Best Alcoholic Beverage to drink for Fat Loss in New Orleans

Are you going out with your friends in New Orleans and hitting the bars? With a little planning and foresight you can somewhat avoid this diet disaster, and below i have listed some low calorie alcoholic drinks you should look at.

However, Alcoholic Drinks seem to be always overlooked as a culprit of weight gain…especially when you go out and consume them back to back.

Some Alcoholic Drinks contain just as many unhealthy calories as a McDonalds Hamburger… can you image what eating 4-6 of those in a couple hours will do to encourage some weight gain?

Ok Now onto the list…

Let’s Look at Beer First

The Worst Low Calories Beers.

- Anchor Porter, 209 calories per 12 oz serving

- McEwans Scottish Ale, 295 calories per 12 oz serving

The Best Low Calories Beers

-Pabst Extra Light Low Alcohol, 67 calories per 12 oz serving

-Molson Light, 82 calories per 12 oz serving

-Anheuser Busch Natural Light, 95 calories per 12 oz serving

Now onto the Wine..

The Worst..

-Ruby Port, A staggering 185 calories per 4 oz glass

-Port, 170 calories per 4 oz glass

-Ginger wine, 190 calories per 4 oz glass

-Martini Rosso, 192 calories per 4 oz glass

The Best….

- White Zinfindel, 80 calories per 4 oz glass

-Chardonnays, 90 calories per 4 oz glass

-Dry Red wine, 83 calories per 4 oz glass

-Dry white wine, 77 calories per 4 oz glass

-Champagne, 96 calories per 4 oz glass

As you can see..Wine can be just as bad if making the wrong choices..

Now, let look at the Liquor.

Liquor can be a little tricky because it usually involves making a cocktail which can REALLY pile on the calories…so it’s kind of difficult to get exact number’s but!

The Worst..

-Long Island Ice Tea, packs 780 in calories per drink!

The Best..

-Blody Mary or a Manhattan, usually reach the mid 100’s calories per drink

-The Mojito and Mowscow Mule are anothe 2 that are on the Lower calories spectrum.

In closing If you are planing on drinking on the weekends you better plan ahead because as you can see drinking a couple innocent Long island Ice teas or other Alcholic beverages sure can pack on some extra calories that will put your Fat loss to a halt in New Orleans.

I would recommend that ANYONE that is trying to lose weight anywhere from 8-20+ pounds of wieght should NOT  be consuming  alcohol because It taxes your system and it fights the progress you may be making in any exercise program or Boot Camp in New Orleans.

Let me know what you think, I love to hear your comments

P.S. I recently had one client in My New Orleans Boot Camp who decided to quit drinking for 20 days and dropped a extra 25 pounds on top of the previous 18 pounds from doing the boot camp the month before…She is a VIP boot camper now where she saves 33% off the price of boot camp a month!

She’s on the path to unstoppable Fat Loss…Click here to Get on the VIP New Orleans Boot Camp program!

Don’t Forget..Let me know what you think, I love to hear your comments

New Orleans,Vampires,Eclipse, True Blood and Fitness Tips!

Hey – Jonas here, and I’m about to see the movie “Eclipse” No, I didn’t read the books!

BUT, I love vampire movies, I think they’re Awesome…Especially since a lot of them are shot in New Orleans or in the bayou.

Actually, One of my friends is always Photo-shopping my face into Twilight movie posters because he thinks it’s pretty funny to post them on my face-book profile when I’m sleeping lol! These photos are his handy work! What you think pretty funny right?

I think it would be kind of cool sometimes to be a Vampire or a Werewolf
Btw… Do you watch “True Blood” on HBO?
I LOVE that show too!

Anyway, I wanted to share with you 4 awesome New Orleans vacation fat loss tips since it is summer and that’s when most of us go on vacation!

Tip One: Have a Plan

Vacations are the perfect place to gain weight since it’s the last thing on your mind. Your best line of defense is to keep your fitness goals at the forefront of your mind. Before you leave for your trip sit down and set a goal.

A realistic goal is to maintain your current weight or to lose a pound or two. Get the whole family on board and keep each other accountable throughout the trip.

