The standard way to lose weight down through the years has been to burn more calories then one takes in. This was accomplished by eating fewer calories which was supposed to allow the body to burn away excess body fat. This works well in the short term and people were able to lose weight but as soon as they stopped their diet and returned to their old caloric intake the weight simply returned. There is a new wave of dietary thought that eating certain foods will speed up metabolism and make this problem a thing of the past.
There are a couple of problems with eating a calorie restricted diet, the first of which is it's difficult to do. Being hungry all the time is not a whole lot of fun and makes it hard to stick to a diet plan. This is one of the primary reasons that most people on a low calorie diet usually fail in their weight loss attempt, they get hungry.
The second problem has to do with how the human body uses calories as its energy source. The fact of the matter is you need a certain amount of calories everyday. Once your caloric intake goes below the minimum needed your body will begin to react in a negative manner. Your body reacts to this lack of calories by slowing down its metabolism to conserve energy. This is a natural reaction to starvation and that's what a low calorie diet is.
By keeping your caloric intake within your maintenance range and increasing your metabolism you stand a much better chance of not only losing weight but keeping it off as well. By eating healthy foods that are rich in vital nutrients you can actually do this because of the way your body must digest and process these foods.
These so called negative calorie foods rely on the age old theory of how to speed up your metabolism. It takes energy to burn energy. What makes these types of foods different from the processed and refined fare that lines most supermarket shelves today is how the body must digest and process them. It takes caloric energy to digest any food and the more nutrient dense a food is the more energy it takes to break it down.
With a negative calorie food it actually takes more calories to digest the food then the food contains. Let's look at a simplified version of how this works. At different times there have been various versions of the grapefruit diet, which for many people worked for a short period of time. Let's say a grapefruit contains 50 calories but it takes 90 calories for the body to fully metabolize that same grapefruit. That grapefruit you just ate burned an extra 40 calories. Unfortunately you can't live on just grapefruit, but there are plenty of other healthy foods that have the same metabolism increasing affect.
A simple change to healthy foods that speed up metabolism can be the first step to losing weight in a healthy way. By eating these negative calories foods you no longer have to starve your self which makes keeping weight off long term much easier.
