Leanbean Fat Burner Review — Why Is It Female-Focused?

Fat burners are one of the most enticing supplements on the market. Can I really take a pill and burn fat? Leanbean presents an interesting and compelling case. Squarely marketed at women, the product aims to be an “all-natural” fat burner made of ingredients sourced from plants: a tropical Indonesian fruit, a Japanese root, raspberries, tea, coffee. It’s vegetarian, very low in stimulants, and for regular people and athletes alike.

For reasons we’ll discuss below, the product has a bigger emphasis on appetite suppression than a lot of its competitors. Leanbean combines several ingredients commonly found in fat burners with some interesting additions for appetite regulation, which in combination could have a synergistic impact that aids in weight loss.

Who Should Buy Leanbean Fat Burner

• Those who follow a vegetarian diet
• Folks looking for some amount of appetite suppression
• People who value the addition of black pepper for absorption
• Anyone looking to bolster their Vitamin B6 and Vitamin B12 intake

Who Shouldn’t Buy Leanbean Fat Burner

• Anyone wary of potential short-term stomach discomfort
• Folks who are prioritizing a larger amount of raspberry ketones in their fat burner
• Those who don’t want to increase their water intake
• People looking to maintain a tighter budget.

It may make sense to be skeptical of these kinds of products, but there’s more to fat burners than meets the eye. We’re going to discuss what this product might help you with, what it won’t help you with, and hear a Leanbean user’s success story. Her weight loss probably didn’t happen the way you think, and she was candid about what impact she thought Leanbean had on her experience.

Editor’s note: The content on BarBend is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. The opinions and articles on this site are not intended to diagnose, prevent, and/or treat health problems. It’s’s always a good idea to talk to your doctor before beginning a new fitness, nutritional, and/or supplement routine. None of these supplements are meant to treat or cure any disease. If you feel you may be deficient in a particular nutrient or nutrients, please seek out a medical professional.

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Do We Need a “Female Fat Burner”?

First off, this is very clearly marketed as a female fat loss product. If you check out Leanbean’s site, they say their reasoning is,

It has been proven that they find cravings harder to resist than men, meaning their temptation to overeat is far stronger.

They state that this is why Leanbean leans more heavily on appetite suppression than other fat burner supplements. But is the above statement true?

There is evidence to suggest that, generally speaking, women may have a harder time skipping meals than men. (1)(2) According to Dr. Helen Kollias, who holds a doctorate is in microbiology in muscle regeneration and a master’s degree in exercise biochemistry and physiology, it may be linked to a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GNRH). GNRH appears to be pretty sensitive to environmental factors and disruptions in routine.

Men have this hormone as well, but because it’s involved in ovulation, a process where the body typically follows cycles and schedules, it’s possible that among women, GNRH is more acutely disrupted by big changes to one’s diet and lifestyle.

In other words, because cycles and schedules are more intrinsic to the functioning of a woman’s body, it can be tougher for women to disrupt their routine and defy that drive.

This is just one possible explanation. By no means does that mean women are more delicate or less flexible routine-wise than men (there are many advantages women have over men, like an ability to handle greater training volume). It just suggests that men and women experience different challenges in the weight loss process.

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Leanbean Fat Burner Ingredients

Before explaining the effects of this product, let’s quickly take a look at the ingredients of a 4-capsule serving, which is what you’d consume over the course of a day.

• Vitamin B6 — 240 percent of recommended daily intake (RDI)
• Vitamin B12 — 256 percent of RDI
• Chromium — 300 percent of RDI
• Amorphophallus Konjac — Std. to 90 percent Glucomannan, 550 milligrams
• Garcinia cambogia — Std. to 50 percent HCA, 180 milligrams
• Green coffee — Std. to 50 percent Chlorogenic acid, 80 milligrams
• Green tea — Std. to 50 percent polyphenols, 160 milligrams
• Turmeric — 200 milligrams
• Acai berry extract — 80 milligrams
• Cayenne pepper — 60 milligrams
• BioPerine Black Pepper — 20 milligrams
• Raspberry ketones — Eight milligrams

Other ingredients include cellulose, hypromellose (veggie capsule), magnesium stearate, and silica.

[Related: Intermittent Fasting 101: A Guide To Benefits, Muscle Gain, And More]

Glucomannan and Appetite

One of the key ingredients for appetite suppression here is glucomannan. It provides about 500 milligrams over the course of a day. It’s a thickener and gelling agent made from the root of the konjac plant in Japan, where it purportedly has the nickname “the broom of the intestines.” Basically, it absorbs water and expands in your belly to make you feel more full.

