Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Which "Fat Burners" Work and Which Don't

Episode Date: October 16, 2015

In this episode I talk about some of the common ingredients found in "fat burner" supplements and which actually help you lose fat faster and which don't. ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: Learn more about Phoenix: https://legionathletics.com/products/supplements/phoenix/ The Definitive Guide to Effective Meal Planning: http://www.muscleforlife.com/healthy-meal-planning-tips/ 4 Caffeine Benefits & BS “Facts” That Justify Your Addiction: http://www.muscleforlife.com/caffeine-benefits/ Why and How I Use Fasted Cardio to Lose Fat as Quickly as Possible: http://www.muscleforlife.com/fasted-cardio/ Garcinia Cambogia Meta Analysis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21197150 Green Coffee Extract Meta Analysis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20871849 Naringenin, Synephrine and Hesperidin: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21537493 Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because

on our website, we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we also cite all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more

about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast, and let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. I am Mike, and today I want to talk about supplements. I've spoken a lot about supplements here and there, and I've talked a lot of shit about supplements. But I want to do a little mini-series of episodes where I'm going to take a specific supplement,

and I want to start with fat burners because, uh, you know, they, they seem to be the most popular. Well, I guess weight, like protein powders are the most popular, but, uh, fat burner, fat loss products are right behind in terms of overall just, um, popularity and, and, and, you know, what people are buying. And, uh, but I, I think that, you know, protein powder, a lot of people, they aren't expecting that much, you know, you're hitting your protein needs. You know, maybe some people think that certain protein powder is going to help them build muscle faster, lose fat faster, but for the most part, you're buying protein powder because you just want to get some protein. Whereas fat burners you're buying for a very specific reason because

you want to lose fat faster. Um, and, uh, so yeah, that's what I want to talk about in this episode. And then in the next episode, probably talk about pre-workouts and anyways, I want to do a little mini series where I just kind of dive into specific types of supplements and, uh, you know, talk about what works, what doesn't, um, and you know, what's, uh, what my recommendations and what I personally, you know, what supplements I use and why. Um, and obviously this relates to the supplements that I sell as well, uh, which might seem a bit and what I personally, you know, what supplements I use and why. And obviously this relates to the supplements that I sell as well, which might seem a bit ironical because I've talked so much shit about supplements and the supplement industry, and I still do, and I still stand by everything that I've said and continue to say.

You know, in terms of my products, everybody says their products are better. But in my case, you know, really what I'm doing is I'm making the products that I myself have always wanted. And what the long story short is, it just boils down to spending a lot more money on producing the products than the other companies. That really is what it is. I've talked about this before. I've written about this. But one of the biggest problems of the supplement industry is simply the retail model makes it impossible to produce good products. Standard retail markup, and this isn't just supplements, but this is, well, I would say

it ranges when you take your production cost. If you can retail something for 10 times the production cost, you're in a good place. You can make that work. All the margins are there for, uh, you know, because you have like, you have the manufacturing of it and then it's going to go to the, to the distributor. He's going to be selling it wholesale to the retailers. He's going to be selling it to the, to the consumers and everybody wants their cut. Standard margins are going to be anywhere from 50 to 100%. Maybe 100 would be a bit high. I'd say maybe from 25 to 75% where a 50% margin is 100% markup. So anyway, that's really kind of the long story short. There are the formulations of my products, which I stand by

those formulations. We're very transparent. Cite a lot of research of why we choose the ingredients that we choose. And, you know, so there's that aspect of it. Then there's also just the fact that we spend so much more on producing these products. I don't care about retail. If none of my products ever see a shelf in GNC or Vitamin Shoppe, I'm fine with that because I am more interested in building an internet type of business anyway. And by selling direct to consumer, I'm able to spend a lot more

on my products, which makes it very hard to compete for other companies to make for other, very hard for other companies to try to copy. Because sure, you can copy the formulation. It's, you know, it's again, I don't use any proprietary blends. You can see what's exactly my product in exact amounts. But are you willing to spend that amount of money on it? Probably not. So anyways, that's kind of a random tangent. But let's talk about fat burners. So the first thing that you should know about fat burners is just straight up.

