GNC Total Lean Thermo CLA Fat Burner Review // Does This Work?

Ben BA(Hons), PGCert

Contents show

GNC Total Lean Thermo CLA Fat Burner First Look:

Have you ever been in to a grocery store and found the own brand products that offer no fancy or posh looking packaging or labels?

General speaking we expect those products to not be of the highest quality and the price reflects this.

The only way of knowing what the product is is by actually reading the large, plain text or guessing from the shape.

Bread is pretty simple, as are cans of beans.

This could literally be any old supplement. It’s plain and boring. Yet, there isn’t exactly much of a big saving.

I digress.

I have had a funny old week. My car destroyed its brakes, probably because I have gained so much weight and the old anchors couldn’t do their job properly.

So, it went to the junk yard and I have bought another cheap ass car. A fancy French number, so what you may be thinking is that I am a masochist…well at this rate I will be cycling 60 miles to work so I could be.

However, this could be natures way of telling me to just do some cardio.

However, I want to cheat a little. I need a helping hand and it may come in the form of this rather bland looking fat burner from GNC.

Products that look plain can be deceiving. My car looks plain but is very comfortable. Plus I prefer the cheapest corn flakes in the grocery store tot he branded Kellogs.

Maybe this will be the Kellog beating cornflake of the fat burner world.

Ingredients

L-carnitine – Acetyl-L-carnitine helps the body produce energy. It is important for heart and brain function, muscle movement, and many other body processes.

It is a very popular supplement and widely proven to be active drugs for the therapy of symptoms associated with male aging. Any fat loss tends to be associated with the extra energy provided by this compound which in turn increases exercise.

https://examine.com/supplements/l-carnitine/

Green Tea – well known to have many powerful health benefits. Clinical studies suggest that green tea extract may boost metabolism and help burn fat.

One study found that the combination of green tea and caffeine improved weight loss and maintenance in people who were overweight and moderately obese.

Some researchers think that substances in green tea known as catechins are responsible for the herb’s fat-burning effect. Green tea extract is found in many a good fat burning supplement.

http://news.psu.edu/story/310179/2014/04/02/research/research-suggests-green-tea-exercise-boost-weight-loss-health

Conjugated Linolenic Acid (CLA) – Initial reports and studies have showed that CLA helped a bunch of women who did no exercise lose 9% body fat.

However, further studies are showing very mixed, if not medicore results that aren’t really setting the world alight, in fact the side effects are having their presence felt moreso outweighing any real benefits.

Any benefits that were found meant that the composition had to be greater than 80%.

http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/conjugated-linoleic-acid-cla

Caffeine – This can assist with endurance, tested athletes saw an edge from caffeine in scientific studies. In some trials, the stimulant boosted athletes’ speed. In others, it helped them last longer before they spent all their energy.

Caffeine also raises the metabolism which means you burn more calories. Some studies show that it can curb soreness after exercise, too. This means you could get back to your training sooner and training means more calories burnt. This is present in all 3 of our Top Fat Burners.

Caffeine Anhydrous is the purest form so always look for that.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16076

Vitamin E – It is an antioxidant, a substance that may help prevent damage to the body’s cells. Antioxidants may provide protection against serious diseases including heart disease and cancer.

http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/vitamin-e

Dose:

The advice is to take 2 soft gels twice daily which is 3986.6mg.

This is a solid amount and rather impressive.

Effects & Benefits:

Everything included in this fat burner is beneficial in one shape or another.

L-Carntine is great for processing foods and producing energy for that 60 mile bike ride I may have to start doing.

Caffeine is a stimulant which can help stay awake and help on that bike ride. It is also a thermogenic so can help raise your body temperature and raise the metabolism which means more calories burned. This is the purest form of Caffeine too.

Green Tea is another proven fat burning ingredient and found in the best fat burners along with Caffeine.

Now CLA is the only ingredient that has a few question marks above its head.

In some tests it has shown to help reduce body fat while not even being accompanied by an exercise regime This sounds perfect for most, myself included.

However, it has not yielded the same, positive results in every study which kind of takes the wind from its sails.

One thing to note though, is that in the tests whereby a positive result was gained, the composition had to be in excess of 80%. However, we do not know the composition with this.

Vitamin E is necessary for the health of the body’s cells and also product against disease.

Negatives:

On looks alone I would veer off to something that is more eye catching. Sorry but it is true. This looks about as interesting as a glass tumbler, minus the Scotch.

That aside, while we have a big, healthy daily dose of nearly 4000mg it is such as shame that there’s only 5 ingredients. A few more or at least 3 more would have bolstered the fat burning battalion.

The next point is the inclusion of CLA.

CLA is not entirely conclusive in its effectiveness, one this that is known is that every time it has been successful at helping people lose weight there has been a composition of at least 80%.

Unfortunately we are not privy to such information so it could either be worth trying and seeing how the results pan out or just not worth bothering with.

GNC Total Lean Thermo CLA Fat Burner Review Conclusion:

We need to know the composition of that CLA to know how worthwhile this fat burner potentially is.

If it is over 80% I would say it is worth gambling on.

However, not knowing that, considering that then only leaves 3 proven ingredients to help with stimulating fat burn and weight loss. Plus it is also $35.

This needs a number of further ingredients such as B6, Zinc, B12 plus Cayenne to make a more compelling case.