Some diets encourage you to eat negative calorie foods to promote weight loss. These foods purportedly take more energy to chew and digest than they provide, making them contain a negative number of calories. No science supports the idea that you can lose weight with these negative calorie foods.
Significance
Negative calorie diets promise to help melt away fat if you include certain foods in your menus. Proponents claim that by consuming negative calories, you raise your metabolic rate, more effectively burn calories and improve your overall health -- all without counting calories. Supposedly negative calorie foods are usually green vegetables such as celery, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage and zucchini. While these super low-calorie foods may take a few more calories to process than they contain, you cannot subsist on celery and broccoli alone.
Reality
Barbara Rolls, a professor of nutrition at Pennsylvania State University, told "The Washington Post" in October 2001 that the concept of negative calories will not miraculously help you lose weight. The foods contained in negative calorie lists are generally low in calories and when you replace higher calorie fare with them, you are trimming overall calories -- not benefiting from some magic negative calorie effect. Negative calorie foods also tend to have a lot of fiber, which helps make you feel full and more satisfied so you eat less overall.
Metabolism
You lose weight by burning more calories than you consume. About 60 to 75 percent of the calories you burn daily are for basic functions, including breathing and pumping blood -- your basal metabolic rate. Physical activity makes up approximately 15 to 30 percent of your burning and food processing, or digestion and absorbing the food you eat, makes up about 10 percent of your metabolism. Mayoclinic.com notes that while you may be able to affect your basal metabolic rate and the amount of physical activity you do daily, changing the number of calories you burn through consuming food is not easy.
Strategy
Instead of chasing after a fad diet that makes too-good-to-be-true promises, follow a healthy reduced calorie plan that involves eating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins. Increases physical activity can also help you burn more calories and promote weight loss. Eating a diet that consists just of negative calorie foods is unrealistic and can leave you nutritionally deficient.
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