Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagal the nutrition diva here with your quick and dirty

tips for eating well and feeling fabulous it's January and everyone seems to be on a diet, so I thought this would be a good time to answer

Mark's question about negative calorie foods. Can you lose weight by eating foods that take more calories to

digest than they contain?

Mark writes, I recently read about negative calorie foods and how they can help you lose weight

because it takes more calories to digest them than they contain.

Sounds too good to be true.

What's the real story?

Well, here's the 411 on negative calorie foods.

Digesting food burns calories, and a few foods such as grapefruit and celery

contain fewer calories than it takes to digest them.

So when you eat these foods, you actually burn more calories than you take in, thus the term negative

calorie foods. Now theoretically the more negative calorie foods I eat, the more weight I'll lose.

How great is that?

Now, all I need is a job that pays me more the less I do,

and a bank account that gets bigger the more I spend.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way, and here's why.

When nutritionists estimate how many calories you should eat,

we're already taking into consideration

how many calories you burn chewing and digesting your food. So the negative calorie diet scheme it's

essentially subtracting those calories twice. That kind of accounting will make

you bounce checks or get you a really good job on Wall Street. But will

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