Can You Lose Weight With “Negative Calorie Foods”?

Social media fitness gurus are claiming that you can eat your way into a calorie deficit with so-called “negative calorie foods”.

Yep, I know.

So what in the Gwyneth Paltrow is going on here, you ask?

Well, it all revolves around something called the thermic effect of food, which is the amount of energy our body expends while breaking down a meal. A “negative calorie food” is said to contain fewer calories than is required to digest (e.g. if a carrot stick only contains 5 calories but your body expends 15 calories digesting it, this would in theory actually help you lose weight).

Holy flaps!

So have these “gurus” stumbled across a tear in the universe which allows us to eat our way to shredded abs? Spoiler; of course not!

Why Negative Calorie Foods Are A Myth

Honestly, I imagine the kind of “experts” who spew this type of misinformation spend the bulk of their free time stapling their tongues to their foreheads.

Here’s a list of so-called “negative calorie foods”:

	Examples Of So-Called Negative Calorie Foods
Apple	Berries	Broccoli
Carrot	Celery	Grapefruit
Lettuce	Watermelon	+ other water-based snacks

(NOTE: An apple contains 116 calories, and they’re definitely not negative!)

The reason this theory is silly is because the thermic effect of food is too small to have the kind of impact they’re promising.

Don’t get me wrong, the TEF is a real thing, but research shows us that it only equates to about 10% of the food itself, which makes it physically impossible for any food to burn more calories than it contains.

For example, the thermic effect of a 400 calorie food would be a maximum of 40 kcals.

Furthermore, there has never been an instance (fucking ever!) of a food with a higher thermic effect than 10%, so when these nuclear bell-ends promise you those kind of results they are outright lying to you.

A Gateway To Future Problems

Be wary of these type of “experts”, because they are often responsible for opening a Pandora’s Box of dietary issues for their audience.

Honestly, in my 22 years as a personal trainer, most of the dietary behaviours which people needed help with had built up over years of falling for bullshit like this.

Learning how to change the bad nutritional habits of a lifetime takes a lot of work, and you deserve all the credit in the world for putting in the effort. That’s why it infuriates me when some unqualified cock taboggan puts out blatant misinformation.

Fuck those fuckers.

Further Reading:

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