So, I've been stuck around the same level of fat for probably 2-3 years now. My body composition has changed, as i started lifting very heavily this year. I put on a ton of muscle, but the fat is still there. I eat healthy, lift weights four days a week and do cardio probably 3 in the winter and 5 in the summer. Have you guys had any luck with any weight loss/fat burning supplements? I just want something to finally get me over that little hump, something to help me burn more fat and still be able to build muscle like I am. Thanks.
Recommended fat burning supplement
- Thread starter TheBiggmann
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SociallyChallenged
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- Mar 22, 2002
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You need to track your diet and make sure you stay under your caloric maintenance and the fat will continue to come off. All the supplement will do is make you burn more calories. If you make sure you decrease your caloric intake, you will essentially be doing the same thing. A supplement is not necessary. Read the fat loss sticky. It applies here.
It is all usually in your diet. I have used Biotests HotRox Extream and feel I had pretty good results with it.
It's easy to say "watch your diet", but the OP requested supplement suggestions. OP should also realize there are a couple of different ways that "fat burning" supplements work. I've found there are 2 major types. 1 - Nutrient partitioner type products that prevent you from really gaining more fat and prevent what you eat from turning into fat. and 2 - Products that drive up your metabolism and/or body heat and try to literally "burn" the fat.
Burners:
Palo Alto Labs makes a decent one called "Leviathan reloaded". It does have Yohimbine in it, which if you aren't used to it can be a little funky. I liked this one as it holds muscle well while burning fat
USP Labs makes Recreate
Lean FX
Lean Extreme
Anabolic Extreme makes something called Slim Xtreme that has gotten great reviews
Nutrient partitioner:
Neovar
Plsin
Banaba Extract
Burners:
Palo Alto Labs makes a decent one called "Leviathan reloaded". It does have Yohimbine in it, which if you aren't used to it can be a little funky. I liked this one as it holds muscle well while burning fat
USP Labs makes Recreate
Lean FX
Lean Extreme
Anabolic Extreme makes something called Slim Xtreme that has gotten great reviews
Nutrient partitioner:
Neovar
Plsin
Banaba Extract
Fat burning supplements can be beneficial in accelerating fat loss and/or blunting hunger, but it's very obvious that's not what the OP needs.
The Sauce
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- Oct 31, 1999
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You already got the best answer. Supplements are not the way to go. They are intended for bodybuilders trying to lose the last 5 pounds to shred before a competition. They are dangerous for a long-term weight loss strategy. You want to lose weight? Eat 6 meals a day, about 2.5 hours apart. Mostly protein - egg whites, poultry, fish, whey, and low glycemic carbs such as oatmeal and brown rice. Keep the fat to about 20-30%. Aim for about your basal metabolic caloric requirement and you will keep on the muscle and lose the fat. In 8 weeks I have lost 22# of fat and gained 8#muscle on a supervised program. There are programs out there. It's hard but there are no shortcuts.
polarmystery
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- Aug 21, 2005
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This did happen to me. Let me explain and I am actually kind of upset by it.
For a solid two months now I've been on a 40-40-20 / 40-30-30 nutrition split with a daily caloric intake of around 19-2300 calories. I have lost a whopping 1 lb of weight but I have increased almost every lift about 40 lbs. I started at 190 now I'm down to 189. I had a few months break due to a shoulder injury and I recently got a new job so I had to find a new gym. I use fitday to track my nutrition intake virgorously and I have an average daily caloric deficit of around 600 calories (according to fitday resting calories burned, weight training, and 45min to hour long cardio sessions). For some odd reason I have not lost any weight. I think what is happening is that I used to be able to lift a lot before my shoulder injury and now I think my muscles are just getting back to the level they used to be. I'm not sure what's going on, but my bodyfat is going down (using calliper's, pants sizes going down slowly) but my weight is not changing for crap. So it can happen but rarely from everything I've read.
