Today seems to be the day when I can get some extra work done, mainly because it’s so quiet around here! My wife has gone out to do one of her many projects, and cats are not clawing at me for attention. This type of household serenity is very rare, so I’m making the most of it.
Taking a break from the action, I just read a great article from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that was published in 2007. The article has a fascinating consensus.
One of the conclusions shown in the article is that the people who were involved in the study, upon which the article is based, were able to lose weight with a moderate amount of exercise while taking fish oil. The subjects also gained muscle mass and showed a tremendous change in their risk factors for cardiac disease.
The people who took fish oil, but did not do any exercise, did not lose weight and those who took sunflower oil had the same results.
The weight loss group took between 3 and 6 grams of fish oil per day. Now, normally less would suffice for most people, but I suspect the folks in this study had fairly significant weight problems, and would need more than the average bear.
In an article which reviewed the study, the author points out a few other things, which are exactly what I’ve been saying.
1. Be sure to think about how you are spending your hard-earned money. You need to get a quality product: high-grade, molecularly-distilled and is certified to contain no contaminants or PCBs.
2. The fish oil product that you have chosen should not taste fishy. A sure sign of an inferior product is “fish burps.” If you are experiencing fish burps, then you are not taking the type of product that you should be taking – enteric coated fish oil. This coating ensures that the softgel will not dissolve before it has reached the intestines.
3. Flaxseed oil is simply not as effective as enteric coated fish oil. In order to get the same benefits as fish oil, you would need to take 6 times the amount of flaxseed oil — that is, 12 grams of flaxseed oil, as compared to merely 2 pharmaceutical-grade fish oil softgels. And flaxseed oil is likely to send you to the bathroom much more often than you would like.
To achieve synergistic weight loss, you can’t go wrong by combining enteric coated, high-potency, pharmaceutical grade fish oil, with moderate exercise and a healthy diet.