Trying to find the best fat burner for women can be a veritable battle field with so many brands fighting it out for your attention.
This no-man’s land is a bit of a minefield with everyone claiming they have the best and most clinically supported formula around so we thought we’d simplify things by collecting what we believe to be the best fat burner for women.
Not only did we look for the most effective fat burner in terms of it’s potency alone, but looked at brand image and reputation, safety and generally whether or not they had women in mind at all when designing their products.
Men and women’s physiology is different, and though there’s a lot of crossover sometimes what works for one just doesn’t work for the other.
Our Choices
- Hourglass Fit – The best fat burner for women
- Instant Knockout Cut
- Hunter Burn
- PhenQ
How Do The Best Fat Burners For Women Over 50 Work?
Let’s not pull our punches here, it’s a complicated and confusing world of diet pills, fat burning ingredients and poor advice designed specifically to make you spend money and don’t worry, we totally get it.
You may be thinking to yourself, “but surely all I need is a healthy diet to lose weight” and honestly, you’d be right. What we’re underestimating however is the ease of which a healthy diet is attained and more importantly, maintained.
That’s the true beauty of weight loss supplements; it’s not going to be a magic pill to simply make you suddenly burn that excess belly fat, but it’s going to ease the weight loss journey and at the very least help you reach your goals.
In fact we’d argue that if you find fat burner supplements that make claims such as “we are the best belly fat burner” then you should follow your instincts because yeah, it’s too good to be true. What isn’t too good to be true however is the effectiveness of the choices on this list.
Now to reiterate, none of these will solve your problems for you, but if you’re already putting in the effort these could be what gets you over that finish line.
For a good example of this let’s talk about thermogenic fat burners. The whole idea here is that it increases your resting metabolic rate which is fancy talk for the rate at which you burn calories without physical exertion, but this is by no means a replacement for a healthy diet and exercise. It’s just an extra cherry on top, and just one of the many ways these excellent supplements help you cross the threshold and start really burning fat.
Now we don’t want to give too much away right now but we’ll be getting into great detail about how these work once we start breakdown each fat burner supplement individually. First let’s discuss what factors to consider when trying to decide on the best fat burning supplement.
How To Find The Best Fat Burner For Women Over 50
There’s a lot to look out for in this industry, and many tricks up the sleeves of fat burning supplements that can easily catch out someone unwary. If this isn’t your first trip around the block then feel free to skip this section, but if you’re new to this and would like to conduct your own research, this is the what we look out for in order to distinguish a better natural fat burner from the worst of them.
- Are the ingredients clinically proven?
- Has is been tested on humans?
- Are the ingredients dosed properly?
- Is the formula transparent?
- Is the brand reputable?
Are The Ingredients Clinically Proven?
It’s fair to say this is probably the most confusing of the lot, as most fat burners claim to be entirely clinically proven.
The devil is in the details, which is why we sift through published scientific papers in order determine what has been observed using the best scientific methods. This can provide valuable insights into these ingredients and tells us everything from the mechanisms at play to the effect it will have on the human body.
For example, it’s terribly easy to say something helped someone to lose weight, but without the proper scientific conditions there are a myriad of variables going completely unconsidered. It’s actually very natural for humans to draw conclusions based on convenient evidence without digging too deep into the topic.
If you swap to a different type of oil you may correlate that with losing weight, when in reality you’ve unwittingly purchased much healthier food or have opted for less fast food because you want to sub-consciously want to use this fancy oil you’ve just spent so much money on.
It may come across as outlandish but the human mind is impressionable and manipulated by our surroundings in more ways than we can personally account for, which is why the scientific method is so important.
Now that we’ve established the importance of proper scientific method, let’s talk about the ways in which a company might claim an ingredient is “clinically proven”.
