4 Reasons And 3 Ways To Spice Up Your Meals

Want to shed fat, live longer, and make your meals more exciting and satisfying? Here's why, when mealtime rolls around, it's time to turn up the heat. 

1. Chili peppers quash hunger

When it comes to winning the battle of the bulge, the ability to tame your appetite is a powerful weapon. So, keep the hunger monster at bay by making hot sauce one of your go-to toppings.
Danish scientists recently conducted a study in which they first provided subjects with a bowl of tomato soup spiked with cayenne and then, on another day, a second bowl without cayenne. The participants reported greater feelings of satiety, more sensory satisfaction, and more energy one hour after consuming the soup with cayenne than they did with the milder version.[1] The satiety-boosting effect has been attributed to capsaicin, the chemical that delivers the heat in cayenne and other kinds of chili peppers.

2. Chili peppers fire up the fat burn

Turning up the heat on your meals may stoke your fat-burning furnace. In a study by University of Arizona researchers, participants were given a supplement containing 2 milligrams of isolated capsaicin. The researchers found that participants' metabolic rate (resting energy expenditure) increased by an average of 6 percent. This caused the participants to burn an additional 122 calories per day compared to when the supplement contained a placebo.[2] As with the Danish study, these participants also reported greater feelings of satiety after taking the capsaicin supplements.

3. Chili peppers can help you live longer

Setting your mouth ablaze might be a recipe for enhanced longevity, too. According to research published in The BMJ, people who eat spicy foods such as chili peppers and chili oil 6-7 days a week enjoy a 14 percent drop in total mortality risk, compared to those who eat spicy foods less than once a week.[3] Researchers suggest that chili peppers are rich in bioactive compounds that may help in the battle against chronic ailments such as cancer and heart disease—and that people who enjoy spicy foods may also tend to follow a healthier diet overall.

4. Chili peppers reduce the salt in your diet

If you're like most people, you might be consuming too much salt. If it's added taste you're after, scientists suggest that a squirt of hot sauce can make it easier to get by with a less-salty diet. Among 606 adults involved in a study published in the American Heart Association's journal, Hypertension, those who ate spicy foods tended to consume less salt overall, and had lower blood pressure numbers than those who avoided fiery foods.[4]
Areas of our brains stimulated by salt and capsaicin appear to overlap. Eating foods punched up with chilies increases brain activity in both areas, tricking your brain into perceiving food as saltier than it is.

Red-Hot Recipes

With all the potential benefits of eating more chili peppers, it's a good idea to go beyond just shaking some Tabasco on your scrambled eggs. The following tasty and nutritious recipes will leave you shouting, "Fire in the hole!" Just keep some dairy products such as milk or sour cream handy to snuff out the flames.

1. Mayan chocolate fudge smoothie

A touch of cayenne gives this smoothie some surprising kick, while avocado makes each mouthful deliciously thick. The drink has a winning mix of protein, carbs, and fats to help your body mend after a spirited workout.

View Recipe Here

2. Chipolata tomato jam

Chipolata peppers are smoked and dried red jalapeños. They are often packed with a flavorful tomato sauce called adobe that brings a smoky heat to recipes. This punchy chipolata-infused tomato sauce makes an exciting topping for chicken, eggs, tacos, and burgers.

View Recipe Here

3. Asparagus gazpacho

Spring's quintessential vegetable is a great stand-in for tomatoes in this version of the iconic cold Spanish soup. Blending in jalapeño adds a kick to each spoonful. Serve for lunch or dinner, and consider making the gazpacho a day or two in advance, as the flavors only get better when left lingering in the fridge. Garnish options include pumpkin seeds, feta, chopped chives, and shaved parmesan.

View Recipe Here

The Full-Body Dumbbell Workout 

You Can Do Anywhere 

Walk into just about any gym and you'll see guys lifting way too much weight, using too much body English and momentum, and just generally trying to impress everybody—especially themselves—with how many plates they can slap on a bar. Rodney Razor saw his share of that when he was just a kid trying to figure out what bodybuilding was all about. The more he lifts, the more he's learned to move slowly and deliberately with the appropriate weight.

