Diets by Food Group | High Protein Diet

The high protein diet has turned out to be one of the most popular diets around these days. The idea behind it is simple: no matter what your objectives are, everybody can benefit from consuming a high protein diet and consuming high protein foods. Whether your objective is to increase muscle, lose weight and lose fat, gain weight and get big, get and/or stay lean, this kind of diet is exactly right for you. There are many reasons why it is one of the only kinds of diets around that can be effective for so many different people with so many different objectives and bodies. However, depending on exactly what your objective is (weight loss, gaining muscle, weight gain, etc.) slight changes will have to be made to it.

A high protein diet is most often recommended by bodybuilders and nutritionists to assist efforts to build muscle and lose fat. It should not be confused however with low-carb diets such as the Atkins Diet, which are not calorie-controlled and which frequently contain large amounts of fat.

The underlying principle behind high protein diets is that carbohydrates cause swings in blood sugar that can push one’s body to create body fat. Complex carbohydrates like rice and pasta are especially stressed as easy ways to eat lots of calories that one’s body will then convert into fat. The high protein stress of this diet centers on the consumption of protein and efforts to minimize carbohydrate intake.

A standard protein diet breakfast involves bacon and eggs. One is not allowed to have toast or juice. For lunch one could have a double cheeseburger without bun and a small salad. At dinner, one simply eats as much of the meat of one’s choice as it takes to fill one up. One may compliment this meal with more salad if one wishes. Fundamentally any foods with starchy vegetables, sugar, and grains and fruits are not allowed.

A diet high in protein can decrease large swings in blood sugar levels. It can also lead to faster than average weight loss but this is largely due to loss of water weight. Having healthy amounts of carbohydrate in your body's tissues pushes your body to store water, which is healthy and necessary. If you drastically decrease the amount of carbohydrate in your body, then you maintain less water. The catch however is that when you start eating carbs again (as almost everybody does), you regain the water weight back.

Another important point to consider is that excess calories, from whatever source (fat, protein, or carbohydrate) will be converted into fat by one’s body. One’s body doesn't mind what the source of the excess calories is; it just identifies that it has more calories available than it needs to burn; as a result it stores the excess calories as body fat.

However, there is also another problem with this diet: it can lead to the over consumption of cholesterol. Every part of that meat and cheese, which is allowed by the diet, can be extremely unhealthy. Plus, this diet can usually lead to kidney problems due to the low carb consumption, and, since carbs are a major source of energy, not eating them can potentially make one weak.

The RDA suggests that we take in 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram that we weigh (or about 0.36 grams of protein per pound that we weigh). This recommendation includes a generous safety factor for the majority of the people. When we make a little adjustment to account for some plant proteins being digested somewhat differently from animal proteins as well as for the amino acid mix in some plant proteins, we should arrive at a level of 1 gram of protein per kilogram body weight (0.45 grams of protein per pound that we weigh). Since vegetarians consume a variety of plant protein sources, somewhere between 0.8 and 1 gram of protein per kilogram would be a protein recommendation for vegetarians. If we do a little calculation we see that the protein recommendation for vegetarians amounts to nearly 10% of calories coming from protein. [For instance, a 79 kg vegetarian male aged 25 to 50 years may have an estimated calorie requirement of 2900 calories per day. His protein needs may be as high as 79 kg x 1 gram/kg = 79 grams of protein. 79 grams of protein x 4 calories/gram of protein = 316 calories from protein per day, hence, 316 calories from protein divided by 2900 calories = 10.1% of calories from protein.] If we look at what vegetarians are consuming, we find that between 10-12% of calories come from protein 3. This contrasts with the protein ingestion of non-vegetarians, which is nearly 14-18% of calories.

Last but not least, one may ask “when are the most important times to eat high protein foods?” There are three "most significant" times. These times are first thing in the morning after one wakes up, last thing at night before one goes to bed, and directly after one works out. Nonetheless, consider that the main point of eating a high protein diet is to give one’s body the protein it needs all day long, which is why it would be a good idea to eat a meal once every 3 hours or so this way one’s body will always have what it needs.