Last updated
17 October 2009

Chillies and weight loss

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Can eating chillies help you to lose weight?

It is generally accepted by health practitioners that eating chillies can help you to lose weight......

......We are not saying that you should buy a packet of chillies and simply eat them as you would a fruit or crisp; rather, chop them up and add them to your low calorie meals.

Note: Chillies come in a variety of strengths - most packets provide guidance on the 'heat' factor!

How do chillies help you to lose weight?

Chillies are a natural metabolism booster - eating chillies can increase your metabolism helping you to burn more fat
Chillies help to curb your appetite, particularly for fatty foods and sweets
Chillies make it easier to switch to low calorie food options (which can often be less flavoursome) as they add spice and flavour to a meal making it much more appetising
Chillies can have a 'feel good' effect by releasing endorphins - dieting can be tough sometimes and a natural 'boost' can help to keep you motivated to achieve your goal!

Consider this - people often fail to lose weight when dieting because they find low calorie food options bland and boring and because dieting often involves reducing portion sizes, hunger soon kicks in. Thus, low calorie options are soon abandoned in favour of higher calorie, tastier alternatives along with larger portion sizes. The result, diet failure!

Chillies help with these two problems as they spice up and make flavoursome what some people might consider to be bland low calorie food, and they also help to suppress appetite so that smaller portions are altogether more palatable.

"How chillies make food more flavoursome is obvious - they taste good and the spicy kick that they give to food is often quite addictive!"

Less obvious is how chillies might suppress appetite. Research has shown that capsaicin, the substance that makes chillies "hot", increases activity in the sympathetic nervous system. The effect of this is to curb appetite - especially for fatty foods and sweets.

Coupled with these two magnificent effects, there is scientific evidence to support the believe that capsaicin can increase your metabolic rate by 50 percent for 3-4 hours after you eat a meal, thereby helping you to burn calories at a faster rate.

And if that wasn't enough, chillies can actually help you to feel good too! Chillies, in the same way as fats and sugar, prompt the body to release endorphins. These natural opiates promote a feeling of calm making you feel much more satisfied. In the absence of fats and sugars in low calorie diets, the chili-endorphin boost, is effectively a great 'pick me up'! The happier you feel, the less likely you are to comfort eat or over-eat by going back for second or third helpings. Also, the happier you are, the more likely you will be to stay motivated to continue with your new regime.

Building your resistance to chilli heat

The more chillies you eat, the greater the effects described.

However, as you probably already know, adding chillies to food makes food hot. Although your tolerance to 'chilli heat' can increase over time, it is best practice so start with smaller quantities until you know how much you can stand.

Your heat tolerance is determined by the number of taste buds on your tongue. The more taste buds you have, the more sensitive you generally are to chili heat. Women tend to have more taste buds on their tongues than men and certainly empirical evidence suggests that men can take more heat than women.

As mentioned above, tolerance to chili heat can be increased over time so don't worry if you are a little sensitive at first - just work you way up in terms of quantities and heat rating consumed gradually. It is important to make sure that you don't overdo the chili to the point that you don't enjoy the food you are eating.

Chilli misconceptions

People often think that chillies (and other hot spices) are bad for you stomach and digestive system - they believe that the heat can cause ulcers in the stomach and irritation to the digestive system. In fact, chillies have quite the opposite effect, as they are both beneficial to digestion and are soothing to the stomach.

This belief has been found to be an erroneous assumption due to the fact that there is no higher incidence of stomach ulcers or digestion irritation in areas, like Thailand, Brazil and Mexico, where the chillies forms part of the staple diet, than in areas where they do not.

Even when an extreme case study was undertaken by the Veterans Administration Hospital in the USA where significant quantities of ground Jalapeno pepper was injected into the stomachs of volunteers, no evidence of damage to the stomach lining was found.

In terms of cancers, the incidence of stomach and colon cancer is also far lower in South America, where they eat far more chilli than they do in the western world. In fact, scientists have found that capsaicin inhibits cancer cell growth.

Lastly studies have recently found that chilli consumption can lead to lower cholesterol, and lead to a reduction in the amount of fibrin in the blood, thereby lowering blood's tendency to clot.

......So, all in all, it seems as though chillies are more than just a superfood for oral pyromanics!!!