Has It Been Tested On Humans? (Quality Of scientific study)
What we’re getting to the bottom of here is how exactly it has been “proven” to work. See, it’s unfortunately quite common for a fat burning supplement to state it’s formula is proven but, upon closer inspection human trials have been inconclusive and instead all that’s really been proven is that we’ve found an effective way for rats to stay in shape.
Now don’t get us wrong, we’re all for rats staying in shape, but it’s not going to tell us a whole lot about exactly how it might effect our human bodies, and that’s the crux of it. It’s important when looking into things to look out for the studies that have been tested and shown results on humans.
Beyond that we look at how it was tested. Ideally we’re looking for is randomised double blind placebo control studies, which are largely considered the gold standard for testing such things that are usually included in a fat burning supplement.
Are The Ingredients Dosed Properly?
So we’ve looked it up and would you look at that, this ingredient has been tested on humans and we’ve found results, so now we need to start comparing the dosage used within the trial with the dosage included in the fat burners.
These clinical trials are largely available publicly and for free, and even those that are hidden behind a pay wall will still provide their abstract. For a lot of people though, this sort of research is quite intimidating and the manufacturers of fat burning pills are full aware of this fact and will-fully abuse it.
This is where most fat burners will catch you, as it may be the case that this ingredient is an effective natural fat burner, but upon closer inspection it’s been found to be dosed at about half the amount that was found to be effective and we’re left wondering why it didn’t work on us.
Is The Formula Transparent?
So everything else is looking good, but we go to check to dosage and… what’s a proprietary blend?
Unfortunately in terms of regulations on labelling for fat burning pills there’s a bit of leeway with how they present the information because they’re able to list the ingredients as part of a proprietary blend that they themselves have concocted.
You might be thinking “well all fat burning supplements are blends of different ingredients” and you’d be absolutely right. The difference is in the presentation of information; one allows the product to hide potentially (and probably) poor doses whereas the other honourably allows full visibility.
This visibility is something we actively look for, and even if the blend has enough room for everything to be dosed correctly, if given a choice between a formula with a proprietary blend and one without one, we’ll choose the transparent formula.
Is The Brand Reputable?
You’re probably starting to see how it all kind of comes together, without well researched ingredients you won’t know if the weight loss supplements will even work, and if that research hasn’t been properly conducted on humans subjects then how can we advocate for it’s use as one of the best weight loss supplements?
When it comes to reputation it’s a lot more intuitive than the rest of them as it’s a concept we’re all deeply familiar with. It all comes down to one question: Can we trust them?
If a company has previously been caught in a lie about a product, or have exhibited reprehensible behaviours then we wouldn’t allow them onto our lists. Every single product we recommend to you comes only from the most reputable brands and this is something we are steadfast in.
Now you know the criteria, let’s present what we found to be the best of the best women’s fat burners.
Hourglass Fit – Our Choice For The Best Fat Burner For Women
Our number one choice is ofcourse Hourglass Fit, a fantastic fat burner for women that is packed to the brim with the best ingredients for appetite suppression, increasing metabolic rate and providing essential nutrients and vitamins to help you to stay on your diet a lot more easily.
Let’s take a deep dive into what makes Hourglass Fit our top top pick for the best fat burner for women.
Ingredients List
B Vitamins (B2, B6 and B12)
We all know vitamins are essential to good health, and it’s no exception that regulating body weight is a part of said health. For example, Vitamin B6 supplementation has been demonstrated to reduce BMI and improve body composition and biochemical factors associated with obesity [1] .
Vitamin B2 is here as it is an essential component of two major coenzymes. As a simplification, what coenzymes do is they assist enzymes as a catalyst for their reactions, helping us to properly synthesise energy from foods. The two coenzymes that Vitamin B2 play an active role in the metabolism of fats [2].
Vitamin B12 is an interesting one as it is directly involved in what’s known as lipid metabolism. Lipid metabolism includes both the synthesis and degradation of fatty acids. The choice between synthesis and degradation represents an important regulatory step in our bodies and directly reflects the energy stores available to the body [3].
