Foods that Burn Fat

There are a lot of misconceptions in the public when it comes to food and diet. People consistently look for ways to burn fat quickly, trying to find ways to lose weight with as little work as possible. The notion that eating certain foods will make you lose weight is simply untrue. Weight loss is a process that involves proper nutrition, excercise and an overall healthy lifestyle. No single "trick" will help you lose that ten pounds you want to get rid of or make you healthier without extra effort on your part.

Many people feel that weight loss is a simple matter of calories in minus calories out. This is very true but it is simplified so much that it makes losing weight more difficult than it has to be. Think of your car. Gasoline in equals energy out right? Not exactly. Your mileage per gallon (MPG) varries depending on how you treat your car. Little things like oil changes, driving style, type of fuel and countless other factors contribute to how quickly your car will burn its fuel. Think of your body in the same way. We want to give your body a tuneup and maximize its efficiency at burning calories. One such way of doing this is through maximizing our diet so we can burn fat at our highest potential.

Foods that burn fat work in several different ways. When most people think of foods that burn fat they think of food that takes more calories to chew and digest than is actually contained within the food. Celery seems to be one of those foods that pops up most often but unfortunately there is no such thing as a negative calorie food. The idea that food takes energy to digest has some merit though. The energy required to digest a meal varies greatly depending on what types of food that meal contains. This energy to digest food is known as the Thermic Effect of Food and we can use it to our advantage in order to burn more calories and fat.

Thermic Effect of Food

We know that different types of foods take different amounts of energy to digest. To use this information all we need to do is identify a scale of foods. Which foods burn the most calories to digest to which foods burn the least. We'll make it simple and break it down into the following three:

1.  Protien - On the scale of energy required to digest different foods, this one sits at the top. Digesting proteins is difficult for your body and tends to burn more calories than any other type of food.  Some estimates go as high as 30% of the calories you take in get burned during digestion.

2.  Carbohydrates - Carbohydrates really could be broken down into two seperate subgroups; simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates like suger and refined carbohydrates are very easily digested and turned into energy by your body. Therefore they burn very little energy in digestion.  These types of foods are so easy for our bodies to digest that they only require an estimated 3% of the calories you take in. Complex carbohydrates take much more energy for your body to digest. Still not as much as protein takes, but far more than simple carbohydrates. This is why you hear advice from dietitions and nutrition experts to always avoid simple carbohydrates and instead go for more complex ones like whole wheat.

3.  Fat- Fat holds its own at the bottom of the scale. There are no subcategories here. Fat is very easily digested by your body and therefore, as far as thermic effect goes, should be eaten sparingly.

Keeping this scale in mind we can begin to maximize out fat burning potential. If your body is burning the calories on its own, its that much less exersize you have to do to lose weight.

How It Works

You decide to eat a piece of birthday cake for dinner one night. For the sake of simplicity we'll say that this birthday cake contains a 1000 calories. Refined sugars and carbohydrates like the ones found in this birthday cake are very easy for our bodies to digest and process. Therefore very few calories will be burned, we'll say 30 based on the 3% estimate from above. You have 970 calories left to either burn or be stored into fat.  The next night you decide to be a little more responsible and eat chicken breast for dinner. Once again to keep it simple we'll say it contains 1000 calories. The difference here is that this chicken breast requires a lot more energy for your body to digest and store. Its thermal effect is much higher and therefore you burn more calories by simply eating it. So, while eating chicken for dinner you burn 200 calories. You now have 800 calories left to either burn or be stored as fat.

It's easy to see which meal is the better choice as far as fat burning and weight control. Any unused calories you have at the end of the day will turn to fat. Would you rather have to burn 970 calories or 800 calories? Despite both foods containing the same amount of energy, you will always wind up with a surplus of 170 calories if you choose the cake. Not only do you devoid your meal of any nutritious value, but youre also sabatoging your efforts to burn fat and loose weight. In order to burn those extra calories to make up that deficit, you would have to run approximately 20 minutes.

The Advantage

While most people chose to ignore this hidden bennefit of their food choices, it can still be a powerful tool in burning fat and losing weight. If you chose to let your food work for you, taking every little advantage, your results will come with that much more ease. It's also an important reminder of how negatively things like simple carbohydrates and fats can effect your health. Not only do you devoid yourself of nutritional value, you also are ingesting more callories per gram of food and on top of that not burning many of those calories in digestion.