Do you need fat burners to optimize fat loss?
The short answer is no. While some bodybuilders or athletes use ephedrine, caffeine, and green tea to try losing fat faster, they don’t work for everyone and may even have damaging side effects. The use of all these products can play a role in:
Reducing your body’s fat stores Increase hormones production Make you feel more energized Increase awareness
The bad news is, ephedrine can cause (from most to least likely) hypertension, cardiac palpitations, stroke, and seizures. These can leave you permanently disabled or dead*. The only “fat burner” we recommend is green tea. It contains caffeine but not as much of the traditional coffee cup and has a mild and extended stimulating effect. We suggest you avoid ephedrine and caffeine caps.
If you’re trying to lose fat, we recommend drinking 2 cups of green tea per day. Besides potentially helping with fat lost, you’ll benefit from its strong antioxidant power. Bottom line, it’s healthy and risk-free.
ACTION STEP
Add green tea to your day. If you don’t like it hot, try this iced tea recipe:
Fill a container with 4 cups of tap, filtered or bottled water. Add 6 bags (6 teaspoons) of tea. Cover. Refrigerate for 8 hours. Remove bags or strain. Serve over ice with lemon, lime or mint for taste.
Adding sugar (extra calories) will negate the tea’s fat-burning effect so don’t be tempted. If you can’t live without giving it a sweeter taste, Stevia (the natural sugar substitute) is probably the best choice.
*Haller CA, Benowitz NL. Adverse cardiovascular and central nervous system events associated with dietary supplements containing ephedra alkaloids. N Engl J Med. 2000;343:18331838.
Is water essential?
Your body is mostly water. In fact, 55% to 60% of an adult’s body is composed of water.
Blood (80-85% water) Muscle (70-75% water) Bone (20-25% water) Fat cells (8-10% water)
Water is also essential to health: if you stopped consuming water in any form today, you’d die in about 5 days. Greater than 15% dehydration is considered fatal. There is also some scientific evidence that consuming lots of water is beneficial to health*, although all scientists do not agree. Our aim here is not to review the scientific literature, so we’ll move straight to the conclusions: consuming plenty of water seems to be salutary, whereas drinking “too much” isn’t a concern.
ACTION STEP
With this “risks vs. benefits” analysis in mind, we recommend you drink 1.5 liters of water (6 cups) of water each day. In addition, if you do cardiovascular exercise, drink 500 mL (2 cups) 30 minutes before your workout and another 1 liter (4 cups) right after.
*German scientist F. Manz reviewed the evidence in “Hydration and disease”, published in 2007 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, and reports that mild dehydration may be one of the factors causing oligohydramnios, prolonged labor, cystic fibrosis, hypertonic dehydration, and renal toxicity of xenobiotica. It also “plays a critical role” in the development of pulmonary disorders like exercise asthma and cystic fibrosis. As well, staying well hydrated would be beneficial to urolithiasis, urinary tract infection, constipation, hypertension, venous thromboembolism, fatal coronary heart disease, stroke, dental disease, hyperosmolar hyperglycemic diabetic ketoacidosis, gallstone disease, mitral valve prolapse, and glaucoma.
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