Exercise increases your body’s utilization of fat, and high-intensity exercise can enhance the effect. Can sports nutrition help you take it to the next level? A study published in theJournal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition offers some interesting insight into the question.

Using both trained and untrained subjects, researchers had some of these adult men supplement their diet with the juice from cashew apples which contains high amounts of antioxidant vitamin C and Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs). They received 3.5 mL per kg of body weight daily for 4 weeks. Other subjects drank a placebo. Blood samples taken after 20 minutes of cycling at 85% of capacity showed a greater increase in fat oxidation and decrease in carbohydrate oxidation in supplemented subjects.

True Strength Moment: Because the juice harvested from cashew tree fruit is hard to come by and doesn’t keep for very long, try mixing a BCAA powder into orange juice or creating another ‘stack’ that combines antioxidants with BCAAs. You might be able to replicate the fat burning boost while preserving more muscle tissue during intense exercise.