Do commercially available fat-burners work?

Losing weight does not happen overnight, and the primary reason most people fail to meet their weight loss goals is this – it takes time and perseverance! However, in a day and age where things happen at a click of a button, and people’s patience levels are diminishing – corporations are seeing a market for fat burners which promise to speed up your metabolism, suppress your appetite and make you lose weight fast.

Flight Lieutenant and fitness trainer Akshay Chopra writes in his book Why My Mom Never Went On A Diet, ‘If you pick any bottle of fat burner in the market, and look at the content, most of you won’t have heard of the fancy names given at the back. Some of the familiar names are caffeine, vitB6 etc. Most of these fat burners contain a large amount of caffeine. Funny, but are you paying thousands of rupees to get a caffeine shot? Over the past few years, when the companies were getting out of ideas, they started a new marketing gimmick. They wrote something called as ‘propriety blend’ in the contents which simply means, special contents cannot be revealed to the other people, so that no other company can copy them. An individual when he reads the term propriety blend, he believes it to be that magic blend which will cure him off all his health problems. But this is just a marketing strategy.’

‘Caffeine and ephedrine are stimulants, they increase body heat, so burn more calories and act as an appetite suppressant and a diuretic. Does this mean you are burning fat? Absolutely not. But do you lose weight? Yes, but all is water weight, i.e. you are just getting dehydrated.’, adds Chopra. Check out a sample weight loss diet plan by our expert dietician.

Beware – Your trainer might be conning you!

If you are advised to use these supplements by the personal trainer at your gym, then beware! It might just be a trick to fleece some of your hard-earned money.

Says Chopra, ‘To help the people in the gyms there are general trainers or floor trainers. These trainers are paid paltry salaries, even when working for long hours. Now to earn extra bucks, one of the easiest ways is to sell supplements to the clients, which the clients don’t need and have absolutely no knowledge about.’

The right way to lose weight

Losing weight may be difficult, but it is not complicated. ‘If you want to increase your metabolism and burn fat, there was, is and will be only one formula – Exercise + clean diet + good supplementation + sleep + no stress = A fit and healthy you’, says Chopra.

You can buy Akshay Chopra’s book ‘Why My Mom Never Went On A Diet’ on Flipkart and Amazon. 

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