Natural, Spicy Juice Recipes
To keep calories low, use a variety of veggies and hot peppers in your natural juice recipes. The hotter the pepper, the greater the capsaicin content, but too much hot pepper could make your drink intolerable. When you’re blending your juice, add small slices gradually until you reach the desired intensity.
Try a little fresh cayenne, habanaro, jalapeno or serrano pepper added to a green mix of kale, cucumber, lemon and green apple or juiced with pineapple, lime and spinach makes for a spicy juice that revs your metabolism just a bit. Or make a low-calorie, spicy juice that plays on the bloody Mary cocktail. Juice tomatoes, lemon and celery and stir in a pinch of powdered cayenne pepper for extra kick.
For another spicy, tomato-based mixture, blend cherry tomatoes, celery, carrots, spinach, cilantro, arugula, garlic, lemons and jalapeno. Stir in a drizzle of honey if your mix comes out too bitter for your taste.
An Asian-inspired juice uses hot serrano peppers, celery, sugar snap peas, scallions, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes and lime. Finish with a splash of refreshing coconut water.
Other Effective Ways To Boost Metabolism
An occasional fresh juice drink can be a nutritious addition to your diet, but it can’t replace other metabolism-boosting strategies, such as strength-training. Lift weights to add muscle mass, which requires significantly more energy to maintain compared to fat tissue. Move as much as you can all day. Formal exercise helps burn calories, but so do small movements — known as non-exercise induced thermogenesis, or NEAT. Tapping your foot, walking to the water cooler, climbing stairs and doing laundry are examples of NEAT that boost your calorie burn.
Eating at regular, predictable intervals during the day can also maximize the thermic effect of food. Participants who consumed the same number of meals per week with the same number of calories, but in an erratic pattern, experienced a lower calorie burn after meals than people who ate at six regular intervals, showed a 2004 study in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders. Do your best to eat each meal around the same time daily and snack on healthy foods between meals. Quality snacks include whole fruits and vegetables, a scant handful of raw nuts or low-fat yogurt.
Written by ANDREA CESPEDES on LIVESTRONG