The Burning Truth About Fat Pills

Swallow the buzzword-strewn advertising and you’ll conclude that fat burners are the ‘rapid-fire’ way to ‘annihilate’ body fat and generally get the body you want without quite so much effort. The marketing bumph works, with yearly sales exceeding £900m. But with broad ingredients list on each bottle, what is in the pills that you’re popping? MH gets into the common additives promising to reduce your love handles.

Suppressing fire

A highly popular chemical in fat burner, glucomannan has an instant effect on your appetite. A natural thickening agent, it absorb liquid and expands in the stomach to super-size meals from the inside out, helping your feel fuller for longer. The effect sounds excessive, but actually it’s no different to thickening soups and while the benefits have been proven for those suffering obesity, the side effects are just as real; you’ll need to stay close to the facilities, in other words.

Green Tea Party

Green-tea extract is one of the more natural options when it comes to giving your metabolism a boost. Containing plant-derived polyphenols it acts to increase your livers' ability to process out fat. For a short-term kick they deliver, and can help you jump-starting weight loss. But be wary once you get back in the gym - according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, green tea extra also increases fat oxidation limiting your ability to use stored fat to power your workouts.

Binding agreement

'Fat-binding' pills stick to fat molecules, make them too big for pancreatic enzymes to break down, sending them straight through your system. Unfortunately, in doing so they can scoop up essential muscle-maintaining vitamins, too.  "Consumption can result in malabsorption of useful nutrients and fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K," says Dr Igho Onakpoya, Researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. "In addition, high levels of caffeine can have laxative effects, leading to diarrhoea and imbalance in body constituents such as sodium, chloride and potassium - necessary for normal body function."

Heavy Metal Hit

The diverse mix of ingredients in fat-burners makes you urinate more frequently, too, resulting in a loss of calcium. Some do try and compensate with extra calcium compounds but these manufactured replacements can overcrowd your intestines, interfering with your natural zinc and iron absorption, effecting oxygen transportation and proper carb breakdown. This can mean your workouts can start to feel heavy, so if you’re training hard you’re better off going clean.

Source:menshealth.co.uk/lose-weight/the-burning-truth-about-fat-pills