Newbies (especially fat ones) and people coming back from a lay off can initially, but it usually does't last long and I see way too many people not reach their goals because they are actually trying to reach both goals at once. If it happens initially that's great, but people have to realize it's not going to happen all the time and they would be better off concentrating on one goal.
The Sauce
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I have had no problem at all acheiving both goals simultaneously. I started at 218# about 7 weeks ago. I am now ~#200. Calipers show me up about 8# lean body mass. The breakdown is 45/35/20. Workouts are predominantly resistance with about 3 HIIT sessions per week, mostly sprints. It's possible.
I do not buy the "nutrient partitioning" nonsense. Meal timing and playing with insulin responses can help to some degree with taking advantage of a technically 'starved' state to flood your body with nutrients, but your body is going to allocate resources to where they are needed. Taking a supplement is unlikely to change that. The biochemical pathways are numerous, and I remain a skeptic of this sort of claim (essentially since the supplement industry is unregulated).
The second type of "fat burner" mentioned is essentially legal amphetamine. Many of these substances elevate your metabolism by speeding up your heart rate, and they are packed chock-full of stimulants (caffeine + herbs). Your choice if you want your blood coursing through your veins on speed, but it occurs to me that there are better options out there. Especially because many of these herbs are unevaluated with regard to safety - especially at the mega-doses delivered.
My two cents.
The Sauce
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Yes. Actually as of today, the 7-week mark, I just hit 20# fat loss. Body fat percentage down from 23% to 15%. Lean body mass up to just over 8#. Waist down from 38" to 34". Biceps up about 0.4". The program is supervised by a professional trainer/body-builder and nutritionist. It's very detailed. Before starting, my weight, impedence, tape-measurements and claiper readings were recorded to asses lean body mass (i.e. fat free mass), fat percentage and water weight. Updated weekly specifically regarding those three measures using the Durnin and Womersley 4-point technique and impedance readings.
Sure accuracy can not possibly be perfect for this sort of thing, but there are established and accepted formulas and techniques for getting the best estimates. My advisor uses a combination of caliper measurements and impedance weekly and once a month a full set of measurements. 2-month mark coming up next week.
You not only CAN achieve both goals, but you SHOULD aim to achieve both goals. The best way to lose fat is to increase lean body mass. Seems obvious but the more muscle you have the higher your metabolism is and the faster you burn fat.
To be fair, I should say that I do use some supplements which may or may not aid fat loss. The science behind it is not great but I do it anyway. I would not expect that using this alone would result in weight loss, though. Pretty harmless stuff:
Udo's Blend 3-6-9 oil (proprietary blend similar to CLA)
Green Tea extract
Chromium Piccolinate
Ahh, nvm... read it wrong.
What was your training before? Did you do any training? How successful were you?
Do you realize how little that 8 pounds of muscle really burns? Definitely not enough to have any significant impact on fat loss. The best way to lose fat is being in a calorie deficit, thus that's where the concentration should be if losing fat were the goal.
What was your training before? Did you do any training? How successful were you?
Do you realize how little that 8 pounds of muscle really burns? Definitely not enough to have any significant impact on fat loss. The best way to lose fat is being in a calorie deficit, thus that's where the concentration should be if losing fat were the goal.
SociallyChallenged
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- Mar 22, 2002
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Then you somehow have magical voodoo that goes against the laws of conservation of energy. You are in a caloric deficit, I guarantee it. If you honestly think you are going to lose weight while eating the exact number of calories your body needs, you don't understand human physiology or physics at even the most basic levels. You lost 20ish pounds. That's 3500x20 calories. Divide that by the days you've been at this and you'll find the approximate caloric deficit. That's how it works, friend. You can't really argue it because it is essentially biological law.
Oh, I'm not saying today's fat burning supplements are "healthy". I was just answering the OP's question. Ephedra is one of THE best fat burning supps, but you wouldn't catch me taking it...not to mention it is now illegal. They work b/c they increase the amount of calories you burn at a resting state, and often help curb your appetite. I here interesting things about Yohimbine right now too.
