A 2026 review found no randomised trial of a tea sold for detox or weight loss, and neither did we. The mechanism is a laxative, and even four to six litres of diarrhoea cuts calorie absorption by only about 12%. The liver damage, though, is documented.
The checklist this page always promised, finally on the page. It sorts your answers into what the ECSS/ACSM consensus says must be excluded first — energy intake, iron, thyroid, infection, mood — and refuses to give you a score, because that consensus found no marker good enough to be generally accepted.
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.
You lose about a pound and a half in an hour and the researchers called it 'bodily fluids' in their own conclusion. The one trial that randomised people found sauna added no significant fat loss on top of exercise — but with 15 per arm, it couldn't have detected much.
116 trials and 6,880 people say aerobic exercise works: about 2.8 kg at the recommended dose. The 'fat burning zone' printed on the machine is a different matter — and it's set at the wrong heart rate even by its own physiology.
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.
It works — but so does daily calorie restriction, and at matched calories the cleanest trial found fasting lost less fat. One good 12-month study does favour it, for a reason nobody sells: people stuck to it better.
Protein genuinely preserves lean mass while you diet — replicated across four meta-analyses. But the effect is small, it mostly fails without resistance training, and the metabolism claim was dismissed by a review the meat and dairy industries paid for.