No amount of pills and powders are going to make you lean. If you don't know what you're doing with make you lean. If you don't know what you're doing with your diet, and if you don't know what you're doing with your exercise, which ties into your diet, it really just kind of ties into energy balance. So basically, if you don't know how to determine how much energy you're burning and how much energy you're eating in terms of calories, and you don't know how to turn that into a workable meal plan, then it doesn't matter how many fat burner pills or powders you take. Now that said, if you do know what you're doing with your diet and you know what you're doing with your exercise in terms of, you know, relying

primarily on weightlifting workouts to drive your fat loss and to preserve muscle, or in some cases build muscle, depending on where you're at, uh, with, with your training experience really, and where you're at with, uh, you're at with your body composition. If you know how to do that and also keep cardio to a minimum, I like to do, really that's why I just stick to high intensity interval cardio because you don't have to do a lot of it to make a noticeable difference in your fat loss. I never do more than about two hours per week when I'm cutting, which I actually am cutting right now, uh, because I I'm pretty lean, but I want to get a little bit leaner for a photo shoot for, um, I'm doing a second edition

of my cookbook, the shredded chef, which I'm excited about. I'll talk more about it soon. I'll, I'll do maybe the preview send out, you know, um, we're, we're doing, uh, shooting all the, all the, all the recipes and stuff, uh, currently. So when that's done, maybe some of the next week or two, I'll release some, you know, a little sneak peek stuff. Cause I'm pretty excited for it. Um, but anyways, no more than two hours of cardio per week and about four hours of weightlifting per week when I'm cutting. And, uh, you know, so that that's pretty much it for the exercise. When you know what you're doing, uh, then there are certain fat loss, certain supplements you can take that will help you lose

fat faster. And they're not, as you'll see, we'll get into it, there aren't very many, but there are a good six or seven or so with probably three or four that are really the primary. You're going to get most out of three or four. And then there are a few more that, uh, I also, I also like for fat loss purposes. And, uh, unfortunately that means the majority of the stuff that you see out there, um, is, is just ineffective. It's not going to help you lose fat faster. Um, and then even when you have good ingredients, the dosages matter quite a bit. Um, so you take something like, let's just start with the simple, obvious caffeine. Caffeine increases the amount of energy your body burns that helps you lose fat faster because as you, I'm sure, you know, if you've been listening to this podcast

for any period of time, energy balance is what drives fat loss. You have to burn more energy than you're eating. So anything that you can do to burn more energy is going to help. Uh, that's where exercise comes in and that's where something like caffeine comes in, where it just stimulates the nervous system. Your heart rate increases, you burn more energy. Very simple. However, it is worth kind of noting that the more you use caffeine, the less effective it becomes in this regard. So, so, you know, if many people, uh, they, they, they've, they've, they've taken high amounts of caffeine for so long that it doesn't really even have much, we'll notice much of a noticeable effect anymore. Uh, like they don't feel that

stimulation. Um, you know, I've seen this with a lot of people that they get up into the seven, 800 milligrams per day range or higher every single day, seven days a week, where after a while, um, they'll have, you know, uh, a good three, 400 milligrams of caffeine and not really feel much of anything or maybe feel a little bit. So in that case, uh, you're, that person is not going to get as much of a fat loss boost as someone like, uh, I mean, I don't know how your consumption habits are like, but personally, I'm probably around four to 500 milligrams a day on average. And then I either do none on the weekends, like on my, on my training days, I'm probably about four to 500 milligrams.

And then I either do none on the weekends or maybe a hundred, 150 milligrams kind of depends on what I'm doing. And if I feel like having caffeine basically. But I generally take at least one of the weekend days off completely. And sometimes it's both, but my intake is dramatically less regardless on the weekends. And then if I am taking a week off the gym, like if I'm deloading, for instance, which is basically taking a week off, I'll also cut my intake back. I might have one scoop of pre-workout before I go to the gym. So 175 milligrams or something like that. And the purpose of that is really just to maintain the caffeine sensitivity, not so much for fat loss purposes, but just because I still want to have those effects. So there's a trade-off there. If you have your diet on point and you know you're doing a few exercise,

if you can take a few supplements that helps your body burn more energy, or in some cases, burn more fat or certain types of fat, which we'll talk about, and you don't mind spending the money, then I think it makes sense. It's not necessary. Again, you can get very lean without any supplements. I've done it myself. I've done it both ways. I've gotten down to the 6% or 7% body fat range using the supplements I'm going to talk about here and not using them. And I can say for sure it is you get there faster when you use them, and it becomes especially noticeable when you get – as a guy, when you start getting into the 10% body fat range, so what you're dealing with at that point are really the stubborn fat stores that are just resistant to being mobilized for several different reasons, which I've spoken about quite a bit, but I will summarize when we get to a certain type of supplement called yohimbine. And so, and for girls, it probably about 20, 19, 20%. When you want to go from as a guy from 10% to 7% or as a girl from about 20% to 17, 16%, you're going to find that doing, it takes longer and the fat loss is just slower in those ranges than it was in higher, you know, at higher body fat levels. And that's where supplementation, I've really noticed supplementation, especially

