The myth of Fat Burning Foods needs to be examined and debunked.  A little common sense will go a long way to clear up the pseudo-scientific mysteries that cloud the issues surrounding the story of fat burning foods.

Yes, I said the “story of fat burning foods”! It is a story dreamed up by people hoping to sell weight loss books and programs based on stretching the scientific facts about what foods do when we eat them.

Some concepts are just comforting to believe. Because there is a kernel of truth associated with them — as there is with the notion of fat burning foods — we tend to accept the rest of the story constructed around them on faith.

Let me say at the start of this discussion that I am not a dietician or a medical doctor. I find that to be an advantage in the search for truth because I am not obligated to repeat from memory anyone’s unquestioned dogma.

It is easy for any organization — such as the Dairymen’s Association, the Milk Board, and the lobbyists for other food producers — to make a large donation to the medical schools and schools that teach dieticians and thereby win their food’s approval.

So…Let’s get down to discussing what we KNOW is true about fat burning foods and what is merely accepted on faith!

There are a few things we can eat that do stimulate our metabolism to burn more energy than they contain:

#1) Hot peppers have a thermogenic effect — that is, they cause our body to produce more heat, which burns calories.

#2) Unsweetened Green tea is a known thermogenic aid. Beside burning up more calories than it contains, green tea help us feel more energetic which leads to physical activity and thus, we burn even more calories.

#3) Black Coffee, another source of caffeine, can also aid in fat burning through the same mechanism as tea.

(Notice that all these items are low in calories and specifically fat.)

Where I begin to doubt the whole “fat burning foods” hypothesis is when a substance such as olive oil, cheese, or various other foods that are relatively high in FAT are lumped in with the known foods that are fat burning.

Olive oil is a fat. Fats and oils both contain 9 calories per gram (more than twice the calories as found in a similar quantity of protein or carbohydrate.

How can consuming fat burn fat?

The argument that the top Web sites focused on the keyword “Fat Burning Foods” use is that the foods they list are harder to digest and therefore burn more energy that way.

But do they cause our body to burn more energy than they contribute? Is there a net loss of energy in the digestion of fat?

I don’t think so! This just doesn’t make sense.

We are also frequently told by those in the weight loss business that losing weight is a simple matter of mathematics: We need to balance our calorie intake against our energy needs. This means that, if we consume more calories than we need, we must burn off these calories (by vigorous exercise, for instance) so we don’t gain weight.

(This, generally makes sense, although all calories and all foods are not equal.)

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there are nutritional benefits to having a limited amount of olive oil in one’s diet — but it is not because it burns fat.

If you want to lose weight, why not just drink a quart of olive oil and sit back on the couch while it magically does all the work?

I find this to be a convenient lie that sells diet books and programs. I am sick of lies that are used to sell programs that don’t help anyone lose fat!

Are you tired of being lied to, to get you to buy one more diet program?

I am tired of watching people with a sincere desire and a need to lose weight being taken advantage of by hucksters selling you a lot of half-truths about fat burning foods. Then, when your new diet fails to produce the promised results, you tend to give up and think it is simply your genetic destiny to remain fat.

This isn’t helping anyone except the fat loss author with the big bank account. He or she gets paid for this bogus information whether you lose weight or not.

This is the reason I have created the distinction between Fat Burning Foods and Fat Burning Fuel.

The notion that there might be fat burning foods (which often contain a lot of fatty calories) is not very helpful in understanding what we need to do to get rid of unwanted fat.

On the other hand, calling green tea, coffee, or chili peppers fat burning foods is a bit of a mental stretch, too. I find it more accurate to call them fat burning fuel — catalysts, that in small amounts speed up our metabolism and cause us to burn more calories, even while resting.

Just as you can’t fuel a car with nothing but fuel additives, you can’t run a healthy body on nothing but these so-called fat burning fuels. They are best understood as catalysts and nothing more.

The important thing is, they work!

To get the fat loss results you are looking for, let’s replace the myth of Fat Burning Foods with the reality of Fat Burning Fuel.