Do green tea and fat-burner supplements help you lose more weight?

Short answer

No. The extra weight loss is around 1 kg, and a full year of use made no difference in body fat loss compared with placebo. High-dose green tea extract made liver problems 7 times more common.

Do green tea and fat-burner supplements help you lose more weight?
'Green tea compounds → more fat burning → weight loss' — does this formula hold?
Green tea extract is one of the most common ingredients in 'fat burner' supplements. The pitch is that its catechins and caffeine make your body burn more energy. We checked how much extra weight actually comes off.
12 weeks of use made no difference
6 trials outside Japan: 0.04 kg
A Cochrane analysis of trials where people took green tea products for 12 weeks or more found a weight difference of just 0.04 kg across 6 trials outside Japan (532 people), which was not meaningful. Waist size differed by only 0.2 cm.
A full year made no difference either
No difference in body fat change
In a 1-year trial of 937 people, 121 were analyzed separately. Body fat fell 0.30 kg in the group taking 843 mg of green tea compound (EGCG) daily and 0.12 kg on placebo, with no difference. Body fat percentage dropped 0.15 points in both groups.
Recent analyses: around 1 kg
Weight 0.74 kg, waist 1.04 cm
A 2025 analysis found green tea supplements cut weight by 0.74 kg, waist by 1.04 cm and body fat percentage by 0.65 points more than control. An analysis of 111 trials with 6,171 people found a 1.25 kg difference. For a 70 kg (154 lb) person, that is about 1-2% of body weight.
What about combined with exercise?
Only a little more than exercise alone
A 2024 analysis that pooled 10 trials with 476 people found that exercising while taking green tea lowered weight and fat by only a 'small' amount more than exercise alone. The researchers concluded that adding green tea gives very little extra benefit.
What about other fat-burner ingredients?
Of 315 trials, 16 showed an effect
A review of 315 trials of weight-loss supplements and alternative therapies found only 52 that were high quality with enough data, and just 16 of those showed meaningfully more weight loss (0.3-4.93 kg). An analysis of 54 trials found garcinia was no better than placebo.
On the flip side, it strained the liver
High-dose green tea extract: 7 times more liver problems
In a trial where 1,021 people took high-dose green tea extract or placebo for 1 year, 26 people (5.1%) on green tea developed moderate or worse liver abnormalities, 7 times more than placebo. Liver enzymes went back to normal after stopping and rose again on restarting.
Bottom line: the extra loss is around 1 kg
Drink green tea as a beverage; lose weight with diet and exercise
Green tea and fat-burner supplements added 0 to about 1 kg of weight loss, and a year of use made no difference in body fat loss compared with placebo. High-dose extracts raised liver enzymes. Green tea is best as a drink; weight comes off by eating less and exercising.