About 16 years ago, when I was on a yet another diet, I had a very memorable conversation with my mother. My mother has been deceased now since 1996 so this conversation still has a profound impact on me.
I was telling my mother I was trying to lose weight again and I was doing the diet of the day-low fat. My mother admonished me to eat more protein.
“But wait a minute, Mommy,” I said, “Eating protein is not good for you. You are suppose to eat low-fat.”
“No, eat more protein,” my Mommy said.
I thought that advice was totally incorrect, especially in the 90′s when Americans were told to eat low-fat, low-fat, low-fat. I figured my mother did not understand and continued with my low-fat ways.
And guess what happen? I continued to struggle with my weight for the next 12 years.
Fast forward to 2008 and those words came back to haunt me. I now know my dear mother was right. Eating more protein is the key to losing weight and keeping it off.
I believe people, especially women, have a love-hate relationship with protein, especially meat. Women are always trying to control their weight, so what do we do? We cut calories and it is the protein calories that we cut the most because they are the most calorically dense and tend to have the most fat (not always, but most of the time.) Most women become vegetarians or vegan in the mistaken belief that this will help control their weight. I was listening to Jimmy Moore’s Livin La Vida Low Carb Podcast with the author Hal Herzog and he stated that a lot of female vegetarians and vegans have eating disorders (again, not all, but quite a few.) I also found a link to Dr. Herzog’s article on the subject if you want to read more about it.
People do not realize how important protein is. As a matter of fact weight loss surgery patients are strictly instructed that they most get in sufficient protein each and everyday. If they do not get in this protein on a daily basis, they will have severe nutritional deficiencies. WLS patients must drink liquid protein supplements in order to get the protein into their bodies because their new pouch can only hold so much food and digesting meat protein is problematic especially since their intestines are rerouted.
Protein is “anti-catabolic” meaning it does not tear down your muscle tissue. See, the problem with going on a typical weight loss diet is that you cut calories. When you cut calories, you cut nutrients. Most people go towards low-calorie foods which are low in nutrition. Because your body is not getting the proper nutrition, you become hungry and blow your diet. Another problem with going on a low-calorie diet is that the body wants to preserve fat tissue over lean muscle tissue, so when you cut your calories your body will burn your lean muscle tissue first. Then your metabolism slows down because muscle tissue is going away. Remember, muscle tissue wants to burn calories, fat tissue wants to store calories. The more lean muscle tissue you have, the faster your metabolism. Eating adequate protein preserves your muscle tissue and therefore your body will begin to burn its fat stores.
That is why a person who is morbidly obese has a hard time losing weight. Their body is mostly fat tissue. So when a morbidly obese person eats, their calories are pretty much being stored in their fat tissue because they have very little muscle tissue to burn off those calories. That is another reason why obese people are eating more. All of their calories are being diverted to their fat tissue instead of their cells. Then, to make matters worse, they go on a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet to lose weight. When I was reading about WLS patients diet, I found it interesting that these patients are not told that carbohydrates are critical for survival but protein is. The reason is that the only thing carbohydrates provide the human body with is energy. That is it. Yes, there are a few vitamins, minerals, and some protein in carbohydrates that humans need to function, but the main purpose of carbohydrates is to provide energy to the human body. However, humans need protein and fat in our diets. If we do not have protein and fats in our diet, we die. Our bodies can only store about 400 to 500 grams of carbohydrate (known as glycogen) in our liver and muscle tissue. Once those stores are filled, all the extra carbohydrates we eat are turned into body fat.
So the question is what is adequate protein? There are a lot of formulas out there, but the main one that I have seen is 1 gram of protein per your body weight. Now some people weigh over 300 pounds, so that is a lot of protein you would have to chow down. Therefore use the body weight that you want to weigh. So if you want to drop 100 pounds from your 300, eat 200 grams of protein a day while at the same time eating less carbs.
If eating all of that meat is not appealing to you purchase a high quality whey protein powder. One scoop of whey protein has about 100 calories and at least 20 grams of protein. I have been trying out some whey protein powders and will write about in a later post.
