Hydroxycut Review: Does It Work or Is It A Scam? My Results!

by Joe Costello, CNC | Men's Fat Burners

hydroxycut pro clinical original fat burner bottleHydroxycut Pro Clinical (AKA Hydroxycut Original) is perhaps the most popular fat burner on the market, but frankly, we don’t think it deserves all of the attention it gets. In fact, in this Hydroxycut review, we will explain why Hydroxycut didn’t even make our list of the Top Fat Burner Supplements.

We would highly recommend you take a look at that list of the top 10 before deciding to purchase any fat burner. However, check out this comprehensive review to learn why we don’t think Hydroxycut Pro Clinical is all its cracked up to be.

Hydroxycut review by a NASM-Certified Nutrition Coach: Is Hydroxycut any good?

Hydroxycut only contains 800 milligrams of total active fat burning ingredients in every serving. That’s about 50% of the standard amount when it comes to natural fat burners. The top fat burners that compete with Hydroxycut contain about 1,500-2,000 MG on average, so no, Hydroxycut is not any good in my opinion. As a Nutrition Coach, there is absolutely no chance I would ever recommend Hydroxycut to any of my clients based on the nutrition facts. BUT, I also took it a step further and tested it myself, and here’s what happened…

My Hydroxycut Results, Experience, and Personal Review

Hydroxycut is now available in basically every store on the planet: GNC, Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, you name it. For that reason, almost everyone knows about it. And since I am a Nutrition Coach (certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine for those who are curious), I get tons of people asking me this question: Does Hydroxycut work? I can pretty confidently answer no, but since I get asked so often, I figured I’d try it myself to make sure I’m right.

I bought a 30 day supply of Hydroxycut, and I took the entire month’s worth. Can you guess what happened in the end? Absolutely nothing. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say I got no results whatsoever after taking Hydroxycut for 4 weeks. That is a travesty, but again, it’s not surprising based on what we can see on the Supplement Facts Panel. I wasn’t expecting Hydroxycut to blow my mind, but I was hoping I would at least experience some benefits…nope.

Did Hydroxycut help me lose weight? No, not at all. After using a full bottle of it, I did not lose a single pound. It didn’t do anything to effect my performance in the gym either. Usually these natural fat burner supplements help to enhance exercise performance so that you can get better results from your workouts, but Hydroxycut had no such effect on me. Of course, everyone is different…I’m not saying this won’t work no matter who you are. You never know.

Bottom Line: Based on my extremely negative experience with Hydroxycut in addition to my analysis of the nutrition facts, I would never in a million years recommend this to any of my clients.

What does Hydroxycut do?

What does Hydroxycut do for you? It’s designed to help you burn fat ultimately, but we don’t believe it’s strong enough to get the job done. With that said, it can probably still help boost energy levels and moderately decrease appetite. It just isn’t likely going to lead to significant weight loss.

Hydroxycut Claimed Benefits

Here are the key Hydroxycut benefits reported by the manufacturer:

  • Elevated energy levels
  • Helps burn belly fat
  • Decreases overall body fat percentage
  • Enhances gym performance
  • Naturally stimulates increased fat burn

Does Hydroxycut Work?

Hydroxycut Pro Clinical is portrayed as though it is highly effective in the television commercials, but it is apparent through the use of simple label analysis that it is unlikely Hydroxycut Pro Clinical would work. We would highly recommend you take a look at our list of the Top 5 Best Fat Burners and choose one of the top 3 off of that list, as we believe those are all significantly more effective.

The reason that we believe it is unlikely Hydroxycut Pro Clinical would produce significant results is because of the fact that the label uses a proprietary blend that comparatively speaking is not very potent.

We have reviewed fat burners on our website that have overall potencies ranging from 1,000 milligrams per serving all the way up to about 1,500 milligrams per serving. The Hydroxycut Pro Clinical overall potency is below 600 milligrams per serving. Compared to the other fat burners we have reviewed, this is a very low overall potency.

The fact that it uses a proprietary blend in combination with the fact that the overall potency is comparatively low leads us to believe that Hydroxycut Pro Clinical does not work as well as other fat burners that we have reviewed.

Hydroxycut Ingredients list

Here are the primary Hydroxycut ingredients:

  • Robusta Coffee Extract
  • Papaya
  • Caffeine Anhydrous
  • Saffron Extract
  • Blackberry

Hydroxycut Pro Clinical is not all bad. While we don’t think it is the best option for people in search for a weight loss solution, it does have some quality ingredients that could lead to some benefits. The biggest issue with the formula is that the individual dosages for the ingredients are not disclosed, which means we can’t definitively say whether or not the formula is effective. With that said, the formula certainly has potential.

Robusta Coffee Extract

The unroasted green coffee bean has been proven across several clinical trials for its ability to burn fat and contribute to overall weight loss. This is in our opinion the best part about this supplement.

The unroasted coffee bean is more effective than having a cup of coffee because roasting the coffee bean eliminates the vast majority of the chlorogenic acid, which is what is responsible for any fat burning benefits produced by the coffee bean.

