NUTRITION • WEIGHT LOSS

The number on the scale is going down. So why do you feel worse?

Your appetite shrank. The list of things your body needs every day didn't. Three meals used to cover it without you thinking about it once, and now there's less food doing the same job.

By The Heights Research Team | Reviewed by Dr. Harry Jarret, PhD MRSB, Director of Science & Research, Heights | Published 11th August 2026

6 min read

For the first time in years, it's quiet. No negotiating with yourself at four in the afternoon. No running the numbers on what you ate. The food noise stopped.

Then one morning there's hair in the drain. Not a few strands. A handful.

Maybe for you it's not the hair. It's nails that snap where they used to bend. A 3pm slump you never used to hit. Catching your own face in the mirror and thinking, why do I look so tired? Everyone keeps telling you how good you look. Nobody has explained why you feel like this.

You're not imagining it. And you're not doing anything wrong.

So why is this happening?

Nothing has gone wrong. Your appetite is doing exactly what it's meant to. The trouble is that the nutrients shrink with the amount you eat.

Food isn't just calories. It's iron, B12, zinc, biotin – what your hair and your energy are built from. Eat half as much food and you get half as much nutrients too.

Your body isn't daft about it. When less comes in, it keeps the lights on where it matters – heart, lungs, blood – and cuts everywhere else. Your hair goes first. Then your energy. Then the sharpness you can't quite put your finger on. Nothing is broken. Your body is rationing.

Which explains the strange contradiction anyone on a big weight-loss journey will recognise: the better the scale looks, the rougher you may feel. It's not the weight loss that's the problem. It's the gaps.

"Losing weight quickly is one of the most nutritionally demanding things a body can do. Most people are doing it with nobody watching the nutrition side at all."

— Heights Science & Research Team

Okay — so what do you actually do about it?

Ask any dietitian who works with people losing weight fast and you'll get the same three answers, in roughly the same order:

1

Protein, at every meal

Your muscles don't know you're dieting on purpose. Protein tells them to stay. When your portions are small, protein goes first on the plate.

2

Resistance training, twice a week

You don't need a gym membership. You need to give your muscles a reason to stay. Two sessions a week is the difference between smaller and stronger.

3

Micronutrients, covered daily

The vitamins and minerals your meals used to cover don't fit in a smaller appetite. This is the part thats harder to manage.

The first two you've heard before. The third is where most people end up winging it: a biotin gummy because someone on TikTok swore by it, iron because you felt tired, a B12 spray from the chemist just in case. Before long the counter looks like a pharmacy, it's costing £100 a month, and you still don't know whether any of it is going in.

That's where Vitals⁺ comes in

20 essential nutrients – the full B complex, omega-3 from algae, vitamin D3, vitamin E, iron, zinc, selenium, iodine – in two small capsules. One simple habit to stick to, not several.

Two things that make Vitals different from standard multivitamins: The capsules are delayed-release, which means the nutrients survive your stomach acid and get to where they need for your body to absorb them. And there's nothing else in them. No fillers, no bulking agents, none of the padding cheaper brands use. Just nutrients in their active forms, the ones your body can use as-is.

Vitals

4.7/5 · 6,118+ verified reviews · Trusted by 150,000+ customers · 1m+ bottles sold

20 nutrients · 2 capsules a day · Vegan · Free from all 14 major allergens · Made by scientists and dietitians

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Does it actually work, though?

Fair question. Every supplement on the shelf says it's "backed by science", and you've probably been let down by that before.

Vitals⁺ went through a 12-week randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial – 35 adults in London and Manchester, run by third-party laboratory the Functional Gut Clinic, with blood analysis completed at Ulster University and The University of Sterling. It was presented at the Nutrition Society conference in spring 2026. You can read more about the study here.

That's more than almost any multivitamin on the shelf has ever done.

The first thing that turned up wasn't about the product at all. Ordinary healthy adults were already running low. 40% short on folate. 34% short on active B12. 83% low on riboflavin. Before any weight loss entered the picture. After 12 weeks:

Vitamin levels, before and after 12 weeks on Vitals⁺

Blood biomarker results from the 12-week placebo-controlled trial, indexed to each group's starting level (start = 100). No comparable change was seen in the placebo group.

At the start

After 12 weeks on Vitals⁺

+82%

+115%

+25%

RBC folate

Vitamin B6

Active B12

Riboflavin also rose 17%. And every participant who started the trial with raised homocysteine finished in the normal range.

Jarrett, Chinta, Medlin, Wadell, Patrick, Black, Treadway, McNally and Hobson (in press). A multivitamin intervention (Vitals+) corrects hidden micronutrient deficiencies without affecting safety parameters: Results from a multicentre randomised placebo-controlled trial in healthy UK adults. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/402876981

That's in people eating normal amounts. You can guess where you'd be starting from.

What actual customers say

From 6,000+ verified reviews

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"It's hard to explain, they make you want to get out of the bed in the morning. Couldn't live without them now."

One thing it won't do

Vitals⁺ won't lose the weight for you. That's not what it's for.


It's there for the part of weight loss that's easier to overlook: making sure that eating less doesn't automatically mean getting less of what your body needs.

2 capsules cover 20 essential nutrients to help you feel more like yourself again – supporting your energy and giving your hair, skin and nails more of what they need too.

Because you didn't sign up for a smaller, more tired version of yourself. You wanted to lose the weight. Not yourself.

2 capsules a day. 1 less thing to worry about.

The vitamins and minerals you need, in 2 small capsules. Delayed-release, so they get where they need to.

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Questions? We've got answers

Vitals⁺

4.7 stars | 6,118+ reviews