When it comes to feasible and long-term solutions to reducing belly fat we don’t want to continuously buy and slather on creams in an attempt to stave off the inevitable weight regain; we want to attack the source.
Instead, we want to look at what the initial reason we even got belly fat in the first place. Was it due to high stress, high alcohol consumption, unhealthy habits such as smoking, or does it underlie some other adverse health situation like prediabetes?
If you can figure out what caused your belly fat initially then it provides ammo that you can use to blast it away for good.
But, in the event that you don’t necessarily know why you have abnormal body fat but you have it and want to target it there are a few options that would be good to look at.
The Top 3 Supplements for Losing Belly Fat
For the top three supplements for losing belly fat specifically, I’ve looked into three supplements that would either normally not be seen as fat burners (due to not inherently having fat burning effects) or things that become better “fat burners” only when belly fat is at high levels.
Sometimes you simply need something to burn calories,but sometimes that’s not as effective as we want since belly fat gets in the way.
Fish Oil
Fish oil supplementation is known for being “healthy,” with emphasis on the quotations since not too many people go into further detail aside from simply saying “anti-inflammatory.”
While we don’t want to delve too much into the various mechanisms of fish oil one we do want to elaborate on is the interaction with a hormone made from fat (an adipokine) called adiponectin.
Adiponectin is an anti-inflammatory adipokine that tends to be lower when visceral fat is higher leading to a relatively higher level of inflammation that impedes improvements to health.
Adiponectin has been noted to increase in obese rodents fed a high fat diet that mimics a typically unhealthy human diet; this has also been confirmed to occur in humans given fish oil supplementation (1,110 mg EPA/690 mg DHA).
Likely due to these mechanisms, fish oil seems to have health-promoting and anti-abdominal obesity actions even when overall weight loss does not occur. That is basically as targeted as we can expect when it comes to oral supplements.
Fish oil may not inherently be a fat burning supplement but, in instances of high belly fat, it seems to selectively reduce visceral fat by reducing inflammation.
If you want to try a high-quality fish oil for this purpose, then you want to check out TRITON.
Berberine
Berberine is the main component of numerous herbs that have been used to treat diabetes historically such as berberis aristata, coptis chinensis, and phellodendron amurense. Berberine’s mechanism is simple; it activates AMPK and it does this well.
AMPK is a protein in all cells that, when activated, signals for the cell to uptake both fat and carbohydrate and also tells the cell to utilize that energy for productive purposes.
In instances of excess calorie intake where blood glucose and triglycerides get too high, AMPK activation has been sought out as a good target to help bring these back down to normal. Some pharmaceuticals also work by activating AMPK, with berberine and the drug Metformin having similar properties.
When it comes to belly fat, however, studies in people with metabolic syndrome have noted that berberine supplementation not only made them healthier but also caused quite a lot of weight loss. This is notable since AMPK activation, by itself, is something that should help with weight loss in the unhealthy yet probably isn’t too viable in the already lean and healthy.
Ultimately, berberine seems to have a lot of promise for reducing weight, specifically for people with lots of belly fat that’s caused by metabolic syndrome. It’s uncertain if this benefit holds true for people with belly fat but no health complications.
Fiber
Rather, we should eat fiber because not only is it confirmed to have mild to moderate benefits to various parameters of cardiovascular health (cholesterol and blood glucose) but it’s also been shown to promote more fat loss than placebo numerous times.
A large part of this is due to how fiber increases satiety (how satisfied one is with a meal; higher satiety means you’re less likely to want to eat again) partially related to the water-forming capacities of fiber; it makes a nice gel in your stomach and it fills you up.
Less food consumption means that weight can be reduced easier when dieting while the beneficial health effects mean that visceral fat is also reduced. A nice side-effect to boot is that, with improved intestinal health, bloating is less likely and might also cut another inch off your waistline.
Fiber supplementation, or simply consumption through food, not only reduces food intake but also provides mild health benefits. The combination of these two functions, over time, can lead to improvements in belly fat loss.
