Vitaliy

In the dieting world, there’s a theory that says that there are foods which contain a small amount of calories, but when eaten actually take more calories to burn in the body. This is called the negative calorie and there are many people who want to know if there is a plan behind it and if it’s healthy to do. There is, but it might not be an ideal plan.

Pro: If you just eat negative calorie foods, you’re going to lose weight.

I’ve never found any specific scientific study that proves negative calories are real, just theories, but there’s no arguing that if you eat less calories, you will lose weight. So if you eat things like celery, cabbage, just about most vegetables and fruits which are considered negative calorie foods, you will lose weight. 

Con: Only eating low calorie foods can be dangerous and unhealthy.

Can you really imagine yourself living of only negative calorie foods? Even if the theory is true, that would mean you would have a negative amount of calories coming into your body everyday and the negative balance would make you feel pretty miserable. 

If the theory isn’t true and there is no such thing, you’re still not getting the amount of calories your body needs daily to survive. In order to find out how many calories you need everyday, you will have to know your BMR first. 

If you have a lot of stored fat in your body, it is true that even if you get less calories than you need, your body will burn the fat deposits to make up for it, but with this style of dieting which is very similar to low carb, if you try to completely eliminate high calorie foods with low calorie ones, there’s more chances that you will fail the diet. It’s almost like starving and if it’s not something you’re used to doing, it’s going to be very tough to stick to. 

What does science say about this?

Many scientific studies have not proven that the negative calorie is real, but they also don’t say it’s impossible and that it may exist. Most of the hype behind the negative calorie diet really comes from the name itself, but if you look at the whole idea behind this theory, it’s probably not possible to live on this sort of diet plan. Lose weight? Yes, but live of, no. 

Combine low calorie foods with high satiety and you have a better plan:

If starving and eating things that leave your body malnourished is what may happen under a negative calorie diet, the better plan would be to avoid that stuff but also lose weight. Taking better eating and exercising out of the way (everyone should be doing that to lose weight), you should eat high satiety foods with low calories.

Those types of foods do have low calories, not as low as typical negative calorie foods, but they make you feel more satisfied and it’s going to be easier to diet while eating them. You shouldn’t do crazy workouts which eating them because putting out too much energy and burning much more calories than you’re putting in can be dangerous, but if you just focus on the diet part, this is going to help you start losing weight and avoid the feeling of starvation.

Learn about high satiety foods.

Even if negative calories are proven to be true, it shouldn’t be a theory that you take all the way, by dropping everything you’re eating and drinking and just eating those types of foods. There’s no way the body is going to have the energy it needs to function. You may lose weight, but along with that, you’re also going to lose a lot of health.

Diets should be done with comfort and balance. If you try to lose weight quickly with most crash diets which the negative calorie one is technically one of, the reaction to doing that will probably be worse. The faster you lose weight, usually the faster you’ll gain it back. 

Those fast food addictions are a killer. You could be on a diet, making great progress and then it hits you and while you always have the will power to stop it, those cravings can sometimes be unbearable. I know about this since I am guilty of it as well. But I also know how to stop them and I have 2 plans of action you can use right now to see results with. 

For many years I have had the fast food addiction, particularly to a McDonalds breakfast menu which included the bacon, egg and cheese biscuit (2 of them) and 4 hash browns, with 2 small drinks of coke. I also loved eating 2 or 3 big macs after working out (yes the perfect time to eat them…).

My weekly routine would have the following trend:

• I would eat the breakfast menu maybe 2-3 times a week.
• The big mac version would happen at night, maybe 2 times a week at most.

Being in my early 20’s and doing this, I could care less about the implications of getting fat. My metabolism was high, I was young and I trained a lot. 

I am 28 now, I still train a lot, but one thing has changed: My belly has been growing and for a guy who does as much working out as I do, it’s embarrassing to see this. My pictures are becoming more difficult to share with friends on FB since it’s SO obviously there. And he’s the perfect one:

I’m still trying to suck in my gut, but what I left out in that picture was that a friend of mine was standing to the left (my right) and showing off his abs. Not my best moment 🙁

But man, do I love those fast foods and it’s so hard to quit. So this cycle of trying to take action, only to go back and start eating them again went on for a few years, until I started taking real action.

I’ve been using 2 different strategies for several months now and have noticed a decline in my belly fat.

Strategy one: 

This one is transitional. My rule for eating fast foods when I started was this:

Eat no more than 1 breakfast menu and 1 evening menu a week, no exceptions. So that breakfast and big mac meal wouldn’t happen as often. 

For the first 2 or 3 months this was tough and I admit, I cracked a few times.

