Friday, January 7, 2011

Weight management and negative calorie foods

negative cal
One of the major problems faced by people trying to lose or maintain weight is how not to starve and, at the same time, how not to consume too many calories.

While no food is calorie free, there are a number of foods that are very low in calories and they are called “negative calorie foods.”  In fact their calorie content is so low that, the body has to spend more calories in ingestion, digestion and elimination, the net calorie consumption is negative.

For this reason, much less of these calories can possibly turn into fat in negative calorie foods as fewer calories are actually available to the body, assuming we don’t add calories with dressing, frying oil etc. This gives these foods a tremendous natural fat-burning advantage. We all should incorporate such foods into our diet whether it is for weight loss or weight management purpose.

Most of negative calorie foods are plant based, water vegetables and water fruits, and they commonly contain a lot of water locked in fibrous matrix.

You may be familiar with some healthy negative-calorie foods, such as:
variety of negative calorie foods
• Celery
• Grapefruit
• Kelp noodles 
• Lettuce, onions and greens
• Pickles, kimchi and sauerkraut

There are a large number of fruits and vegetables that are considered negative calorie foods. Here is a list provided by fatfreekitchen:

Negative calorie Foods

Negative Calorie Vegetables
Asparagus
Beet Root
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrot
Cauliflower
Celery
Chicory
Hot Chili
Cucumber
Garden cress
Garlic
Green Beans
Lettuce
Onion
Radish
Spinach
Turnip
Zucchini
Negative Calorie Fruits
Apple
Blueberries
Cantaloupe
Cranberry
Grapefruit
Honeydew
Lemon/Lime
Mango
Orange
Papaya
Peach
Pineapple
Raspberry
Strawberry
Tomato
Tangerine
Turnip
Watermelon