Vitamins for weight loss and dieting are designed to supplement what are generally poor eating habits nutritionally. The United States has more overweight and clinically obese people per head of population than practically any other developed country, and their efforts to reduce weight are leaving many short of the vitamins and minerals required for a healthy life.

It is possible to adopt a nutritionally healthy diet that contains low calories, and many fail to understand the simple mathematical formula of calories and exercise. In a nutshell, in order to lose weight your calorie intake through food must be less than the calories you burn through exercise. There are charts for both that will enable you plan your eating and exercise, but most people ignore the science.

Theoretically, therefore, it is not necessary to adopt a diet that is low in nutrition. However, many do, because they want to lose weight without exercise. There are also many that are unable to exercise, and they need some means of losing weight while maintaining a healthy diet. That involves the use of the most appropriate mineral and vitamin supplements for those whose natural intake is reduce by a diet. So what are the best vitamins to make up for what is lost through weight loss and dieting?

In fact every vitamin is important to the human metabolism, so the term 'best vitamins for weight loss' is invalid. However, assuming that a person is dieting and their natural vitamin intake is not as it should be, then what are the best supplements? These supplements might not only be vitamins, and the following recommendations are made with the assumption that at least some of the common vitamin intake is as normal. Most recommended supplements will be for water soluble vitamins, since it is assumed here that the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K are being stored in the body during dieting. This is generally the case.

The most abundant of the water soluble vitamins are the B vitamins and they will quickly be leached out of the body. They will therefore need replaced quickly since they are essential to life. Vitamin B2 is riboflavin, and is essential for the proper functioning of the thyroid gland and the metabolism (the basic life chemical processes). Vitamin B3, or Niacin, is also essential for the thyroid, and it plays an important part in the control of blood sugar levels. Pantothenic acid, otherwise known as vitamin B5, helps to control the use of fat and generation of energy and Vitamin B6, Pyridoxine, is again essential for the thyroid function and the metabolism.

So you can see that without the B complex vitamins, life could not exist. The B vitamin missing is B12, but that is not as essential as the others where weight loss is concerned. The other two parts of the B-complex are Choline and Inisitol that are not true vitamins since they are manufactured in the liver. True vitamins are not produced in the body. However, these two are necessary for the effective use of fats so are included here since their absence will help to promote obesity.

The other essential water soluble vitamin in dieting is vitamin C. This vitamin provides a large number of benefits, and its absence will cause a number of problems even before the well known scurvy sets in, when the teeth start to fall out of the gums. Vitamin C has a part to play in weight loss, and a supplement is generally necessary during a diet that is short of fresh fruit and vegetables as some are.

If you are overweight and diet without a proper vitamin intake, you are in an invidious situation because vitamins are essential for the chemical reactions that make up your metabolism. These reactions are carried out by enzymes that rely on vitamins for their proper functioning. The calories you eat are either used for energy or are stored in the form of fat. If you do not have a proper intake of vitamins, you cannot convert the calories to energy, so it is stored as fat. The more you diet, therefore, the fatter you can get!

There are also a few minerals essential to life that you can fall short of during a poorly designed diet. Zinc is essential for the production of thyroid hormones, which it forms in association with vitamins A and E. Chromium, however, is probably more important than zinc. Chromium is a necessary element in the metabolism of sugar, and it has been studied closely in relation to its association with insulin. Without chromium your food will not be efficiently used as fuel for the metabolism, and will be stored as fat. Studies have proved that a chromium supplement can result in a weight loss over three months of ten times that without it.

Incidentally, if your diet is giving you any digestion problems, a few fennel seeds will sort the problem out. Fennel is an excellent natural remedy for digestive problems and can even help in the weight loss process. Fennel tea is useful to provide you with a good supply of vitamins and minerals while dieting.

Another supplement that might be of great benefit to you while trying to lose weight is Coenzyme Q10. This is a substance that is present in all the cells of your body, so you would think that a supplement would not be necessary. Wrong! Studies have proved beyond doubt that taking a Coenzyme Q10 supplement while dieting can help you to lose twice as much weight as without it. This might not happen with everybody, but it is certainly worth a try. It also provides you with health benefits, being a strong antioxidant and helping with certain problems with degeneration of the brain.

There is a little known fruit used in Indian cooking called garcinia cambogia that, if you can find it, is great for diets. The hydroxy citric acid that it contains not only acts as an appetite suppressant but also helps your body to convert carbohydrates to energy rather than to fat, and seems to reduce the tendency to create cholesterol. It is a dream fruit that also tastes great.

These are just a few of the vitamins and supplements for weight loss and dieting that can be used to enable you to diet safely without suffering from a deficiency or, in the extreme, actually put weight on and defeat the object.