I also started forcing myself to eat much healthier foods, little to no bread, spinach, carrots, cherries and mostly egg dishes for breakfast and fish related meals for lunch and dinner. 

I also had a period where I did a master cleanse for 5 days and lost 14 pounds. I have never seen my belly shrink so fast, but after that, I fell of the fast food wagon and it all came back…

So instead of cleansing again for 5 days, I just decided I would stick to my long term plan.

After the 3 months were up, what has happened is amazing:

My fast food cravings are almost gone. I actually eat that same cheat meal once every 2 or 3 weeks now. The last time I ate that breakfast menu, I couldn’t even finish it because I just didn’t crave it anymore. 

Now that evening cheat meal with big mac’s has almost vanished too. I now just eat sushi instead. 

I workout more and do more strength training, but here’s the funny thing:

My weight actually went up from 176 to 183. Yet I’m skinnier. What went wrong?

Actually nothing. It’s that my muscle mass is increasing and muscle weights more than fat. If you work out a lot and eat healthy, you’re going to experience this too. For example, the P90X diet and workout program gets these type of results and yet people freak out because they think weight gain is something bad. It’s not if it’s muscle that’s growing, not fat!

Strategy 2:

This one is for those hardcore fast food eaters who really have a hard time stopping. I know from experience quitting cold turkey is one of the toughest things to do and you may also know how much easier it is to run right back to give into those addictions. 

Try the Every Other Day Diet. Here you’ll diet in a special way which would help you cheat every other day and then slowly you would transition out of it and eat more healthy and less unhealthy overtime, but you’ll also lose weight during the first stages, even up to a pound a day if you follow the strategy it sets up. 

How about dieting eating fast foods? 

It can actually happen and one man proved it, but let’s not forget that fat isn’t the only thing you’re putting on when you eat those foods, you’re also hurting your health in ways that adds on as the years go by. 

Sure celebration or cheat days should be around and people should enjoy what they eat, but you can actually enjoy and CRAVE healthy foods if you eat them long enough for your body and brain to get used to it. 

The hard part is getting rid of the bad foods and unless you have a health condition which requires that you quit eating bad foods immediately, you should aim for a transitional phase to get out of the bad habits and into the good ones.

These strategies do work:

They aren’t the easiest thing, but anyone can do them. Just remember to stick to it and if and when cravings do come, instead of submitting, force yourself to eat something healthy. That will curb the hunger and make you forget about it.

Do this a few times and not only will you be proud of yourself, but your cravings will change. You’re going to see it, feel it and eventually not even want to eat fast foods as often. This is the sign you’re headed to a healthier future!

I hope these strategies help you and I’d love to know if you have any personal stories of any fast food cravings and addictions you struggling with as well as were able to beat!

Fast food junkies are reveling in joy right now and everyone who has been saying for years how bad fast foods are and that anyone who diets cannot seriously think of eating these foods is going to have to read what one man did to prove them wrong…

John Cisna, a science teacher experimented with an all Mcdonalds diet for 90 days and ended up losing 60 pounds. This was a science experiment he set out to test after his students asked him if it was possible to eat nothing but foods from this fast food chain.

The only thing about this story that makes sense is that John didn’t go and eat nothing but burgers. He actually stuck to a particular regiment:

• 3 meals a day: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• No more than 2,000 calories consumed a day.
• He walked for 45 minutes almost every single day.
• He ate items on the menu that were very basic: Oatmeal, egg whites, salads and a value meal.

And besides this leading to 60 pounds of weight loss, he also lowered his cholesterol! If you don’t think Mcdonalds foods, the type of stuff he was eating isn’t unusual. But there are a lot of people who think Mcdonalds foods are loaded with calories, trans fats and other bad ingredients.

I though most salads on the Mcdonalds menu had more calories than some of their value meals but this is incorrect. The Mcdonalds page which lists all of their salads also shows the calories per meal and the highest in salads was the Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken which has 480 calories. The lowest was somewhere between 100-200 calories. 

How many calories you consume is more important than what you eat.

Besides proving that it can be done, John also proved how important calories are. There are diets where you can eat practically anything you want, but in limited proportions and still lose weight, but maintaining a limit to how many calories you consume daily is very important. 

This sort of eating approach is probably not going to be recommended by most doctors, not only because of the ingredients you’re going to be eating but also the money that you’re going to spend, but if you want to try something like this, find out how many calories you need to eat everyday to feel satisfied and don’t pass that limit. 

John didn’t go over 2,000 calories but that was his example. The article which talked about John’s experiment did not say how tall he was, his age or how much he weighed before/after he tried the Mcdonalds “diet”. If someone doesn’t go over 2,000 calories, he might have started around 200-220 and by the end of it was under. 

