Protein….. for weight loss?
By now, I’m sure we all know someone on keto, or someone who swears by intermittent fasting. We have family or friends that have done low carb, high fat diets or low fat, high carb diets, paleo or some form of anti-inflammatory diet. A friend, or a friend of a friend experienced great success, so we gave it a try. Whatever the case may be, we most likely have tried some kind of diet option to help improve our quality of life.
Something that gets overlooked though, is the one thing that is usually pretty constant within all of those diets, and that is protein intake. Protein is the common denominator in most diets, as it usually remains consistent in how much you should consume. Just look at these Precision Nutrition food plates and the percentage of protein with each diet presented. But, just how does protein help in weight loss? To answer that, we should take a look at what protein is and what it does for the body.
What is protein?
According to National Academy of Sports Medicine, protein is an important macronutrient that is involved in nearly all bodily functions and processes.
It plays a key role in exercise recovery and is an essential dietary nutrient for healthy living. The
elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen combine to form amino acids, the building blocks
of protein. Protein and amino acids are primarily used to create bodily tissues, form enzymes and
cellular transporters, maintain fluid balance, and more.
As you can tell, protein is rather important to our every day lives and daily functions. We need protein. To avoid going to detail on what protein does for the body and what it’s purpose and function is, I want to tackle why protein is important in weight management, particularly weight loss. We are probably already pretty aware of it’s benefit for athletic performance and weight gain, but protein plays a pretty significant role in weight loss as well.
How protein promotes weight loss
In order to know how protein promotes weight loss, we need to discuss some of the benefits of protein for weight loss. While there are many benefits to dietary protein, for a diet intended on weight loss, there are four main areas that directly effect weight loss.
- Satiety
- Lean Body Mass
- Thermic Effect of Food – Protein
- Storage as Body Fat
Satiety
Satiety is important as this is the satisfied feeling of being full after eating. Protein generally increases satiety to a greater extent than carbohydrates or fats. This happens because protein takes more energy to digest than carbohydrates or fats, which gives you a feeling of being full. Since protein helps you feel more satiated, you typically consume less food, so less calories. Protein helps to naturally put you in a caloric deficit in this manner.
Lean Body Mass
Lean body mass is the mass of the body minus the fat. Lean body mass is associated with your basal metabolic rate (BMR), or the amount of calories you burn at rest. Having a higher percentage of lean body mass boosts your metabolism, making it easier to maintain a healthy weight. Protein helps to preserve lean body mass during periods of caloric restriction (weight loss). Most evidence suggests that ~ 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram, or .73 grams of protein per pound is a recommended daily target for protein intake to spare lean body mass loss during periods of weight loss.
Thermic Effect of Food – Protein
Thermic effect of food is the increase in energy expenditure after consuming a meal. You can call this the “cost” of digesting your food as your metabolic rate increases from the process of breaking food down, digesting it, and turning it into energy. Protein has the highest thermic effect out of the three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fats).
The thermic effect of protein is 20-35% of calories consumed, where as fats is roughly 10% and carbohydrates is around 5-15%. A higher protein intake significantly boosts metabolism and increases the number of calories you burn. This can be up to 80-100 more calories burned each day. On average you can see about 50-75 calories burned from the thermic effect of protein daily.
Considering 1 pound is the equivalent of 3500 calories, and a deficit of 500-1,000 calories daily can lead to 1-2 pounds of weight loss a week. From this we can see that the process of eating quality protein can help lead to weight loss as it helps you feel full faster and longer, and you burn calories as you consume protein. This is why understanding your total daily energy expenditure is important when creating a weight loss plan.
Body Fat Storage for Protein
Minimizing body fat storage during a weight loss program is essential to losing weight. During weight loss periods we often consume more energy then is expended, so we need to make sure that excess energy (i.e. calories) is not stored as fat. The body processes the three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fats) differently. To keep this as simple as possible, protein goes through a very different biochemical process than the other macronutrients to be stored as fat.
This process makes it very hard for protein to be stored as body fat. In fact, there was a study that found that protein is stored as body fat with roughly 66% efficiency. That study also showed that carbohydrates stored with 80% efficiency and fats stored at 96% efficiency. This just goes to show that during weight loss, overeating protein results in much less stored body fat than overeating on carbohydrates or fat.
So, while many different diets can be successful for weight loss, protein is one of the most important factors when planning a diet. As we can see, protein provides satiety, helps maintain lean body mass, increases the thermic effect of food, and can also reduce how efficiently the body stores extra calories as body fat.