Importance of Eating Protein While Dieting

Importance of Eating Protein While Dieting

The amount of quality protein in your diet is the single most important calorie that influences your metabolic rate, favorably influencing weight loss. Quality protein also helps you sustain muscle during weight loss, improve muscle fitness, improve immunity, improve antioxidant function, build HDL cholesterol, and enhance insulin and leptin function – all of which contribute toward optimal weight management efforts over time..

Eating high quality protein reduces the loss of lean muscle while dieting. Lean muscle burns more calories than fat and keeps your metabolic rate up. Lean muscle burns calories like a furnace. So, an extra 10 pounds of muscle will burn approximately 350 to 500 calories a day or an extra pound of fat every 7 to 10 days, without making any other changes. So you want to hold onto every ounce of lean muscle while dieting because it is helping you reach your weight loss goal more quickly and easily.

Protein is at the top of the hierarchy of macronutrients, as far as the Thermogenic Effect goes. A whopping 27% (on average) of the calories you consume from protein are used in the process of digesting the protein. Protein has to be broken down into amino acids which then can used which is a labor-intensive process intracellularly. If you were to consume 300 Calories in pure protein (such as a pure protein powder, or Protein Bar/Shakes, or something similar), the Thermogenic Effect would burn off 81 of those calories just during the act of digestion, leaving you with 219 calories. Who doesn’t want to burn calories by just eating more protein?

Eating Protein reduces the chances of you YO-YO dieting because it helps you hold on to your lean muscle mass which has a positive effect on your body composition and body fat percentage while dieting. Those who do not eat protein and lose large amounts of weight most likely lost a lot of lean muscle and have poorly affected their body composition. These people are more likely to gain the weight they lost back and even more weight sometimes. This sets the dieter up for disappointment and results in the dreaded YO-YO diet. This makes losing the weight the next time even more difficult because the calorie burning muscle is lost. Constantly snacking on protein bars and shakes while dieting is a great way to make sure this does not happen to you.

High protien foods take longer to leave your stomach and make you feel full sooner and for a longer amount of time. Nutrition Metabolism, dieters who increased their protein intake to 30 percent of their diet ate nearly 450 fewer calories a day and lost about 11 pounds over the 12-week study without employing any other dietary measures. Wow that’s a lot of weight loss for just only increasing your protein intake. They lost the weight because they felt fuller and satisfied longer which decreased their daily caloric intake.

-High Protein Diets allow you to get that TONE/LEAN LOOK you are looking for! As you lose body fat and keep your lean muscle by consuming more protein this changes your body composition for the BETTER!!! AND IT IS EASIER TO KEEP THE WEIGHT OFF

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