Protein is essential for optimal health and well-being. It supplies the body with the essential amino acids it needs to build and repair muscle tissue, synthesize hormones, stabilize blood sugar levels, and support bone health.
It comes as little surprise, then, that protein also plays an important part during (and after) weight loss transformation challenges!
Here’s why protein is important for fat loss, body recomposition, and maintaining your weight loss results.
Why Protein is Important Weight Loss & Maintenance
Increased Satiety
To lose fat, you must be in a calorie deficit, which means you’re burning more energy each day/week than you’re consuming.
While this seems simple in theory, maintaining a consistent calorie deficit over multiple weeks (and possibly, months) is difficult, especially if you feel hungry all the time.
Here’s where protein comes to the rescue!
Protein offers greater satiety (keeps you feeling fuller between meals) compared to either carbohydrates or fat. This means that if you build your meals and snacks around protein and round it out with carbohydrates and fat, instead of the way the standard American/Western diet is, you’ll feel more satisfied after eating and less likely to snack between meals and overeat.
Over the weeks and months of your fat loss venture, this helps you stick to your calorie goals, maintain your deficit, and lose body fat.
Increased Calorie Burning
How many calories your body burns each day (aka your total daily energy expenditure -- TDEE) plays a key role in achieving and maintaining the necessary calorie deficit to lose body fat. Your TDEE is made up of several factors, including:
- Basal metabolic rate (BMR): the number of calories your body burns during the day if all you did was lay in bed
- Exercise activity thermogenesis: the number of calories burned during your workouts
- Non-Exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT): the number of calories burned from non-workout activities (e.g. walking the dog, cleaning the house, etc.)
- Thermic effect of feeding: the number of calories you expend breaking down the carbohydrates, protein, and fat you eat into sugars, amino acids, and fatty acids
Regarding this last point specifically, certain foods require more effort to digest than others. Compared to either carbohydrates or fats, protein is more thermogenic, which means your body has to expend more energy (i.e. calories) to digest it.
Essentially, consuming a diet higher in protein versus a diet higher in carbohydrates and fats helps your body burn a few extra calories throughout the day. Over days, weeks, and months, this supports weight loss and body recomposition.
Protect Lean Mass and Maintain Body Weight
Being in a prolonged calorie deficit, like the one required to lose body fat, increases the risk of losing lean muscle tissue. The reason for this is that lean muscle requires more energy to maintain than body fat.
What this means is that when calories are at a premium, the body will seek to rid itself of unnecessary “expenses.”
In order to preserve your lean muscle tissue when dieting, you must do two things: perform resistance training 3-4 times per week and consume enough daily protein.
This potent 1-2 punch sends a powerful signal to your body saying, “I NEED MY MUSCLE!”
Plus, having more lean muscle supports a higher resting energy expenditure despite weight (body fat) loss, which means your body naturally burns more calories during the day, even if you’re not doing anything.
How Much Protein Should I Eat?
Current recommendations are for individuals to consume 0.8g/kg of body weight of protein per day. This is 0.36 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. For a 135-lb person, this is 48.6 grams of protein.
This is a pitifully low amount of protein for individuals who are training hard and/or dieting. Something to keep in mind, though, is that these clinical recommendations are based on the minimum amount of protein the body needs to merely survive.
For an active individual that regularly engages in demanding exercise as well as those looking to lose weight or build muscle, this is simply inadequate.
A superior option is to aim for about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, make it a goal to consume ~150 grams of protein per day.
Ideally, you would divide this as evenly as possible across however many meals you eat per day (e.g 3, 4, 5, etc.). This allows for better digestion and absorption of dietary protein as well as providing regular “anabolic pulses” of essential amino acids (EAAs) that your muscles require to stay strong, resilient, and healthy.
To make sure you’re eating enough protein each day, it’s helpful to track your nutrition, which can be done quickly and easily using the 1UP Fitness App, available on both Apple and Android devices.
The Best High Protein Foods
Many individuals following a traditional western diet may struggle to consume enough high-quality protein. If you find yourself moving away from the outdated food pyramid, and looking for the best high-protein foods for weight loss, here are some of our top picks:
- Lean beef
- Wild game (elk, bison, venison, etc.)
- Pork
- Poultry (chicken, turkey, duck, etc.)
- Seafood (salmon, cod, tuna, shrimp, oysters, etc.)
- Eggs & egg whites
- Cottage cheese
- Greek yogurt
- Cheese
- Legumes (beans, lentils, etc.)
- Protein Shakes (e.g Whey, Egg, Vegan, or Clear)
Takeaway
Protein is essential for everyday health, and it can play a pivotal role in your fitness and physique outcomes. Beyond its ability to help repair and build muscle, eating protein helps keep hunger in check and provides a subtle boost to your daily energy expenditure.
A good rule of thumb is to consume one gram of protein per pound of body weight from high-quality sources that supply the body with all the essential amino acids it needs to stimulate and support muscle protein synthesis.
Lastly, for added weight loss support, you may want to consider Make Her Lean Max or Pro Ripped Max which contain a scientifically researched blend of ingredients to support increased calorie burning, appetite suppression, and energy.