Tip Two: Make Exercise a Must

So often exercise is looked at as a chore, but vacations are the perfect time to really enjoy a good workout. You won’t be rushing home from work trying to squeeze in a few minutes at the gym, rather the vacation workout can be a relaxing and enjoyable experience.

Virtually every hotel these days has some type of workout room equipped with cardio machines, dumbbells and a universal machine. If you are taking a cruise then you are in for a real treat – most workout facilities on cruise ships have huge windows that look out onto the ocean.

Tip Three: Maintain your Metabolism

When traveling it is easy to go for hours without a meal-between flights and long drives food sometimes isn’t readily available. The problem here it two fold. First your metabolism slows from the long absence of food. Secondly you are more likely to indulge in a high calorie meal when you get around to eating next.

Avoid this yo-yo of starvation and overindulgence by carrying healthy snacks with you and eating something every three hours. A handful of almonds, a piece of fruit or a small protein bar are fantastic options to keep on hand.

Tip Four: Eat Smart

While we all know that eating in is usually healthier than eating out, on the road you simply don’t have a choice – all of your vacations meals will be eaten out. So take the time to order with your health conscious mind, and not simply your taste buds. Watch out for extra large portions-don’t be afraid to take a doggie bag back to your room (assuming of course that you have a refrigerator).

Another thing to keep in mind is to keep fried food consumption to a minimum. Fried foo ds co ntain more fat and calories than other options, they are also likely to give you heartburn and indigestion-two things you don’t need spoiling your vacation. Stick with dishes that contain veggies, lean meats and whole grains.

Enjoy your vacation! Keep the following tips in mind as you embark on your summer adventure an d you may come home fitter than when you left. And when you get back into town sign up for my New Orleans fitness and fat-loss boot camps and I’ll you  get the body that you deserve – in less time than you think.

I would love to hear your comments below!

Why Steady State Cardio Actually Sucks in New Orleans(as a primary fat loss tool)

There are 2 major reasons in my book why standard cardio is a big loser for fat loss.

Reason 1

The first is EPOC. EPOC stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. Basically what EPOC does is tells us how long it takes the body to return to its pre-exercise metabolic rate. So after a bout of intense exercising your body will continue to burn extra calories for a certain period of time. From a fat loss perspective, the longer the EPOC the better. Some activities like weight training have an EPOC of 30 plus hours. The EPOC for steady state cardio is approximately zero. Yessir, give or take when you step off that treadmill or bike you are done burning calories – done.

You should think of exercising like investing your money. Let say you have a pile of money (you do right?) You are far better off investing it in a high yield account than you are burying it beneath the dog house out back. You want a return on your investment right? The same is true for exercise. If you are going to spend the time, get a high return on your investment and that means a high EPOC. You want to continue to burn extra calories for as long as you can post exercise. There are simply better choices than boring cardio.

Reason 2

The second reason cardio blows for fat loss is the adaptation factor. Your body is wonderful at adapting to various stresses. In general that is a great thing – it has allowed us to survive and thrive for hundreds of thousands of years as our world has changed. From a fat loss perspective it is a giant pain in the ass. Our bodies adapt to certain exercise quite rapidly, and that can bring fat loss to a halt.

As your body becomes accustomed to the activity, it becomes more efficient at doing it. With cardio that means that while walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes once burned 500 calories, 3 weeks later it only burns 300 calories. So for the same amount of work you are now burning 200 less calories per session. Sound good? I didn’t think so.

Real World Example

This has been proven in multiple studies but my favorite example is a client that came to see me a few months back. This is an absolutely true story. She was a woman in her 50s who had 30-40 pounds of fat to lose. She began to walk around her neighborhood to lose weight. At first it worked great, but then the weight loss stalled. So she walked more. Then it stalled again, so she walked more again. After she told me this I asked her how much she was currently walking per day. She said 3 hours per day. I kid you not. 3 hours per day. My jaw hit the floor. Can you imagine working out 3 hours per day and seeing no results for your efforts? I have clients who barely do 3 hours per week and have fat falling off them.

Here’s what happened: her body adapted AND there was zero EPOC. So first off the very second she was done walking she was also done burning calories. There was no carry over to the rest of the day, thus no metabolic increase.

Then as she continued to walk day in and day out her body figured out what was going on and made the appropriate adaptations. Initially that meant weight loss. But that did not last long.

