Some foods boost your weight loss

Ready to lose weight? I mean are you really ready to drop some pounds?

I just love getting your attention like that. Sorry - a little columnist humor there.

We're talking about negative calories today. It seems they're supposed to be the next big thing. Make that the next big old thing. Few things in physical fitness and nutrition are new. Most things are different takes on old issues.

These negative calories are no different.

Actually there's no such thing as a negative calorie. A calorie is heat, a unit of energy. If something has a calorie in it, it can't be less than it is. I know that last sentence sounds like something Paris Hilton might say, but bear with me.

Certain foods are called negative-calorie foods because our bodies use more energy to digest them than the amount of energy they have. For instance, say a piece of celery has 15 calories (or units of energy) and our body uses 25 units of energy to digest the celery. That creates a 10-calorie deficit - therefore a negative-calorie food.

So, how well do these foods work?

The fitness and nutrition community is still torn on that. There are Ph.D.s who believe negative-calorie foods are amazing. There are some who think they're just a fad.

I lean more toward the amazing side. I'm just not all the way to amazing for the simple reason that these are foods anybody can get at any grocery store. Folks don't have to travel to Death Valley and get ancient bristlecone pine extract and drink it mixed with nectar of Gravel Ghost.

Apples, asparagus, broccoli, cantaloupe, carrots, cucumber, garlic, grapefruit, green beans, lemons, onions, pineapple, spinach, tomatoes and zucchini are just a few negativecalorie foods. There's nothing extravagant or amazing about these things that 99 percent of us buy.

Consider the example of my wife. She was a vegetarian for the 10 years before the birth of our second child, and never had an issue controlling her caloric intake. She became carnivorous again - like me - and that intake was more difficult to control.

She decided to return to being vegetarian in January. By the end of March, she'd dropped more than 25 pounds.

"It wasn't just that," she said. "I exercised, too."

Sure, she did get more serious about exercise. However, don't forget that many of the foods listed above - negative-calorie foods - would be big parts of a vegetarian's diet.

Still, don't assume that because one goes the vegetarian or vegan route, one will be a skinny-minnie. A Burger King Veggie Burger with cheese has 470 calories and 20 grams of fat. That's more calories than a Whopper Jr. with cheese and almost as many fat grams. Take away the veggie burger's cheese, and it's 420 calories and 16 grams of fat - which still has more calories and as much fat as a Burger King cheeseburger.

Even with negative-calorie foods, it's all about holding ourselves accountable for what we eat.

Milo Bryant has two National Strength and Conditioning Association certifications and he appears on KOAA's Comcast Channel 9 most Wednesdays at 4 p.m. You can contact him by e-mail at milo.bryant@gazette.com or read his blog at milobryant.blogspot.com.