Negative Calorie Diets - Can This Be Real?

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Negative Calorie Diet

Negative Calorie Diets

You've probably heard of the Negative Calorie Diet, sometimes referred to as the Catabolic Diet. On the surface, it sounds like a dieters dream. The more you eat, the more weight you lose. Can this be real?

Of course, there is no such thing as a food that contains negative calories. Every food contains calories. The idea behind the Negative Calorie diet is to eat catabolic foods, or negative calorie foods that burn more calories to digest that what they put back.

Surprisingly, strictly based on numbers, this is entirely possible, but it should be noted that there is no scientific evidence to verify it.

For example, if you eat an orange that hypothetically contains 80 calories, you gain 80 calories. But if that same orange uses 110 calories to digest, you lose 30 calories.

Since your body needs 110 calories to digest the orange and the orange only provides 80, where does it get the other 30 calories? It would come from the stored fat in your body.

Now all you need to do is eat a crate of oranges every day and you'll be thin in no time.

OK, that's not very practical. But there are many other catabolic foods to choose from, but as you might expect, they all belong to the fruit and vegetable families. You can chew that cheeseburger until your gums bleed, but you will still consume more calories that you burn.

The biggest drawback to the Negative Calorie diet is that fruits and vegetables lack some important nutrients found in meat, dairy, and grain foods. Can we be healthy eating only fruits and vegetables? Of course. Vegetarians do it all the time. Fruits and vegetables are a very important part of a healthy diet. But they are not the only part.

The bigger question would be if you are willing to. If you are used to eating meats, dairy, and grains, would you be able to switch to an all vegetarian diet?

The better solution would be to incorporate fruits and vegetables into your regular diet. They not only help you burn more calories, but they also provide vital nutrients. They also help fill you up, so you eat less of the other foods.

Here is a partial list of catabolic or negative calorie foods:

Vegetables:

Asparagus
Aubergine
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrots
Cauliflower
Celery
Chicory
Cress
Cucumber
Fennel
Gourd
Leek
Lettuce
Marrow
Peppers
Radish
Spinach
Tomato
Turnip

Fruits:

Apricot
Blackberry
Blackcurrant
Cantaloupe
Clementines
Damsons
Grapefruit
Guava
Honeydew
Lemon
Mandarin Orange
Peaches
Plums
Raspberry
Rhubarb
Strawberry
Tangerine
Watermelon

The foods you eat play the most important role in your health and fitness, and weight loss story. Like the saying goes, "You are what you eat".