There’s a lot of substantial evidence for this effect. One study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that two daily doses of 500 milligrams of glucomannan helped obese people lose more weight than a control group even without making any other lifestyle changes. (3) This and most other studies have patients taking twice what you’ll get in a serving of Leanbean. But we didn’t find any studies suggesting that one 500-milligram dose would be ineffective, and it’s combined with other potential appetite suppressants that we’ll discuss below.

The patients in that study didn’t report any side effects, but it’s pretty commonly reported that glucomannan makes you thirstier. That makes sense since it’s a gel-like substance that expands in the gut by sucking up fluid. This isn’t medical advice, but it appears it may be a good idea to drink plenty of water while taking glucomannan.

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Cayenne Pepper and Appetite

Cayenne pepper is another ingredient that seems to be effective at curbing the appetite, as shown by a lot of research. A 2014 study published in Appetite found capsaicin, an active ingredient in cayenne, decreased the desire to eat after dinner. (4) There are other ingredients in Leanbean with similar effects.

Green Tea and Garcinia Cambogia

Green tea might lower appetite because it might interact with dopamine and norepinephrine. Simultaneously, the garcinia cambogia could do the same by interacting with serotonin, according to data published in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. (5)(6)

However, there’s plenty of evidence — especially with Garcinia Cambogia — that these ingredients don’t help with appetite suppression at all. (7) But there’s still promising research nonetheless. But isn’t all the hype around this product’s ability to burn fat?

Does Leanbean Burn Fat?

LeanBean’s commercial says it has ingredients that are meant to “get your metabolism moving.” Can a supplement like this — or any supplement, really — actually increase metabolism?

Cayenne Pepper and Fat Loss

Practically every fat burner out there contains a hit of cayenne pepper to raise your metabolic rate. But how much does that actually help? A 2003 study in the Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand found a dose of chili pepper elevated metabolic rate by roughly 12 percent for 30 minutes. (8) Sounds promising, but if you burn 2000 calories per day, that’s just an extra five calories.

A larger study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that, on average, a chili pepper extract helped people burn an average of 50 more calories a day. (9) Although it’s better than nothing, that’s less than half a tablespoon of olive oil.

[Related: Nutrition For Bulking: 10 Tips For Intelligent Muscle Gain]

Garcinia Cambogia and Fat Loss

Garcinia cambogia, a tropical Indonesian fruit, gets a lot of hype for its purported fat loss abilities. There is some evidence that it actually helps reduce belly fat accumulation, like a 2003 study of 39 people in Current Therapeutic Research. (10) Split up into an HCA group and a placebo group, it found the HCA group had “significantly reduced visceral, subcutaneous, and total fat areas compared with the placebo group” after 16 weeks.

There are some important caveats, though. Some studies found no effect on body fat with HCA, and most that have found such an effect were using at least 1000 milligrams a day. (11) That’s significantly more than the 90 milligrams in a daily serving of Leanbean.

Raspberry Ketones and Fat Loss

Raspberry ketones get a lot of publicity for their apparent fat-burning abilities. The issue here is that these results are mostly seen in some in vitro studies — meaning performed with microorganisms, cells, or biological molecules outside their normal biological context — and on a few on rodents.

Those that have been performed on rodents used enormous amounts of the stuff. Leanbean cites one on their website — published in the peer-reviewed journal Planta Publica — that saw fat loss among rats using hundreds of times more raspberry ketones than the amount included in Leanbean, going by the bodyweight of the rodents. (12) There aren’t really any great studies that have been performed using humans.

Green Coffee Bean Extract and Fat Loss

The chlorogenic acid in the green coffee bean extract may help with fat loss. The most widely cited study was published in 2007 in the Journal of International Medical Research. However, doses in the very few studies that have found this to be the case were in the 120 milligrams to 300 milligrams range, whereas Leanbean uses 40 milligrams per day. (13)

[Related: The Lifter’s Guide To Magnesium: What This Nutrient Does For Strength]

Leanbean Testimonial and Success Story

Let’s forget about theory and science for a second. This is a product used by thousands of people. Does it work or not? Leanbean connected us with one of their customers who had significant success on the product so we could ask her what actually happened.

Margarita Nguyen is an Australian chaplain based in Melbourne who was struggling to lose her pregnancy weight. In an interview with us, she said that Leanbean helped her lose almost 19 pounds in two months. First, she went to her doctor and got some blood tests to ensure the supplement was safe for her and her hypothyroidism. It is always safer to check with your physician before taking any fat burner and confirm that they are safe to consume even if you don’t have any preexisting medical conditions.

“I actually went down two kilos in two weeks, and I dropped down two sizes in my dress size from the work I’ve been doing,” she says. “I wasn’t full crazy gymming. I was just doing those interval running exercises on the treadmill for about twenty minutes.”

