Hello,

I am 6' 175 male, 20 years old. My body fat is roughly 15% and I want to bring it down. I am down from 215 or so since I started working out and dieting. I am no longer dieting, and my weight has been the same for about 2 or 3 months now. I want to get down about 10 pounds but I really want to lose fat instead of destroying my muscles, or even maintain weight and lose fat.

I work in a health food store and more or less feel like a lot of the stuff I stock is snake oil. I take just a couple things (a multi, octacosanol, a special formula made by my boss, and a protein recovery drink) and i was wondering if anyone had heard of CLA. It is touted as a supplement that has the ability to lower body fat and increase lean muscle mass as well as a host of other benefits, inluding anti-cancer effects. Apparently it is a fatty acid that is lacking in our diet since it comes from grass fed beef, and most beef is grain fed now.

Some swedish study and a few other studies have shown that it does what it says it does. I have read the swedish study and the sample size was small, but they claimed there was a significant decrease in body fat among the 20 people. The test was double blind, etc, just small. The studies show that (of course) in conjunction with a healthy diet and moderate exericise your body fat can be significantly lowered. They also gave mice 50 times the equivalent recommended dose for human consumption and they mice were later autopsied and showed no signs of toxicity. Some mice also showed tumor shrinkage. There are, however, very few studies on it.

Besides all of these things, it sounds like CLA is just plain good for you, so here I am, getting sold on health food, which I just called snake oil.

Does anyone have any experience with this stuff?