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Feb 1, 2024 · High protein diets can help with weight management, wound healing, and building muscle. You shouldn’t eat too much protein. Eating more protein than recommended won’t have health benefits and could actually cause side effects.
Cravings for protein don't necessarily indicate that you have an underlying condition, disease or nutrient deficiency. Usually, protein cravings develop if you're used to eating a lot of high-protein foods and you restrict them. Men are also more prone to protein cravings than women, who tend to crave carbohydrates more often.
- Lindsay Boyers
- Overview
- 1. Reduces Appetite and Hunger Levels
- 2. Increases Muscle Mass and Strength
- 3. Good for Your Bones
- 4. Reduces Cravings and Desire for Late-Night Snacking
- 5. Boosts Metabolism and Increases Fat Burning
- 6. Lowers Your Blood Pressure
- 7. Helps Maintain Weight Loss
- 8. Does Not Harm Healthy Kidneys
- 9. Helps Your Body Repair Itself After Injury
Eating protein can make you feel full longer. It may provide many health benefits, including increasing muscle mass.
The health effects of fat and carbs are controversial. However, almost everyone agrees that protein is important.
Most people eat enough protein to prevent deficiency, but some individuals would do better with a much higher protein intake.
Numerous studies suggest that a high-protein diet has major benefits for weight loss and metabolic health (1, 2).
The three macronutrients — fats, carbs, and protein — affect your body in different ways.
Studies show that protein is by far the most filling. It helps you feel more full — with less food (3).
This is partly because protein reduces your level of the hunger hormone ghrelin. It also boosts the levels of peptide YY, a hormone that makes you feel full (4, 5, 6).
These effects on appetite can be powerful. In one study, increasing protein intake from 15% to 30% of calories made overweight women eat 441 fewer calories each day without intentionally restricting anything (7).
If you need to lose weight or belly fat, consider replacing some of your carbs and fats with protein. It can be as simple as making your potato or rice serving smaller while adding a few extra bites of meat or fish.
SUMMARY A
Protein is the building block of your muscles.
Therefore, eating adequate amounts of protein helps you maintain your muscle mass and promotes muscle growth when you do strength training.
Numerous studies show that eating plenty of protein can help increase muscle mass and strength (8, 9).
If you’re physically active, lifting weights, or trying to gain muscle, you need to make sure you’re getting enough protein.
Keeping protein intake high can also help prevent muscle loss during weight loss (10, 11, 12).
SUMMARY Muscle
An ongoing myth perpetuates the idea that protein — mainly animal protein — is bad for your bones.
This is based on the idea that protein increases acid load in the body, leading to calcium leaching from your bones in order to neutralize the acid.
However, most long-term studies indicate that protein, including animal protein, has major benefits for bone health (13, 14, 15).
People who eat more protein tend to maintain bone mass better as they age and have a much lower risk of osteoporosis and fractures (16, 17).
This is especially important for women, who are at high risk of osteoporosis after menopause. Eating plenty of protein and staying active is a good way to help prevent that from happening.
SUMMARY People
A food craving is different from normal hunger.
It is not just about your body needing energy or nutrients but your brain needing a reward (18).
Yet, cravings can be incredibly hard to control. The best way to overcome them may be to prevent them from occurring in the first place.
One of the best prevention methods is to increase your protein intake.
One study in overweight men showed that increasing protein to 25% of calories reduced cravings by 60% and the desire to snack at night by half (19).
Likewise, a study in overweight adolescent girls found that eating a high-protein breakfast reduced cravings and late-night snacking.
Eating can boost your metabolism for a short while.
That’s because your body uses calories to digest and make use of the nutrients in foods. This is referred to as the thermic effect of food (TEF).
However, not all foods are the same in this regard. In fact, protein has a much higher thermic effect than fat or carbs — 20–35% compared to 5–15% (21).
High protein intake has been shown to significantly boost metabolism and increase the number of calories you burn. This can amount to 80–100 more calories burned each day (22, 23, 24).
In fact, some research suggests you can burn even more. In one study, a high-protein group burned 260 more calories per day than a low-protein group. That’s equivalent to an hour of moderate-intensity exercise per day (25).
SUMMARY
High blood pressure is a major cause of heart attacks, strokes, and chronic kidney disease.
Interestingly, higher protein intake has been shown to lower blood pressure.
In a review of 40 controlled trials, increased protein lowered systolic blood pressure (the top number of a reading) by 1.76 mm Hg on average and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number of a reading) by 1.15 mm Hg (26).
One study found that, in addition to lowering blood pressure, a high-protein diet also reduced LDL (bad) cholesterol and triglycerides (27).
SUMMARY Several
studies note that higher protein intake can lower blood pressure. Some studies
Because a high-protein diet boosts metabolism and leads to an automatic reduction in calorie intake and cravings, many people who increase their protein intake tend to lose weight almost instantly (28, 29).
One study found that overweight women who ate 30% of their calories from protein lost 11 pounds (5 kg) in 12 weeks — though they didn’t intentionally restrict their diet (7).
Protein also has benefits for fat loss during intentional calorie restriction.
In a 12-month study in 130 overweight people on a calorie-restricted diet, the high-protein group lost 53% more body fat than a normal-protein group eating the same number of calories (30).
Of course, losing weight is just the beginning. Maintaining weight loss is a much greater challenge for most people.
A modest increase in protein intake has been shown to help with weight maintenance. In one study, increasing protein from 15% to 18% of calories reduced weight regain by 50% (31).
Many people wrongly believe that a high protein intake harms your kidneys.
It is true that restricting protein intake can benefit people with pre-existing kidney disease. This should not be taken lightly, as kidney problems can be very serious (32).
However, while high protein intake may harm individuals with kidney problems, it has no relevance to people with healthy kidneys.
In fact, numerous studies underscore that high-protein diets have no harmful effects on people without kidney disease (33, 34, 35).
SUMMARY While
protein can cause harm to people with kidney problems, it doesn’t affect those
Protein can help your body repair after it has been injured.
This makes perfect sense, as it forms the main building blocks of your tissues and organs.
Numerous studies demonstrate that eating more protein after injury can help speed up recovery (36, 37).
SUMMARY Eating
Previously, high protein diets were suggested to increase bone resorption, increase urinary calcium, and increase the risk of fractures and osteoporosis. 7 However, as shown in Heaney, et al. 7 as well as the recent meta-analysis by Santesso, et al. 20 there is no effect of increased dietary protein on calcium metabolism and/or markers of bone health (i.e., bone mineral density in total body ...
- You Always Have to Pee. If you feel like you always have to pee, it could be due to eating too much protein. Our kidneys can only process so much protein at once, so the waste from the protein that is being broken down may build up.
- You Feel Like You're in a Funk. A high-protein diet might have helped you tone up for summer or get closer to your goal weight, but could it also contribute to your blue mood?
- You're Constipated. High-protein diets are often low in fiber, especially when your main protein sources are animal products—which can wreak havoc on your digestive system.
- Your Weight Is Creeping Back Up. High-protein diets are often praised for helping people drop a dress size or two in as short as a week—but the long-term effects aren't as desirable.
Jul 11, 2024 · Here’s what a high-protein diet can look like: High Protein Based on Body Weight One high-protein rule for the average person is 1.2 grams or more of protein per kilogram of body weight, Sollid ...
People also ask
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To overcome this, lowering energy intake while maintaining fullness and FFM is crucial, and a high-protein, energy-restricted diet is one important strategy. 3,4 In this review article, we examine the clinical evidence for the weight-loss effects and side effects of high-protein diet (HPD) and introduce various mechanisms through which HPD increases satiety and induces weight loss while ...