when you combine it with fast training, which again, I'll talk a little bit about. So that's kind of the broad overview is don't think any supplements are 100% required to get very lean or to lose fat at a steady pace, but the right ones definitely do help. And they're not necessarily expensive, but you know, you will have to be willing to spend at least a little bit of money on them. So let's start first on the list here. Let's come back. Let's come back to caffeine. I already spoke about it a little bit. Um, in terms of, of dosages, when you look at the dosages used in, in weight loss studies involving caffeine, it's usually between about two and six milligrams per kilogram of body weight

per day. So I weigh about 87 kilograms. So you're looking at anywhere from, you know, 170 to 500, a little bit over 500 milligrams a day. I'm at the higher range of that, uh, four to 500. Rarely do I go above 500, uh, or, and really I never go above 600. And, you know, it's actually interesting. I got a DNA test done by DNA fit many months ago. And one of the, one of the things that I, that I kind of learned about my body in that is my body's detox pathways are, they work very quickly. So you can have, uh, you have these two different types of enzymes that, that, uh, involve getting poisons out of the body basically. And you can have fast acting, uh, or slow acting, uh, enzymes. And this, this just kind of relates to,

to the DNA in your body. It produces these proteins and you come the way that you come. So in my body, I guess most people or what's common is a fast acting and a slow acting, but some people have too slow acting and detox enzymes, which this would be in terms of caffeine use. That'd be a person that could have a hundred milligrams of caffeine and be like wired for like three or four hours. Um, but I have two fast acting, uh, polymorphisms on, on, on this, uh, for, for these enzymes. So, uh, it's, I mean, it's a poly, it's a genetic polymorphism, but it produces, it results in the production of these fast acting enzymes. So what that means for me is a hundred milligrams of caffeine. I barely even feel, I mean, my body processes it very quickly. I might feel a little bit for like 10 minutes. Uh, so I could take 400 milligrams of caffeine in one go and yeah,

I'll feel pretty good for about an hour. And then, uh, I could be asleep, you know, if, if it were at night, I could go to sleep within two hours for sure. Um, and you know, that's just how my body works. So funny enough, what the guy who was going over it with me, his name is Andrew. And he said is like, basically with that setup, I could abuse the shit out of caffeine without, you know, it would be very hard to harm my body basically with high caffeine intake because it gets processed very quickly. Anyway. So for, for me, I mean, I also wrote an article on caffeine, uh, a little there was a review of just the literature on caffeine intake. And basically the conclusion was that for the average person, about 400 milligrams per day, if you stay at or below that, you have no risk of high blood pressure or any sort of health issues that could arise from very high levels of intake.

And, you know, again, they saw in that paper, they were talking about some different studies where people, some people's bodies, and this would probably be somebody like me, you know, they could be at anywhere from 800 milligrams to even a gram of caffeine a day for long periods of time with no negative side effects. Um, so maybe I could do that, but I don't know that that seems a bit extreme. I don't need that much caffeine. All right. So now let's talk about another super popular weight loss, uh, supplement or fat burner. And that's Garcinia Cambogia, which, uh, you know, has been all over the internet and, and talk shows and whatever, because of trolls like Dr. Oz. Amazon, you see them,

I mean, they just sell a trillion bottles. It's not Amazon, obviously, but you have vendors on Amazon that sell a trillion bottles of these Garcinia Cambogia pills. And basically, it's a little fruit that has a high amount of a molecule called hydroxy citric acid. And that molecule has been shown to reduce fat gain during periods of overfeeding in rats and animal research can point the way for human research, but you can't just extrapolate something seen in rats to humans because while there are certain, uh, similarities in terms of the physiology of a rat and a human. There are also very, very large differences, which is an obvious statement, but I guess it needs to be said. And particularly with fat loss and fat gain, like for instance, rats process carbohydrates

very differently than humans. So this is one of those cases where just because something is good for helping rats losing weight doesn't mean it's good for humans. And that's exactly what was found in a meta-analysis that I'll link down below on human trials of Garcinia cambogia, about a dozen. And out of those, the two that were most rigorous and that were also the largest studies that didn't have funding biases or just massive flaws in terms of design and execution. They found no statistically significant difference in weight loss between people that were taking Garcinia Cambogia and not. So chalk this one up to worthless, really. Don't even waste your money. It's not going to do anything. Save that money for supplements that have been shown to work in

humans. So next on the list, let's talk about green coffee extract, which like Garcinia cambogia, uh, you know, has, has kind of had its, uh, 15 minutes of fame. Seems like every six months or so we have some new molecule that, uh, splashes on the headlines and no research shows this is the new wonder weight loss pill or whatever. Then you actually look at the research and it's rat research or it's just bullshit research or whatever. Um, green coffee extract is one of those things where there's not much research

available and the human research that is available. Uh, there, there was a, a meta analysis that was done on the human research, uh, for, for,

you know, green coffee extract and weight loss. And out of the studies they reviewed, I think it was like three, I'll link this study down below so you can look at yourself, but it was three. We're on only three were, were designed and executed well enough to even be worthy of review. And those were funded by companies that sell green tea or green coffee extract pills. So it's that, that is just not reliable. Um, you know, basically the bottom line is maybe this stuff could help you lose weight, but you'd have to take it in very large amounts. It's just not practical.

