Key Takeaways
- Fat burning supplements often deliver marginal results and can pose serious risks, including heart strain, liver damage, and interactions with medications.
- Hormonal changes, muscle loss, and metabolic shifts make weight management more fat loss during menopause much more challenging.
- Personalised nutrition, resistance training, lifestyle adjustments, and targeted fat reduction treatments (e.g., Bodysculptor, Exion Body, Vanquish ME) are more effective than relying on supplements.
- A BIA (InBody) scan also helps you track progress accurately and avoid losing muscle during fat loss.
It is often tempting for women in perimenopause and menopause to consider fat burning supplements, as losing weight becomes noticeably more difficult during this period.
Fat burning supplements promise effortless fat reduction, faster metabolism, and rapid weight loss, but do they actually work and are they safe?
If you’re considering fat burning supplements to manage midlife weight gain, it’s critical to understand how they work, and the risks they may carry.
Fat Burning Supplements: What are they exactly?
Fat burning supplements are dietary products that are formulated to help the body in losing unwanted fats. These products use enticing marketing claims that promise to impair your body’s fat absorption, increase its fat metabolism, or drive weight loss by forcing the body to burn more energy throughout the day. They can be categorised into three types:
- Appetite Suppressants
- Lipolysis Enhancers
- Thermogenics
Let’s take a look at each closely.
Appetite Suppressants
This type of fat burning supplement works by helping you feel fuller, so you consume fewer calories in a day. A widely used ingredient is glucomannan, a fiber-based ingredient that expands in the stomach and increases satiety.
Lipolysis Enhancers
These claim to help break down stored fat in the body, which the body then uses for energy.
Thermogenics
These are designed to speed up your body’s metabolism and your TDEE. Common ingredients used include caffeine, capsaicin, and green tea extract.
The Dangers of Fat Burning Supplements
Fat burning products labelled as “natural” or “herbal” are commonly mistaken to be safe, despite the Health Science Authority’s (HSA) repeated efforts in flagging unsafe and undeclared ingredients in such supplements sold online.
During menopause, your body may also be more sensitive to stimulants and metabolic stress, making these risks even more relevant. Here are some potential risks:
Cardiovascular strain due to excessive stimulants
Many supplements are packed with large doses of caffeine or other stimulants that are formulated to boost metabolism. Consuming high amounts of these ingredients can cause:
- Anxiety
- High blood pressure
- Insomnia
- Jitters
- Rapid heart rate
Specifically, these products may be spiked with Sibutramine, which is an ingredient that was banned in Singapore as it increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Damage to liver and kidney
High doses of concentrated extracts can be toxic to your body, even when derived naturally from plants like green tea. Excessive intake of fat burning supplements is also linked to hepatotoxicity or liver damage. Common symptoms include dark urine, extreme fatigue, and jaundice.
Potential interactions with other drugs
If you’re taking medications for conditions more common in midlife, such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, you should be aware that fat burning supplements can interfere with their effectiveness or cause side effects.
A Smarter Approach: Understanding Your Body Composition
Instead of relying on supplements, a more effective and sustainable approach –especially during menopause– is understanding how your body is changing.
A body composition analysis (such as an InBody scan) gives a deeper look beyond weight, helping you assess:
- Body Fat Mass (BFM): Total fat stored in the body
- Lean Body Mass (LBM): Muscles, bones, and organs
- Skeletal Muscle Mass (SMM): Muscle essential for strength and metabolism
- Visceral Fat Levels: Fat around internal organs, linked to higher health risks
- Total Body Water: Indicator of hydration and cellular health
Weight gain during menopause often involves muscle loss and metabolic slowdown. Without proper tracking, you may lose muscle along with fat. This is especially important because muscle helps maintain your metabolism, and losing muscle can make weight regain more likely.
How Body Composition Tracking Supports Fat Loss
One of the biggest advantages of a body composition analysis (BIA) is that it lets you see if you are really losing fat so you can track your progress accurately. Even if the scale shows no change, a body composition analysis can reveal that you’ve lost 2 kg of fat while gaining 2 kg of muscle, which is a huge win.
BIA can also reveal patterns in your body’s fat distribution, such as areas that are more resistant to fat loss. With that knowledge, you can then consider the best fat reduction treatments to safely spot-reduce fat, such as Bodysculptor, Exion Body, or Vanquish ME.
Other recommendations based on your body composition data include lifestyle adjustments and personalised nutrition strategies.
There’s No Shortcut, But There’s a Smarter Way
There is no magic pill when it comes to effectively losing fat, especially during menopause when your body requires a more thoughtful and targeted approach. No matter how “natural” and fast a fat burning supplement claims to be, it can only provide marginal results at best while exposing you to unnecessary risks.
To kickstart your fat loss journey during perimenopause and menopause, a body composition analysis can help you understand where your body is today, so you can take the right steps forward with confidence. Not sure where to start? We’d love to help – come in for a complimentary BIA test and discover your body’s baseline.
