We looked, and the evidence does not back the claim: either it was tested and did not hold up, or nobody has tested it and nothing that was tested supports it.
The pinch test everyone repeats has no clinical basis and runs backwards to what a skinfold measures. What biopsies after major weight loss actually found, and the correction we owed this page.
Low-carb diets drop weight fast — 61% of it water in one measured study, against 37% on an equal-calorie mixed diet. At matched calories they don't remove more fat. The model's own advocates funded the trial that showed it.
Creatine adds about 1.9 lb of body mass, almost none of it fat — which lands on your scale in the middle of a diet. On whether it burns fat, the two best 2024 analyses disagree, and the larger one found nothing.
Thirteen controlled trials and 1,158 people say no — the pooled effect of targeted training on targeted fat is indistinguishable from zero. The belief didn't start with a study. It started with a machine that needed a reason to exist.
Don't eat protein with starch: the rule has been sold since 1929. Its claim about the stomach was tested in 1934 and 1936 and failed. The diet got one real trial, in 2000, and the food-combining group lost slightly less weight. Whether it eases bloating has not been trialled, as far as we could find.