Calorie Negative Foods: Fact or Fiction to Help You Lose Weight Fast

Negative calorie foods is a term that is widely circulated in the world of weight loss and body building, but what does it mean for a type of food to have negative calories, how does that work, and despite all the hype, are negative calorie foods for real? Will they help you lose weight fast?

Negative calorie foods are foods that require your body to burn more calories for their digestion than the digested product will give back to your body in terms of energy. That means that not only will said type of food not provide you any calories, it will make your body burn some as well. Even though it sounds too good to be true, there are certain foods that will do just that, you just have to know how to use them.

Most of these foods should be eaten raw in order for them to have a maximum effect. After all, by cooking them you make it easier for the body to digest them in most cases, and as such, you're cheating yourself. The negative calorie foods belong to the fruit and vegetables food categories, and some examples of negative calorie foods are as follows: cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, lettuce, radish, cucumber, lemon/lime, grapefruit and others.

Negative calorie foods are most effective when used on their own, or in combination with each other but certainly not in combination with calorie-rich foods, something that would render the use of negative calorie foods useless. In other words don't put cheese sauce on your broccoli or dip your celery sticks in peanut butter. Combine raw shredded cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, celery, and radishes for a crunchy salad for lunch. Add raw cauliflower and broccoli spears to your dinner. Have an entire grapefruit with your breakfast.

Negative calorie foods are not miracle foods that will make you lose weight in no time without any effort on your part. Rather, they can help you in your efforts to lose weight, complementing the effects of a balanced, low fat diet and exercise program. While these foods will not spare you the effort it usually takes to achieve positive results in weight-loss, they will help you get there faster.

Try consuming two servings of a negative calorie food with every meal. You'll get more vitamins, fiber, and burn more calories. One of the best negative calorie foods isn't really a food at all. It's ice water. Yes, an 8 ounce glass of ice water requires your body to burn up 25 calories in order to raise its temperature back to normal after consuming the water.

Lose weight fast by adding negative calorie foods to your diet.

Lose Weight in Two Weeks with a Low Calorie Program.

The average person needs to eat about 2000 calories per day to maintain their weight. Of course this varies based on how much the person weighs, their metabolism and activity levels, but it is a bench mark. Lose weight in two weeks. There are three ways to lose weight on a low calorie program: Cut back the number of calories consumed, increase activity levels to burn off more calories, or just a combination of both.

A pound of fat requires that 3500 calories either be burned or not consumed. A calorie is the amount of energy in food. 500 calories would have to be cut from the average person's daily diet to lose one pound of fat per week. A restricted low calorie program is usually between 1200 to 1500 calories per day. A medium apple has 70 calories, an 8 oz. steak about 425. One tablespoon of fat, oil, or butter has 120 calories. As a general rule fat and oil has more calories than any other type of food. Vegetables and fruits have the least amount of calories.

Increasing the amount of exercise per day can result in weight loss. If you walk for 30 minutes daily you'll burn off 250 calories. The good news is that exercising at a brisk pace, say walking, for 20 minutes will increase your metabolism from 10 to 15% for two to four hours afterward. A brisk pace means that you can still talk while walking. If you can whistle or sing, you're going too slow and if you can't catch your breath enough to hold up your end of the conversation, you're going too fast.

Combining a low calorie program with an exercise program will allow you to burn off the fat faster.

The advantages of a low calorie program is that you can eat a wide variety of food. There are no restrictions on what you can eat, just how much you can eat. If you absolutely have to have a piece of cheesecake you can eat it as long as you include it in your daily calorie consumption.

The disadvantages include sometimes being hungry but you can lose weight in two weeks on a low calorie program.

Severely cutting back calories doesn't accelerate weight loss, in fact it has the opposite effect. Your body is conditioned to react to starvation, which is what you're doing when you decrease calories below 1000 per day, by lowering your metabolism. So you can cut back and your body will just compensate. The bad news is if you go back to a normal diet it takes your body a while to realize you're not starving and increase your metabolism back to normal levels.

Plan for your snacks

Plan ahead so you won't be hitting the vending machines or the cookie jar. There are lots of prepackaged alternatives at the grocery store that offer low fat, low calorie, but tasty snacks. Prepackaged costs more than the big bags but you get portion control in return. You can also package up your own snacks. Keep the calorie count to about 100. Fresh fruit and veggies are a given, but you can also have popcorn without the butter, saltine crackers with low fat cheese, a cup of soup, a handful of nuts, or pretzel sticks. Put your selected snacks in a zip lock bag and place in the fridge, when you feel the urge, they'll be ready and waiting.

