If you are on a weight loss diet, chances are that you avoid milk and dairy products, your reason being that these are ‘fattening’. Well, you are wrong. Milk and dairy products can actually help you lose weight, and the credit goes to the calcium they are enriched with.

Calcium, a mineral long known to make bones healthy, has also been identified as a constituent for encouraging weight loss. Theory suggests that, when your body has a lack of calcium, it will stimulate your appetite to consume more food in order to satiate the deficiency. Thus, studies have shown that people consuming more dairy products lose weight faster than those who don’t. One hypothesis for the effectiveness of dairy calcium consumption, related to weight loss, is based on the presence of a component in dairy products, called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Research has shown that CLA helps increase metabolism rate, decreases abdominal fat and enhances muscle growth, lowers insulin resistance, cholesterol levels and tryglycerides – all of these eventually leading to successful weight loss.

Calcium intake alone can help in losing weight, but works best when combined with a low-calorie diet and physical exercise routines. So if you have given up milk and dairy products under the misconception of it being ‘unhealthy’, you should replenish all the lost calcium by having a glass of milk right now!