Reddit reviews NOW Supplements, Vitamin D-3 5,000 IU, High Potency, Structural Support*, 120 Softgels

158 is quite low for your frame so I'm not surprised that you have a natural propensity to under-eat. To have enough body fat to obscure at least an unflexed 2 pack at 158 after 6 months of working out is absurd and suggests that you're doing something wrong.

There are some supplements that can help but I think the primary problem is likely lurking in your diet, man. The secondary problem is likely your training regimen, as the words "different machines which train every muscle group" send up a big ass red flag.

The calorie deficit you're working under is too steep. 1700 is somewhere around 400 calories short of your daily maintenance need. That means you're not eating enough to fulfill your daily energy needs while idling. By the time your day is over, you're likely using over 3,000 calories.

So, the cool thing about cars is that if they run out of fuel, they have the common decency to shut down. Your body, should you not feed it, will either convert its fat stores to energy or sometimes, it will prefer to hang on to the fat and break down muscle for what it needs instead. The annoying thing is that you won't be able to tell which it's doing until you post to Reddit 6 months later.

When you create too steep an energy (calorie) demand over an extended period of time, your body will slow its metabolism (the rate it burns calories) to accommodate. It's essentially preparing you for a famine because you're not eating enough and it thinks shit's about to go down. It doesn't give a single fuck about your appearance: your body's primary concern is survival. The next step is to prefer to maintain its fat stores instead of converting them to energy. Instead, it breaks down muscle tissue, which is the opposite of what you want.

Because you've probably been under-eating your entire life, I'll assume you don't eat big meals, and I'm going to guess that those 1700 calories are being spread out across several (5-6) meals. With a carbohydrate intake of over 200g a day, spreading them out over several meals, you've probably got elevated blood sugar all day. That means that you'll have insulin roaming about in your body all day that will also tell your fat stores to stay put.

When you put all of that together, you've got a recipe for a skinny-fat dude.

Definition comes from the relationship between your muscle and skin. When your skin stretches tightly against your body, it will dip into the crevices in your muscle tissue. Body fat is the layer between the muscle and skin so the less body fat there is, the more defined you become, just as long as you've still got muscle there. That's all definition is. The reason your stomach looks like a rolling meadow is because you're essentially talking your body into keeping its fat stores, while breaking down your muscle.

• Here's 5 pounds of muscle and 5 pounds of fat.
  
  As you can see, fat takes up way more room. What you can't see is that when you put on muscle, you retain more water. Often, the combination weighs more than the fat you've lost, which is why using a scale to determine your success is nearly worthless.
  
  
• This dude is a pretty good example. Look familiar?
  
  So here's a list of things to do to solve your problem.
  
  
• Look into Intermittent Fasting.
  
• Increase calorie intake to 3,500 on work days, 2300 on rest days.
  
• Eat 1g of protein per 1b of your body weight.
  
• Save the carbs until post-workout.
  
• Flip around your gym and running frequency.
  
• Use free weights and pick a program to follow.
  
  Supplementation recommendation:
  
  Daily:
  
  
• Multivitamin
  
• Fish Oil
  
• Alpha-lipoic Acid and Chromium
  
• Vitamin D
  
  Post-workout:
  
  
• Creatine Monohydrate
  
• BCAA
  
  You can look into thermogenics like caffeine and green tea extract if you'd like but I think appetite suppression is the last thing you need. Trying to artificially increase your metabolism might actually do more harm than good.

http://www.amazon.com/NOW-Foods-Vitamin-5000-120-Softgels/dp/tags-on-product/B002EA99HE

5000IU, $11 for eight months if you go for 240 softgels. Until the FDA/your country's equivalent gets their act together, pick this up somewhere and give the middle finger to cancer. :D

Edit: damn you, Amazon link structure.

Hmmmm... Got some minutes today, so let's type out some questions!

• I'm slowly developing a suspicion that I am mildly lactose intolerant (despite not being genetically predisposed to it in the slightest, pretty much every member of my family consumes a broad range of dairy products, sometimes in excess, without any adverse effects), or at the very least, my small intestine is not producing sufficient lactase. Either way, I'd like to supplement it in small doses when I do consume excess dairy. In my mild case, to avoid the discomfort, what dosage would you recommend and how long before/after intake should I supplement?
  