Papaya

Since it is very high in fiber, Papaya functions as the appetite suppression component of Hydroxycut Pro Clinical. Ingestion of Papaya is going to cause all that fiber to swell up in your stomach, which makes you feel full.

Since taking Papaya makes you feel full and the Hydroxycut Pro Clinical dosage directions say to take two servings per day, you are going to feel full much more often than you normally do, which will cause your appetite to be suppressed and your daily calorie intake to shrink. Calorie intake reduction is the key concept with this ingredient.

Caffeine Anhydrous

This is the purest form of caffeine in existence and is going to be primarily responsible for boosting your metabolism and raising your energy levels in order to enhance gym performance.

Good fat burners usually include some sort of energy elevating ingredient in order to encourage increased exercise since no fat burner is going to work without regular exercise. Stimulants like caffeine anhydrous encourage people to exercise and allow people to get more out of their workouts as a result of having higher energy levels.

Saffron Extract

The primary focus of this ingredient is appetite suppression. In order to lose weight, it is an absolute requirement that your daily calorie expenditure be greater than your daily calorie intake.

Certain ingredients in Hydroxycut Pro Clinical are responsible for helping you get your daily calorie expenditure up while others are responsible for having the opposite effect on your daily calorie intake. Expending more calories by exercising regularly combined with reducing the amount of calories you consume will nearly inevitably lead to weight loss.

Blackberry

The formula includes blackberry because of the fact that consuming blackberries makes you feel full due to the amount of water they contain, but they also don’t contain a lot of calories. This combination makes blackberry ideal for weight loss.

The primary function of this ingredient in the Hydroxycut Pro Clinical formula is to make you feel full and encourage you to eat less often as a result. Here is another good example of a calorie intake reduction method.

Hydroxycut Complaints & Praise (Hydroxycut reviews from real customers)

Our analysis of Hydroxycut is based on the supplement facts, but we also like to take into account what users of the product are saying. In this case, it’s not good, and we’re not surprised.

There are about 700 Hydroxycut reviews submitted by verified buyers of the product on Amazon right now, and it received an average rating of only 3.9 out of 5 stars, which is pretty bad. We generally like to see mid to upper 4’s in terms of average rating.

On top of that, over 30% of users rated it between 1 and 3 stars overall. There are way too many negative Hydroxycut reviews for us to feel comfortable recommending this stuff. The formula is already bad enough, but these customer ratings make the outlook even more bleak.

Last but not least, don’t forget about my personal Hydroxycut review I wrote earlier on in this article. If you didn’t read it, long story short, this stuff did not work for me at all. It didn’t cause side effects for me or anything…it just didn’t work or produce any benefits.

The Pros

  • Contains high quality, proven ingredients
  • Uses both unroasted coffee bean and caffeine
  • Includes multiple appetite suppression components

The Cons

  • Overall potency is comparatively low
  • It uses a proprietary blend
  • It didn’t make the top 5 list

Is Hydroxycut worth it? Our conclusion

Hydroxycut Pro Clinical does contain some excellent ingredients as you can see, however since we don’t know the dosages for each of these individual ingredients, we cant be sure how well Hydroxycut Pro Clinical works. The dosages being hidden by the proprietary blend combined with the fact that the supplement just isn’t as potent as it could be are the two primary reasons why we wouldn’t recommend Hydroxycut Pro Clinical.

Our Recommendation: Check out some other higher quality supplements on our list of the Top 10 Best Fat Burners. Our #1 recommended fat burner can be found on our Fat Burners home page. Any of the top three fat burners on that list will be very likely to produce serious results for you. Explore the list of the top 10 and find something that’s right for you!

Where to buy Hydroxycut at the best price

First of all, how much does Hydroxycut cost? Let’s take a look at where to buy Instant Knockout & get the cheapest deal on prices:

Outlet

Price

Check Current Pricing

Amazon

$$$

Walgreens

$$$$

References

  1. An Evidence-Based Review of Fat Modifying Supplemental Weight Loss Products

  2. Natural products and body weight control

  3. Fat burners: nutrition supplements that increase fat metabolism

  4. Supplementation of green coffee bean extract in healthy overweight subjects increases lean mass/fat mass ratio: A randomized, double-blind clinical study

  5. Effects of coffee and caffeine anhydrous on strength and sprint performance

Certified Nutrition Coach at JNC Enterprises Inc. | Website | + posts

I’m not just a supplement analyst. I’m an extremely qualified one! I am a Certified Nutrition Coach (CNC) and actually received my certification directly from the National Academy of Sports Medicine. I am also a Nutrition & Wellness Consultant, certified by the American Fitness Professionals Association (AFPA).

Hi, I’m Joe Costello CNC

I’m not just a supplement analyst. I’m an extremely qualified one! I am a Certified Nutrition Coach (CNC) and actually received my certification directly from the National Academy of Sports Medicine. I am also a Nutrition & Wellness Consultant, certified by the American Fitness Professionals Association (AFPA).