If you’re looking to get the most bang for your buck from your fat burning diet, one concept that you must make sure you’re understanding and taking into consideration is the thermic effect of food.  If you’ve ever used a metabolic rate calculator, you know very well that the thermic effect of food is a factor that gets added into the mix.

To figure out how many calories you burn daily, you need to look at your basal metabolic rate, the thermic effect of food, and your activity calorie burn.  Together, these determine how much food you can eat and still lose weight.

So, by increasing the thermic effect of food, you can effectively either eat more food each day and still see the same rate of fat loss, or you can see faster fat loss if you keep your calorie intake constant.

Let’s look at what this concept is all about so that you can maximize it in your plan.

What The Thermic Effect Of Food Is

The very first thing that you need to understand is what this concept is all about.  The thermic effect of food refers to how many calories your body is going to expend after you eat a food simply for breaking it down and digesting it.

Digestion of food burns calories too

The more calories you expend through the digestion process, the fewer calories you are going to ‘net’ overall, thus the lower your total daily calorie intake will be.

Does This Really Help You Burn Fat?

So does this actually help you burn fat? In a word, yes.  If you are actually netting fewer calories each day as you go about your diet plan, this means that you will be burning more energy over the course of the day and it’s THAT energy burn that is necessary for fat loss to occur.

The more energy you burn, the faster you burn fat – period.  Obviously you will still have to be dieting and eating a reduced calorie diet as the thermic effect of food isn’t that powerful, but it does all add up.

Do not underestimate the impact of this factor on your fat loss success.  In fact, the thermic effect of food is one of the key concepts in the design and working of Metabolic Cooking.

Foods That Have The Highest Thermic Effect Of Food

So which foods should you be focusing on to experience the highest thermic effect of food?

For optimal results, you should be looking to lean proteins.

Protein rich foods will have you burning off about 25-30% of the calories they contain simply breaking them down.

Fat rich foods will only have you burning off around 2% of the calories and carbohydrates are at around 5% respectively.

So as you can see, this can make a big difference overall.  Even taking your diet up to 30% protein can spark a much faster rate of fat loss in many people than the standard diet containing 15% or so.

So be smart. Add more protein to your diet and maximize the benefits you get from the thermic effect of food.  It can help boost your weight loss success rate that much more.

Which thermogenic foods do you include in your diet? Let me know