A clean diet and regular exercise are proven keys to weight loss; lots of protein, lots of fiber, healthy fats, daily runs or walks, and hitting the gym regularly for a strength session.

It seems like you’re doing everything right, but for some reason, the scale just won’t budge. It’s beyond frustrating and can frankly be a bit defeating to know you’re putting in work and it’s not actually working.

But before you toss in the towel, we’ve got something you’ll want to hear.

It’s called a fat burner, and it may be exactly what your body needs to kick start the fat burning process and help you knock a few pounds off the scale.

Whether you’re new to the fat burner world or a seasoned pro, we’re going to breakdown how fat burners work and how using the best fat burner can help you lose weight.

What Is a Fat Burner?

A fat burner burns fat—it’s a pretty self-explanatory function. But the way a fat burner burns fat is completely unique to the ingredients it contains.

Typically, most fat burners help stimulate thermogenesis, regulate appetite and control cravings, and boost fat oxidation 1, which essentially increases metabolic rate to help you burn more calories, reduce energy intake, and use fat to supply energy.

In general, there are two types of fat burners you’ll find: ones that contain stimulants and ones that don’t.

We’re all familiar with the role of stimulants in things like pre-workout formulas; they’re designed to increase the activity of the central nervous system, pump you up, and keep you alert. Caffeine—one of the most common stimulants in fitness supplements—operates the same.

In a fat-burning formula, caffeine increases the activity of the sympathetic nervous system to stimulate the release of catecholamines, namely cortisol and epinephrine. In doing so, it mobilizes fatty acids from adipose and/or intramuscular stores for fuel 1, thus helping to cut fat.

However, when you have a fat-burning formula that is completely stim-free like Burn Lab Pro, it relies on the actions of potent thermogenic ingredients to do the same function. And we’ll explore exactly how it does this a little further down.

The Role Of A Fat Burner In Weight Loss

Fat burners work on two principles: thermogenesis and lipolysis. By stimulating both, they work to mobilize and burn fat to help you lose weight and body fat easily. Here’s a more detailed explanation of how.

Thermogenesis

Technically speaking, the term thermogenesis (thermo = heat; genesis = creation) describes the literal process of generating heat in response to environmental temperature or diet; this process serves as a protective mechanism against extreme cold exposure or to regulate energy balance after dietary changes 2.

While cold exposure may be effective for inducing thermogenesis, it is the diet aspect we’re concerned with here. In humans, the brain is largely responsible for controlling and regulating thermogenesis.

Sympathetic nervous system activation is the main driving force, but various hormones may also play a role in adaptive thermogenesis 3.

These external stimuli trigger brown adipose tissue (BAT) to produce heat through the sympathetic nervous system (SNS)- and β-adrenergic receptors (βARs) 4.

Because brown fat activity in humans gradually declines with age, along with the presence of specific diseases like obesity and diabetes, a thermogenic fat burner can naturally upregulate this process.

And because brown fat makes a substantial contribution to total energy expenditure (300 kcal more a day if fully stimulated), increasing brown fat-dependent adaptive thermogenesis may reduce fat mass and improve overall metabolic health 4.

Lipolysis

The second principle by which fat burners work is through lipolysis (fat breakdown). Without mobilizing fat stores, it’s going to be nearly impossible to lose fat—and that’s precisely what fat burners do.

Lipolysis can be triggered through fasting and exercise, but it can also be triggered with various hormones, including epinephrine, norepinephrine, growth hormone, testosterone, and cortisol 5; the unique blend of ingredients in Burn Lab Pro helps to stimulate secretion of these hormones by activating sympathetic nervous system activity.

Here’s a rough idea of how lipolysis works.

An increase in sympathetic nervous system activity causes a subsequent increase in circulating catecholamines, which trigger the breakdown and mobilization of fat in adipose tissue. Once released into the bloodstream, these fatty acids circulate throughout the body and can be put towards energy production.

If you’re taking a fat burner in a fasted state, there’s limited glucose coming in, which means your body doesn’t have enough substrate to meet energy demands. As such, it uses what’s available: fat. More fat burned equals more fat lost.

Key Fat Burning Ingredients

Fat burners aren’t just a magic pill that you take and somehow they melt weight off your body. They’re a strategic combination of unique ingredients designed to target fat cells and increase energy expenditure.

Burn Lab Pro is a stim-free fat burner that uses an innovative blend of five powerful ingredients to help you lose weight, burn fat, and build muscle—all at the same time.

HMB (ß-hydroxy-ß-methylbutyrate)

As a by-product of leucine breakdown, the role of HMB in a fat burner is mainly to prevent muscle catabolism during weight loss and training, especially when training in a fasted state or a caloric deficit.

It plays important roles in protein metabolism, insulin activity, and skeletal muscle hypertrophy 6 by:

  • Inhibiting muscle protein breakdown
  • Increasing muscle protein synthesis via the mTOR pathway
  • Stimulating growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor-1 (GH/IGF-1)
  • Enhancing muscle stem cell proliferation and differentiation

HMB works alongside other potent thermogenic and lipolytic ingredients to preserve and build muscle mass while you burn fat and lose weight.