  
  
• The 2nd question is related to vitamin D supplementation, now that winter is looming and my hours in the sunlight are limited even further. I'm currently taking 4-6 Life Force® Multiple (I know, should've got the men's one with no iron), as well as 1-2 Cod Liver pills daily (2500 IU vitamin A, 200 IU vitamin D). I've read many anecdotal reports of increased energy and elevation of mood with vitamin D supplementation and I think I could benefit from it with my daily work/school stresses. What dosage would you recommend and is this a decent deal on some D3?
  
  
  
• Lastly, given the above Life Force multi, could I benefit from Zinc micro addition? My diet is clean and fairly varied, but of the common natural sources of zinc, I really only consume products from the lower half of this table along with beef. In searching for zinc supplements I've found several types (gluconate, picolinate, glycinate) and it would be nice if we had a brief description of the distinction between the types, as well as, which would be more beneficial than others.
  
  
  Thanks

This might seem like a stretch, but what has helped me deal a bit more over the passed few days is...vitamin D3. I'm not a doctor nor do I play one on TV, but you might want to consider this small thing you can do to possibly make life a little more tolerable. Of course everyone is different and this may not work for you but being in the same situation, I was going to try anything.

I'm going to say it... I could've written most of your post, except I am female. I was also in this position and started scouring the internet for anything I could do to get out of that hell. I started talking to people too.

Most of the answers I got made me so fucking mad. Mostly because people will just blindly say, "Why don't you go on medication, just to get you over the hump?" As a person who has tailored their diet so that food is medicine for my body that is in chronic pain 24/7, adding more chemicals/toxins to the mix didn't seem to make sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure pharms help people, they've just never helped me. I've tried many, many different ones and they've only made things worse.

This is what helped me. I started taking this brand https://www.amazon.com/NOW-Foods-Vitamin-5000-120-Softgels/dp/B002EA99HE
2 in the morning (10,000IU a day). After the third day, I didn't wake up with the nauseousness I feel toward life. I get this because I hate my life and myself so much, I get nauseous anytime I am awake, thinking about almost all the things you had written in your post.

I know it may seem like a simple vitamin such as D3 wouldn't even touch this hell we live in, but it has for me. It is easy to overdose on vitamin D from what I've read, but D3 is another story. Here's an article on what the difference is between the two, how it helps your body as a whole and also the dosage to get your levels up. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/23/oral-vitamin-d-mistake.aspx

On my third day of taking this, I was able to fucking laugh!!! I couldn't believe it. That hasn't happened in about a couple of years, genuinely. I woke up, not dreading what the world was going to be like and was able to function with more of a clear mind. Not that it made all worries and despair disappear, but I was able to even go out to a grocery store and not feel so debilitated at the mere thought of being hearded into lines at a store we HAD to go to in order to survive, buying food and feeling like a sheeple. I also have been able to be more active which causes me to be more tired at night, allowing for easier sleep. I usually get 2 hours a night. Passed couple of days, it's been 4-5 hours. It's only been a few days so I hope this is a growing trend. I have been dealing with insomnia on and off in my life, but my most recent stent is 5 years and counting.

I know this isn't much, but it may prove to be helpful for you and is not too expensive. You know, "Just to get you over that hump."

Take it easy man, message me if you need to vent more. I really hope this can be of some help to you.

I don't know anything about supplements in the UK; I have a "NOW" brand that has 5,000 IU per capsule.

I know the UK had some problems way the heck back when they fortified foods with too much vitamin D, and poisoned a bunch of people- aching joints, that sort of thing. The regulatory agency there may be touchy about marketing a vitamin D supplement with anything more than a tiny amount of the stuff. 5 ug would 200 IU, or what some people consider sufficient to stave off rickets- barely.

Oh man, that's rough. MS can be a shitty disease for everyone - those who have it and their family/caretakers. You may want to check national MS society for support for yourself.

Also, link to Vitamin D on amazon if you want to buy some for your mom while she's waiting on the Rx.

Hope things get better for both of you.

I take this. One pill, once a day.

Is this the one?

The Now Foods D3 has pretty good reviews on amazon.

I go tanning a few times a week and do have some D3 that I take occasionally. Why the drops rather than pills? I have these: NOW vitamin d
Thanks for the recommendations though, I have saved your threads to reconsider when I run out of certain supplies.

http://www.amazon.com/NOW-Foods-Vitamin-5000-120-Softgels/dp/B002EA99HE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319727879&sr=8-1