Weight loss can be difficult for some people, regardless of how much they try to amend their diet or workouts in the gym. Maintaining a healthy weight and an active lifestyle is important for good health, and we’re reminded all the time how obesity can lead to a number of health problems such as heart disease and diabetes. But there are problems which can lead to weight gain itself, such as thyroid disorders and many more. The choices we make affect directly our weight and health, as we all know. But there could be aspects to your lifestyle that you hadn’t considered could affect your weight, such as your iron levels. Iron deficiency anaemia could be leading to your weight problems – it could be impacting why you can’t lose weight as easily as you’d like to.
Iron is essential for carrying oxygen to the bloodstream, and when you’re exercising it can make you feel weak and tired if your iron levels are low. Your battle with being tired and lacking energy could be affecting the intensity of your workouts, and as a result you could be impacting your weight loss without even realising it. If you feel like you’re always exercising but never getting anywhere, this could be why. The harder you can work out, the better results you’ll see and your body shape will be a testament to that. Iron, it seems, could be the hidden key to weight management success that you may be ignoring to your detriment. But why is it that this secret weight loss trick not promoted more, and how do you know if you’re a member of the iron-deficient club?
There are some important things to bear in mind if you think iron could be missing from your diet and affecting your weight management. One of the biggest causes of iron loss is due to bleeding, and this is often because of heavy and frequent menstrual periods in women. For people with coeliac disease, Crohn’s diseases and people who have had gastric bypass surgery could be impacted by iron absorption. Furthermore, your diet could be the problem – people following vegetarian diets could find that their iron intake isn’t what it should be – plant-based iron sources are non-heme which is why the RDA for iron is higher in vegetarians than meat eaters. Vegetarian men and post-menopausal women need 14mg daily or pre-menopausal vegetarian women should aim for 33mg daily. Often, people forget that forty per cent of iron found in meat, fish and poultry is heme, with the other sixty per cent falling into the category of non-heme.
All plant-based sources are non-heme. It’s also important to remember that non-heme iron isn’t absorbed as easily as heme iron. Sources such as rhubarb, spinach and beet greens contain an oxalate acid which binds with iron to make it unavailable for the body, which is why getting the right amount from plant-based sources is difficult. If you’re in doubt as to what your iron take is like and if it’s enough, you should speak to your GP. A sign that you could be iron-deficient are finding yourself low on energy, tired or winded, but you should be tested properly before taking supplements or upping your iron intake substantially. It could be the difference between years of weight loss struggle and a healthy management of weight loss, as well as better health overall.