So she had to walk more and more for the fat loss to continue. Eventually her body became very good at using fat for fuel – she was an efficient fat burning machine. While this might sound cool, it is most decidedly not cool.

We want our cars to be efficient at using fuel, the less gas we use the better. But since the goal is fat loss we want our bodies to use as much fat for fuel as possible- we want our bodies to be fat Inefficient . Her body was using less fat per unit of time while working out. Not only that, it taught her body to use less fat during the rest of the day too.

The end result was stalled weight loss. The only method she knew to re-start the weight loss was walking more. But to what end?

There you have it, in a nutshell the reason why at my New Orleans Boot Camps we do not use steady state cardio as a primary fat loss tool.

Now I just spent over 100 words tell you how useless cardio is, but I will say it does have its place in certain fitness programs. But if your main goal is fat loss, steady state cardio should be very low on your to-do list!

Make Sure you leave a quick comment Below!

Making the Invisible, VISIBLE!

A Fitness Blog Post by: Jonathan Kaufman( New Orleans Boot Camp Instructor in Lake view)

I moved to New Orleans to find myself spiritually and wound up living in, of all places, a Zen Temple. Here in New Orleans, city of fun, festivity, and frolic, a place exists where I could go to get in touch with my true self, whatever that was.

Up until this period in my life I was a bit lost and wandering. My life was being wasted because I was living for others and not for myself. I would catch my mind worrying more about what people thought about me than what I actually was accomplishing, and I realized that there was more to life than living for others, especially since life is too short to squander.

At the Zen Temple we would meditate, of course, but there would also be periods where we would go through ceremonies that seemed meaningless at the time to me. Ringing gongs, chanting in Japanese, constantly cleaning an already spotless building and living space, and doing things solely for the sake of doing them can make even the sanest person a bit “loopy”.

When I would ask my “Zen Master”, Robert, why we go through all of these motions, cleaning already clean things, chanting the same things over and over, going through the repetition of the day, he told me this, “We do these things to make what is invisible, visible.” He is always a bit cryptic and I guess it’s a Zen Master thing. I left him that day feeling a bit confused, and my mind worked to figure out what he meant by the words that he said.

In all of us there are dynamics that are daily and ongoing. These dynamics, or situations, are for the most part contained within ourselves and we do not necessarily notice them. It’s like an emotion that you may have that isn’t expressed outwardly. Without a reason, you would probably keep that emotion to yourself and the people around you would never know that anything was going on. Then one day you decide to purchase a t-shirt. Perhaps the t-shirt has a smiley face on it, or it could have a funny comment, or it may have a skull and crossbones across a black panel. Whatever the t-shirt’s image may be, this is in some way a reflection of you. That is what Robert, the Zen Master, meant when he said that we were making the invisible, visible.

How we dress, what we say, the actions that we do or don’t do, the people that we connect and interconnect with, these are all ways that we use to express the true selves that are hidden within the “flesh bag” that is given to us at birth.

What does this have to do with New Orleans Boot camp? It has a whole lot to do actually.

Teaching Bootcamp in New Orleans has been a learning experience for me and I continue to grow and learn as I teach each successive camp.

On the first day of camp I explain what is expected of my campers and I try to keep it light and fun. No unreasonable stress or unrealistic expectations. Try to have fun. Learn what this is about, especially if you have never been to a fitness boot camp, and use the Bootcamp as a tool.

If I were to teach a computer class and gave twenty laptops out to 20 students, at the end of 30 days, each laptop would be different, although they all started out exactly the same. Each student would modify the components or software to match the lives that they are living and even two very similar people would have totally different needs and uses for their laptops.

Bootcamp is my laptop. I present the same exercises, routines, challenges to everyone but each camper is an individual and must make modifications to the exercises and schedule according to their individual lives.

• Nobody can do it for you and I can’t jump into your body and show you what it feels like to put in the effort.

• This awareness of what you do and how it affects your body must be learned by yourself.

• To develop this awareness, each camper must take a good look at their effort, and emotion, and the thought processes that they manifest, and adjust their workout to reflect their individual ability and goals. Be flexible and open to seeing what is happening as you take the journey.

