Here’s What You Need to Know About Fat Burners
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You have more choices than ever if you’re looking to lose weight, making it important to explore all of your options. During your research, you may come across so-called fat burning supplements, which naturally raises the question: Do fat burners work?
After all, these pills swear they can help melt away pounds and all you have to do is take them. If you’re wary of going this route, that’s more than fair. Fat burning supplements make a lot of promises and there usually isn’t much—if any—research to back them up.
Meet the Experts: Keri Gans, R.D.N., author of The Small Change Diet; Beth Warren, R.D.N., founder of Beth Warren Nutrition and author of Living a Real Life With Real Food; Mir Ali, M.D., bariatric surgeon and medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA.
But what are fat burners and can they actually help you to lose weight? Experts explain.
What are fat burners?
Fat burners are pills that are sold as supplements that promise to help you lose weight—specifically, fat. The supplements usually make big claims about how much weight they’ll help you lose and typically say that they’ll help you drop pounds by blocking your body’s absorption of fat, speeding up your metabolism, and decreasing your hunger cues, among other things.
You’ll usually see supplements with ingredients like caffeine, green tea extract, carnitine, yohimbe, and soluble fiber, says Beth Warren, R.D.N., founder of Beth Warren Nutrition and author of Living a Real Life With Real Food.
How are fat burners different from weight loss medications?
Weight loss medications are a huge business right now, with many people focused on injectable drugs that contain semaglutide (Wegovy, Ozempic) and tirzepatide (Zepbound, Mounjaro). Both of these medications are prescriptions and help patients lose weight through a few different mechanisms, explains Mir Ali, M.D., bariatric surgeon and medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA.
“They suppress appetite and slow gastric emptying,” he says. As a result, you feel fuller, longer after you eat and may not even be all that hungry in the first place. These medications are also taken once a week through an injection. But these are medications that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and have research to back their impact on weight loss, he says—fat burners do not.
There’s also a difference in the way these two work. “Weight loss medications work by decreasing appetite while fat-burning supplements claim to speed up one’s metabolism,” says Keri Gans, R.D.N., author of The Small Change Diet.
Are fat burners safe?
A big concern with fat burners is that they’re considered supplements. As a result, they’re part of a largely unregulated industry and companies don’t need to get approval from the FDA to hit shelves. “Therefore, you cannot be sure what ingredients are in the bottle,” Gans says.
Warren also recommends that you “take caution” before using a fat burner. “Adverse side effects can include an increase in heart rate and elevated blood pressure,” she points out. If you have an underlying health condition, that can be especially dangerous for you.
Risks and side effects of fat burners
The biggest risk of fat burners is that you just don’t know what’s inside the bottle, Gans says. Companies can say that their product includes certain ingredients but actually have different ingredients inside the bottle.
While every fat burner is different, most rely on stimulants to try to rev up your metabolism. As a result, Gans says you may end up dealing with these side effects:
Jitters
Anxiety
Insomnia
Headaches
Nausea
Stomach cramps
Diarrhea
On the extreme end of things, Warren says you could end up with increased blood pressure, heart problems, and even kidney failure, depending on what you take and for how long.
Fat burner alternatives
If you’re just starting out with weight loss, Gans recommends trying out a plant-forward diet and focusing on portion control. “Be physically active, get adequate sleep, and try to decrease daily stress,” she says.
Of course, weight loss is complicated and, while adjusting your diet and exercise plan may work for some, it won’t be enough for others. If you’ve tried that and you’re not seeing the results you’d like, consider checking in with a registered dietitian for specific dietary advice.
If you feel like you still need a higher level of intervention, talk to a general care physician or obesity medicine specialist about your options. They should be able to offer you personalized guidance and take things from there.
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