Thermic Effect of Food

Looking to lose belly fat with no extra effort? The human body is naturally a calorie-burning machine.

Are you aware that even digestion requires specific amount of calories to proceed? When you bite food, chew it and swallow it, you burn calories. Calories are still needed when you assimilate nutrients, digest food, transport nutrients to bloodstreams, metabolize and store fats and nutrients.
Thermic Effect of Food

The energy your body requires for digestion of food intake is called thermic effect of food. If you are familiar about calorie intake and expenditures, you should be familiar about this concept. If not, it will be important that you at least retain a basic knowledge about it.

In general, nutritionists and experts estimate that the body uses 10% of total calorie intake for digestion and assimilation processes. Thus, to easily determine thermic effect of food, you will have to follow a simple formula. Sum up the total calories you consumed and multiply the numeric amount by 10%. For example, you have consumed a total of 3,000 calories in a day. Generally, 10% of those calories, or 300, make up the thermic effect of food.
Weight loss strategy

Now we are going to use this concept to help you lose more weight.

To use the concept as a weight loss tool, you need to know about caloric values of major food groups—protein, carbohydrates and fats. You can easily identify the presence of such on the food you take. Carbohydrates are energy giving foods like bread and rice. Proteins are derived from fish and meat, while fats are those characterized by oiliness and intense, but very appetizing flavor and aroma.

In general, a single gram of protein and a gram of carbohydrate contain 4 calories each. In comparison, a gram of fat has 9 calories. Clearly, the total calories contained in fats are more than twice those contained in protein and carbohydrates.
Fats, proteins and carbohydrate intake

In terms of thermic effect of food, fats are easily digested. Thus, the total calories needed to digest and assimilate fats are only 2% to 3%. In contrast, some protein-rich foods can have high thermic effect of food of up to 30%, which means there will be more calories your body will burn to digest the materials.
Strategy:

So in order to maximize the calories expenditure just by eating you need to do two things:

* Eat more foods that take longer to digest(see the article on protein)
* Eat smaller meals more often (every two to three hours)