Today, we're going to be talking about how to use fish oil, the over the counter supplement fish oil for weight loss. You're probably very familiar with fish oil as a supplement, as a dietary supplement, but probably not for its benefits and effects on weight loss or using it in the setting of weight loss.
Most people think of fish oil, they know it's really good for their body and they know that it's really beneficial at reducing inflammation. So it's often recommended for treating inflammatory diseases, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disease, and so on. But there are some special properties associated with taking fish oil that also help with weight loss.
So we're going to be talking about how fish oil can help with weight loss and then we'll be talking about how to actually use fish oil if you want to use it for weight loss, because it turns out you need to use a higher dose than you're probably thinking of.
Now, the topic of the discussion we're going to be having today really fits into all of these categories because fish oil has an impact on several different hormones. And these are the hormones which impact obesity.
So if you have high levels or if these hormones dysregulated in any way, it will lead to obesity, weight gain and weight loss resistance. And that's where fish oil steps in.
What are the benefits of taking fish oil
The first thing I want to answer is, can fish oil help with weight loss? Absolutely yes. In fact, I have it as a portion of my weight loss bundle, which has a series of different types of supplements, all designed to help with weight loss. In that bundle include things like berberine ( you can check how to lose weight fast with berberine), special types of probiotics, fish oil, a special type of protein powder. The protein powder can help, but also it has some natural sources of caffeine and so on.
So all these things have been studied and proven to be effective at helping with weight loss. But we're going to talk specifically about fish oil, and I want to explain to you how it actually can help your body lose weight. As a little bit of a spoiler, it does have to do with its impact on those hormones that I talked about previously.
Also, as we get to these, I'll make mention of them so that you understand what I'm talking about. But just as a primer, the hormones that we're going to be talking about include insulin, glucagon, thyroid hormone, leptin and some potentially testosterone.
1. Taking fish oil in several studies has shown to lead to an increase in lean body mass, don't let the lean body mass part confuse you. What it really means is muscle mass.
What some studies see is that taking fish oil can increase muscle mass in people who take it routinely. This is awesome, because it's really a good thing, we want high levels of lean muscle mass and low levels of fat mass for us to lose weight.
Now, what happens is when you take fish oil, that's helping your muscles to grow bigger and to grow stronger and to take up more space. As they do that, you also see a decrease in fat mass, which we'll talk about in just a second. But I want to stay on the lean muscle mass for just about a little bit longer here.
Why is lean muscle mass important? Lean muscle mass is important because the more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism will be, and the higher your metabolism, the more calories you will burn at rest and the more energy you will burn and the more weight loss or the more weight that you will burn or the more fat that you will lose as well.
2. People that have taken fish oil have been shown to have lower or decreased levels of fat mass, especially when it is used in conjunction with regular and routine exercise.
So what we actually have here, when you look at the studies, a couple of different things happen. If you take fish oil just by itself, you will see an increasingly lean muscle mass and you will see a decrease in fat mass. But what's interesting is that both of these things occur at about the same rate.
The actual scale will stay about the same, your scale won't necessarily go down, but two things will happen simultaneously, which are helping you lose fat mass, which is really what you want.
What actually happens is if you take fish oil, you're going to increase your muscle mass at about the same rate that you are reducing your fat mass. So two really good things are happening at the same time, but it may lead to the scale staying relatively flat. So don't get that confuse you, because as you are losing fat you are also getting more muscular.
This is actually a really good thing, losing fat and gaining muscle mass simultaneously is exactly what you want to happen. It's very hard for people to do this. In fact, people try to do it and they don't have success, but fish oil is one way to do that. Now, if you can take it a step further by combining it with exercise, it's really fantastic.
So if you take the supplement fish oil and you combine it with exercise, you actually see a reduction. You see a reduction in the fat mass and increase in lean body mass, but the decrease in the fat mass is actually greater than that of the body mass. And it might actually cause in this case, the scale to drop, which is why I always recommend never take weight loss supplements alone without combining it with regular exercise, if you want to see good results.
You should use it in addition to all other therapies, including changing your diet, eating a whole food diet, exercising, balancing your hormones and so on, getting enough sleep, reducing your stress and so on. You want to be doing all of these things together. So these are very important things that fish oil is doing right away.
3. Another benefit of fish oil is that, it is actually also increasing thyroid function, but only in the liver, and it does this by increasing a specific enzyme, which is responsible for heat production. This may not sound very interesting to you at first glance, but we care about heat production for the same reason we care about increase in muscle mass, the more heat that you produce, the more energy that you're burning and the more calories that you're burning.
You should know that the thyroid is responsible for a good portion of heat loss in your body. Depending on what study you're looking at, but somewhere between 40 and 60% of your metabolism is regulated and controlled by your thyroid. And what fish oil is doing is activating a specific enzyme and protein inside the liver, which is increasing the amount of calories that you burn by virtue of its impact on increasing heat production.
So it doesn't increase the thyroid in the whole body, but it increases the sensitivity of that protein inside the liver, which is still very beneficial. If you're trying to lose weight.
4. Another benefit is that, fish oil has a positive impact on another really important hormone called insulin. You probably know about insulin if you are regularly coming to this platform, because we have many posts on diabetes. Anyway, insulin in the context of weight loss, is the hormone that is designed to help your fat cells grow. It actually helps all of your body.
