Can Foods Have Negative Calories?

People in Chamblee, GA, are always looking for easy ways to boost weight loss efforts. You can imagine how excited some were to find there was food with negative calories. It’s true and not something out of a science fiction or fairy tale. It’s all about the thermic effect that takes place during digestion. It takes about 10% of the calories in food to digest it. It’s more for some food and less for others.

Low calorie foods that are more difficult to digest leave few calories for the body to use.

Not only does high-fiber food feed your microbiome and make you feel full longer, but it also burns more calories during digestion. Celery is one example that’s higher in fiber, so it uses 20% of the calories for digestion. Since celery is already lower in calories, the net sum of calories after digestion is even lower. A celery stalk has six calories, but its net sum of calories is just five. Protein is higher in calories, but it takes a while to digest and goes through many processes. It uses 30% of its calories for digestion.

You can spice things up and reduce the calories you consume.

If you’ve ever sprinkled on too much cayenne pepper, you know it burns your mouth for quite a while. That burns calories and the heat of the pepper increases your metabolism, causing you to burn even more calories. While you probably will never eat a whole tablespoon of cayenne pepper, if you did it would only contain 17 calories. When you consider the boost to metabolism and the changes it causes that increase body temperature and burn calories, it’s probably the closest to negative calories of any food or food addition.

Food high in water content can act as a diuretic and help you lose weight.

While these juicy fruits and vegetables won’t necessarily burn more calories, they contain few and may act as a diuretic to help you lose water weight. Watermelon is one of the best-known for its water content. Due to thermogenesis, fiber, and liquid content, it has almost no calories. Other fruits and veggies besides watermelon and celery that add bulk but not calories to your diet include leafy greens.

• Turmeric, cinnamon, and cumin can also boost your metabolism and increase the calories you burn. Adding spices like these and hot peppers to other food can reduce the overall calorie count.
• If you love noodles, consider ones with almost zero calories. They’re made from spiralizing zucchini and called zoodles. It has few calories, and the fiber and thermogenesis lower the calorie count even more/
• Other high thermogenic foods that burn almost all the calories they contain include kale, spinach, and certain beets. You can even use the leaves on beets for a salad.
• If you add cinnamon to your diet to burn more calories, make it the healthiest type. Choose Ceylon or true cinnamon. The type at the grocery store, cassia cinnamon, is high in coumarin, which can be toxic in high doses.

For more information, contact us today at Thrive Fitness Atlanta