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Healthful foods help make bodies function properly. When we eat too much junk food, the fats, preservatives, sugars and chemicals can overwhelm our body’s ability to transform the food into energy, resulting in a slow metabolism. However, too little food can also drag down a person’s metabolism. This is what happened to Oprah Winfrey when she went on a liquid diet to lose excess weight fast. The low-calorie diet was unsustainable, and she gained the weight back–then had to put in extra effort to return her metabolism to a normal rate. There are concrete strategies you can employ to boost your metabolism and encourage your body to burn calories efficiently.

Vitamin A, which aids the body’s immune system, eyes, mucus membranes and cell reproduction, is really two kinds of vitamins: retinol and the provitamin-A carotenoids. Natural retinol comes from animals, while the carotenoids, of which the most well-known is beta carotene, come from vegetable sources. When you eat the animal sources of retinol vitamin A, you absorb the retinol the most directly and efficiently, while the vegetable carotenoids get converted into retinol inside the body less efficiently. The hype you might have heard about beta carotene, which is present in many vividly colored vegetables and fruits, is well-deserved and stems from the fact that it’s the most efficiently absorbed of all the carotenoids. How much vitamin A should you take during pregnancy? In supplement form, take no more than the right amount of vitamin-A retinol for your age—to be safe, consult the chart from the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine and speak with your physician. As for foods to take or not take that are high in vitamin A during pregnancy, see the recommendations below.