But if I were to put my money on it, I would say that green coffee extract is not going to help you lose weight. And that we will see that when more research comes out that isn't biased and isn't, you know, it's not a foregone conclusion. They're not going into it basically saying we need to massage this data to come to this conclusion. And that stuff happens quite a bit. Don't think that it doesn't. So let's talk about green tea extract. This isn't as sexy right now as stuff like Garsina Cambogia or raspberry ketones or green coffee extract, green tea extract. I think it had its time probably sometime in the past.

And now it's just kind of a mainstay, perennial type of thing that always sells and people have now kind of tended to associate with fat loss. And for a good reason. Research shows that green tea extract actually can help you lose fat faster. And the reason why is because it contains a high amount of molecules called catechins that are found in tea. And there's one catechin in particular. EGCG is the acronym. And it stands for epigallocatechin gallate, I think is what it is. Something like that.

Long-term, EGCG is what everybody just calls it. And the mechanism whereby of how this helps is when your body produces adrenaline and noradrenaline, those molecules, like when you're exercising, for instance, the adrenaline levels, for instance, adrenaline levels rise, your heart's beating faster, you're burning more energy. And those molecules attach to receptors on fat cells that cause the fat cells to release the energy that they're storing, and then it can be burned. So that's the basic underlying physiology of, quote-unquote, burning fat. That's what's actually happening. quote unquote, burning fat, that's what's actually happening. So, uh, EGCG and, and there are other catechins in tea, but this is the one most associated with fat loss. What it does is it actually counteracts an enzyme that your body produces that degrades adrenaline and noradrenaline.

So it kind of prevents your body from putting the brake on the adrenaline or adrenaline in your blood. And the longer it can remain in your blood, the more fat cells that can bind to and, uh, you know, uh, burn in a sense or, or prime or get them to release their energy for, for burning. So this is a, this is an example by the way of, uh, where, when you take, when you take a supplement or you take, you know, any, any substance and you want to know, uh, you know, does it have these effects over time as the research kind of continues on, on a molecule? Um, it, it might start with a, an association. Oh, it seems like this type of, it seems like people that are drinking a lot of tea tend to have lower body, uh, the lower BMIs for instance, or lower body fat levels. Why is that? And then as research

continues, and of course, this just takes time, and it takes money, and it takes work, then eventually scientists find they start narrowing it down. Huh, interesting. What's the chemical makeup of this tea? What's in here that we know that might have these types of effects? So what about this? What about that? Well, look at these molecules. Look what it does in rats, for instance. That's interesting. We might be onto something here. Let's now go see what happens in humans. Oh, it has the same effect in humans. And what is this effect exactly? What is this mechanism? How's it working? And then eventually you kind of come through where you understand now, this is how it works. This is why it works. And, and, and then it just becomes an accepted thing.

Whereas something, you know, the, the, the, the industry though, the, the supplement industry, they'll jump on anything. If there's just that, they would start selling green tea extract right when that association was made in the beginning. Oh, it seems like people that drink a lot of tea, uh, you know, tend to be leaner than people that don't bam. All right. Green tea is good for weight loss. Let's go. And they would just cite that research and start selling skinny tea and all that shit that you see. So that's just something to keep in mind that when you're reviewing research on supplements or substances, you want to see that whole life cycle, I guess. You want to see that. You don't just want to see, oh, there's an association. Or, well, in rats, it seems to work this way. It needs to come all the way through to well-designed clinical trials with humans that are also well-executed and don't have obvious funding biases like being paid for by companies that sell supplements. All right, let's move on now to 7-Keto-DHEA, which sounds like some kind of crazy drug or something, but it's not. It's just a chemical byproduct of a substance that your body produces called DHEA. So 7-Keto, as it's called, it's a popular weight loss supplement these days, fat burner type of supplement. And research does show that it might be able to counteract some of the metabolic slowdown that occurs when you're restricting your calories and that it can help you lose more fat over time. But there's just not

