Ranking the best fat burners for men of 2021

Category winners

Best fat burner for men overall: Instant Knockout

Instant Knockout boasts a veritable who’s who of the best natural fat burners out there, including cayenne pepper, caffeine, green coffee bean extract, and green tea extract. There’s no other option on the market that offers such a wide variety of efficacious ingredients.

Best fast-acting fat burner for men: Instant Knockout

Given its history as a weight cut enhancer for MMA fighters, Instant Knockout is perfect if you want to burn fat as fast as possible—its fat oxidation properties are top of the line. 

Best fat burner for men with testosterone boosters: CrazyMass Cutting Stack

CrazyMass Cutting Stack is specifically designed to accelerate fat loss by sustaining high levels of testosterone. Alongside its Testosteroxn blend, you also get supplement combos for increasing fat oxidation while retaining as much muscle mass as possible. 

Best fat burner for men over 40: Hunter Burn

Hunter Burn takes a head-on approach to address some of the unique problems men over 40 face when it comes to losing fat. Hunter Burn includes natural carb blockers to counter increased carb sensitivity, matcha green tea to amp up fat oxidation, and cayenne pepper to increase your body’s baseline metabolic rate. 

Best fat burner for men who work out: PhenQ

PhenQ’s unique combination of thermogenics helps you amplify the natural fat burning effects of your workout, plus tamp down on your appetite after long gym sessions. This keeps your caloric consumption low and your caloric expenditure high, which is exactly what you need to cut fat. 

Best fat burner for men with belly fat: Hunter Burn

Tired of a beer gut? Hunter Burn’s combination of fat oxidizers and carb blockers can put you on the fast track to shaving off pounds of fat, especially when it comes to your visceral fat—i.e. the unhealthy fat that concentrates around your belly. 

Who should buy a fat burner for men?

Men looking to lose weight and cut body fat will have more success if they leverage some of the hormonal advantages that make getting fit and muscular easier for men.

Broadly, there are two kinds of men who can benefit from a fat burner: the first is regular guys who are overweight and are looking for a supplement to accelerate their weight loss. These men likely have lower testosterone than they should, since having a lot of body fat is known to increase estrogen levels and depress testosterone levels.

For them, a fat burner specifically designed for men can help increase their androgen levels, plus achieve some more muscle growth, which will in turn help with their weight loss goals.

The increased metabolic rate that is created by the thermogenic ingredients is particularly helpful for these men, as their baseline metabolic rate is liable to go down as they are cutting their calorie intake to lose weight. 

The second group of men who can benefit from a fat burner for men are bodybuilders, weight lifters, and other athletes who have been bulking to gain mass for a while, and are now looking to cut body fat while maintaining their muscle mass gains.

For these men, it’s important that they keep up a diet that’s high in protein, and continue working out, but they need to shift their body’s metabolic focus from adding overall body mass to cutting body fat (but not muscle). The beneficial shifts in hormonal profiles and metabolism induced by a good fat burner for men can help induce these changes.

Whether you fit into the first or the second group, a fat burner specifically formulated for male physiology could be a good way to increase your rate of fat loss, especially if you are looking to maintain muscle mass at the same time. A good fat burner might help you boost your fat loss above and beyond what you could get from a diet and exercise program. 

How we ranked

To formulate our rankings, we first started by aggregating all of the fat burning supplements on the market. To do so, we looked for multi-ingredient products that took advantage of the best and most effective fat burning supplements, like CLA, green tea extract, and garcinia cambogia.

We ditched any supplements that relied on potentially risky ingredients like bitter orange or its active compound, synephrine, as there are too many case reports of side effects occurring in these kinds of supplements. 

Among all of the fat burners that contained at least three different effective fat-burning supplements, we then started to select for supplements that would be particularly effective for men.

This meant that products which included ingredients known to boost testosterone, such as zinc and magnesium, remained, while products that did not do much for male hormones or energy levels got dropped from consideration.

Men can generally handle caffeine a bit better than women (partially because of body size, and partially because of hormonal differences), so we were more tolerant of caffeine than we were in our rankings of fat burners for women.

