by Chris Shugart
Ephedra is long gone. Ozempic is on the rise. But not enough people know about the natural wave of fat burners. They're healthier and a lot less risky.
Decades ago, people wanting to lose fat could take an ECA stack: a combination of ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin. Bodybuilders even whispered about it, calling it their secret weapon.
Eventually products containing ephedrine trickled down to the general population. Fat burners containing it made billions. But in 2006, the FDA spoiled the fun. All ephedrine alkaloids were banned, including ephedra and ma-huang, the "natural" versions. Too many adverse events, they said.
Fat burners, as a supplement category, fizzled out... only to be replaced by GLP-1 drugs, the science on which is still coming to light. We're hearing promising things about low dosage use from numerous health professionals... and grave warnings from just as many on the other side.
Bottom line is, people still want to lose fat as fast as possible, but most aren't willing to risk pancreatic cancer, blindness, gastroparesis, or dependence on a lifetime prescription.
So, do effective supplemental fat burners still exist? Yes, but they work through very different (and much healthier) mechanisms of action.
What's a "fat burner" anyway?
"Fat burner" is an unspecified term, mainly because we don't really "burn" fat, we breathe it out and excrete it. Fat burners containing ephedrine alkaloids worked by stimulating the sympathetic nervous system (releasing norepinephrine to boost fat metabolism), increasing lipolysis (the breakdown of stored triglycerides), and increasing thermogenesis (the process by which the body generates heat).
The old-school fat burners also worked by blunting appetite. And of course, dieters jacked up on ephedra were less likely to skip their cardio sessions.
Looking back at all the studies, ephedra/caffeine supplements modestly boosted fat loss. Dieters using them typically lost two more pounds per month than dieters using placebos, at least in the short term. As we discovered, they didn't work for long, but they were a nice boost… if you could tolerate the heart palpitations and the inevitable crash.
Nature's "fat burners"
Some supplement makers still try to produce fat burners, but most are just glorified caffeine pills. They get the energy part right, but their stuff doesn't do much for fat loss, aside from caffeine's mild thermogenic effects.
The new "fat burners" work differently; they're more like fat-loss facilitating agents. Rather than artificially (and somewhat ham-handedly) forcing your body to release fat, they correct the underlying issues that cause easy fat gain and hamper fat loss. At the same time, they nudge the body to create a trend: natural fat loss is easier while storing fat is more difficult. It's healthy and sustainable.
Here are three non-stimulant ingredients backed by science:
1. Cyanidin 3-glucoside (C3G)
C3G shrinks fat cells and limits fat storage while increasing and enhancing calorie-burning, metabolically active brown adipose tissue. It increases insulin sensitivity by enhancing glucose uptake by myotubes, causing muscle fibers to preferentially burn calories instead of being stored as fat. (It's a nutrient partitioning agent.) C3G raises adiponectin levels, which regulates glucose and increases fatty acid breakdown.
Users notice they can eat more carbs and get leaner. But beyond increased energy expenditure and other body composition effects, C3G reduces systemic inflammation and protects against oxidative stress-induced DNA damage. It's anticarcinogenic and even improves cognition. It's really healthy stuff and could be marketed as a longevity supplement.
C3G works under one condition: you have to get enough of the good stuff into your body. Most C3G products are underdosed and don't use a delivery system to enhance bioavailability. You need about 300 mg derived from black rice. Indigo-3G (Buy at Amazon) checks all the boxes.
2. Beta glucan
Regular fiber itself has some fat-loss benefits. But beta glucan is a very special kind of soluble fiber, and algal beta glucan is the most effective form. When tested against other types of fiber in studies, beta glucan...
- Caused subjects to lose fat (or to stop gaining fat when they were overfed on purpose).
- Improved overall metabolic health.
- Improved insulin sensitivity and stabilized blood glucose levels.
- Increased production of short-chain fatty acids, such as butyrate, known for their beneficial effects on gut health and metabolism.
Most of these effects come from beta glucan's ability to increase and diversify beneficial gut bacteria/flora. Your gut microbiome basically controls your metabolism, among other things.
Most people take algal beta glucan for its immunity-boosting benefits, but it's also an effective non-stimulant "fat burner." Just be sure to take the type derived from Euglena gracilis algae, such as Biotest's Beta Glucan Immune-Boosting Fiber (Buy at Amazon). It's much more bioavailable than beta glucan derived from oats or yeast.
3. Forskolin carbonate
If you use the right form, forskolin improves body composition in two ways: it "burns" fat by raising thyroid hormone and helps you build muscle by boosting testosterone. Remarkably, in studies, it works even on people who aren't working out.
Forskolin stimulates an enzyme called adenylate cyclase, which increases cellular concentrations of cyclic AMP, or cAMP, which interacts with different types of cells. When you raise cAMP, you increase thyroid hormone secretion and speed up lipolysis (fat burning).
Not only does this increased thyroid production turn up fat loss, but increased levels of cAMP activate protein kinase, which activates hormone-sensitive lipases involved in the breakdown of triglycerides – the building blocks of fatty tissue.
Forskolin 1,9-carbonate (the carbonate ester of forskolin) works best, and Carbolin 19 High-Performance Forskolin (Buy at Amazon) uses a delivery system for enhanced absorption and action duration. Take 200 to 400 mg per day.
