Does Weight Loss Come in a Pill?

By:
Jonny Bowden

Since every mall now has a kiosk selling "metabolic enhancers" of one kind or another, it's time to take a fresh look at exactly what these babies are and what they can -- and cannot -- do.

What about the stuff they sell in those kiosks?

Well, primarily these are thermogenic agents. A thermogenic agent is one that produces heat -- in everyday parlance, it "speeds up" the metabolism. The kiosk products do indeed produce some thermogenic effect, but at a cost.

The most common ingredient in metabolic enhancers is ephedra. Ephedra is basically legal "speed." While I'd be lying if I said it's as dangerous as crack cocaine, a small dose is approximately equal to a few cups of strong coffee. Same deal with ma huang. These substances should be avoided like the Black Plague if you have any tendency at all to high blood pressure. They can -- and usually do -- make you jittery, nervous and speedy, and can raise blood pressure and heart rate. This does indeed temporarily "speed up" the metabolic rate, but how much that transfers to actual weight loss is anyone's guess. My personal opinion is that to whatever extent they work, they do so by suppressing your appetite, NOT by adding appreciably to the number of calories burned during the day, though they probably do slightly increase the number of calories burned while "under the influence."

Understanding your metabolism

What is metabolism anyway? One clever writer (Kenneth Baum, author of Metabolize!) asked his six-year-old son that question and was met with the following answer: "It's everything that happens from when you eat to when you poop!" And you know what? That's not a bad definition. Metabolism is, briefly, the sum total of everything that happens in the body -- the building up of various substances (muscle, proteins, RNA, hair, nails, enzymes, storage fat, bones) and the breaking down of others (food, storage fat, etc.). Both "building up" processes (called anabolic) and "breaking down" processes (catabolic) are going on simultaneously, all the time. And the raw material, the stuff the body uses for this myriad of tasks, is food. Or, more properly, the nutrients contained in food.

In one sense, then, the metabolic rate could be defined as the speed at which our internal engines run.

Four factors contribute to your metabolic rate.

1. By far the largest contributor is your "basal" or resting metabolic rate. (They're not exactly the same thing, but for our purposes they're interchangeable.) This is basically the number of calories you burn at rest, just sitting in a chair.

2. The second biggest component of your metabolic rate is determined by your level of activity and exercise.

3. The third component is sometimes called the "thermic effect of food," and is defined as the amount of calories (or energy) it takes to actually digest and process the food you eat. ("Thermic," by the way, means "heat", and "thermogenic" means "heat producing." Remember that energy production is going on in the body at all times, and one of the byproducts of energy production is heat. Which food type has the highest thermic effect? Protein.)

4. The last and smallest contributor to the metabolic rate is something with the intimidating name of "facultative thermogenesis," which basically means the heat-producing effect of things like fidgeting, reaction to cold and stress, and other similar factors.

Now, when you and I say things like, "I have a slow (or sluggish) metabolism," what we mean is, "How do we get this whole process to move faster? How do we speed up the engines? How do we run the whole show at a higher temperature?"

Well, the biggest determiner of resting metabolic rate is how much muscle you have. Muscle is where the action is, as muscle cells are loaded with tiny little power centers called mitochondria, which are where your calories get "burned" (more properly, it's where the breakdown products of food -- like fatty acids and glucose -- get "oxidized," but let's not get too technical). So the more muscle you have, the more powerhouses you have to break down fat. All things being equal, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even while sleeping.

The conclusion is obvious: The number one metabolic enhancer is muscle. And the best way to get it is by lifting weights.

The point is that when you really understand what metabolism is, you see immediately that the amount of difference these enhancers can make is negligible. They will "rev up the engine" slightly, but without a lot of exercise to burn that gas, you're just producing a few extra calories as heat while doing some potential damage to the rest of your system. Except for the appetite effect (which would make you eat less -- but so would "diet pills"), the effect the products have on calorie expenditure and fat loss pales when compared to exercise, muscle building and a diet designed to keep insulin levels from soaring into the stratosphere.

Other ingredients often found in these products (besides the stimulants) are carnitine and chromium. I've written about these elsewhere, and believe that both of them play an important part in supporting different aspects of metabolic function (blood sugar in the case of chromium, and fat metabolism in the case of carnitine). But the amounts contained in metabolic enhancers are usually way less than what's needed, and if you want them you can do better getting them as separate products from reputable companies.

Want my opinion? When it comes to metabolic enhancers, step away from the kiosk, throw out the sugar and head toward the gym.

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