• If you are sore for too many days after a hard workout, ask yourself “why?” “What would have to happen for me to recover more fully?”

• If you are getting leaner and eating better, ask yourself, “how?” or “what?” do I have to do to get the best results possible.

• When you want to get stronger at doing a push-up, ask yourself, “What needs to happen to make a difference happen?”

Questioning yourself and the process that Adventure New Orleans Fitness Bootcamp is, along with the effects or results that you are achieving will help you to develop the awareness that empowers you to take control of your life and your fitness goals forever. Be positive and make the invisible visible to you and the people around you.

Jonathan Kaufman, ( Lake view Boot Camp Instructor )

Make sure and leave a comment Below!

Don’t Drink Yourself Fat in New Orleans

“Watch This Free Presentation on How To Transform Your Body Without Eliminating Carbs, Ditching Fat, or Starving Yourself.”

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Start anytime Between April 26th and May 3

New Orleans, 51 Summer Fitness Boot Camp Tips on Burning Fat!

A Fitness Boot Camp Guest Post by Dan Go

Summer means a lot of things…but the most important thing is the fact that we wear our most revealing clothes during the summer so you want to be looking your best when hitting the scene or going to the beach. There is nothing worse than having that extra flab hanging around from the holidays haunting you every time you wear your clothes.

The good thing is changing your body doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to live off of salad and chicken for every meal, work out in the gym for 2 hours a day 7 days a week and you don’t have to give up your lifestyle to tone up, slim down your winter belly and have toned arms your friends would be jealous of.
Here are 51 tips on burning the extra fat off of your body and if you don’t want to go through all 51 of them.

51 Fast tips to a Summer Ready Body

1. You can never out exercise a bad diet. Start eating whole foods and stay away from junk now.

2. When eating out make sure you ask the waiter to fill up your plate with two servings of veggies rather than the mandatory carb that comes along with it.

3. Always write down goals for yourself. Don’t type them. Write them.

4. Make sure those goals are so out of this world that everyone will be looking at you like you are crazy. Shoot for the stars and you’ll end up in the clouds. It’s so cliche but true.

5. Take a before picture of yourself. Front, side and back.

6. Front load your carbs in the beginning of the days. On workout days you can have more than normal carbs. Non workout days I would have little to none.

7. Drink water. A dehydrated body will not lose fat. 1.5 Litres a day for the ladies and 3 litres for the men.

8. To burn the most fat in the least amount of time 99% of the time do full body circuit training workouts with little to no rest in between.

9. Don’t bring a cell phone with you to the gym.

10. Don’t take fat loss advice from someone that doesn’t look like they practice what they preach.

11. 90% of personal trainers suck. Before investing in one research them out and make sure they have testimonials so they have a proven track record of getting results.

12. You will end up living up to the expectations of everyone else around you. Put yourself in the company of people who have achieved what you already want to achieve.

13. There is no one perfect fat loss program.

14. There are only a few fat loss principles.

15. If you screw up (which you will eventually do) don’t beat yourself up for slipping up. Focus on the solution rather than the problem.

16. Thoughts equal things. Focus on what you want ie. Flat stomach, toned thighs etc.. rather than what you don’t want ie. “I don’t want to get fat”, “I don’t want to eat badly” etc..

17. Always measure yourself every single month to see if you are making progress. Most important measurements are the hips and waist.

18. Have less than 10 seconds rest time between sets for a circuit.. The less rest you have in-between sets the more your body turns into a fat burning machine. I would aim for doing 5 exercises 1 minute each exercise done 4x over. Example: Squat, Pushups, Lunges, Back Rows, Knee high sprints would be a sample circuit.

19. Always aim for the “Afterburn effect”. Afterburn happens when you end a day of exercise but an hour later you are still sweating from the workout. This is your metabolism on FIRE. This is done through different forms of circuit training.

20. Buy clothing that is a size or two down from what you normally wear. Make it your goal to fit into that piece of clothing in two months.

21. Fitness classes (Step classes, fake weight classes, tae-bo classes, etc…) are fun but ineffective at helping you burn fat and achieve the body you want to achieve. Avoid them at all costs.

22. Yoga is awesome for developing an injury resistant body but horrible for fat loss. An average yoga class burns 130 calories. Sweeping your floor burns 130 calories.