much research on it. Very small amount, only a handful of human studies. And they're funded by companies that are selling seven keto. So, you know, it's an interesting molecule. It might help. Um, I don't include it in any of my products. I don't sell it. I don't recommend it because again, I like to stick to things that I know will work. And I know the work because of what I just talked about earlier in that they're, they, they've gone through that full, uh, research cycle, which takes time. It takes money and it takes work. And, you know, it means that, um, maybe some of my products don't sound as sexy as, as, you know, uh, some of the, some of the supplements that other companies come out with. And, you know, it's also, it's an interesting business model that a lot of these supplement companies are operating on where they, you know, they feel like they have to be constantly

releasing new products, which I do understand. Yeah. Great train. Cool, bro. Sorry about that. We'll wait for this train. All right. So anyways, where they'll, uh, you know, constantly wanting to release new products, which I understand new products means more revenue. I mean, I'm all for introducing new products as well, but I think that there, it, from a marketing standpoint, it becomes a bit, you know, even as a consumer, I, I remember before I really knew much about supplements or, you know, had my, I was doing what I'm doing now, you know, when these companies would come out every six months or, or so, or whatever, with a new muscle building pill or a new fat loss pill, it's supposed to be bigger and better than the last one, you start to wonder, okay, is this just marketing bullshit where you're just coming out with you're trumping, you're one-upping yourself every six months? I mean, what does that say about the pills you were selling several years ago that those were completely worthless? And so what they try to do, though, is try to take the angle of like, no, it's this new

molecule with this new research, and now we know this, and now we're making it even better. It makes for a good sales pitch. And if you're not educated in terms of understanding the industry and what goes on behind the scenes, the stuff that I'm talking about here, I used to go for it. I used to be like, yeah, sure, whatever. I mean, I wasn't super convinced per se, but I just was like, man, I'll try it kind of thing. And they, they, you know, they try to sell a lot of bottles on that. I'll try it. And then maybe there's a placebo effect. Oh yeah. I think I lost fat faster. And then I'll tell my friends and so forth. Um,

so I, I'm going about things a little bit differently. Like I have, you know, um, my, my quote unquote fat burners called Phoenix and it, and it has green tea extract, has a couple other things that we'll talk about. That base of that formulation, I'm all for improving it over time. I'm actually always looking for ways. For instance, take something like 7-Keto. there are, you know, for instance, seven, take seven, something like seven keto three years from now, you might have enough research on it. That's that, you know, we can trust that, that says, Hey, this actually does work. If that were the case, then I would look at how can I work seven keto into Phoenix, for instance. But until then, uh, I'm just going to stick to the tried and true

things that, uh, a lot of these, like you, you know, you've heard, you've probably heard the green tea extract helps. You've probably heard that sinephrine helps. So anyways, that's 7-keto. I personally wouldn't spend my money on it just because I think that the money could be spent on better supplements. Okay, so now let's talk about yohimbine. Yohimbine is a chemical that's extracted from a plant

that it's an African plant, the Yo-Him-Bean plant. And research shows that Yo-Him-Bean does accelerate fat loss. But now we come, and this is human research. I think the first study that really kind of made the rounds was done with soccer players. So how does it work? Well, how it works is, so I spoke a little bit earlier about stubborn fat. And one of the things that makes certain fat stubborn, to lose is, uh, we have two main things. One is blood flow is usually lower in those areas. You'll find that the stubborn areas like in guys, it's lower abs,

usually the lower back, the muffin top type thing, right? And then in girls, it's usually the hips and thighs and butt. You'll find that those areas of the body are actually colder to the touch than other areas. And that's because there's just less blood flow to those areas. So that's a problem because your body needs to transport adrenaline or adrenaline through the blood to the fat cells to mobilize them. So if less blood is getting to an area, that just means less of those chemicals are going to get there. So that's one problem. And another problem is fat cells have two type of receptors, uh, where these catecholamines is what they're called. Adrenaline, noradrenaline are called

catecholamines, which are, it's not catechin, catechin's T catecholamines in the body. So, so fat cells have two, uh, types of receptors, one type of receptor. Um, it, it takes the chemical and then it releases that it triggers the release of the, of the energy in the fat cell. And then you, you burn it and then the fat cell has shrunk now and you look leaner. The other type of molecule though, it, or sorry, receptor, it, it takes the molecule, but it doesn't release the energy in, in the fat cell. Um, so those, uh, are, are the, the, the good receptors are known as it's the beta type receptor and the bad receptor is an