Now that all sounds very complicated, and it is, but what we can deduce then is that without proper levels of Vitamin B12 our body will not be able to properly synthesise the stored fat in our bodies, reducing the effectiveness of any calorie controlled diet which can have a direct influence on our energy levels throughout the day whilst engaging in calorie deficit.
Chromium
Chromium is one that we see in a bunch of women’s fat burners, and it seems to be its effects on insulin that is the key here, and a lot of the testing has been done on women in particular for its potential in treating Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.
In these tests it’s been observed that Chromium supplementation has positive effects on BMI [4] and further studies have been conducted on Chromium as a weight loss tool, and have found it to provide a small amount of weight loss in overweight and obese adults [5]
Zinc
Though it’s been debated in the medical world for some time, losing weight in specific zones such has always been desirable, with some even going so far as to label themselves as a “belly fat burner”. Zinc is one of the few supplements that may actually contribute positively to this debate.
A 2019 study performed on 40 obese subjects over a period of 15-weeks had both groups engage in the same calorie controlled diet (300kcal below estimated requirements). The group that supplemented with zinc showed significantly higher results in the reduction of body weight, body mass index, waist circumference and hip circumference [6], which shows that if there’s anything to help you tackle stubborn belly fat it’s likely Zinc.
Glucomannan
Personal willpower is a very difficult thing to manage, and can come with feelings of shame and frustration if met with failure. It makes sense then that many fat burners for women contain ingredients to help suppress appetite, and Glucomannan stands above all in the field of appetite suppression.
There’s simply no ingredient as effective at reducing portion sizes and snacking.
The mechanism at play here is ingeniously simple, with it essentially increasing in size once in your stomach, making you feel satiated with much less food. There have been many studies showing a significant weight loss, with one showing 5.5lbs lost over an 8 week period [7] when supplementing Glucomannan an hour before meals.
Cayenne Pepper Extract
If you’ve explored women’s fat burners before you may have encountered the term “thermogenesis”, or have perhaps previously taken a thermogenic fat burner. What this means essentially as an increase to our resting metabolic rate, and as such an increase in energy consumption by the body.
This means that we’ll essentially be losing weight faster without increasing our physical exercise, though we recommend this should be used alongside physical movement and not as a replacement for it.
This thermogenic fat burner effect has been observed in clinical studies testing the efficacy of Cayenne Pepper Extract, generally focused more closely on the capsaicinoids present [8]. In vitro studies have even concluded that that capsaicinoids can mitigate risk factors associated with obesity and diabetes via its positive effects on insulin resistance and fat mass accumulation [9].
5-HTP
When we described Glucomannan as being on top of the world of appetite suppression, we definitely meant it, but every king needs a queen. 5-HTP is just as effective when it comes to appetite suppression, and the two of them marry together to help suppress appetite and cravings to the point that the word snack will altogether leave your vocabulary.
There’s a fantastic study that shows how effective 5-htp is in which 20 obese patients were randomly assigned to recieve 5htp or a placebo. There were two consecutive 6 week periods that were measured, with no prescribed diet during the first period. Significant weight loss was observed in the 5-htp treated patients during both periods, alongside a reduction in carbohydrate consumption and a consistent presence of early satiety [10].
Potential Side Effects
Hourglass fit is designed from clinically tested, natural fat burner for women. It has no known side effects when taken in line with manufacturer-recommended dosage. If particularly sensitive however, glucomannan has been known to cause some bowel distress. This is very uncommon, but worth mentioning just in case.
Significant Information
- You take Hourglass fit with a big glass of water, 4 times a day.
- Each bottle contains 120 capsules (a 30 day supply).
- Suggested intake period: 90 days
- Caffeine free fat burner.
- Only available directly.
Instant Knockout
In our number two spot here we have Instant Knockout, a fantastic fat burner for women that shares a lot of the same ingredients with Hourglass, but differs in rather interesting ways.