23. Doing exercise with a friend is the best way to stick to a workout program. Just make sure you workout and not talk to each other for hours not geting anything done.

24. If you do exercise with a friend, make sure they are AS SERIOUS AS YOU ARE in terms of achieving your goals. Which leads to…

25. If you can have a full out conversation when working out….you are NOT WORKING OUT HARD ENOUGH.

26. Always make sure your exercise program is constantly changing in some form of fashion to never let your body plateau. This means changing your intensity and adding more weight or doing more reps.
27. Don’t do long boring cardio. Do interval training. Google it.

28. Always take a post workout protein shake after a workout. This will boost your metabolism and increase the effectiveness of the workout.

29. Always aim for protein at every single meal.

30. Aim for 5-6 meals spread apart every 2-3 hours every day.

31. Always take a fish oil supplement and a multivitamin at least once every day.

32. Always seek a coach or a mentor to help you achieve your goals especially in areas you are weak in. I hire a business coach to help me out with my business. He costs a ton but he is worth every penny.

33. Adopt a long term mindset when trying to achieve a goal. Nothing happens overnight. We live in an instant gratification society where we wants things done FAST. The truth is it took us “X” number of years to develop the body we have.

It won’t take as long to lose it but you have to be patient if you don’t see anything happen in a couple of weeks or even months. Keep at it and don’t quit.

33. Stop rationalizing. We rationalize and lie to ourselves to soften the blow. We gotta be radically honest with ourselves and push for the solution.

34. It takes more energy to be positive than negative, to be optimistic than to be pessimistic. Choose to consciously be optimistic and positive and you will attract more good things in life to you. This sounds a little esoteric but it’s a universal law just like gravity.

35. Make sure you have one day a week (if you are eating right) to do/eat whatever the hell it is you want.

36. Always look for ways to stay active while doing something that is fun for you. Mine are basketball and beach volleyball. What are yours?

37. Always find a local fitness expert to work with. The last thing you want is to hire a trainer that has no freaking clue on how to put you through a workout!
38. Stay outside of your comfort zone as much as you can. Doing uncomfortable things will result in more confidence, more growth as a human being and more skills.

39. Never whine, bitch, or complain….EVER. The more you whine, bitch or complain about a situation the more that situation will get worse. It never helps. Plus no one wants to hear about it.

40. Intensity EQUALS results.

41. Get away from using machines at the gym. Use your body weight, free weights, kettle bells elastic bands…use them ALL! But don’t use the machines. They just absolutely suck at fat loss.

42. Always aim to get 7-8 hours of sleep a day.

43. Ladies aim for half a gallon of water a day. Guys aim for a gallon of water a day.

44. Have only ONE GOAL and stick to it. Don’t have a goal to lose 10 pounds and win a marathon. Confucius says, “Man who chases two rabbits, ends up with none”. Have one goal and laser focus on it until you achieve it.

45. Keep a nutrition journal to keep track of your eating habits.

46. The best Ab exercise is pushing yourself away from the dinner table.

47. Understand that there are three kinds of business in life. Your business, other peoples and life’s business. Your business is your thoughts and actions. Other peoples business is their thoughts and actions. Life’s business are things like the weather and the traffic. Focus only on YOUR business, because it’s the only thing that matters, the other stuff you can’t control so don’t worry about it.

48. Only do things for yourself not because someone else wanted you to. Ride your own race and compare your results only to yourself.

49. Always take action but don’t be attached to the outcome.

50. When working out for fat loss stick with compound exercises that hit multiple muscle groups such as squats, pushups and lunges.

51. In Guy Ritchie’s kick-a** film RockNRollla there’s a chase scene that just goes on and goes on ( the scene is funny as hell by the way )… the bad guys just won’t give up no matter what… where most people would have keeled over and died, these dudes just keep comin’ at ya… that is how you get the body you dream of. <—-Borrowed from my business coach.

52. (Bonus) It may sound totally cliche but we only get one chance at this thing called life. Enjoy the summer as much as possible and don’t take anything too seriously

Those are the 51 (well 52 actually). I would recommend to pick 5 of them right now and start applying them to your life and body.

