Metabolic Renewal is a popular weight loss program targeted to women. It claims to be effective because it’s targeted to the “female metabolism."
But do women really require different weight loss strategies than men? Does hormone-based weight loss make sense? Does Metabolic Renewal provide medical proof of their health claims?
In this article we'll seek to answer these questions and more by reviewing the Metabolic Renewal program in detail and highlighting some claims made by the company we find questionable.
Does Metabolic Renewal Work?
Metabolic Renewal’s site makes various health claims on a “Science” page of their website which are entirely uncited.
The first “Finding” states that women burn 65% more fat than men. The details state that a 2002 study in The American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology and Metabolism proves this, however we searched every article published that year and cannot find this study. Use this link if you’d like to search the journal’s database for that year yourself.
We have never come across clinical data suggesting that this is true, so we will consider it to be false.
Medical research has shown that women burn more fat during exercise than men, because women have higher body fat on average, but we cannot find any data backing the 65% claim.
Metabolic Renewal’s “Finding #3,” shown above, claims that the program burns 10x more fat with zero medical citations or proof in the entire section.
While any exercise program can help individuals lose weight, we do not believe that Metabolic Renewal is likely to be more effective than any other exercise program, given the lack of legitimate proof of their claims.
Metabolic Renewal Real User Review
One of the most popular reviews of Metabolic Renewal on YouTube is published by a channel called "Ruby Rouge Reviews." It has achieved over 35,000 views at the time of updating this article.
The video appears unsponsored and the creator shares her experience using Metabolic Renewal for eight months, and explains whether it caused weight loss:
Questionable Health Claims
Metabolic Renewal’s site makes many questionable and uncited health claims.
At the time of initially writing this article, the brand's homepage claimed that “exercising like a man can suppress a woman’s thyroid.” This claim had a citation number, but no matching citation anywhere on the page, likely because this claim is complete nonsense and unscientific.
There are no medically-defined gender roles for exercise. Both men and women benefit from all forms of exercise, from anaerobic to aerobic to low-intensity exercise like walking.
Their homepage also claimed that “for the past 100 years, nearly all of the exercise and nutrition research has been done on men.” This is blatantly false.
A cursory search of PubMed, the leading free medical database of research studies, provides 572,000 results for the search term “men”, and 1,526,000 for the search term “women”.
A search for “women + exercise” (which searches the database for published medical papers containing both terms) provides 58,000 results.
Both of the above statements have since been removed from the brand's website, potentially because our article (which ranks very well in Google search and reaches many people) clearly disproved both claims.
Metabolic Renewal’s site still claims that “most women fall into one of 7 core Hormone Types” without any medical citation. We consider this statement unscientific. We have not come across any medical evidence that women can be categorized into "hormone types."
Modern medicine has a good understanding of hormones and this is a made-up term the company is using to market an email solution to their customers. We find this to be a highly questionable business practice.
Are Gendered Weight Loss Programs Illogical?
We consider gendered weight loss programs to be entirely illogical. While men and women are certainly different biologically, weight loss is a simple thermodynamic process: calories in versus calories out.
Regardless of gender, an individual burning more calories than they consume will lose weight (outside of exceedingly rare medical conditions). An individual consuming more calories than they burn will gain weight.
We have not come across any convincing medical evidence that women and men require distinct weight loss strategies.
Gendered weight loss programs are a great marketing strategy, because they can appear to be more targeted and relevant than broader strategies like eating healthier and exercising, but we consider it to be a red flag when brands make gendered weight loss claims, and we'd recommend that consumers avoid products and services making gendered weight loss claims without medical evidence.
Founder Is Not Medical Doctor
The founder of Metabolic Renewal is a man by the name of Jade Teta. As he documents on the “About Dr. Teta” page on their site, he is a naturopathic doctor.
While naturopaths are allowed to refer to themselves as doctors, typically Medical Doctors (MD) bear this title, so we wanted to highlight this distinction for readers.
Naturopathic doctors are only required to complete around 6,000 hours of clinical training, while Medical Doctors complete around 21,000 hours according to this breakdown by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).
We’re not against naturopathic medicine necessarily; we’re against bad science.
Our Weight Loss Supplement Recommendations
There exist several weight loss supplements with significant clinical backing in terms of both efficacy and safety.
We recommend dietary fiber as a safe and effective weight loss supplement, especially when combined with caloric restriction.
A landmark medical study found that moderate caloric restriction (750 calories per day below baseline) combined with dietary fiber intake (a minimum of 20 grams per day) caused an average weight loss of 16.03 pounds over 6 months. That’s a pace of 32 pounds per year of weight loss in overweight individuals simply by adding fiber to a moderately-restricted-calorie diet.
The fiber supplement we recommend is SuperGut Fiber Mix. It contains a clean and effective formulation: a blend of three different types of unflavored dietary fiber and zero additive ingredients. It can be mixed into liquids or foods. Interested consumers can buy SuperGut fiber at this link.
We recommend using two fiber mixes per day, which provides 16 grams (g) of total fiber. Diet should provide the remaining fiber necessary to meet the 20 g minimum threshold.
Medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil is another dietary supplement which has been shown in clinical trials to cause weight loss.
MCT oil is quickly absorbed by the body and increases metabolic rate, which causes fat loss. A meta-study on MCT oil documented weight loss of 1.12 pounds over 10 weeks. This equates to a potential annualized weight loss of 5.84 pounds with MCT oil supplementation.
We recommend Bulletproof MCT Oil as our top MCT oil product, because it has a clean and effective formulation. The only ingredient is MCT oil derived from coconuts, and the product has no questionable additives. Interested consumers can buy Bulletproof MCT Oil at this link.
The effective dose range of MCT oil for weight loss (based on the medical review) is 1.7 g to 10 g per day. Bulletproof's MCT oil provides 14 g in one tablespoon, so around two-thirds of one tablespoon should be a maximally-effective dosage.