For anybody interested in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue's effect on metabolism...
That's 6 calories extra per pound of muscle. If you were to replace 2 pounds of fat with 2 pounds of muscle you wold increase your resting metabolic rate by about 8 calories a day. Even gaining 20 pounds of muscle would only increase your resting metabolic rate by about 160. Therefore, if you happened to rely primarily on gaining muscle to burn fat and happened to gain 20 pounds of it, it would still take you almost a month to lose 1 pound of fat.
Here's the Full Text
That's 6 calories extra per pound of muscle. If you were to replace 2 pounds of fat with 2 pounds of muscle you wold increase your resting metabolic rate by about 8 calories a day. Even gaining 20 pounds of muscle would only increase your resting metabolic rate by about 160. Therefore, if you happened to rely primarily on gaining muscle to burn fat and happened to gain 20 pounds of it, it would still take you almost a month to lose 1 pound of fat.
Here's the Full Text
Ephedrine HCL has much less side effects than Ephedra with the same effects, and can easily be bought at any pharmacy. Yohimbine works great for stubborn fat loss (males gut and low back fat, females thighs usually) because it acts as an alpha antagonist. However, since ephedrine is a beta agonist, they can have very similar effects (spiking heart rate, etc.) and should not be taken together.
However, most people won't really benefit from Yohimbine until they reach low bodyfat levels. Men below 10% and women in the mid teens. Not everybody has stubborn fat issues either. Plenty of men can get ripped just fine with just diet and exercise, while some women who carry most of their fat in their thighs may run into problems. There's also other ways to get rid of stubborn fat without resorting to Yohimbine and many people do not respond very well to it, but it is an option. I noticed no adverse side effects when I took it, but many people do. Ephedrine on the other hand, can be beneficial and safe to a lot of people if used responsibly and diet and training are in order. It does a great job at curbing hunger, limiting LBM loss, and increasing daily energy expenditure. The appetite blunting and energy effects do stop after taking it for a while, but one study actually showed the effects on metabolism increase with use, unlike most drugs.
Heh, was just going to post the same thing but from a different source. It is worth noting, however, that even 160 extra calories burned per day is nothing to scoff at, as that's 32% of the caloric deficit (500) I'd recommend to the average dieter. More importantly, the exercise you'd have put in to build that kind of muscle mass burns calories, possibly increases your metabolism for short periods immediately after exercise, and has tons of other wonderful health benefits (increased strength, power, bone density, and so on). In other words, even if the muscle itself doesn't burn an enormous number of calories, there are still countless benefits to adding it.
Having said that, The Sauce is most likely a beginner, so losing 20lbs while adding a small amount of muscle mass is not impossible in the early stages. In fact, most newbies will see their waist lines shrink and their muscles grow for the first several weeks. The great tragedy is that this wonderful effect doesn't last. I have no doubt that after another month or two, either his weight loss or his muscle growth will stall, or both, and like everyone else, he'll need to work towards one goal at a time to make efficient gains.
Don't get me wrong, there are definitely benefits to adding muscle mass and there is more to the equation. However, the effect muscle has on resting metabolic rate just is not near what most people make it to be. Many even claim between 50-100 calories from every pound of muscle.
The Sauce
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What you two are not taking into consideration is that the type of calories and timing of meals plays a critical role in metabolism and hormone regulation. Low glycemic, slow digesting carbs and high protein calorie meals will have greater effects on stimulating the metabolism and androgenic hormones, and suppressing cortisol and insulin. So ultimately you are correct, I guess there is a calorie deficit but not compared to my usual baseline metabolic rate. You can lose weight without becoming catabolic with regard to muscle mass by keeping your metabolism up with frequent, smaller meals and healthy foods. I have no reason to lie about this. I would be perfectly willing to post my diet for anyone to try out and confirm independently.
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