10 Surprising Fat-Blasting Strategies

Fire Up Your Food — And Your Metabolism

Rev up your metabolism with chili peppers! Research conducted at Purdue University found that adding spicy ingredients like cayenne pepper, hot peppers, or hot sauce to meals can help suppress appetite and even stoke your metabolic fire a bit. When dieters who didn’t normally eat spicy foods ate a soup seasoned with cayenne pepper for lunch they ate 60 fewer calories at their next meal AND burned an extra 10 calories (it’s a small amount, but over time it adds up!). A small study on mice from researchers at the University of Miami might explain how. They found that capsaicin, the ingredient that gives peppers their heat, activated a certain type of fat cell (referred to as brown fat cells) to burn white fat cells, which typically store energy.

Try adding chopped hot peppers to scrambled eggs, chicken or tuna salad, and tossed salads…or make a spicy sandwich spread by mixing a generous shot of hot sauce into hummus or low-fat mayo.