alpha type receptor. And so now what you have is you have this situation where not enough blood is getting to the area. So you already have a reduction in the amount of adrenaline or adrenaline that's going to the area. And then you have these fat cells that have high amounts of receptors that are just going to kind of Pac-Man eat up the catecholamines without actually shrinking the fat cell, releasing the energy. So what yohimbine does, and this is what has been shown in subsequent research, is it shuts down those alpha receptors, basically. So now those beta receptors, the receptors that result in fat loss or that, you know, when they are receptive to fat loss or they cause the fat loss when the adrenaline or adrenaline bind with them, those now are not being outdone by the alpha receptors, I guess you could say. So going back to that, you know, for on the break analogy, you have your hymn bean basically prevents the alpha

receptors from putting the break on fat loss. And your hymn bean is particularly effective when, again, just kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, when you're lean and you want to get really lean is when you're really going to notice the effects of a hymn bean. Now there's no reason not to, there's no reason not to take yohimbine even if you're like not super lean. Even if you're starting, if you're a guy starting at 20%, you're going to lose fat faster with yohimbine. And interestingly enough, actually yohimbine, unlike caffeine or synephrine and other stimulatory type of ingredients, yohimbine accumulates, which, which those, the stimulants, they reduce their effectiveness, you know, goes down over time.

As you use them for longer and longer, your body builds up tolerance. You need more to get the effects. But yohimbine accumulates in the body, and actually it's more effective over time, which is interesting. Now, the only catch with yohimbine is if your insulin levels are elevated significantly above the baseline level, which would be caused by eating food. above the baseline level, which would be caused by eating food. So if you're not in a fasted state, which is where your insulin is at a baseline level, your body is not processing any food that you've eaten. And it's basically fully living off of its fat stores. If you're not in that state, yohimbine doesn't work. And that's been shown in research as well, that insulin negates yohimbine, fat loss effects.

So your him bean is really only for use with fast training. I'll link an article down below where you can read about fasted training. I do highly recommend fasted training. If you are also going to use supplements, if you're not, you might get a little bit of a fat loss boost from it. But if you combine it with proper supplementation, which in this case, it would be caffeine, uh, yohimbine and, and, and synefren at least, uh, which we'll talk about synefren. Um, but there are a couple other things that are like in my fat burner Phoenix, it contains

synefren, but then it contains a couple other molecules that makes synefren even more effective. And so that, that, those three that work synergistically together. Um, and you, you know, like if you, um, cut, if you're a guy or, you know, or a girl going from 10 or 20% down to, let's say seven or 17% respectively. Um, and you do it one time without the supplements that I'm talking about, especially, you know, him being caffeine, synephrine, and you do it with, you will notice a big difference. I mean, personally, I would say, I mean, this isn't super scientific, it's anecdotal, but I've done it several times. I would say that if I, it's about 30%, 25 to 30% faster when you get into that stubborn fat area where, you know, maybe the most you could lose without the

supplements would be maybe a half a pound a week. And then with the supplements, it could be anywhere from, I guess it's been a little bit more. I mean, I would say maybe even 50% because I've kept logs. This is, again, this is not super scientific, but I have kept logs in terms of like weight reduction and caliper readings with supplements and without supplements. And it was, if I remember correctly, maybe about 0.7 to 0.75 pounds per week, as opposed to 0.5. So it's a pretty big jump. And, you know,

if that saves a few weeks, if that saves three or four weeks in the end of a cut, I'll take that. That's worth it to me, especially when you consider the fact that there are really no side effects or no downsides. Some people don't do well with yohimbine. It makes some people jittery and it can raise your blood pressure. So if you have high blood pressure, it's not recommended. But if you're healthy, if your blood pressure is normal and you are very likely to be fine with it. And in terms of the clinically effective dosage, the amount used in the studies that have proven its effectiveness of fat loss use about 0.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. So when you look at how much is in a pill when you buy it, it means that you could be taking quite a few pills. But again, at least

you're getting something out of it. I mentioned raspberry ketones. I won't spend much time on it because it's just rat research bullshit. Raspberry ketones are worthless. They're not going to do anything. This is one I don't think is going to go anywhere. There's one human study that was funded by a company selling raspberry ketones. The mechanism doesn't really make sense. The amount seen in rats, if you extrapolated that alone to humans, it would be an absurd amount that you'd have to take. It's just a worthless supplement. Just

ignore it. All right. So now let's talk about sinephrine, which as you know, I'm a fan of sinephrine. It helps you lose fat faster. Chemically speaking, it's similar to ephedrine, which does occur naturally. But I mean, I think all the ephedrine now is just chemically synthesized. It's created in labs. And sinephrine is similar to ephedrine, but it's just not as strong. Ephedrine's effects are stronger. And I've never actually tried ephedrine. It works.

