Whenever you think about losing weight, you think about calorie intake. Calories are the worst enemies that you can have when you motivate yourself to cut off some pounds. With all the processed foods that are manufactured these days, even the seemingly harmless fruit packages are full of calories that could make you consume even more calories, way beyond what you should have. What is the solution to this diet dilemma? The immediate answer is more exercise, more discipline, and of course, a negative calorie diet.

A negative calorie diet is a program wherein your body gets to burn calories in order to digest the food that you eat. The process involves both mechanical and chemical processes. There are certain foods that contain much lesser calories than the actual calories that you need to break them down. It is believed that when you eat this type of food, you will lose weight. A perfect example to this concept is the famous celery stick. One stick has about seven calories. If your body needs thirty calories to break the celery stick down, then you burn off about twenty three calories. You can lose a pound in a month if you eat five celery stalks a day. That is about 3,500 cal in a month. If you follow the negative calorie diet, you will surely lose weight a lot faster.

For those who have a hard time sticking to a weight loss diet, why not try the negative calorie diet? This is a diet that is all-natural and fun because of the various flavors involved. Here are some of the facts about the negative calorie diet that you can discuss with your dietitian or doctor:

1. Food choices

You cannot start your negative calorie diet if you do not know wheat certain foods to take. Here are foods other than celery sticks that you can consume to lose pounds in no time:

• Cucmber, lettuce, cabbage
• Asparagus, broccoli, onions
• Beets, carrots, apples
• Zucchini, grapefruit, oranges
• Strawberries, pineapple, limes
• Lemons, raspberries

2. Mechanism

The negative calorie diet starts with the process of mastication or chewing. Through the process of peristalsis slowly moves every bit of food down to the stomach. This takes up to thirty minutes. In four hours, the stomach churns up the food with hydrochloric acid. After that, the pyloric sphincter releases the digested food into the small intestines, wherein the digested food gets a dose of strong bases from the pancreas and the gall bladder. The digested food becomes ready to be absorbed after four hours. The entire process takes about twelve hours to complete. All these need calories to push through. It just so happens that when you eat the foods in the negative calorie diet, you will use up more calories for burning them.

3.  Burning off

Generally, the calories that your body takes in are spent in three different ways. Five percent of the calories are given to thermogenesis wherein the calories are absorbed and stored. Twenty five percent of the calories you take in are spent through exercise. About seventy percent is given to metabolism. When you have the negative calorie diet running, you burn a greater amount of calories than the amount that you actually get from the given food choices. If a carrot that contains five calories needs 0.25 cal to process, absorb, and assimilate, then you only get about 4.75 cal, which you can completely use up through exercise and eating a lot less.

4. Attitude

One of the biggest secrets in the negative calorie diet is the attitude that you have towards it. You have to be determined and very controlled to make sure that you just stick solely to the foods in the negative calorie diet. The temptation to add spread, dips, and creamy sauces to the foods in the negative calorie diet seems so tempting but you know you have to keep yourself from doing that. The negative calorie diet could only be effective if you have the will and the positive attitude that you can do it and that you can maintain it.

Remember that in order for the negative calorie diet to work, you have to take action and spend time in exercise. This is to really help burn the excess calories in your body so that you can lose more weight over time. Don’t forget to consult with your doctor if your present health status is okay with the negative calorie diet. It is vital for your overall health to be maintained as you lose weight.