To find out how much calories you need to eat everyday to lose weight, but also not starve, find your BMR which will tell you this and then don’t go over that amount. Try to eat foods with a low satiety and rarely treat yourself to a big meal. You should have no problem losing weight then.

The cleanse comes to an end today and I’ve got to say, my initial predictions of 4 pounds lost by day 3 was highly under par! I just weighed myself today. Originally I was 180-183 and the scale showed me 2 indications: 169.8 and 168.3. That’s anywhere from 13-14 pounds gone.

What’s even more amazing is that these pounds aren’t water weight. They are actually pure fat that I’ve lost in the mid section. My stomach is much less noticeable. My fat around my waist has also lessened. When I first started the cleanse, I said weight loss wasn’t my biggest goal, it was to lose fat around the waist, and in the end I got both. 

I just finished eating my first light meal after the cleanse. Prior to doing so, when I woke up, I drank my last 2 liters of salt water. I decided not to continue drinking the lemon mix because I didn’t know how it would mix with the food/drinks I’ve had later. Plus coming off the cleanse, it’s better to not do anything (other than drink water) before you get back into eating. 

My first meal consisted of a bowl of oatmeal with a teaspoon of coconut oil (a little bit of sugar too), about 5 tablespoons of flaxseeds mixed with hot water and a hot cup of tea with raw honey and an organic lemon. I’d say I consumed about 400 calories for my first meal back. I ate the flaxseeds to help with digestion which is what they’re known to do.

I obviously want to maintain the results I’ve gotten up till now and flaxseeds and healthy eating will do that. Next week I resume my training (martial arts) and I know that with this cleanse, I’ve made it much easier to get toned faster and get six pack abs. 

I also want to note that when I started eating, my appetite wasn’t even that big. I could have honestly gone without it and continued the cleanse, but because I have a restaurant get together tomorrow, I decided to warm up for it today.

Coming of the cleanse is very important. You can’t just start to stuff yourself. You need to ease back into it. What I did is acceptable, but most places/people recommend only drinking juice on the first day off the cleanse or at the very least a light salad or oatmeal, then the next day something similar, but in slightly larger potions and on day 3 or 4, you can begin to eat the same old way again.

Now that this cleanse is done and I’ve experienced 5 days on it, I wouldn’t mind doing it again for the whole 10 days next time when I get a chance. I hope the opportunity will come up this year as cleanses should be done once a season or at least once a year based on certain resources I’ve read. That is if you’re healthy enough to do it.

If you have been reading my blog entries for the past 5 days and also want to do the master cleanse and are healthy enough to do it, I know it will be of great benefits to you. I mean just look at me. I wasn’t even aiming to lose weight and I dropped 14 pounds rather easily. No hardcore workouts. And even though I was fasting, I didn’t feel all that hungry after day 3 so it’s an extra thing to keep in mind.

Imagine what a master cleanse can do for people who are 10, 20, 30, 50 or even a 100 pounds overweight? Do it right and you can put yourself on the road to a healthy life.

While I wouldn’t mind eating a big mac right about now, my cravings are pushing me more towards healthy foods like grilled salmon, salad. At this point, anything that is fried seems disgusting to me and as I’ve said in previous entries, a master cleanse rids you of cravings for unhealthy foods which pushes you even more so towards a healthy lifestyle.

That’s one of the biggest benefits of a master cleanse. It’s not a yo-yo diet because after the cleanse, you basically want to live and eat healthy. Your body craves it! 

Before you decide to do a cleanse, I recommend reading a full post on it as it will help prepare you for it. Also if you haven’t read my previous blog entries, I know they’ll also help you throughout your experience. Remember, the first 2-3 days are the most difficult, then it gets pretty easy! Thank you for reading about my master cleanse experience!

Apologies for the late post. I was very busy at the time, but here’s a quick update for day 4:

I woke up and felt pretty good, no major hunger cravings. In fact, I felt a lot lighter in body and mind (more than in day 3). I’ve been told that I’ve slimmed down by my mother which is interesting considering I was wearing a shirt when she noticed. I haven’t weighed myself yet so I don’t know the total amount of pounds lost.

Later on in the day and closer to night, I felt the cravings creeping up again but even at it’s worst, it was very manageable. I now see how people can do the master cleanse for 10 days straight without eating.

Now I am moving into the last day. I’ll start it off with the same salt water flush, but this time, I’ll drink half of the lemon juice I normally would and that’s because at night I will be having my first meal. It will probably be oatmeal and a cup of tea.

I will let everyone know how things finish up, learning experiences, how I feel and how much weight I lost during this whole cleanse. Thank you for reading.

Day 5 (final) is up! See how much weight I lost (WOW)!