Both have strong appetite suppression effects with glucomannan and 5htp, but instant knockout have opted to include caffeine anhydrous.
Caffeine is quite an effective fat burner for women, and there’s a lot of great reasons for that. Firstly if caffeine is ingested in a period between 30 minute/ 4 hours before a meal it is found to reduce caloric intake [11], helping to improve to appetite suppression effects of glucomannan and 5htp.
That’s not enough for caffeine though, as it also has been clinically proven to enhance thermogenesis and energy expenditure [12] and ofcourse how can we forget; why do we drink coffee? For energy! It doesn’t take a clinical trial to prove this, but we found one anyway and of course caffeine influences cognitive performance, alertness and wakefulness [13].
In terms of vitamin content, Instant knockout swaps out Vitamin B2 for Vitamin D3, of which many of us just don’t get enough of. In fact it’s noted that around 24% of Americans are deficient.
We found a 2019 study to support its use as a weight loss supplement that shows improving the Vitamin D status in obese subjects with a Vitamin D deficiency in combination with diet resulted in further weight loss [14].
Potential Side Effects
There are very few side effects with any association to this fat burner for women, and that’s thanks to its use of clinically tested and natural fat burner ingredients. Those sensitive to stimulants would ofcourse be advised to take with caution, and if you’re not used to it you may come across side effects such as headaches, difficulty sleeping and shakes. Stimulant sensitivity aside any other adverse effects will be very uncommon.
Significant Information
- Take with a glass of water 4 times a day
- Best to take the last pill no later than 5 hours before going to bed
- 120 capsules per bottle (one month’s supply)
- Vegan friendly
- Available directly and via other online vendors such as Amazon
Hunter Burn
Our last podium finish goes out to Hunter Burn, an absolutely wonderful fat burner for women with a potent and most importantly, fully transparent formula. We say that because a lot of the lesser fat burning supplements genuinely rely on hiding their formula in order to market themselves effectively.
Hunter Burn knows that good fat burning ingredients speak for themselves, and that the best fat burners for women focus entirely on helping women burn fat instead of bloating their own marketing budget.
One of the greatest strengths of Hunter Burn is being able to target stubborn body fat, earning its status as one of the best natural fat burners on the market today. It carries a lot of the same ingredients that we’ve already shone a light on, such as glucomannan and Cayenne pepper extract, but it can’t be overstated how effective these are as an appetite suppressant and thermogenic fat burner.
One of the ways Hunter Burn stands out from the crowd is with its inclusion of matcha green tea extract. This leaf extract, also known as camellia sinensis, helps to power your fitness levels to new heights.
We found a 2018 study that showed that drinking Matcha green tea will increase fat oxidation during brisk walking in women. Participants completed a 30 minute walk at a walking speed of 0.4 kilometres an hour and were found that have an increased metabolic rate [15].
This inclusion of matcha green tea extract shows how Hunter Burn considered women’s fat burners from the start and proves it’s a worthy contender for best fat burner for women.
There’s two other quite unique fat burning ingredients here, with amino acid L-Theanine and White Kidney Bean Extract.
Let’s start with L-Theanine as it’s quite possibly one of the most interesting and exciting ingredients we’ve yet discussed. We’re all aware of the idea of body fat, but what is less commonly known is the scientific name for this: Adipose tissue.
There is what is known as White adipose tissue, which is specialised for energy storage, and brown adipose tissue, which is specialised for energy expenditure and thermogensis [16].
How L-theanine works is it activates the browning of white adipose tissues, making it more available for the body to access for energy. When dosed with L-theanine it’s been found that there is improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity [17].
