You will find a free list of negative calorie foods below, but first let’s consider what this means. There is no such thing as a negative calorie – a calorie is a unit of heat and it cannot be negative. So when people talk about negative calorie foods, this just means a food whose calorie level is low enough that it takes more energy to eat and digest it than the food contains.

For example, if you consider water to be a food, then cold water is certainly a negative calorie food. It contains no calories at all and the body has to expend energy to bring it up to blood temperature. So every time we drink a glass of cold water we burn up a couple of calories and lose a little weight. But there are very few foods like this. Most foods that are on the list do not really use more calories than they add, or if they do the effect is negligible … until you remember that at the same time the body expends energy just to keep alive and breathing. Celery for example does not give us enough calories to cover both the energy that it takes to digest it, plus the energy that we expend even when we are doing nothing. So that is why people call it a negative calorie food.

Negative calorie foods are most attractive to anorexics. A negative calorie diet would obviously result in starvation in the long term and nutritional deficiencies can occur surprisingly quickly. The calories burnt usually come from muscle mass, and the result is debility and wasting.

A more healthy way to use a negative calorie diet is as a form of fasting or detox. It is something you can do for one to three days right after the Christmas season or another time when you have been eating a over-rich diet. Provided you are otherwise healthy it can be a great way to clean out the system. However it is still best to take medical advice before attempting this.

If you decide to use a negative calorie detox, keep the following points in mind:

1. It is never a good idea to eat huge quantities of one type of food, especially fruits. A lot of foods contain substances that can be damaging if consumed to excess. For example, the acid in grapefruit and pineapple can damage your stomach lining. Other foods put an excessive burden on the liver or may cause diarrhea. So try to use all the different foods in small quantities.

2. Do not spend all day eating. You will just become bloated and feel sick. If you are only doing this for a couple days, you should not feel too hungry. Plan four or five salad meals each day, and let your digestion rest at other times.

3. You will feel more satisfied if you eat slowly and chew your food thoroughly. You will also use more calories that way. So if the foods can be eaten raw, that will be more effective than cooking them. Foods like carrots and beets will also be more satisfying if you eat them grated.

4. Schedule time when you do not have any important commitments. As with fasting or any kind of detox, you may suffer some uncomfortable symptoms including headaches, tiredness, depression and irritability. If these become severe, stop the diet and see a doctor.

5. When you end the detox, plan a gradual return to normal eating.

If all the above points are checked and passed, let’s move on to the list of foods.

* Apples
* Asparagus
* Beets
* Blueberries
* Broccoli
* Cantaloupes
* Carrot
* Cauliflower
* Celery stalk
* Celery root
* Cranberries
* Cucumbers
* Eggplant
* Endives
* Garden cress
* Garlic
* Grapefruit
* Green beans
* Green cabbage
* Lamb’s lettuce
* Lemons
* Lettuce
* Onions
* Papayas
* Pineapples
* Prunes
* Radishes
* Raspberries
* Spinach
* Strawberries
* Tangerines
* Tomatoes
* Turnips
* Zucchini

Please use this free list of negative calorie foods wisely.

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: christmas, depression, diarrhea, energy, food, headaches, negative calorie food, nutritional deficiencies, starvation, tiredness

It is not surprising that many people wonder why fad diets are bad when they seem to get results. You will find many sites on the internet claiming significant weight loss in just a few days. That type of weight loss is always temporary. It is usually 90% water which will be put straight back on as soon as your body rehydrates, which it must do if you are not going to suffer severe health problems or die.

Other fad diets are not so obviously crash diets with outrageous claims but they are over hyped diet plans that tend to be fashionable for a while and usually make a lot of money for the inventor in associated product sales. In the best cases these are good nutrition plans which will help you lose weight, but which you could probably have gotten for free from your doctor. In the worst cases they will prove so difficult to follow that you will give up after a week.

The bad of fad diets

1. Diets that promise quick and easy weight loss are usually based on eating more of one food type and none of another. These do not give the benefits that you would get from a balanced diet. They may suggest you take supplements but many supplements are not absorbed by the body unless they are taken along with the foods that the diet has banned. After a few weeks, if you stick to it that long, you may begin to develop nutritional deficiencies.

2. Fad diets are often boring and over restrictive. After the novelty of the first day or two, you will not enjoy your meals. You will then start to crave food constantly and will break the diet. You may even feel guilty, thinking it is your fault that you did not lose weight.

3. Most fad diets do not follow recommendations of the American Heart Association and similar bodies for fat levels in the diet. Often the diet will recommend high fat foods and low carbs which if taken long term, could result in heart disease. The promoters may tell you that the diet is only intended to be followed for a short time. But you probably will not reach your goal weight in that time, and then what? You either continue with a plan that is not good for your health, or stop and probably gain back what you lost.

