Fat burners – do they work?

Short answer: No. Blog post over.

“But why not?” I hear you cry.

OK, the explanation, why fat burners don’t work

The only way you will lose fat is by being in a calorie deficit.

This means eating fewer calories than your “maintenance” – a particular number of calories which you roughly expend every day. Some days are higher, some days are lower, but over the long term, eating less than your average maintenance calories will result in weight loss.

There is no other way. If you think there is another way, let me know about it and I’ll tell you why it’s wrong, or why it’s actually just eating fewer calories (or raising your maintenance calories) in disguise!

Fat burners will not directly burn fat.

They will not magically reduce the number of calories in the food you are eating.

They MAY make you feel more awake and make you a bit jittery (many of them contain caffeine) so they might result in a bit more NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis – basically calories you burn by fidgeting and moving around a bit more) but this will be a really tiny amount that won’t make ANY meaningful difference.

It’s far easier to just cut out that 350 calorie Starbucks drink (x5), replace the 3pm 300 calorie chocolate bar (x5) with a 100 calorie banana, and drink a few 80 calorie gin and DIET tonics instead of a few 250 calorie pints of beer (x3 on a Friday night). Oh look, across the week I’ve saved you 3,260 calories. If you were eating at maintenance before and neither gaining or losing weight, now you’ll be losing just shy of a pound of body fat per week.

You’re welcome.

That will get you results. The fat burners will do absolutely nothing.