There's no question. There's a lot of research on ephedrine. You lose fat faster with ephedrine. I've never tried it. I've always just kind of stuck with sinephrine for whatever reason. It's not that ephedrine is even dangerous. I would classify it probably along the lines of caffeine in terms of how serious of a drug it is. But I've always stuck with sinephrine and seen good results with it. And sinephrine helps you lose fat faster in a few different ways. It increases, uh,

your basal metabolic rate. So it just helps your body like, like caffeine, right? So it stimulates your body. You burn more energy. That alone is going to help you burn more fat. Um,

it also has a similar effect to your him bean, uh, in that it is a antagonist of the alpha receptors in fat cells, meaning that it helps shut those receptors down, which now you see why I'm saying that when you are dealing with stubborn fat holdouts, which is really what you are dealing with when you get lean and you want to get really lean, both yohimbine and sinephrine together, they make a difference. they do and one last fat burning effect that Sinephrin has and Ephedrine has as well

is it increases the thermic effect of food which is the amount of energy that it costs to break down the food that you eat and that's one of the factors in terms of your total daily energy expenditure how much energy your body expends every day

the thermic effect of food does account for a sizable chunk of it In terms of your total daily energy expenditure, how much energy your body expends every day, the thermic effect of food does account for a sizable chunk of it. By increasing that amount of energy that you burn, it makes it easier to be in a calorie deficit. It also gives you more room. What you don't want to do when you're dieting is you don't want to heavily restrict your calories and then drop way below BMR and have to keep on cutting calories. You want to use exercise to burn energy. You want to use supplements to burn energy so you can keep your calorie intake as high as possible, really for as long as possible. Depending on how lean you want to get, yes, you are going to have to. You probably are going to have to reduce your food intake along the way, but some people don't have to, and that's great.

They can just start at their 25% deficit, let's say, and then through smart exercise where you're doing a good amount of weightlifting, not killing yourself with cardio, and being obviously very specific on food intake, making sure that your, your measurements are correct. You're not, you know, eyeballing cups and then accidentally overeating 80 calories every meal, doing stupid things like that. Um, plus supplementation, which with good supplementation, you should be able to burn a couple hundred extra calories a day. And if that doesn't sound like a lot to, I mean, consider that that's 30 minutes of cardio just in supplements. So that again comes back to, that's why for me, it's worth it. If I can burn an extra 200 calories a day, that's something around an extra, you know, half a pound of fat a week. That's worth it to me. One of the benefit of Senefran is that research shows it can be a mild appetite suppressant for some people. So that's also welcome for you dealing with hunger. And when you're in a calorie deficit,

your body wants more food, period. In terms of clinically effective dosage, 50 milligrams is good of sinephrine for that'd be a serving. And that's what you'll find in my fat burner, Phoenix has 50 milligrams of sinephrine per serving. And I mentioned it also has two other molecules that work synergistically with sinephrine, and those are hesperidin and naringin. And research shows that they stimulate the production of a certain hormone, uh, that helps break down fat cells. And they work synergistically with sinephrine to increase the amount of, uh, metabolic boost that, that basal metabolic, uh, increase that occurs with sinephrine. It is higher when you combine it with, uh, naringin and asperidin. And the study that, which I'll link

down below that shows this, showed about it was when you take, this is the study that the dosages in Phoenix were based on, that one serving was about, I don't remember off the top of my head, it was about 150 to 180 additional calories burned for the day. And that's without adding in caffeine, which itself increases the energy that your body burns, but also then synergizes with synephrine, asparagin, and naringin. So from that alone, that's where I come to this 200 calories a day. And that might even be a bit conservative, might even be a bit higher than that. But, you know, I think that's a very safe science-based kind of prediction for how much more energy you could expect to be burning by taking just a handful of supplements. So I think I'll stop here. I've been, you know,

going on for a while now and I've covered a lot of the big popular weight loss or fat burner type of ingredients. But to summarize, and also just to say there are a couple other things in Phoenix that have been associated with or shown to speed up fat loss. to speed up fat loss. Um, for instance, five HTP, it doesn't directly help your body burn more fat, but it increases a satiety fullness when you eat, especially with carbs. So, you know, the, the, one of the, obviously the biggest problem that, that most people run into it there with losing weight is they just can't stick to their diets. Even, even if their diets are, you know, well put together, they're eating foods they like, it's high protein, it's relatively high carb, they eat on the schedule they like, there's no good reason why they shouldn't be able to stick to it, but they just get hungry or whatever. So 5-HTP can help with that. It can just help you feel full. I like going in that direction more than heavy appetite suppressant type of molecules because they can have harsher side effects and I don't like how they make my body feel.