The Worst 3 Supplements for Losing Belly Fat
For supplements that are not good for losing belly fat we’re going to focus on things that are popular but don’t work as well as many think, rather than outright “bad” for reducing belly fat.
The things that are bad for reducing belly fat are drinking lots of alcohol, smoking, and eating a ton of food while continuing to be stressed out every day. It should be pretty obvious but, yeah, don’t do those things if you want to lose weight.
Garcinia Cambogia
Garcinia cambogia is a fruit known as malabar tamarind that, for our purposes, is also a low-hanging fruit that has to be mentioned here.
I’ve already discussed this supplement relatively in-depth before but the gist of it is that it’s heavily marketed with outrageous claims despite most evidence suggesting that it doesn’t work in humans.
The bottom line is that it’s heavily marketed, commonly marketed towards belly fat as well, and just doesn’t work.
Caffeine
Whoo-boy, this is gonna be an interesting section where I argue that, for people with high levels of belly fat, caffeine is probably going to be more negative than positive.
First and foremost, context. If caffeine is able to act as a fat burner, and is successful in causing fat loss, then it’ll be able to reduce visceral fat accumulation which is a net positive. Acute caffeine usage, in the context of fat burning supplementation, is a good thing.
Furthermore, it’s not like chronic caffeine ingestion is all bad. Evidence from rat studies suggests that caffeine increases both AMPK activation and decreases catecholamine production, both of which may work to mitigate visceral fat gain over time. Among the things to keep in your routine while losing fat caffeine isn’t the worst choice.
However, caffeine is also known to increase cortisol when ingested. While normally this would not be an issue if the body adapted to it, caffeine is not subject to tolerance and, to a small degree, will always increase cortisol when ingested.
While cortisol is something that is highly beneficial in the short term, if it’s elevated too frequently then it’s likely to play a role in the development of visceral fat accumulation.
Caffeine has both positives and negatives when it comes to losing belly fat. If you want to improve belly fat losses then either just have one drink of caffeine in the morning (when cortisol is normally high) or try to take a break from it. Repeated doses of caffeine each day may not be ideal.
Low-Calorie Sweeteners
Studies on whether low calorie sweeteners are able to help with weight loss have been known to be pretty all over the map; successes in fat loss diets, failures associated with long-term fat loss, and even an observed greater level of abdominal obesity.
If we’re going to mock conjugated linoleic acid for once being associated with weight gain then, to be fair, we gotta poke some fun at low-calorie sweeteners.
The odd thing here is that we don’t exactly know what’s happening since, when we look at the most popular artificial sweeteners, they aren’t actually affecting body fat or health in any way; why is something that is almost metabolically inert having a proven effect?
There are a few theories floating around but almost all of them come back to the idea of “people eat more without realizing it.”
When you ingest sugar, the increase in insulin seen actually suppresses appetite (and being more insulin sensitive increases this effect) while the perception of sweetness stimulates appetite. This has led to some researchers believing that, by divorcing the suppression and the stimulation, it causes a small increase in carbohydrate intake.
Artificial sweeteners have also been associated with altering how some people perceive sweetness which implicates it in the entire field of how taste influences weight.
The Bottom Line on Supplements for Belly Fat
At the end of the day, losing belly fat is about 90% or more the same as losing fat in general. Eat healthy food, sleep right, and exercise frequently. Lifestyle modifications trump here.
However, when it comes to abnormal belly fat gain it also signifies that the fat you have on your body is not really “healthy” fat and you’re at greater risk for health issues than others with a more balanced body fat distribution.
Bad news, you’re at greater risk for almost everything bad.
Good news, many health supplements can now moonlight, at least for a short time, as fat loss agents by helping you get into a healthier body state conducive to burning off that belly fat.
If losing fat in general is a marathon that takes time and patience, losing visceral fat is realizing that you’re a bit off course so you need to back up and correct your destination before proceeding on the exact same marathon course.
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