Best Digestive Enzymes for Weight Loss

Do Digestive Enzymes Help With Weight Loss?

Digestive enzymes do not directly help with weight loss. To lose weight, you need to be in a caloric deficit.

However, when most people want to lose weight, they tend to desire one or more of the following:

• To look better, such as eliminating unsightly fats in the belly or other areas of the body
• To improve health, such as to improve cardiovascular health, metabolic health, or sleep
• To achieve other health goals, such as fertility or pre-conception 

Here are some indirect ways that digestive enzymes can help with weight loss.

Digestive Enzymes Can Support a Muscle-Sparing Diet and Exercise Program

In our experience as fitness and nutrition professionals, we find when people come to us, they want to lose weight yesterday. Yet, the best long-term physique and health outcomes happen when our clients maintain muscle mass, lose weight at a healthy pace, and plan long-term. Short-term thinking and rapid weight loss without maintenance plans can reduce muscles and other healthy lean mass, like bones. Subsequently, these dieters tend to rebound worse than where they started. 

Muscle building uses a lot of calories, which can make it easier to lose fat. Also, muscles are responsible for over 80% of blood sugar regulation, so it can help reduce midsection fat that tends to arise with suboptimal blood sugar control. 

Maintaining muscle mass, losing fat, and building a beautiful physique require the following:

• Sufficient protein intake. Aim for 1.6–2.4 g/kg (0.73– 1.10 g/lb) of body weight. The more aggressive the caloric deficit, the more protein you need to spare muscles. Amino acids provide the building blocks of muscles and stimulate muscle-building signals like mTOR and growth hormones.
• A resistance training program with the ability to recover from these exercise programs. The recovery requires proper nutrition, sleep, and rest from training. 
• Caloric deficit, mainly from food but can also come from overall physical activity, cold exposure, muscle building, and more.

Now, the value of protein depends on how much you can digest and absorb it. Many people who struggle to consume enough protein rely on protein powders or drinks to achieve their total protein intake. In a clinical trial involving young male subjects, researchers estimated that only 15 out of the 50 grams of protein could be absorbed from the whey protein drinks. Introducing a digestive enzyme blend containing fungal proteases significantly increased serum amino acids compared to placebo. At about 3 hours, the blood amino acid levels in the digestive enzyme group were about 3 times that of the control group. Therefore, adding a digestive enzyme to protein drinks or post-workout drinks can be beneficial for helping these amino acids get to your muscles.

Studies in athletes suggest that digestive enzymes may improve exercise recovery in 2 ways:

1. Digestive enzymes boost amino acid absorption
2. Systemic enzymes like bromelain can get absorbed into the bloodstream to assist with the resolution of exercise-induced damage and soreness

Digestive Enzymes Can Help You Eat Enough Proteins

Also, many people, especially women and older adults, struggle to eat enough proteins or have an aversion to protein-containing foods. The protein aversion tends to happen due to low stomach acid, which creates post-meal discomfort when consuming meat. A high-protease digestive enzyme blend and betaine HCl can help with protein digestion and overcome some digestive upset from starting a high-protein diet. 

Gut Problems Can Contribute to Weight and Body Fat Gain

Increasingly, research is linking the gut to metabolism. There are many links, such as:

Metabolic endotoxemia: A leaky gut from a junk food meal (equivalent to a high-fat diet in mice) allows for bacterial toxins to enter the bloodstream. This is called metabolic endotoxemia, which is linked to obesity and all kinds of metabolic issues. The immune response to bacterial toxins can interfere with weight and appetite regulation hormones, such as contributing to leptin resistance.

The solution to metabolic endotoxemia isn’t just digestive enzymes. Rather, the best solution is to improve your overall diet to reduce unhealthy fats, while increasing fiber and plant-based polyphenols. 

Overall, feeding your gut flora with probiotics, omega-3, fiber, and plant polyphenols can support gut health and indirectly help with metabolism. 

For some people who have mild immune responses to a specific protein or food matter, like lectins, digestive enzymes that break down the food can be crucial for healing the gut lining. This may indirectly help with weight loss. However, this weight loss may be the exception, not the rule. 

Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes: Certain bacteria strains in the Firmicutes family are linked to increased calories harvested from your food. These bacteria are linked to weight gain and obesity, but study results have been mixed.

Digestive Enzymes May Reduce Bloating

Another reason digestive enzymes may appear to help with weight loss is by reducing bloating. Digestive enzyme supplements like MassZymes contain enzymes that break down bloat-inducing fibers and sugars. This can help to mitigate post-meal stomach distension and discomfort due to gas. However, this is not the same as weight loss.

Which Digestive Enzymes Are Best for Belly Fat?

There is no one digestive enzyme product that helps with belly fat. For many of us with chronic stress or suboptimal blood sugar control, belly fat might be extra hard to lose. See this article to learn more about the most effective way to lose belly fat.

When You Shouldn’t Take Digestive Enzymes for Weight Loss

In some people, digestive enzymes increase hunger and appetite, which causes them to eat more. This is when digestive enzymes are contraindicated for weight loss. If you find yourself excessively hungry, try taking fewer capsules or only reserve the enzymes for around your training sessions. 

In others, especially those who are low in digestive enzymes or nutrients due to suboptimal digestion, restoring digestive enzymes and stomach acid may support a healthy metabolism. In this case, they may find that digestive enzyme supplements reduce their appetite and thus digestive enzyme supplements to be helpful for weight loss.

Inhibiting Digestive Enzymes May Help With Weight Loss

Many weight loss supplements contain digestive enzyme inhibitors. For example, Alli blocks fat digestion and absorption, while white kidney bean extract blocks amylase from digesting fats. Several ingredients in Berberine Breakthrough also inhibit amylase. 

Foods that contain digestive enzyme inhibitors such as legumes and potatoes can lead to fullness, reduce calorie intake, improve blood sugar control, and therefore help with weight loss. To learn more about achieving healthy and long-term weight loss, check out the Ultimate Nutrition Bible.