Want to get the most out of losing weight and lowering your cholesterol? Then taking enough calcium and vitamin D while slashing your calories may do the trick.

Calcium apparently interferes with the amount of fat absorbed in the intestines and helps the body burn fat quicker. The mineral found in many dairy products also may help people control their appetites, Canadian researchers said.

Most overweight women apparently suffer from a low intake of calcium, which may provide another avenue for treating people with weight problems, said Dr. Angelo Tremblay, a researcher at Quebec's Laval University.

 "In the clinical context of obesity treatment, calcium supplementation could be recommended in women with inadequate calcium intake to improve the cardiovascular disease risk profile," Tremblay wrote in this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Calcium's effects independent of weight

In the typical American diet, calcium is usually found in dairy products, plant-based foods and supplements. Milk and milk products provide more than 70 percent of the calcium consumed by Americans, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The daily recommended intake for calcium from the National Academies of Sciences varies, depending upon your age. Children 4-8 need just 800 daily milligrams of calcium, while men and women need 1,200 milligrams a day.

Meanwhile, Tremblay and his team researched the effects of calcium and vitamin D supplements on 63 overweight or obese women who were getting less than 800 daily milligrams of calcium.

The women were put on a 15-week diet and took two 600-milligram tablets of calcium and 200 IU of vitamin D tablets a day. As for eating, they consumned 700 less calories a day, according to the study.

During the 15 weeks, the women enjoyed greater drops in their LDL "bad" cholesterol and increases in their HDL "good" cholesterol. In addition, the effects of taking calcium on the ratios of total cholesterol to "good" cholesterol and "bad" cholesterol to the "good" kind were independent of their weight, Tremblay said.