Still, we did not consider any product that leaned too heavily on caffeine as its primary or only fat burner. While caffeine pills are definitely an effective way to suppress your appetite and boost energy expenditure, top fat burning supplements for men can do much better than that.

Once we had identified the fat burners that contained ingredients that are particularly effective in men, we came up with our final rankings by scoring these supplements according to how well the ingredients harmonized with one another.

For example, supplements that increased energy expenditure and suppressed appetite scored better than supplements that accomplished just one of these tasks.

Supplements that contained ingredients that support each other, like green coffee bean extract and green tea extract, were likewise rated higher, while supplements that contained too many binders, fillers, and other unnecessary ingredients scored worse or got dropped entirely.

Our final rankings represent the best a man can get when it comes to fat burning supplements: whether you are just trying to ditch your beer gut or you are trying to get an extremely lean and muscular physique, you’ll find what you need in our rankings. 

Benefits

For men, weight loss is a great goal, but fat loss in particular is even better. If you can selectively lose fat mass while retaining your muscle mass, your health will improve even more and you’ll look even better.

Figuring out how to tune your body to burn more fat while on a weight loss program is in large part a matter of picking the right supplements.

When it comes to fat burning supplements for men, there are a tremendous number of options. These options have widely varying levels of evidence for their efficacy.

One of the most-proven and reliable fat burning supplements is green tea extract. Researchers initially noticed that obesity was less of a problem in nations that tend to consume a lot of green tea, like Japan and China.

However, many other confounding factors could cause that type of association, so a specific kind of study was needed to determine whether there was a real effect.

Such a study came along in 2005, when scientists in the Netherlands examined a large group of obese and overweight individuals over a four-month period (1).

When they analyzed the data, they found that a green tea supplement improved weight management during the follow-up period, independent of caffeine consumption.

This is an important observation, because caffeine itself is a powerful fat burner (which is way some men use caffeine pills). That’s why a number of fat burning supplements, even ones without green tea derived ingredients, still include caffeine.

Caffeine is a powerful fat burner. Research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that administration of even a small dose of caffeine has significant fat burning effects (2). This study looked at a single 100 mg dose of caffeine, which is about as much as one cup of coffee.

Many fat burning supplements have twice this amount or more. The caffeine dose had a significant fat-burning effect in both obese and “post-obese” (meaning people who had lost weight and were no longer obese) subjects. The good news is that the energy expenditure increase appears to be greater in the obese subjects, even though the relative dose that they get is smaller.

Due to their larger body mass, an obese person usually has to take a higher dose of a supplement to get the same effect. In this case, though, perhaps due to the increased number of fat cells in the body, an obese person actually gets more benefit from a given dose of caffeine.

Back on the topic of green tea extract, though, the mechanism of action for green tea extract seems to be related to its active ingredient, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).

Research in the International Journal of Obesity has found that EGCG independently increases the metabolic activity in fat cells (3). Furthermore, this effect appears to be magnified by caffeine, meaning that the two work synergistically to increase fat cell activity.

The exact mechanism involves some complex cellular biology, but the net effect is a magnification of fat burning activity beyond what would be achieved with either supplement on its own.

The upside of this is that, unless you want to avoid caffeine in your fat burning supplements for its side effects, you should look for at least a moderate amount of caffeine alongside green tea extract for maximum efficacy.

Another strong fat burning supplement you should look for in a fat burning supplement is conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA. While robust studies in humans are lacking, there is good evidence from animal studies to suggest that it both reduces your appetite and more importantly increases the metabolic activity of fat cells, making CLA a staple in many appetite suppressants. 

A study in the journal Obesity Reviews cites a number of studies on CLA and recommends that it be considered as a legitimate long-term weight loss supplement (4).

Cayenne pepper could help men lose body fat. Among some of the more modern and newly discovered fat burning supplements, the most attractive is almost certainly capsaicin, also known as cayenne pepper extract.

