True or False: Can Supplements Boost Metabolism for Fat Burning?

You can't boost your metabolism with supplements. Or at least not enough to cause weight loss and your body to burn fat. This is hope in a bottle, but this hope doesn't stand a chance. It doesn't work.

One misconception is that caffeine supplements boost your metabolism, but I've also heard that fish oil, protein, CLA, and green tea will do it, too. As with the fat burning zone, this myth comes from a distortion of science. Supplements do not boost metabolism or cause your body to burn fat so that you lose weight.

Green tea, for example, was shown to increase the daily energy expenditure of young men by eighty calories per day. Now, that's great news for the people who make supplements because they can put that claim on their label, but what that doesn't take into account is that people's bodies adapt to a stimulus.

If there is any benefit to taking a particular supplement, by the end of the week, your body has adjusted to the chemical and no longer reacts to it. And that's why, as a recent study showed, that taking Green Tea supplements for 12 weeks did not cause any fat loss. Most supplements seem to be nothing more than glorified caffeine pills.

Let's think of this another way. Say for example that green tea extract actually did help you burn an additional eighty calories per day. It is agreed upon by most trainers that one pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories. Even if the supplement did boost your metabolism as intended and claimed by the diet gurus, then it would take nearly a month and half to lose one pound!

Unfortunately, you'll find big metabolism boosting promises from supplements in every magazine, and it is very difficult to avoid the allure of the quick fixes that supplements present. Supplements make you think, "Why work out when you can take a pill?"

And as long as there are people who aren't willing to work for their results, there will always be a product claiming to work miracles.

Unlike these "miracle" supplements, research repeatedly shows that both strength training and interval training can help boost your metabolism and burn fat.

In one study, women did a strength training session with eight repetitions per exercise and had a significant increase in their post-exercise metabolism. This is just another example of how short burst training will burn more calories and more fat. These are proven results that no diet pill can compete with.