If you work outside the home, brown bag your lunch

It's tempting to run out to the nearest fast food joint for a high fat, high carb lunch. If you pack your lunch you have control of what you eat and won't be tempted by a burger and fries. If you have a fridge and microwave at your office, and who doesn't these days, you can serve up a delicious salad and soup lunch. As an added benefit you will save money. The average fast food lunch these days costs around $7.00. And you can use the time you save to run errands, relax or take a walk around the block.

Lose That Weight with Acai Berries

You know you've put it off long enough. First it was "wait until the kids were back in school," then "who can diet at Halloween with all the festivities," then along came Thanksgiving and Christmas with all the cookies. Well you're out of excuses it's time to lose that weight in 2009.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to find a food that was not only good for you but helped you lose weight and tasted good? How about a raspberry chocolate flavored juice? There is such a thing: the Acai berry. It's high in antioxidants, amino acids, and essential fatty acids. It helps you lose weight because the Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids it contains help increase your metabolism. The fiber fills you up and because it takes longer to digest, it keeps you full so you don't get hungry as soon.

Acai berries are not some brand new scientifically molded super food. It's been around for ages and has been consumed by native South Americans as a regular part of their diet. The Acai palm tree produces two crops a year. Are you now wondering why this wonder fruit doesn't show up in the produce section of your local supermarket or at least health food store? It's simply because the berries are extremely perishable once they've been harvested. Within 24 hours of being removed from the palm tree the berry starts to rot. That and the fact that the berry is a small sized fruit about the size of a grape with a rather large seed there isn't a lot that's edible.

The good news is that Acai berries products are available in the United States and other parts of the world besides South America. There's Acai berry juice, pulp, powders, extracts, and supplements.

Like any good for you food the challenge is to incorporate the food into your diet on a daily and regular basis. Here are a couple of ways to get Acai berries into your diet and boost your weight loss program. Here are a few more ideas.

Fruit smoothie - Mix 1/2 cup of juice with 1/2 cup of yogurt, whirl in a blender with a handful of chopped fresh fruit.

Mix the pulp with equal portions of applesauce

Mix half juice and half green tea

Mix half juice with half sparkling water

The amount you should use of the powders, extracts and supplements depend on the quality of the product and how the acai berry was processed. While there haven't been any side effects confirmed from Acai berries eating too much of anything isn't good for you.

Have breakfast

Skipping breakfast leads to low blood sugar mid morning which results in cravings for sugary foods to pump the blood sugar back up. A vicious cycle results and continues throughout the day. Your breakfast should consist of whole grains, a protein source and fruit. It doesn't have to be fancy. A slice of whole wheat toast spread with a tablespoon of low fat peanut butter and an apple will do just fine. Or you could mix ½ cup of nonfat cottage cheese with chopped fresh peaches and a couple of whole wheat crackers. Another possibility is a scrambled egg served on an English muffin with a glass of orange juice.

Can You Lose Weight Fast And Easy Or Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?

You've been lugging the same 15 pounds, or maybe it's 25 or 50 pounds, around for what seems like forever. You've tried every diet known from cabbage soup to no carb to bananas and peanuts. You lose a little weight and then it comes right back on. Are you your own worst enemy when you try to lose weight fast and easy?

The key word is "try." When you think about it there's really no such thing as "try." You either accomplish your goal or you don't. And that may be why you've had such a difficult time "trying" to lose weight, you didn't think you actually could.

How you think determines how successful you'll be. Trying implies a half hearted effort that may work for a little while but is full of doubts to whether you'll achieve your goal. So change your way of thinking as much as your way of eating to lose weight.

Picture yourself healthy and at the weight you want to be. If you have photos of the thinner you put them up on the bathroom mirror. When you look at the photos picture yourself looking like that now. If you don't have photos choose a picture of someone you'd like to look like.

The idea is to fill your mind with the positive image. When a cookie beckons or you're dying for a double mocha latte in the afternoon, replace the craving with the positive image of you.

Change the way you think about food. Fresh fruits, vegetables, and juices are filled with energy and that's what the new you wants: lots of energy. Sugary cookies, breads, candies, sauces, and rich foods are filled with sludgy, draining, weigh you down calories, and that's what you do not want.

Enjoy the crunch of a fresh apple and the sweetness of the juice. Thank about the vitamins and antioxidants you're giving your body. Apples have another benefit. It's been shown that eating a small apple before every meal leads to weight loss. That's because apples contain a substance called pectin which makes you feel fuller so you eat less.

Now compare the apple with a frozen entrée, over salted, laden with chemical preservatives, and added fat to replace any flavors the natural ingredients may have had. The entrée just sits in your stomach like a lump and then slowly slugs through your digestive system.

Which would you rather have?

Change your thinking from trying to doing and you'll lose weight fast.

Visit Dee Power's Lose Weight Fast for more weight loss tips.