorbing 10%. Just like how you can overcook a veggie and cook the nutrients out, it's the same thing with a vitamin.

A liquid or powdered form multi-vitamin is most likely going to be cold filtered and cold process to keep the nutrients intact. I use one called Alkalinity Fuel. It is a powdered form that you mix in with water and makes a nice little orange or tropical berry flavored drink (those are the two flavors it comes in). It is made from spirulina, alfalfa, wheat grass, chlorophyll, kelp, and ginger root. And is 90-100% absorbed in the body.

Back to this previous poster, you clearly have taken the wrong supplements or have not been educated on how to properly implement them into a workout plan. I take various supplements like a creatine nitrate - it boosts strength and power (creatine) and opens up blood vessels to allow more blood flow and oxygen in and out of the muscle tissue. This supplement called Assist NOX works great and I know numerous people that absolutely love it. Preworkouts, various protein powders, BCAAs, Glutamine, etc. also are all extremely beneficial and work great for me and a lot of people that I work out with.

Further, many supplement companies like the manufacturer who makes the above supplements I was talking about called Nutracore Nutrition is a GMP (good manufacturing process) manufacturing facility and has it's batch records tested twice a month by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). So your claim that they are not regulated is false.