The last time I bought a muscle magazine must have been 13 or 14 years ago. But I confess, the other day in the gym, there were three bodybuilding mags sitting on the bike, and I flipped through them as I was pedaling. As I saw the number of supplement ads and the outlandish things they said, it reminded me of one of the reasons I stopping buying magazines in the first place…

I almost spit out my high protein oatmeal pancake all over my Macbook this morning when I saw this!  I was reading my email, eating breakfast, when I came across this message from a Burn the Fat reader who wrote, “Hey Tom, Have you heard of Fat Water? I’m serious! This actually exists! I’d love to hear what you think of it.”

Since 1989, when I started in the fitness business, I’ve seen dozens of diet supplements burst onto the scene, sell into the multi-millions, only to drop off the map and end up buried in the graveyard of fat loss products (that we now know never worked in the first place). The shelf life is usually a year or two – three if they’re lucky – before the FTC sues or the product dies a natural death as the novelty wears off. They’re promptly replaced by “the next big thing” … an African cactus, a berry from the Amazonian rain forests, an ancient Asian tea, an herb from the Himalayas… sound familiar? There’s always an exotic story that hooks people again, isn’t there?

Everyone has heard the commercials at least once. Sensa, the miracle supplement that will help you lose weight without resorting to a diet! Trainers and doctors have been inundated with questions about the supplement for years. Now, thanks to the FTC, the advertisements have stopped. Sensa marketing has been put on hold until the company can provide some evidence that their product works.

Creatine is so well researched, with so much real-world feedback supporting its use, it has often been called “the supplement that actually works.” As most of our readers realize (especially after reading our exposes, like the one on fat burner scams), it’s no exaggeration to say that 95% or more of the supplements in the muscle-building, fat loss and sports nutrition market do not work as advertised, or may even be harmful. So when something comes along that actually does work and is proven safe, it’s worth taking a closer look.

Enough is enough. Everywhere we go, we are being inundated with ads promising us that taking a few pills a day will burn fat. Turn on the television and you hear doctors recommending the latest and greatest fat burner (here’s a little secret: most doctors take only one class in nutrition during their education, and thus know very little about nutrition and metabolism). If you want to waste your money on fat burners, go ahead and stop reading. If you want to learn the truth, keep reading. We’re going to take an evidence-based approach, and see what the actual scientific research says about these popular fat burners.

Yesterday a reader alerted me to a “new miracle fat burner” that has been making its rounds around the internet. She told me it came from an African tree and a “clinical study” showed that subjects lost 28 pounds of fat in 10 weeks – get this – “with no change in diet or exercise!” That’s right, just pop the pill. The advertisement even quoted the study it came from. Wow, so a study exists and an advertisement on the internet says it’s true. That does it. It must be true then right? (face palm).

Acai Berry has been touted as a powerhouse superfood and weight loss miracle. The truth is, not only are most of the health claims unproven, the weight loss claims have no basis whatsoever.  Although the Acai craze probably peaked a couple years ago, it never went away and the acai berry diet is now back in the news. This month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed 10 more lawsuits against fake acai websites.  Shady business practices on the internet have made acai marketing one of the biggest scams in weight loss history, but people are still buying this baloney.  By the end of this article, you’ll have seen undeniable proof that the Acai Berry Weight Loss Diet is an absolute fraud.

An investigation on protein drinks published in the July edition of Consumer Reports magazine, which was then picked up by CBS and NPR, has been causing waves of concern or even alarm to ripple through the fitness and bodybuilding world. Supplement companies are up in arms and people are wondering whether they should stop drinking protein shakes after the magazine said they tested 15 protein drinks for heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury) and 3 of them came up above the proposed safe limits…

The United States Food And Drug Administration (FDA) has warned dieters and bodybuilders to “immediately” stop taking the weight loss diet pill Hydroxycut, citing 23 reports linking the supplement to liver damage and the death of a teenager…