So I like 5-HTP. I've never heard a complaint from anybody in terms of having any sort of side effects or making them feel bad or whatever. and it increases fullness. So I like going in that direction on it. And, uh, there are, there are a few other ingredients as well in Phoenix that I'll, I'll link it in the, in, you know, the notes below, or if you're listening, you can find it at Legion athletics, L E G I O N athletics.com. Um, go to supplements and you'll see Phoenix and, and you can read all about what I've been talking about here. You can review a ton of the research that, you know, all the studies that have gone into my, or that, you know, that have resulted in me saying what I'm saying now and producing, creating the product that we created. It's all there. So yeah, go check it out. And, you know, to summarize, so you have caffeine,

you have sinephrine, you have yohimbine, you have green tea extract, and then you have a few others that you can read about over on the Phoenix supplement page. And those are really it. I mean, I can tell you that there may be other molecules out there that could help a little bit, like CLA, for instance. It's unreliable, is the problem. There are some research that shows that CLA helps with fat loss, other research that shows that it doesn't. It seems to work for some people, not work for other people. So that's why I don't recommend CLA. I don't sell CLA. Again, I like to stick to things that are guaranteed to work, and we understand why they work. And, uh, you know, you'd be, you'd, you'd be, uh, an outlier if it didn't help you basically. Um, so I can tell you

that if you just stick to, uh, what I, what I've, what I've been talking about here, you stick to these supplements, you just won't need anything else really that post-proper diet and exercise, you're going to lose fat, you know, uh, steadily and rapidly. And, um, you won't have anything else really that plus proper diet and exercise you're going to lose fat you know steadily and rapidly and you won't have to spend a ton of money on on fat burning supplements and you don't have to wonder what you're putting in your body is it good for you is it not good for you and that's also you know uh there i've written about this there There was an FDA report on OxyElite, that USP Labs product, having Prozac in it. And then there was another report having something that was causing liver failure. So like that, I used to, I mean, I never took OxyElite, but I used to take JAKT and when I had DMA. And so again, I mean, unfortunately in some ways, you're taking your health into your own hands when you are trying these latest and greatest type of supplements.

You know, test boosters, different test boosters on the market have tested positive for pro-hormones, which makes sense because you can't really do anything. That'll be its own episode. It'll be test boosting. but there really aren't any good natural test booster type of molecules out there that work well enough and over a longer long enough period of time to be worth using i wish there were because i would make a product and i would use it myself just because why not if it were natural and it were safe i'd probably be willing if i could increase my testosterone naturally by 100 to maybe 150 to 200 nanograms per deciliter. That would be worth – I would spend money on that because that would be enough. Maybe it will make a huge difference in the gym.

It's not like you're going to build a lot more muscle. Maybe it might promote a little bit more leanness. But I think that would be enough to notice like probably improved sleep. Maybe you probably notice a bit in your libido, um, energy levels, you know, mood. So anyways, when, when, when that's the case, when there really isn't anything that's gonna, gonna give much of a kick in terms of T boosting and you're the type of person that's willing to put Prozac in your supplements and stuff that causes liver failure, like you just give no fucks, then of course it makes sense to take a pro hormone, change it a little bit, throw it in your test booster. So then people take it and they're like, Oh shit,

like you've, you know, obviously pro hormones work, um, and the right ones. So you put some of that in there and then people are, you know, they're going, this, this is awesome. They start telling their friends and you know, that stuff happens. Don't think it doesn't happen. It does. Go look it up yourself. You can just Google OxiElite Pro, Prozac, OxiElite Pro Liver Failure. You can go look at the FDA, you know, announcements on it.

And, of course, you've probably heard of that pre-workout craze, basically having meth, a molecule that is, um, it metabolizes in the same way as meth in the body, but it's not meth technically, which is how they, that's the legal, you know, loophole there that the molecule has changed enough to not be considered meth, but it still has the same effects in the body. So, you know, a lot of shady shit. Anyways, I hope you found this helpful. Um, if you have any questions, you know, you can comment down below, although it's kind of hard for me to manage the YouTube comments because their comment management system fucking sucks. So I try, I try, I try to jump in and answer, you know, questions and comments and stuff, but I can't get to them all much better is like coming

over to my blog and leaving a comment because discuss is what I use for commenting on the blog and it has a much better management system. Um, I'm able to actually keep track of and stay on top of without wanting to shoot myself in the head. Um, so yeah, or you can shoot me an email and shoot, hit me up on social media. You know how to find me. So let me know if you have any questions. Hope you found this helpful. And next week we'll talk about pre-workouts. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com,

where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscle for life.com. All right. Thanks again.

Bye.