Changing your body doesn’t take that long and it doesn’t have to be super hard. I went from a fat dude to a pretty lean guy and I’m just a regular person so if I can do it you can do it. Just focus on your goals, persevere and you’ll get to where you need to be in no time.

Talk soon,

Dan Go

Dan Go owns Markham Boot Camp and also does Personal Training in Thornhill.

Make Sure You leave a comment below!

A New Orleans Stretching Yoga Sequence

This Great Yoga Sequence is a Guest Post by Kamloops Yoga Teacher Katrina Ariel

Stretching is a very important part of taking care of your body, and doing a short session like this yoga practice is a good way to keep your muscles supple and your body happy.

Keeping up your workout, balancing it with stretching, and – of course – eating smart, are all essential aspects of staying healthy.
Sometimes the hardest part is getting the food part right. But there are simple things you can do (like choosing Low Glycemic foods) that make a BIG difference.

To find out how to reset your metabolism and why Low Glycemic foods are so important, check out this helpful video New Orleans Fat loss Contest <===Click here

Katrina Ariel is a Kamloops Yoga Instructor , she runs Yoga Fitness Boot Camp Kamloops Canada

REAL  New Orleans Slimming Secrets from the Supermarket:
“The Top 4”

This “negative” can be very positive.

Most of us don’t just want to lose “weight”. We want to lose body fat. This is what really concerns us, cosmetically speaking, at least.

Body fat, referred to by scientists as adipose tissue, is the stuff that can hide shapely, defined muscles from view, make your bikini fit awkwardly (or not at all), put rolls on your belly, and so on. To lose body fat and prevent it from finding you again, you must burn more of it than you store. When you achieve this scientists say you are in negative fat balance, and it can be a very positive thing.
Indeed, if you stay in negative fat balance long enough, then you will unquestionably lose body fat.

The supermarket is a great place to go for things that can increase body fat. But it’s also home to some of nature’s most powerful tools for helping you lose it. In this exclusive report we reveal 4 natural “slimming secrets” that can immediately increase your calorie-burning rate, the first and most critical step toward achieving a negative fat balance and fitting into your swimsuit properly again.

1.   Coffee (caffeine)
While the proportions may shift from moment to moment, your body always burns a mixture of three fuels: carbohydrate, fat and protein. Thus, if you increase your overall calorie-burning rate (a.k.a. metabolic rate), it’s pretty much guaranteed that your fat-burning rate will go up, bringing you that much closer to the negative fat balance territory where real slimming occurs.

About 75% of the caffeine consumed in the United States comes from coffee, a product that no supermarket can be considered complete without.
Caffeine is recognized worldwide for its ability to enhance alertness and performance. However, it also displays fast-acting calorie-burning properties.

For instance, a study involving lean and overweight (obese) subjects reported that a single 100-mg dose of caffeine (equivalent to a little over 1 cup of coffee) was enough to raise their calorie-burning rate by up to 4% for 2.5 hours.
While a 4% increase may not seem like a big deal, it can turn into one. The scientists who conducted the study explain, “…if it is assumed that there is no compensatory increase in food intake, the increase [in calorie-burning rate] after caffeine would represent an energy deficit of 75-110 kcal/day. These changes may be small but over several months could accumulate and lead to substantial changes in body weight.”

But wait. Regular coffee drinkers know all too well that you can become tolerant to its energizing effects over time. Won’t the same thing happen here? Fortunately, evidence suggests that caffeine’s calorie-burning effects persist with repeated exposure. Case in point: The subjects in the above study were all mild to moderate consumers of caffeine, consuming anywhere from 250-500 mg per day, equivalent to ~3-6 cups of coffee. Yet they all enjoyed a calorie-burning boost from the relatively small dose given to them.

2.   Hot Pepper (capsaicin)
The waiter places a delicious meal in front of you that includes a spicy curry sauce. You devour it. For the next 30 minutes your calorie-burning rate is cruises at 10% above baseline, equivalent to burning an additional 129 Calories per day, or 27% of the caloric value of the entire meal. Sounds too good to be true? This fictitious scenario became a reality at Kyoto University in Japan when scientists gave young women a 481-Calorie meal consisting of a yellow curry sauce containing 3 mg of capsaicin.