Coleus Forskohlii Root

Forskolin is a compound isolated from the roots of the Coleus Forskohlii plant that is rich in alkaloids; it exerts its thermogenic effects by acting directly on adenylate cyclase, the enzyme responsible for activating cyclic adenosine monophosphate, also known as cyclic AMP (cAMP).

The function of cAMP is to trigger the breakdown of stored fatty acids from adipose tissue 7, along with regulating the body’s thermogenic response to food, basal metabolic rate (BMR), and utilization of body fat; theoretically, this leads to increased fat breakdown and loss, and greater lean body mass 8.

Accumulation of cAMP (the role of forskolin) stimulates lipolysis, which should mean increased rates of fat breakdown.

Cayenne Pepper Extract

Cayenne pepper, specifically the active compound capsaicin, is a potent stim-free thermogenic agent that increases core body temperature, revs metabolism, and burns calories and fat, ideally leading to substantial weight and fat loss.

Capsaicin does this by acting as an agonist of the transient receptor potential vanilloid subfamily member 1 (TRPV1) 9 to increase activation of the sympathetic nervous system and subsequently increase the release of two important catecholamines: epinephrine (EPI) and norepinephrine (NE).

Both epinephrine and norepinephrine interact with hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), which may enhance fat breakdown and increase circulating free fatty acids (FFA) and glycerol, thereby providing a substrate for fuel 10.

Using fat as fuel means more fat burned from the body and more weight loss!

The Extras: GTF-Chromium + Black Pepper Extract

Both chromium and black pepper play more of an indirect role in fat loss, but nevertheless just as important.

GTF-chromium helps improve the function of insulin by enhancing glucose uptake from the bloodstream, as well as increasing the number of insulin receptors on cell membranes 11.

As insulin is a fat-storage hormone in excess, better insulin response and sensitivity means a reduced risk of storing energy.

Black pepper, on the other hand, serves a bit of a double role: It enhances absorption of all nutrients in the fat burner to increase efficacy, but also itself is a potent thermogenic agent 12.

Some research eludes the role of black pepper in increasing metabolic processes that generate energy in the body and block the accumulation of new fat cells.

How To Use A Fat Burner

In general, there are two times you’ll want to pop a fat burner: before breakfast (just after you wake) and/or before your training session.

Before breakfast: If you’re taking a rest day, the best time to take a fat burner is before breakfast. Your metabolism is at its lowest in the morning—studies suggest around 15% lower coinciding with a normal circadian pattern 13—so taking a fat burner first thing helps to rev metabolism and get it burning calories faster to enhance daily energy expenditure.

Before training: The other option is taking it before training. Because Burn Lab Pro is a unique blend of ingredients designed to support weight loss AND improve athletic performance, it only makes sense to take it before training to support muscle growth, prevent muscle breakdown, and fire up your body to burn more calories during your workout.

Final Thoughts

We’d all love to be able to eat pizza, chips, and ice cream (and they’re totally okay in moderation), but the fact of the matter is that taking a fat burner isn’t a substitute for a lousy diet. It works in combination with a healthy diet to help rev your metabolism and burn fat.

You know the old saying that weight loss is 80% diet and only 20% exercise? It’s pretty accurate, so if you want to maximize your fat burner’s effects, make clean eating a priority, too.

References

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  2. BB Lowell, BM Spiegelman. Towards a molecular understanding of adaptive thermogenesis. Nature. 2000;404(6778):652-660.
  3. MJ Müller, A Bosy-Westphal. Adaptive thermogenesis with weight loss in humans. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2013;21(2):218-228.
  4. E Paulo, D Wu, Y Wang, et al. Sympathetic inputs regulate adaptive thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue through cAMP-Salt inducible kinase axis. Sci Rep. 2018;8(1):11001.
  5. MJ Birnbaum. Lipolysis: more than just a lipase. J Cell Biol. 2003;161(6):1011-1012.
  6. P Kaczka, MM Michalczyk, R Jastrząb, M Gawelczyk, K Kubicka. Mechanism of Action and the Effect of Beta-Hydroxy-Beta-Methylbutyrate (HMB) Supplementation on Different Types of Physical Performance - A Systematic Review. J Hum Kinet. 2019;68:211-222.
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  8. S Henderson, B Magu, C Rasmussen, et al. Effects of coleus forskohlii supplementation on body composition and hematological profiles in mildly overweight women. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2005;2(2):54-62.
  9. RJ Bloomer, RE Canale, S Shastri, S Suvarnapathki. Effect of oral intake of capsaicinoid beadlets on catecholamine secretion and blood markers of lipolysis in healthy adults: a randomized, placebo controlled, double-blind, cross-over study. Lipids Health Dis. 2010;9:72.
  10. JW Jocken, EE Blaak. Catecholamine-induced lipolysis in adipose tissue and skeletal muscle in obesity. Physiol Behav. 2008;94(2):219-230.
  11. RA Anderson. Chromium in the prevention and control of diabetes. Diabetes Metab. 2000;26(1):22-27.
  12. MS Butt, I Pasha, MT Sultan, MA Randhawa, F Saeed, W Ahmed. Black pepper and health claims: a comprehensive treatise. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2013;53(9):875-886.
  13. S Sharma, M Kavuru. Sleep and metabolism: an overview. Int J Endocrinol. 2010;2010:270832.