White Kidney Bean Extract is interesting as it seems to directly reduce the way in which our bodies digest and absorb carbohydrates [18]. In todays day and age carbs are almost impossible to avoid and control as they’re everywhere, and this has been a major contributing factor in the rise of obesity
Potential Side Effects
Thanks to this fantastic fat burning supplement building it’s formula from natural ingredients there are no adverse effects directly associated. As previously mentioned however specific sensitivity can lead to glucomannan giving people gastro-intestinal issues and the study we read on white kidney bean extract [18] did mention a link with bloating, flatulance and diarrhoea, though it went on to state this was well tolerated and absolutely safe with doses all the way up to 3,000 mg per day, 6 times the amount contained within Hunter Burn
Significant Information
- Suggested to be taken as two capsules with a large glass of water, three times per day
- 180 pills included in one month’s supply
- Available directly as well as through via other online vendors such as Amazon
- Caffeine free fat burning supplement
PhenQ
The UK based company Wolfson Brands Limited has become a very reliable and well-known name, and that’s well earned given they’ve been building this reputation for more than 10 years at this point. Their diet pills are definite contenders for the best fat burner for women, with a large yet surprisingly focused ingredients list designed with the female body in mind. This impressive formula showcases they have an intimate understanding on how the body burns stored fat and aims to both reduce counteract this process. Let’s take a look at the formula.
PhenQ takes a slightly different approach than the other fat burners for women. Don’t get us wrong, there are still shared ingredients such as caffeine, Chromium and capsaicinoids (though this time via capsicum extract), but there’s more differences than there similarities. In fact PhenQ has what they’ve called their “key ingredient”, so let’s take a look at that first to see why it’s worthy of such an accolade in one of the best fat burning pills available.
Alpha-Lacys Resest (ALR) is a patented synergistic combination of Alpha-Lipoic Acid (ALA) and Cysteine. Although alpha-lipoic acid and cystine are worthy inclusions themselves, it’s the combination that really sets them above the rest when it comes to fat burning supplements, possessing somewhat of a symbiotic relationship.
To simplify things a bit, we can essentially say that ALA is one of the main ways our body breaks down carbohydrates, and it is an anti-oxidant that is made in the body, but can also be consumed via certain foods.
To say there is substantial evidence that ALA is one of the most effective weight loss supplements in the world is an absolute understatement. In fact, we found a systematic review that was conducted in 2022 that included 16 trials with over 1,000 patients that concluded significantly reduced body weight was a result of supplementing ALA [19]
That’s one it’s own however, when combined with Cystine to create ALR, a lot more gets done. First of all it fights fatigue by improving adenosine triphosphate synthesis (ATP). ATP is within the cells of all living things and has the crucial role of converting the chemical energy provided by food and putting it to work [20].
Conclusion
So there we have it folks, our list for the best women’s fat burners. There’s everything from appetite suppression to stimulated metabolisms here as well as everything in between.
We truly believe if you try any of the products we’ve spoken about today that you’ll come away from it feeling very pleased with your purchase.
If you’re looking to get that hourglass figure then you certainly can not go wrong with our best fat burner for woman Hourglass Fit. Its fantastic appetite suppression properties coupled with its thermogenic fat burner effects you’ll have an easier time reducing caloric intake and find that your body burns calories more easily.
On top of all of that this is a stimulant free fat burner, meaning you’ll be able to tackle that stubborn belly fat even if you’re sensitive to caffeine and other stimulants.
Ofcourse we can’t forget the rest of them, which are still more than worthy of your time and get a large recommendation from us. Whether you’re looking for a potent pre workout fat burner like Instant Knockout Cut, a high dosage fat burning supplement such as Hunter Burn or looking to try one of the most exciting fat burners on the market with Phen Q, you’ll be in good hands.
1 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8331291/
2 – ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Riboflavin-HealthProfessional/
3 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7400011/
4 – pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28595797/
5 – pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24293292/
6 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889702
7 – pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6096282/
8 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6088424/
9 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8194937/
10 – pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1384305/
11 – pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28446037/
12 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6467726/
13 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462044/
14 – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30246883
15 – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29345213/
16 – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3661118/
17 – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33863801/
18 – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7284421/
About Dr. Kate Gundy MD