Papaya to Lose Weight

No single food guarantees weight loss. The best way to shed unwanted pounds, according to the National Institutes of Health, is to eat a nutritionally balanced, low-calorie diet and increase physical activity. When you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight. Because papaya is a low-calorie food packed with vitamins, it can be part of a healthy weight-loss plan.

Nutritional Data

Papaya is believed to be native to Central America but is now grown in tropical climates worldwide. Its soft pink flesh tastes sweet and musky. A 1-cup serving of cubed raw papaya provides only 55 calories but has significant nutritional value. It contains 86.5 milligrams of vitamin C, which is 144 percent of the required daily value. It also has 31 percent of the daily requirement of vitamin A. In addition, papaya is a fat- and cholesterol-free food.

Weight-Loss Food

In 2002, a national magazine ranked dried papaya among ''The 20 Best Weight-Loss Foods.'' It praised dried papaya's ''sweet taste that mimics a piece of candy'' and recommended it as a snack food for dieters in place of a sugary treat. Four pieces of sun-dried papaya has 120 calories. That's half the amount in M&Ms or Skittles candy, which both have 240 calories per serving.

Papain

Papaya is easy to digest because it contains papain, an enzyme that helps breaks down protein. Tufts Medical Center calls papain ''one of nature's own digestive aids.'' Papain is primarily used as a meat tenderizer, but it sometimes is an aid for people who have difficulty digesting protein. Papain has been used medically to treat post-surgical inflammation and fluid retention, but results have been mixed, according to Tufts.

Recommendations

Most adults require about 2,000 calories per day, but that number can vary widely, depending on metabolism, activity level, lifestyle, age, weight and other factors. If you burn 500 calories more than you consume per day over the course of a week, you will lose one-half to 1 pound per week. The Calorie Control Council recommends slow weight loss as the safest and most effective method and the most likely to result in long-term loss of body fat.