Whenever people ask me for advice about how to lose weight, I inevitably have to touch on the topic of protein. For so many years, the medical community has been telling us to only eat tiny bits of protein in order to lose weight. Well, they’re right, kind of, but mostly wrong.
Yes, if you cut back on protein, you’ll cut calories and IF you don’t make up those calories with other foods, you’ll lose weight. The problem is, you’ll feel hungry and deprived all the time and you’ll be losing the wrong weight.
The human body needs protein. Every minute of every day, our muscles are deteriorating and rebuilding themselves. The bricks they use to do that are protein and amino acids, the building blocks of protein. If you do not consume protein then your body will get it by catabolizing (eating) its own muscle. This sets your body into a self-defeating cycle where it continues to eat muscle to repair muscle until it eats all the muscle you have.
I should mention two very important things here:
1.) The human heart is a muscle and the muscle tissues in it are not immune to catabolization.
2.) Your metabolism is dependent upon how much muscle you have. Breaking down your muscle, means making your metabolism slower. A slower metabolism means it will be even more difficult for you to lose weight.
So, cutting calories by cutting protein will make you lose weight but you’ll be far less healthy (and even look more fat) because of it.
Solution for weight loss:
Increase your protein intake so that you are consuming one gram of protein per day for every pound of goal body weight. For example, if you want to weigh 145, make sure you consume 145 grams of protein every day. Since your body can only process 50 grams of protein at one sitting, you should divide this evenly between at least three meals throughout the day. My recommendation is to divide it into 4-6 meals/snacks per day. It may seem like a lot of meals/snacks but eating at 4-6 regular intervals throughout the day will keep your metabolism running faster than 2-3 meals a day.
By increasing your protein intake:
1.) Your body will keep the muscle you have, keeping your metabolism up.
2.) You’ll feel satisfied and rarely hungry as the digestion of protein triggers a satiety effect in the brain.
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