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Rerun: Filling Up On Fewer Foods With Less Calories--Volumetrics and "Negative Calories"

Originally written in March 2009.
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Before you object mightily to the term “negative calories” and start yelling “MYTH! MYTH!”, I want to explain exactly what they are, how to use them, and why you should start.

First, the WHAT: Negative calorie foods aren’t foods that contain calories less than zero—there is no such thing. What this term signifies is negative NET calories—foods that take more energy to digest than the food itself gives off in calories. If you do a Google search, you may find additional information under the term “Volumetrics”—a diet that includes negative net-calorie foods along with lean meats and select starches.

Second, the HOW: Use these foods in conjunction with lean proteins to get a balanced meal without having to resort to refined carbs, sugary foods, or fatty foods to achieve long-lasting fullness. Whether you cook them or eat them raw, they still work because of their high water and fiber content.

Third, the WHY: Well, there are many reasons, but I’ll just skip to what I think are the pertinents:

1. Improved nutrition—these foods are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, which will serve to help cut down health care expenses.

2. The additional water and fiber in these foods will go toward speeding up your metabolism, digestion, hydration, and colon health. Water and fiber both serve to clean out your digestive tract and blood, pulling out excess fat, hormones, cholesterol, sugar, and salt.

3. Less reliance on refined carbs that break down into sugar (which becomes stored as fat) means ultimately less fat in the system.

4. In this time of recession, shortening the shopping list and using only inexpensive, filling foods like these saves money, time, and space in the kitchen—most of these foods are refrigerated and don’t require cupboard space. Plus, these foods don’t rely on coupons or rebates to entice you to buy them. They can also be grown at home.

5. Most of these foods can be served raw (as in salads), by the piece (such as fruit), or cooked in some way (baked in desserts, added to soups, stir-fried, boiled, fried, you name it), meaning they allow for greater cook’s imagination—no tie-downs to a cookbook or package directions.

6. This may be the most important—because these foods have negative net calories, you can eat more often, or more per meal. Because of their relative cheapness, you can afford to serve larger portions—but their high fiber and water content means you may not have to, because it takes less to fill you up.

Negative net-calorie foods
Corn
Rice
Potatoes
Kidney Beans, Black Beans—I’d include small red beans as well
Cauliflower
Lettuce (all varieties)—I’d include chard and kale as well
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Carrots
Beets
Green Cabbage
Celery
Chili Peppers
Cucumber
Endive
Garden Cress
Garlic
Green Beans
Onion
Peas
Radishes
Spinach
Turnips
Zucchini
Bananas
Apples
Papaya
Pineapple
Grapefruit
Asparagus
Watermelon
Apples
Berries—black-, blue-, straw-, rasp-, and cran-
Cantaloupe, Honey Dew melons
Mango
Oranges, Tangerines
Peaches
Pineapple

If you’d like to hone this list down much further, here are the absolute highest-nutrition foods from this list (I call it “the Wenchypoo magic 8”):

Plums
Navel oranges
Carrots
Broccoli (you can substitute other crucifers—cabbage, collards, cauliflower, etc.)
Red bell peppers
Berries (straw-, blue- and black-) Small red beans can be substituted for blueberries due to high antioxidant level.

UPDATE: Recently, black rice and forbidden rice was discovered to have more antioxidants than blueberries or beans.

I personally use the Magic 8 as a starting point in my diet, and add leafy greens for salads, lean meats, and red potato, bean, or rice servings (as Volumetrics will tell you to). Quite often, I throw it all into the salad—the meat, the fruits/veggies, and the beans or rice—and have an all-in-one dish of mostly negative net-calorie foods. Pre-preparing foods helps cut down kitchen time (see “How I Make My Own Kitchen Convenience”), so I have even more time to spend elsewhere, like at the computer writing articles for my blog.

Not only did I cut down on time, needed space, and money, but also weight*, and you can too with a little re-thinking and re-allocating. No more choice overload when it comes to the grocery stores, or even diet food lists, and no more slaving yourself to coupons, rebates, or other gimmicks, because these negative net-calorie foods are already at rock-bottom prices when in season—even cheaper when grown yourself!

* Weight loss alone gave me more benefits, such as better health, lower cost of clothing, more closet space, more dresser space, less laundry, and less shopping time needed because now my husband and I can share clothes like sweats, shorts, t-shirts, and tube socks. Our clothing sizes no longer have an X or XX in front of them thanks to negative net-calories and The Magic 8 foods.

Posted by Cute at 7:51 PM

Labels: financial (non-tax), food preparation and use, food purchases, health