Frontiersman Sept. 22, 2006

As a fitness training professional I’m asked if certain products will help with weight loss.  The good news is I’m going to tell you the truth.  Bad news is you might not want to hear it.

The latest trend in marketing is to claim that a simple pill will burn fat.  No supplement will “burn fat.”  Fat loss requires 2 steps.  First you must coax adipose material out of a fat cell and into the bloodstream.  Second burn and release the fatty acids as fuel.  This can not be done in and of itself by a pill.  What works is exercise and supportive nutrition.  Can fat burners contribute to the process?  Not if you are looking for healthy, long term results.  Some fat burners contain stimulants (synephrine, yohimbe, tyrosine, guarana, caffeine, bitter orange, etc.), but a fat burning pill is simply a combination of fantasy and pure marketing genius.

Appetite suppressing herbs have been sold for decades.  Hoodia is popular right now. Don’t fall into the trap of the amazing discoveries from the Amazon, or teas and juices that guarantee to shut down the appetite centers of the brain.  Pharmaceutical companies have jumped on the band wagon too.  They developed drugs that suppress your appetite, but if you want to lose fat, you need to increase your metabolism.  To do that you need to eat more of the right kinds of food.  Eating less is the worst thing you can do for your metabolism.    Limiting food intake leads to muscle wasting away, metabolic shutdown and alterations in thyroid activity.  Some herbal products contain diuretics such as uva ursi and dandelion root which contribute to losing weight via water loss. Some of these products can be dangerous and misleading.  Losing water and suppressing the appetite are short term ways to dropping pounds (not fat), but the long term ramifications are too great – an even slower metabolism.

It is a myth that you can spot reduce fat from a specific part of your body.  Doing abdominal crunches will not make the fat on your stomach go away, it simply goes against how we are designed.  Fat loss is the result of fat being sent into the bloodstream and it is proportionate, not discriminate, as to where the fat will come from.  To lose fat you need to work the major muscles groups with weight bearing exercise, eat supportively, and do moderate amounts of aerobic movement. 

We all know diets don’t work, that is why people keep coming up with new ones.  If the old one worked we wouldn’t need to come up with another one!Diets are a great strategy for slowing down metabolism and training the body to become an excellent fat storing machine.

The combination of supportive nutrition, moderate aerobic exercise, with a concern for muscle is called synergy.  It’s what “works” and always has worked. If your goal is fat loss, you need all three of these elements.  Without them you will be holding yourself back from obtaining your full fat loss potential with long term lasting results.