Negative calorie food
There are many different types of nutrition plans and diets that can be found either online, or in various other sources. Many of them are based on a biomechanism called ketosis, in which your body stops using carbohydrates as the main source of energy, and instead uses its own body fat, and fat that is taken with food, as the main energy source. The mentioned state of ketosis can be achieved by a ketogenic type of diet, which is actually nothing else but just another name for a low carbohydrate diet, because on the ketogenic diet, your goal is to eat food that is rich in fats and proteins, and low in carbs. There are many different meals and food you can eat in order to meet the mentioned criteria.
Vegetables are often a concern for people that want to achieve or mantain a state of ketosis, because they contain certain amounts of carbohydrates. However, some types of vegetables can be eaten with no problems, even in larger amounts because of the phenomenon of negative calories. Negative calorie food is basically food that requires more calories to be digested than it provides by itself. In other words, its thermic effect is higher than the calories it contains. However, true negative calorie food, which would, as stated, require more energy to be digested than it caries itself, doesn’t really exist. Insted, we actually talk about a certain part of the calories taken with food, that are wasted on the digestion of that same food. In some cases, these percentages are somewhat higher and fairly impressive, in other cases they are rather low.
In any case, anyone who is on a diet based on ketosis, shouldn’t worry about digesting too much vegetables with negative calorie count. Here we will mention one of the most well known and most often used ones: cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage, celery, endive, spinach, carrots, broccoli and many others. By combining the mentioned vegetables with the typical low carb food that is a part of a ketogenic diet, one will get all the necessary nutritients, but at the same time, the intake of unnecessary calories will be minimal.