[Related: The Best Foods And Supplements For Fighting Inflammation]

It’s important to note that she was doing intermittent fasting while taking Leanbean (only eating during an eight-hour window) and was consuming 1,200 calories per day. She only restricted her calories down once she started taking Leanbean. Could it have just been a calorie deficit that brought upon such effective results? Yes, but that doesn’t mean Leanbean didn’t help.

“The fasting could only happen because I was using that Leanbean supplement,” Nguyen says. “Normally, when I fast, I find it really, really difficult, but when I started taking Leanbean, I found it was really easy to fast for 16 hours when normally I would struggle really badly.”

It’s hard to know how much the supplement specifically helped her “burn more fat.” It’s also tough to determine how strong the placebo effect is. It does seem that in this instance, it helped to curb her appetite. While Leanbean doesn’t contain stimulants, she also felt that she could maintain energy levels. However, she did report she was thirstier than usual, an effect that the Glucomannan may have caused.

Can You Lose Weight With Just The Fat Burner?

“When someone asks you a question like that, you have to reframe it for them,” says Nguyen. “You can’t just take a fat-burning supplement and expect to lose weight when you’re still having 10 Snickers a day and lounging on the couch all day; it doesn’t work like that. I had to do the exercise…work on the nutrition, and I had to take a fat burner that was safe for me…that was Leanbean.”

[Related: Should Athletes Try Low Carb Diets?]

Leanbean Price

Prices can change a lot, but on average, a bottle will cost you between $50 and $70 for a month’s supply — roughly two dollars per day. It’s hard to compare that price with different fat burners because they vary so much in their ingredients. For example, very few have of Leanbean’s competitors contain glucomannan, which is arguably their most effective ingredient.

When scouring the web for fat burners, most top sellers’ prices are closer to a dollar per day, so it’s fair to say that Leanbean is relatively pricy. Still, most of the top sellers focus more on stimulants and cayenne pepper than the ingredients in Leanbean.

[Related: 10 Kinds Of Creatine And What They All Mean]

The Takeaway

Leanbean has some interesting research supporting its fat-burning properties. It’s still important to keep in mind that if you’re eating more calories than you burn, it’s not likely to make a huge difference. This product potentially reduces appetite and maintains energy levels to make calorie restriction an easier feat to accomplish. You will still need to control calorie intake and maintain an effective exercise routine for Leanbean’s benefits to really shine.

References

1. Kumar S, et al. Intermittent fasting dietary restriction regimen negatively influences reproduction in young rats: a study of hypothalamo-hypophysial-gonadal axis. PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e52416.
2. Wang GJ, et al. Evidence of gender differences in the ability to inhibit brain activation elicited by food stimulation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Jan 27;106(4):1249-54.
3. Walsh DE, et al. Effect of glucomannan on obese patients: a clinical study. Int J Obes. 1984;8(4):289-93.
4. Janssens PL, et al. Capsaicin increases sensation of fullness in energy balance, and decreases desire to eat after dinner in negative energy balance. Appetite. 2014 Jun;77:44-9.
5. Ohia SE, et al. Safety and mechanism of appetite suppression by a novel hydroxycitric acid extract (HCA-SX). Mol Cell Biochem. 2002 Sep;238(1-2):89-103.
6. Jurgens T, et al. Can green tea preparations help with weight loss? Can Pharm J (Ott). 2014 May;147(3):159-60.
7. Kim JE, et al. Does Glycine max leaves or Garcinia Cambogia promote weight-loss or lower plasma cholesterol in overweight individuals: a randomized control trial. Nutr J. 2011 Sep 21;10:94.
8. Chaiyata P, et al. Effect of chili pepper (Capsicum frutescens) ingestion on plasma glucose response and metabolic rate in Thai women. J Med Assoc Thai. 2003 Sep;86(9):854-60.
9. Galgani JE, et al. Effect of dihydrocapsiate on resting metabolic rate in humans. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Nov;92(5):1089-93.
10. Hayamizu K, et al. Effects of garcinia cambogia (Hydroxycitric Acid) on visceral fat accumulation: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Curr Ther Res Clin Exp. 2003 Sep;64(8):551-67
11. Heymsfield SB, et al. Garcinia cambogia (hydroxycitric acid) as a potential antiobesity agent: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 1998 Nov 11;280(18):1596-600.
12. Park KS. Raspberry ketone increases both lipolysis and fatty acid oxidation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Planta Med. 2010 Oct;76(15):1654-8.
13. Thom E. The effect of chlorogenic acid enriched coffee on glucose absorption in healthy volunteers and its effect on body mass when used long-term in overweight and obese people. J Int Med Res. 2007 Nov-Dec;35(6):900-8.