A little musing on the world of celebrity quotes and how they can cause a topic to go nuts.

Date:   4/11/2010 2:24:06 PM ( 14 y ago)

Big Dumb Celebrity Mouths

It's quite remarkable sometimes to see the effect that a celebrity has on something just by commenting on it. Today I read that Jim Carrey made a comment about Tiger Woods's wife, saying that Elin Woods was partly complicit in everything that happened with Tiger and his infidelity. Now, that doesn't sound fair to me, but it's just one person's opinion, and though I've always been a big Jim Carrey fan, I'm just going to have to take him down a notch in my book. However, because he's a big movie star, all of a sudden this little bit of celebrity idiocy is a major headline on CNN.com and probably getting tens of thousands of clicks as a "news story".

In the world of health and dieting it can be even more of an intense effect. I was scanning through e-zine articles recently and noticed that there is an article about using cayenne pepper along with regular fasting as a means of speeding up your metabolism and losing weight. This article, according to the view account at the bottom of the page, has been read over 40,000 times in the past couple of years, and I was wondering how this one little article achieved such incredible views on the Web. Then I realize, the article mentions Beyoncé Knowles, who was reported to have used a cayenne pepper diet back in 2006 to lose 20 pounds for her role in the film "Dreamgirls". This mention caused the Cayenne Pepper Diet to spike in Google Trends and gain traffic all over the web since then, in a number of places, as celebrity watchers searched to find out what gave Beyoncé her lovely figure.

So I decided to get in on this action, and I posted an article on e-zine that presented my own views and research on the effects of cayenne pepper, and whether it's a good idea to use this as a diet. I mentioned Beyoncé, hoping to garner the same degree of views as the previous person did, but sadly for me, e-zine declined my article saying that they no longer accept articles that have "celebrity gossip". I was a bit perturbed by this, because it's not gossip -- Beyoncé did actually say that she used the drink consisting of cayenne pepper, lemon, maple syrup and water to lose 20 pounds before making that film. I believe she was even more specific in saying that it was "practically" all that she had during that time period, indicating that Miss Bootylicious was practicing fasting along with the use of cayenne pepper. So I thought I had it on pretty good authority, but I guess e-zine is not interested in taking any risks with Beyoncé's legal team.

So anyway, I love that CureZone lets me blog about whatever I want, and I appreciate that about them, so maybe this blog post will come up in some searches when people are looking about the cayenne pepper diet and use Beyoncé's name. Again, I'm not saying she endorsed it, I'm just saying she was reported to have discussed it, which does happen to be true.

So What Is It about Cayenne Pepper?

In any case, the Cayenne Pepper Diet is a very interesting technique because it uses this amazing pepper as a means of speeding up your metabolism and therefore helping you lose weight. I actually think that if you use cayenne pepper on a lot of your food, the indirect effect will be that you'll eat less because your food will taste absolutely horrible. Cayenne pepper is a great spice, but adding it to everything you eat is just not a great idea if you are someone who enjoys the taste of your meals.

The other way it's used is in fasting, such as the above-described lemon and maple syrup drink with cayenne mixed in. I have recently become a fan of regular fasting, not for weight loss benefits but instead for general health and the detoxifying benefits of the occasional 24-hour fast. I'm not interested in fasting more than one day at a time, which I think you would have to do if you wanted to realize some serious weight loss benefits from it. I think weight loss can be much better achieved by simply moderating your food and eating small amounts many times during the day to keep your metabolism running hot. Fasting actually slows down your metabolism, so it doesn't seem to me to be the most effective weight loss technique unless you're going to do it for more than three days, which is a bit intense. Anyway, to use cayenne pepper for fasting I think has a negative consequence as well, because fasting is hard enough when you're just drinking water or juice, and the hunger pangs will certainly get you and test your resolve. To make it even worse by adding cayenne pepper to your drink, making it taste considerably more horrible than you can imagine, will only test your resolve that much more and reduce your willpower to complete the fast. I just don't think that any metabolism boosting effects are truly worth it, so I don't believe that the cayenne pepper diet is a "stick-able" diet.

And just because it might have worked for Beyoncé, doesn't mean it will work for you. After all, what we don't know about Ms. Knowles is whether she had any help, in the form of a special nutritionist, dietitian, or even a security guard who kept her away from the fridge! We just don't know, so it's best not to take random celebrity quotes out of context and presume that there are some authority for trying a particular diet. If only I could convince e-zine that this is what I meant.

In any case, if you'd like to read the article that I did post, here is a link to it: Cayenne pepper diet

Or, if you'd like to check out the diet system that I do recommend, which is called strip that fat, here's a link to that: STF Amazing Diet

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