In his do-anywhere dumbbell workout, Razor will call out timing for the negative, and sometimes the positive, portion of the lifts. Moving slowly, he says, helps you isolate and focus on the muscles you're targeting. For all these movements (even push-ups), make Razor happy by keeping your core tight, chest up, shoulders back, and back straight.

If you're in a gym with a full dumbbell rack, you can try to dial in the weights for each individual movement, but you don't have to. The workout is designed so that you can use the same weight for all the movements. Use a weight that you can row for 12 solid reps, but that challenges you somewhere between reps 8 and 12. Sure, that's a weight you can probably deadlift a whole bunch of times, but guess what? That's exactly what you're going to do.

The workout could also be performed as a burner of a circuit, but Razor suggests doing it in straight sets to maximize the muscular overload of each move. This is minimalist bodybuilding at its best! Do it when you only have a little time, a little equipment, or a little motivation, but do it!

Walk into just about any gym and you'll see guys lifting way too much weight, using too much body English and momentum, and just generally trying to impress everybody—especially themselves—with how many plates they can slap on a bar. Rodney Razor saw his share of that when he was just a kid trying to figure out what bodybuilding was all about. The more he lifts, the more he's learned to move slowly and deliberately with the appropriate weight.
In his do-anywhere dumbbell workout, Razor will call out timing for the negative, and sometimes the positive, portion of the lifts. Moving slowly, he says, helps you isolate and focus on the muscles you're targeting. For all these movements (even push-ups), make Razor happy by keeping your core tight, chest up, shoulders back, and back straight.
If you're in a gym with a full dumbbell rack, you can try to dial in the weights for each individual movement, but you don't have to. The workout is designed so that you can use the same weight for all the movements. Use a weight that you can row for 12 solid reps, but that challenges you somewhere between reps 8 and 12. Sure, that's a weight you can probably deadlift a whole bunch of times, but guess what? That's exactly what you're going to do.
The workout could also be performed as a burner of a circuit, but Razor suggests doing it in straight sets to maximize the muscular overload of each move. This is minimalist bodybuilding at its best! Do it when you only have a little time, a little equipment, or a little motivation, but do it!

The Full-Body Dumbbell Workout You Can Do Anywhere

1: Dumbbell Shrug

4 sets, 15-20 reps (Do first 10 reps slowly and under control with 2-sec. negative and peak contraction pauses. Then finish the set with 5-10 rapid reps.)

2: Bent Over Two-Dumbbell Row

4 sets, 8-12 reps (2-4 sec. negative, 1-2 sec. positive)

3: Single Leg Deadlift

4 sets, 20 reps (2-4 sec. negative and positive)

4: Pushups

4 sets, 15-20 reps (Grip dumbbells instead of placing hands flat on floor, using 4 sec. negative and positive.)

5: Dumbbell Jump Squat

4 sets, 30 sec. each (holding a dumbbell in a goblet hold)

6: Dumbbell Walking Lunge

4 sets, 10-15 reps

Technique Tips

Dumbbell Shrug

Start with good posture: back straight, core tight, shoulders back. As you lift up the dumbbells, squeeze your traps like you're just shrugging your shoulders. Squeeze your traps as intensely as you can, and hold the contraction for 1-2 seconds. Release slowly.
  
Bent-Over Double Dumbbell Row

Bend your knees to get as low as you can for this exercise. Use your arms to lift the weights chest high, then take 1-2 seconds to lift the dumbbells higher by squeezing your shoulder blades together. Razor says the goal is not to see how high you can pull your elbows, it's to get that long contraction of your shoulder blades.
Squeeze your shoulder blades together, hold for a second, then take 2-4 seconds on the negative to return to the starting position. Keep your chest up, gluts tight, and back straight throughout the exercise.

