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.
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.