A local doctor who lost 70 pounds and learned to control his appetite on a diet he created has written a book sharing his secret.

The main ingredient? Hot sauce.

VIDEO: Learn About Hot Sauce Diet

Dr. Spiro Antoniades said he had gained a lot of weight after doing all the wrong things.

"Overeating, eating too fast, eating the wrong things, doing things while eating, eating with the wrong people -- everything was wrong," he said.

Antoniades, a surgeon, said he ate his way up to 248 pounds. He decided to take a week off work to study the problem and come up with a solution.

"I would come home from work and act like a starved maniac. I would eat like crazy. I needed something to push me back, slow down my eating and force me to drink water," he said.

Antoniades said his diet answer was hot sauce.

The secret ingredient -- capsaicin, hot sauce's active ingredient.

"If you have it first, it decreases your appetite and makes you thirsty. So, you drink something and you just calm down for a moment and eat a lot less," he said.

Antoniades said the hot sauce was an effective deterrent for eating behaviors he didn't like, such as eating a log of cheese or wanting to eat a whole chocolate cake.

"I punish my behaviors with hot sauce. And the behaviors go away, and I don't have the feelings anymore. It works. It really works," he said.

Antoniades said he lost 70 pounds on the diet and wrote a book about it, called "The Hot Sauce Diet."

He said one of his favorite tricks is making a hot sauce bomb by taking an olive or half a hard-boiled egg with the yolk removed and filling it with hot sauce.

Antoniades said when he's on the diet, he puts hot sauce on just about anything -- even salad -- so he'll eat it slowly.

The surgeon said once capsaicin is swallowed, it is no longer hot.

Antoniades said he started using hot sauce as a deterrent to eating in college. When money was tight, he would put the hot sauce on pizza so that he would eat less.

Antoniades said he had gained so much weight that he was becoming diabetic. He was able to reverse that by losing the weight.

To hear more of his interview, click here.

You can also read excerpts from his book, "The Hot Sauce Diet," by clicking here or find out more on his Web site, www.hotsaucediet.com.