Capsaicin is the compound responsible for the sharp, and for some of us, intolerably painful, sensation produced by eating hot red peppers. It’s also to blame for the beads of sweat that appear on your forehead as you do so. Thus, it may come as no surprise to learn that deep inside the body capsaicin can increase your calorie-burning rate by stimulating a process known as thermogenesis.
Thermogenesis essentially involves the release of calories in the form of heat. Once released, they can no longer be stored as body fat. In addition to increasing thermogenesis, capsaicin has been found to improve meal satiety (i.e. how full you feel after eating), thereby reducing your risk of overeating. In animal studies it has been reported to increase calorie-burning rate and reduce body fat.

Of course, the single most powerful way to increase your calorie-burning rate and get into negative fat balance is to exercise. Here, too, capsaicin may boost your slimming efforts. When scientists gave healthy subjects capsaicin an hour before performing low-intensity exercise (stationary cycling), they burned more fat. The increase was impressive enough that the scientists suggested capsaicin be used as an adjunctive therapy in the treatment of elevated blood lipid levels and/or obesity.

3.   Cinnamon
Cinnamon often serves as a flavorful addition to carbohydrate-rich meals. How great is it, then, to learn that it may help “push” more of those carbohydrates into lean muscle and away from fat cells (adipose tissue)?

Most of the carbohydrate calories you eat are eventually converted into glucose (a.k.a. blood sugar). The hormone insulin helps direct glucose into your body’s cells, including muscle cells. The more sensitive your muscle cells are to insulin, the more efficiently they can scoop up glucose and store it for later use, such as providing your muscles with energy during exercise. All other things held constant, this leaves less glucose available for your fat cells, which might otherwise use it to make body fat.

Of the many plants studied to date, cinnamon has been reported to be among the most powerful in terms of its ability to enhance insulin sensitivity and keep blood glucose levels in check. When added to a carbohydrate-rich meal, it reduces the rise in blood glucose normally experienced afterwards. While the effects on insulin sensitivity may take a couple of weeks to manifest, the improvements in blood glucose control appear virtually immediately.

So cinnamon increases insulin sensitivity and improves blood glucose regulation. Great. However, does this mean it can help you lose body fat more quickly? In fact, this ancient spice might help you do more than that. Dr Richard Anderson (Ph.D.) at the US Department of Agriculture has conducted numerous studies on cinnamon.
He says that if cinnamon is consumed long-term, it can enhance lean body mass (this includes muscle) and reduce body fat, something he and his scientific colleagues demonstrated in a study performed in 2006.

4.   Green Tea
White, green and black varieties of tea all contain caffeine (anywhere from ~14-61 mg per 6-8 oz serving). But it’s green tea that seems to get the most attention from scientists when it comes to burning fat. And its fat-burning effects are due to more than its caffeine content.

In one frequently cited study, healthy young men were given a green tea extract three times per day. Their 24-hour calorie-burning rate was 3.5% higher than that of subjects taking a placebo. This was equivalent to burning an additional 200 Calories per day -more than enough to eventually produce substantial weight loss and reductions in body fat.

Not only did green tea cause the subjects to burn more calories, but a larger proportion of the calories burned were determined by the scientists to have come from fat. That is, green tea was pushing them closer towards negative fat balance territory, if not pushing them right into it. Based on the scientists’ comments (they used the term “remarkable” to describe green tea’s effects), they seemed to be quite impressed.

Indeed, green tea’s thermogenic effects in this study were as powerful as much larger doses of caffeine.

Summary: The “Top 4” REAL New Orleans Slimming Secrets

Nothing worthwhile comes without  hard work, and that includes building a swimsuit-ready body.
That’s why it’s important to make use of whatever tools nature has available to help you safely and effectively lose body fat and avoid regaining it.

There may be more “slimming secrets” out there waiting to be discovered, but the top 4 revealed here –coffee (caffeine), hot red pepper (capsaicin), cinnamon and green tea are among the most powerful studied to date.

Individually, their calorie-burning effects are virtually immediate. Combined, they may greatly simplify even the most formidable of New Orleans Fat Loss Challenges.

Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think!

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
Dulloo et al. (1989). Am J Clin Nutr 49:44.

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