Foods that help you lose weight

I am often asked "what types of food should I eat to burn calories?" I just hate to tell them that there is no such thing as fat burning foods. I remember when I was young, my mother would religiously eat one banana and drink a small can of grapefruit juice for lunch everyday, to try and lose weight. She claimed that those foods burned off the fat in her body. I was just a kid and didn't know any better, so I took it as a fact.

When I got older and had more nutritional education, I realized that it was not the foods she ate but the small amounts of them that she ate. Both the grapefruit juice and banana amounted to about 200 calories for lunch. Topped with a small dinner of less than 800 calories and almost nothing of a breakfast, no wonder my short 5' mom was able to stay slim and tiny, she barely ate much at all.