Have you heard the theory that spicy foods can help you lose weight? There is truth to this, and that can be good news for those who would like to drop a few pounds. However, that doesn’t mean that you can simply eat anything that is spicy and lose weight, of course. Just because you have some hot sauce and capsaicin on your California burrito with all of those delicious French fries, it does not mean it is suddenly healthy food.
You need to learn more about metabolism and how you might be able to use hot sauce and capsaicin as a part of your weight loss regimen. It is not going to be the only thing you want to use, of course, but it can be a part of it.
What Is Metabolism?
A person’s metabolism is affected by a range of things including the makeup of their body, the amount of activity they get on a regular basis, and even the foods they eat. Because hot sauce and capsaicin have the capacity to increase the heat generation in a person’s body, it has the ability to increase their metabolism.
How Could Capsaicin Help?
The capsaicin is what gives peppers, and hot sauce, the “heat” that they have. It will work on receptors in the human body that will ultimately make a person feel hotter. The body will react to that stimulation by sweating which will help with burning calories. However, you are probably wondering just how much of an effect spicy food, such as hot sauce, could offer.
Research has shown that consuming something spicy will increase a person’s normal metabolic rate by about 8% or so. This is not a huge amount, but it could help to burn a few more calories. To make a bigger difference, you would have to have more hot sauce or capsaicin supplements.
Interestingly, the studies have also shown that even though you might not burn a lot of calories because of the increased metabolic rate, the boost could suppress a person’s craving to eat. Therefore, the weight loss that you get from using hot sauce and capsaicin supplements might be because you are simply eating less than normal. A study from Canada found that men who had hot sauce with an appetizer were eating about 200 fewer calories than others. Two hundred calories might not seem like a lot, but it is about 10% of the total calories that most people ingest over the course of a day.
If dropping weight was as simple as eating a few cayenne peppers, everyone would be doing it. However, you can take the information here and add it to the rest of your diet and exercise routine. It can help to give you that added edge to make the weight come off just a little easier and to give your metabolism the boost it needs. If you continue to eat the hot sauce and capsaicin supplements, they can continue to serve your metabolism well.