You've heard the rumors. You eat a stalk of celery and the energy used by your body to digest it is more than the celery provides. You lose weight by eating it. Can this be true?

If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. While celery is rich in fiber, which is great for you, it does in fact contain some calories. Researchers have found that digesting a stalk of celery takes your body about .0005 calories of energy. In comparison, you take in 6 calories when you eat that stalk. So the energy used to digest it is fairly small in comparison with what you gain.

That's not to say that eating celery is bad, of course! It's full of good fiber and it helps you feel full. This might help you ward off eating something less wonderful for you. But the mere act of eating that stalk of celery is not causing your body to lose weight.

There seems to be one and only one thing you can ingest that actually "burns calories" by the sheer fact of it going into your system. That is ice-cold water. The water itself has zero calories to begin with, so it's not adding any energy to your system. And your body, striving to maintain its healthy body temperature, must exert energy in order to warm that water up to "body temperature" and mesh properly with the rest of you.

If you drank six 8-oz glasses of ice-cold water a day, this could add up to a total calorie burn of 10 calories in that day. Enough to offset that stalk of celery :). So not a huge amount. Still, if you enjoy ice-water, this might be an added incentive to drink ample water each day, which is always good for you.

I'll note that technically if you drink something with caffeine in it, that caffeine speeds up your metabolism, so in a way ingesting that material causes your body to burn things at a higher rate and could result in more calories burned. However, I am a proponent of avoiding caffeine for the artificial highs-and-lows it creates. I find it much better to live a healthy lifestyle and maintain a steady, strong metabolism that is constantly burning at a strong rate. So I wouldn't recommend the boost of caffeine, as it causes a matching trough later on.

So your best option is to eat wisely, drink ample water, and get some healthy movement into your daily routine. That's the best path to long term health!



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