FUEL FOR FAT LOSS

Make sure you get the most out of your morning run. British scientists recently found that people who down a carbohydrate-rich, highfiber breakfast before working out burn twice as much fat while running as they do after a similar meal without the roughage. Why? Eating low-fiber, refined carbohydrates significantly raises the amount of insulin in your body, which limits your ability to use fat for fuel, says study author Emma Stevenson, Ph.D. Specifically, the study participants burned the most fat when they’d eaten about half a cup of muesli cereal with 1½ cups of milk and ½ cup of plain low-fat yogurt; they burned the least when they’d had cornflakes with milk and white toast with jam.

A NEW WEIGHT-LOSS REMEDY: HOT SAUCE

Eating fire could help you torch your gut. Australian scientists recently determined that overweight people are more likely to burn blubber after consuming a meal that contains chili peppers than after one that isn’t packing heat. That’s because study participants’ levels of insulin—a hormone that signals your body to store fat—were 32 percent lower following the spicy meal. Capsaicin, the chemical that makes chili peppers hot, may improve the liver’s ability to clear insulin from the bloodstream after a meal, says study author Madeleine J. Ball, M.D. Although the researchers used high amounts of capsaicin in the study, you can get some of the benefit simply by dousing your dinner with as much Tabasco sauce as you can handle.

JUMP UP AND SHOUT

Well, you don’t have to jump. But a bit of movement at your desk job would be nice for health purposes. Sedentary desk jobs are slowly destroying the health of cubed workers around the world. In a study commissioned by the American Council on Exercise, a pedometer on 98 workers in ten different occupations found that secretaries took just 4,327 steps, teachers 4,726 steps and lawyers 5,062 – all far short of the 10,000 estimated steps required for good health. Try standing the next time you’re on a phone call, it can be an effective way to fight the (office) bulge.

MELT YOUR MIDSECTION

Want to know the real secret to a South Beach body? Wake Forest University researchers discovered that people who diet and exercise shrink their abdominal fat cells twice as much as those who diet only—even when they lose the same amount of total weight. When scientists analyzed the body-fat distribution of study participants who had dropped an average of 22 pounds, they observed that those who included exercise in their weight-loss programs were able to specifically target belly fat. “Abdominal fat cells may have different amounts of metabolic enzymes than other parts of your body, causing them to be more responsive to exercise,” says lead author Tongjian You, Ph.D.