Weight Loss With Spicy Food - Can You Boost Metabolism With Spicy Foods

The speed of your metabolism is often said to determine how easy you will put on weight or keep it off. To some extent this is true, your metabolism is processing of food to give the body energy and nutrients that it needs to survive. It is thought that 60% of the calories that the metabolism uses are to keep everything within the body functioning. 30% is used to give us the energy to go about our daily activities. 10% of the calories are needed to process the food that is eaten. There are many theories about how to boost the metabolism so that it burns the calories faster and thus allows us to lose weight, eat more food or eat the foods we like to eat and not gain weight. One of these theories is that spicy foods will boost metabolism and aid in weight loss.

There seems to be two camps regarding this theory, those that endorse it and those that think it as a way to make food more interesting and help us to eat foods that are healthier and less fattening.

For those that think it works the theory goes that it increases the thermodynamic burn that goes on in the body when the food is eaten. This means the body must utilize more calories to process the food hence increasing the metabolism.

People that don't think it is effective still agree that it increases the amount of calories that are needed to process the food. But that it is not a significant amount to make any real difference to boosting the metabolism and weight loss. They do think that adding chili or other spices to foods gives then a better taste or flavor. This encourages people to eat more vegetables and foods that are less fattening.

Curries, for example, will also include things like ginger, garlic, turmeric and coriander that are said to have numerous affects on the body such as reducing the susceptibility to diabetes. Many of the these ingredients have been used in Ayurvedic medicine for hundreds of years for all sorts of ailments. As the metabolism is the combination and coordination of various systems within the body it is important to keep the body health as a whole. If one system breaks down this can affect others and result in the metabolism becoming inefficient.

Another factor that might help to burn more calories or boost the metabolism is drinking cold water. The body has to raise the temperature of the cold water once it enters the body and it burns calories to do this. And as you may know, a tall glass of cold water is a welcome relief when food is hot and spicy.

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