4. Many fad diets do not help you to incorporate enough servings of fruits and vegetables in your weight loss program, or give you the variety of foods that your body needs.

5. Quick weight loss diets are just a temporary solution and do not help you to make permanent changes to your eating habits. Permanent changes are the only way to remain at your target weight once you reach it. Fad diets encourage yo-yo diet-binge cycles of fast weight loss and equally fast weight gain. This is worse for your health and your self esteem than if you had stayed overweight all the time.

Whatever the publicity materials may say, these diets will not help you in the long term. The best way to sustain weight loss is to eat a varied and healthy diet, do not overeat, exercise regularly and avoid fad diets.

Tags: American Heart Association, food, food type, heart disease, internet claiming significant weight loss, nutritional deficiencies, temporary solution

Vista Magazine is a great source for many alternative medicine info and I always pick up the latest magazine when I am near a health food store. I read through the latest copy and found a great article that talks about the importance of multivitamins.

As you know from some of my past posts I am a firm believer in multivitamins although I do not think that they are in any way a replacement for good healthy whole food.

Ensuring that your family’s nutritional needs are met can be a pot and pan-noisy event. Add to that the challenge of guiding your family through the piles of nutritional information available and you may feel overwhelmed.

Quiet the noise and feel sure that your family’s requirements are satisfied by discovering what there is to know about multivitamins.

We all know that multivitamins are a combination of nutrients (vitamins and minerals) that are essential for general health and well-being. The body is a symphony of chemical reactions, each requiring particular nutrients to occur properly. By ensuring that all of these nutrients are present, the body can function optimally, resulting in feelings of energy, vitality and health.

Are all multivitamins the same?

No. There are more than a dozen multivitamins sold in Canadian stores. Investigate the differences to decide which one is best for you.

There are two main groups: synthetic and whole food multivitamins. Synthetic multivitamins are formed by creating all of the essential vitamins and minerals in a laboratory and combining them into a capsule or tablet. Whole food multivitamins also contain all of the essential vitamins and minerals, but because they are made from concentrates of whole fruits and vegetables, they also contain additional nutrients. Many of these additional nutrients are necessary for the body to be able to absorb the essential vitamins and minerals. For example, vitamin C is more efficiently absorbed in the presence of bioflavonoids, which are naturally present in oranges and other whole foods. By using whole fruit and vegetable concentrates, whole food multivitamins offer a more complete nutritional source, and are more bioavailable (better absorbed by the body).

Some multivitamins contain more than just vitamins and minerals. Today, multivitamins may contain green foods, mushrooms, essential fatty acids and amino acids. All of these nutrients play a part in ensuring that the symphony of reactions in the body is functioning optimally.

Who needs a multivitamin?

Nutrients are essential to every reaction in our body. However, there are some age groups that have greater nutritional needs than others.

Kids and teenagers
Growing bodies are working hard to create new cells while still maintaining energy and health in existing cells. As a result, they are in great need of essential vitamins and minerals. Children, teenagers, athletes and pregnant women’s bodies face these growing nutritional challenges. A multivitamin can offer all of the vitamins and minerals needed to promote healthy growth.

Another area of the body that experiences rapid growth is the immune system. During the invasion of an infectious microbe, the ability of white blood cells to rapidly multiply is drastically affected by nutritional status. Multivitamins have been shown to enhance many aspects of the immune response (Nutrition, Oct. 2001).

Adults
Adults also need multivitamins. In your 20s, ensuring your diet contains lots of vitamins and minerals can correct any nutritional deficiencies you have developed in your teens and reduce your risk of developing long term deficiencies such as osteoporosis. In your 30s, running after the kids and trying to manage a career can cause you to reach for convenience foods which lack essential nutrients. A multivitamin can help address the potential nutrient deficiencies. In your 40s, fine lines start to appear and a desire to focus on anti-aging emerges. The antioxidant power available in a multivitamin can help prevent the aging damage caused by free radicals in the body.

The elderly
As you age, the body’s ability to digest and absorb nutrients decreases. This can lead to nutritional deficiencies. The risk of malnutrition increases the risk of infection. Studies have found that multivitamins can reduce the mean annual number of days spent with infection in the elderly (BMJ, July 2005). Daily multivitamin use in the elderly has been recommended by scientific reviews (Clin. Infect. Dis., Dec. 2001).

Now that you know who needs multivitamins I should tell you what I am taking daily and why. I take a fairly good multivitamin (but not one of those expensive ones), a calcium for my teeth and bones (Idon’t drink much milk), a B50 to supplement the B vitamins that are always short in a multivitamin, and an Omega 3-6-9 vitamin for the healthy fish oils.

Tags: Alternative Medicine, chemical reactions, energy, food multivitamins, health-food store, healthy whole food, malnutrition, Microsoft Vista, nutritional deficiencies, osteoporosis, still maintaining energy, synthetic and whole food multivitamins