According to research published by scientists at the Manchester Food Research Center at Manchester Metropolitan University, a significant body of experimental literature indicates that capsaicin is a beneficial fat burning supplement (5).

In their study, they pooled the results from several different experiments, with a grand total of over 500 subjects. The data showed that capsaicin, when taken for one to two years, can significantly reduce fat mass.

One benefit of capsaicin over other proven fat burners like green tea is that it does not require caffeine to work optimally, and does not seem to have the same stimulant-inducing effects.

There are many other supplements with varied levels of scientific support: chromium, forskolin, green coffee bean extract, and garcinia cambogia are all found in many popular weight loss supplements, but the experimental evidence for them does not rise to the same level as caffeine, green tea extract, capsaicin, or CLA.

This doesn’t mean they don’t work; indeed, there is good evidence from cell culture experiments or studies on mice, but the human studies aren’t there yet.

Side effects

Fat burning supplements have been an area of supplementation that’s been rife with side effect controversies. Market leaders like Hydroxycut have had to reformulate their ingredients several times because of safety concerns related to ingredients like ephedra, synephrine, and hydroxycitric acid.

Fortunately, the best fat burning supplements have side effect profiles that are pretty mild. One notable exception to this is also one of the most surprising: caffeine, of all things, has a pretty lengthy side effect list.

In high doses, like those found in some of the more extreme fat burning supplements on the market, caffeine can cause jitters, irritability, nausea, and (as you might guess) an inability to sleep.

Knowing your own caffeine sensitivity is very helpful when figuring out what level of caffeine you can tolerate.

The best-proven fat burning supplements also tend to be the safest. Green tea extract has no significant side effects; indeed, it’s often taken for its ability to boost general health and well-being and fend off chronic disease.

CLA, as a natural food ingredient, has a similarly unremarkable adverse effect profile.

Capsaicin has been widely studied for its pain-relief properties; the only side effect noted in those studies was localized burning sensation when capsaicin is applied to the skin.

By analogy, this could cause an upset stomach, so pay attention to the capsaicin content of your supplements if you have a sensitive stomach.

Recommended dosage

The ideal dose of a fat burning supplement for men is going to vary greatly depending on what the ingredients are. For the most part, reputable manufacturers deliver the ingredients at the appropriate dosages.

With caffeine, the thing to be careful about is not taking too much. Even small amounts of caffeine have fat-burning effects, so you don’t need to overdo it with a high dose that’s likely to cause adverse effects.

Just 100 or 150 mg is plenty to induce a thermogenic effect (more on thermogenics here). Green tea extract is typically supplemented at 400-800 mg doses, which seem to be ideal for fat burning.

CLA needs to be delivered at a higher dose; some studies recommend doses as high as a few grams per day. Capsaicin, given how new it is as a fat burning supplement, does not have a well-established effective dose.

For what it’s worth, published studies so far use doses in the range of 3 to 10 mg per day, though a few studies have used more.

FAQ

Q: Are fat burners good? 

A: A fat burner is only as good as its constituent ingredients. A fat burner that relies on a mega-dose of caffeine, or potentially risky ingredients like ephedra or synephrine is definitely not good for you.

On the other hand, if a fat burner includes powerful, safe, and effective fat burning agents, such as green tea extract, or uses a supplementation strategy that increases your body’s natural fat burning capacity, like supplementing with zinc and magnesium to boost testosterone levels, can make a real difference when it comes to a weight loss program or a fat-cutting cycle for an athlete. 

Q: What is the best fat burner and appetite suppressant combo? 

A: When it comes to the single most effective and versatile fat burner and appetite suppressant, there are a lot of potential candidates, but you can make a particularly strong case for green tea extract.

That’s because green tea extract increases fat oxidation, suppresses appetite, and on top of that, amplifies the benefits of caffeine while ameliorating its negative effects.

It also has a tremendous amount of evidence for its safety and its efficacy. You’ll notice that many of our top-rated fat burners for men contain green tea extract for all of these reasons. 

Q: What’s the best natural fat burner? 