Single-Leg Dead lift

Start from standing and lower the dumbbell until it's at shin level or almost touches the floor, depending on your hip mobility and hamstring flexibility. Only go as far down as you can keep your back neutral, though! At the same time, kick the unweighted foot off the ground and stretch that leg behind you as straight as possible, keeping your back straight and your chest up. When you come up, pull through your gluts and hamstrings.
Once again, you'll get the most benefit from this exercise by moving slowly. Razor recommends taking 2-4 seconds both on the way up and the way down. Keep a slight bend in the knee of the weighted leg.

Push-up on Dumbbells

Push-ups on dumbbells may seem more or less the same as push-ups on the floor, but they're not. For one, the weights give you an extra couple of inches of range of motion at minimum—if you choose to use it, that is. That means you can really increase the stretch at the bottom position, and utilize more chest than floor push-ups. Being able to use a neutral grip on dumbbell handles is also a bit more shoulder-friendly for most lifters, potentially allowing them to bust out a few more reps with good form.
You can position your hands and the dumbbells at whatever position you prefer, changing these positions with every set or workout. To make the exercise more challenging, elevate your feet on a bench or higher. The higher your feet are, the more you'll work your upper chest. Keep your core tight and your elbows in.

Dumbbell Jump Squat

Now things are going to get sweaty.
Hold a single dumbbell with both hands at chest height, as you would for a goblet squat. Bend your knees at least until your thighs are parallel with the floor or slightly lower. As you lower your body, keep your chest up and your shoulders back. Explode into the air, keeping the dumbbell in the same position relative to your body. When you land, Razor says, use your toes, your knees, and then your legs to absorb the impact and move immediately back into the squatting position. If you've done your landing right, it should barely make a sound.
No need to count reps here; just watch or listen to the clock. Even with a light weight, your quads and lungs should be burning after a couple of 30-second sets.

Dumbbell Walking Lunge

You know Razor's drill by now: chest up, shoulders back, core tight. Holding the dumbbells by your side, take an exaggerated step forward, drive though the heel of your front foot, and lower your knee as close to the floor as you can. As you bend your forward leg, protect your knee by stopping before it goes past the toes of that foot.

Find a controlled pace, and start stepping! After 30 seconds, you may be feeling fine, but after 4 rounds of 30 seconds, you should be cooked—and you should have a new respect for those bells.

Tariq grabs silver at world championship

KARACHI: Pakistan’s Waqas Tariq grabbed a silver medal at the World Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championship at the Indoor Athletic Stadium in Pattaya, Thailand yesterday.
Despite the current Mr Pakistan losing his gold medal to India’s Bobby Singh in the 80kg event, Pakistan Bodybuilding Federation (PBBF) President Sheikh Farooq Iqbal is satisfied with the bodybuilder’s performance.
“There was tough competition but the results are good,” Iqbal told The Express Tribune from Thailand. “Tariq’s efforts have really paid off. He is in excellent form and hopefully he will continue to make us proud in the future as well.”

Bodybuilding: Pakistan squad leaves for Thailand
He further added, “Pakistan had won a silver medal last year after seven years and that was a breakthrough; now Tariq has carried on this year. The important thing for us was to have a place among the top four because the competition is very fierce, especially from India.”
Iqbal believes that Tariq, despite not winning gold, has a bright future. “We were hoping for him to clinch gold but this was his first appearance at a world championship. He certainly has proven himself as one of the leading bodybuilders in his weight category.”
In other weight categories, Fida Hussain (85kg), Zeeshan Baloch (75kg) and Mujahid Hussain (55kg) all finished among the top four in their respective categories.

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Meanwhile Tariq’s teammate, Muhammad Furqan Khan, who could not travel with the national squad as he was suffering from dengue, believes Tariq’s feat would motivate other bodybuilders to do well.
“I’m happy for Tariq. He has begun to get his name out there and I’m sure he will make it big in years to come. His performance will certainly motivate other bodybuilders to hit the gym and improve on their fitness,” he said.