Insulin makes every aspect of your body grow by the way, but most people know about it in its setting of type two diabetes. Insulin resistance is a key player in developing type two diabetes mellitus, and a lot of people, if they're overweight, have some element of insulin resistance. Depending on degree of affectation, insulin resistance can be mild to moderate to severe.
But a lot of people, it's estimated that about 50% of the population of the United States has some degree of insulin resistance right and that number is only getting higher. The more people that gain weight, the higher that number will be and the more problems people will have as we go on.
What fish oil is doing is increasing insulin sensitivity, which is decreasing insulin resistance, which I'm going to abbreviate IR here. It also does have an impact on glucagon, glucagon is kind of like a sister hormone to insulin.
I just wanted to include that in there, but it's not necessarily as important as its impact on insulin. So if you have diabetes, or if you know you have insulin resistance, if you've been told that your fasting insulin is really high, or you know that your blood sugar is creeping up and you're becoming pre-diabetic, this fish oil is a great supplement to use in that setting because of its impact on insulin.
Forget about the other benefits that we talked about before. If you have any insulin resistance or diabetes, it will be beneficial to you, but it will also be causing a benefit in these other areas as well.
5. Number five is that fish oil also has a positive impact on leptin. You may not understand or know a lot about leptin. But we have discussed it a little in best hormonal supplements for weight loss. Leptin is another hormone that helps regulate how much fat you have in your body, so the more weight that you gain, the higher your leptin gets.
Leptin resistance makes it very difficult, if not impossible to lose weight. Insulin resistance causes a whole other host of problems, but leptin resistance often goes with the insulin resistance and can't be a big problem. We have studies which show that fish oil can actually help lower leptin levels, which will reverse leptin resistance, which will make it easier for you to lose weight, which is why I actually recommend it in the setting of leptin resistance as a supplement that you can use.
Then lastly, you probably already know about this benefit, but fish oil has a positive benefit or positive reaction to inflammatory levels, meaning that it reduces inflammation in the entire body. And it does this by virtue of its impact on certain types of pathways in the body, the lipooxygenase and cyclooxygenase pathways, which if they are activated, they increase inflammation in the body.
Fish oil does this because it has to do with the balance of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids and so on. Like I said, most people know about fish oil and its ability to reduce inflammation, but inflammation is a key player in developing obesity as well. So the more inflammation in your body, the harder it is to lose weight.
If you can drive down that inflammation, it makes it easier for you to lose weight, and fish oil of course does that, which is one of the benefits that we're talking about here in the setting of weight loss.
How to Use Fish Oil for Weight Loss
If you like what you're reading here and you want to use fish oil for weight loss, how do you actually do it? So what we're going to talk about is how much, because there's a specific way that you need to be taking it if weight loss is your desire. Getting only the standard dose of fish oil is probably not going to be sufficient for the benefits that we're talking here.
You have to use a fairly high dose and the dose and the range that I recommend is about 4,000 to 6,000 milligrams per day. This will also translate to about four to six grams, depending on how your fish oil is dosed.
But I can tell you that most capsules of fish oil do not even contain about 1,000 milligram. It depends on which type you're using, but most probably have somewhere between 800 to 1,000 milligram.
So in that case, you may need four to six capsules per day, right? We're talking about a fairly high dose here. Because if you want to get weight loss benefits, you have to use that. So remember you, you need to use a higher dose of 4,000 to 6,000 milligrams per day, usually for the range of about six months, which we'll talk about in just a second.
Now you don't necessarily have to use that higher dose all the time. There are some sustained release fish oils out there. They have an enhanced delivery system, which is a triglyceride delivery system, which allows for three times the blood levels of fish oil to be sustained in your body after you take it.
If you're using one of those, then you don't have to take as high of a dose. But if you're taking the standard sort of fish oil, then you're going to have to use that higher dose.
I have a supplement which uses that sustained release fish oil and that triglyceride delivery system. So the dose doesn't have to be as high. Again, I recommend that in my weight loss bundle, but you can get the same effect just using a higher dose of regular standard fish oils, but you're going to be going through those fish oil tablets and capsules pretty rapidly. Because you're using four to six per day instead of the one that the bottle recommends that you use to get that benefit.
You want to use that high dose for about six months. That's the duration. So this isn't like a short term thing. You're not going to see results right away. It takes a while for you to build muscle mass and it takes a while for you to lose fat mass. So don't think that this is that sort of quick fixing.
You're going to be doing this for a while. Which is why you need to be serious if you want to do it. And then lastly, never, ever, ever take any supplement that I'm talking about here, any medication, any hormone without combining it with everything else that I also talk about.
So in this case, you want to combine it and you probably can't read that. But that's what I'm saying. You need to combine fish oil with a healthy lifestyle, which includes getting enough sleep, reducing your stress, exercising regularly, taking additional weight loss supplements.
Remember this is just one of probably, I think I have a list of seven to 10 different supplements that are all designed to help with weight loss. So use this in conjunction in addition to those other supplements and hormones if necessary. So thyroid hormone, testosterone, potentially if you have low testosterone and so on, this is really how you get the weight loss that you're looking for. You burn that fat off and it does not come back, but you need to have this sort of comprehensive approach.
So that's how that's how I recommend using fish oil for weight loss in that setting., and it's a little different than probably you've seen or heard about before.
I want to make sure that's all clear. If you have any questions about why I'm doing this or the studies that we talked about or whatever it is, if you have any questions about what we've talked about here, leave them in the comments below, and I'll do my best to get back to those questions.
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