A: When it comes to natural ways to burn fat, several plant extracts are thought to have powerful abilities to boost your body’s fat oxidation.

Green tea extract, green coffee bean extract, and caffeine all fall into this category, to name just a few. These natural fat burners are both safe and effective, making them great ingredients to seek out in a fat burner for men. Indeed, you’ll find these in several of our top-rated fat burners in our rankings. 

Q: What foods burn fat? 

A: Pretty much any lean source of protein, like chicken, fish, or whey protein, is a good way to burn fat. The complex structure of the amino acids in protein means that your body’s baseline metabolic rate increases to a greater extent when you are digesting protein compared to an equivalent amount of calories from carbohydrates or fat.

Moreover, protein has the added benefit of exerting a stronger feeling of satiety, or fullness, after a meal. That means that you are less likely to eat more at a subsequent meal if you’ve had protein-heavy food earlier in the day.

Beyond protein, some of the most popular caffeinated drinks are great ways to burn fat as well: coffee is a phenomenal way to burn fat, as is tea (particularly green tea or matcha tea). 

Q: How can you burn abdominal fat? 

A: Burning away fat from a specific area of your body is tricky: where your body gains fat is dictated mostly by genetics and your body type, not any particulars of your diet or exercise routine.

So, to drop abdominal fat (whether to lose a beer belly or get a six-pack), you need to boost your overall rate of fat oxidation. Thermogenic supplements, like those you’ll find in a fat burner for men, are a great way to do this. Another way to accomplish the same thing is to naturally increase your testosterone levels.

Having higher testosterone induces your body to store less body fat, so doing whatever you can to boost your testosterone will go a long way towards burning abdominal fat as well. 

Q: How can men burn more fat? 

A: To burn more fat, you need to increase your overall caloric expenditure, shift your body’s metabolism towards more fat oxidation, or both.

Increasing overall caloric expenditure is the end goal of a thermogenic supplement, whether it is caffeine, chromium, or CLA. Shifting metabolism is something you can accomplish with green tea extract, caffeine (again), or forskolin.

A rigorous exercise program can help on both fronts; building muscle mass increases your body’s overall metabolic expenditure (as bigger muscles burn more energy) and doing a cardio workout or HIIT training increases your body’s rate of fat oxidation. Combining strategies can help you burn more fat and burn it faster. 

Q: How do you burn body fat without exercise?

A: If exercise isn’t in the cards and you are trying to drop body fat—or if you are already exercising, but want to accelerate your rate of fat loss—you need to look at your diet and your supplementation routine to find a way to boost your metabolism and increase your rate of fat oxidation.

Several of our top-rated fat burners for men are well-suited for men who aren’t exercising and still want to burn fat, as they address both metabolism and fat oxidation.

A high protein, low carb diet can also help burn more body fat without having to exercise, and adding coffee, green tea, or supplements derived from these beverages, can also help with fat loss. Even so, you’ll likely have better results if you do exercise, especially if you employ fat-burning workouts like HIIT training. 

Q: How much body fat can you lose in a week?

A: One of the things that makes fat loss difficult is the fact that it takes long periods of hard work to see results. You can drop a few pounds of fat in a week with some aggressive dieting and supplementation, but for real benefits you need several weeks (and really, several months) of dedication.

If you need to drop weight, but not necessarily body fat, you can use a diuretic, but you’ll be mostly losing water weight, not body fat. 

Related articles

Recap

Though your options for a fat burning supplement seem endless, keeping a few basic guidelines in mind can help select one that’s right for you.

Look for a supplement that has at least a few of the well-established and reasonably effective fat burning ingredients, like green tea extract, moderate doses of caffeine, CLA, and capsaicin.

Other ingredients can be helpful too, but your best shot is going to come from these ingredients. If you are getting a supplement with green tea in it, its efficacy can be magnified by a moderate amount of caffeine.

Finally, be patient. These supplements aren’t going to work overnight, but the evidence is pretty good that they do gradually increase your fat mass loss over time.

For BodyNutrition‘s #1 recommendation for a fat burner for men, click here.