I've seen some people on here write about a negative calorie diet. What is this?

Question

What foods are considered negative calorie foods?

Answer 1

The Negative Calorie diet works on the premise that certain foods create negative calorie effects (negative calorie foods), allowing you to lose weight. The Negative Calorie diet is controversial because the theory is not scientifically sound. No foods actually possess ‘negative calories’. However, advocates of the Negative Calorie diet say that you can literally eat your way to weight loss. A negative calorie diet ebook has even been published on this topic.

The theory behind the Negative Calorie diet is extremely appealing. It works on the idea that your body has to burn energy in order to digest certain foods. As a consequence, your body is actually burning fat. Take for example – an orange, which may contain 50 calories, it would take a certain amount of energy from your body to process all of the nutrients and vitamins within the orange. In doing so, you would burn more than 50 calories. However this is also highly dependent on the speed of your metabolism.

The Negative Calorie Diet claims that after consuming certain 'negative calorie foods' (like an orange), your body is left with a net calorie results which is a negative calorie deduction. So for every orange you eat, you should burn off 25 calories. This is why advocates of the Negative Calorie Diet encourage you to eat frequent healthy meals, in doing so you are actually increasing the speed of your metabolism.

Critics of the Negative Caloriet diet argue that no foods possess ‘negative’ calories and you cannot eat your way to weight loss. They also purport that by following the Negative Calorie Diet you are potentially offsetting your positive calorie energy reserves, cancelling out the effectiveness of weight training. This criticism argues that we need calories to create energy both for exercise and for recovering from exercise. On the other side of the debate, advocates of the Negative Calorie Diet concede it is true that there is no such food, which contain ‘negative calories’. However they do argue that the by ingesting certain foods you are increasing the metabolic processes which can result in weight loss.

The Negative Calorie diet – Against:

No scientific proof to confirm its effectiveness
Very little information surrounding diet
More theoretical than practical
The Negative Calorie diet – For:

Little effort involved
Promotes consumption of foods rich in vitamins and minerals
Increases the body’s metabolism
The Negative Calorie diet works on the concept that certain negative calorie foods contain a surplus of vitamins and minerals which can speed up enzyme production in quantities sufficient to break down not only its own calories, but possible additional calories present in the digestion system. These negative calorie foods includes:

Asparagus
Watermelon
Pineapple
Grape Fruit
Papaya

Answer 2

It is the holy grail of all the diet, but few people are willing to pursue it.

I'll let you in the secret:

Late at night when everyone is asleep and no one is watching, you first have to purge all the food you had consumed that day. You then furtively and gently pick the excretion from the toilet. Plate them in a nice presentation in a bowl, with choice of your condiment and chew it down.

Nothing works like magic as this diet. It'll let you forget about food, or consumption of anything, for a while, and the further purgatory effect it may have, hence the phrase: negative calorie diet.

Answer 3

No foods are negative calorie. What they probably mean is for example..

Ate: 500 calories
Burned: 600 calories

So, then your daily calorie intake would be -100. That is a very unhealthy way to lose weight!

Answer 4

I would think it means that you burn more calories than you consume, so the ratio each day of input/output is negative calories.

You just have to maintain the balance, or watch when you begin to eat more regularly that it is a net zero balance in order to maintain your weight.

It's the basis for almost any diet - lessen input, increase output, and lose weight.

Answer 5

I am not completely sure but my thought would be if you are consuming less calories than you burn in a day then you would lose weight. Then it would not really be a KIND of food but how MUCH food.

Answer 6

Sounds very unhealthy to me. But if you eat less than you burn you would definitely lose weight.