Secret Weapon for Weight Loss

1. Mushrooms
When people ate mushroom-based entrees, they felt just as satisfied as when they’d eaten those same dishes made with beef—though they’d taken in a fraction of the calories and fat.

2. Eggs
Dieters who ate eggs for breakfast felt full for longer and lost more than twice as much weight as those who got the same amount of calories from a bagel for breakfast. Think beyond breakfast, too: eggs boost a salad’s staying power and make for a satisfying snack.

3. Apples
For a mere 95 calories, a medium apple contains 4 grams of fiber. Boosting your fiber intake may help you to prevent weight gain—or even encourage weight loss.

4. Low Calorie Desserts
Banning sugary foods could lead to overeating. One reason may be that removing access to sweet foods stimulates the release of a molecule in your brain called corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), produced when you’re afraid, anxious or stressed. And increased stress levels may lower your motivation to eat more nutritious foods, making it more likely that you’ll binge on junk food.

5. Soup
People who start a meal with vegetable soup eat 20 percent fewer calories over the course of their meal.

6. Oatmeal
Eating a breakfast made with “slow-release” carbohydrates, such as oatmeal or bran cereal, three hours before you exercise may help you burn more fat. Here’s why: in the study, eating “slow-release” carbohydrates didn’t spike blood sugar as high as eating refined carbohydrates, such as white toast. In turn, insulin levels didn’t spike as high and because insulin plays a role in signaling your body to store fat, having lower levels may help you burn fat.

7. Hot Chile Peppers
Consuming a little hot pepper (in tomato juice or in capsules) 30 minutes before a meal helped study participants feel less hungry and eat about 10 percent less.

8. Almonds
Chew more to curb hunger. Participants got maximum satisfaction—they felt fuller longer—from the nuts when they chewed 40 times. Chewing more may cause a greater release of fat from the almonds, which triggers hormones that curb hunger.