You love a hard workout at the gym, but it's getting harder and harder. You're eating well, losing weight, and working out like a champ. But your body feels so tired.
A diet with some lean red meat, chicken thighs, or iron-fortified energy bars or cereals, she says, usually pumps enough iron to deliver oxygen to exercising muscles and helps prevent unusual fatigue.
But calorie cutting, heavy menstrual periods, vegetarian diets, or just nixing top iron sources such as red meat can leave you too pooped to participate. So have your doctor test hemoglobin, hematocrit, and serum ferritin, the storage form of iron.
What you may need: Iron
Usual dose: RDA for women ages 31 to 50, 18 mg/day; ages 51+, 8 mg/day; pregnant women, 27 mg/day; vegetarian women, 33 mg/day
Tolerable upper limit: 45 mg/day from food and supplements unless prescribed by a doctor
Food sources: Lean meat, poultry, fish, legumes, nuts and seeds, whole grains, dark molasses, fortified cereals such as Total or Cream of Wheat
Best supplement: Daily multivitamin
