As we near the end of this module where we’ve asked you to focus on incorporating protein at every meal, we feel it’s important to continue explaining why we’ve introduced this goal so early in the program.
To date, we’ve discussed how higher protein diets help us better regulate hunger (by suppressing hunger), while also leading to a higher energy cost to digestion, leading to fewer calories available to be stored as fat.
Based on these outcomes, it’s no surprise that a higher protein diets would be good for weight loss. However, any calorie-reduced diet can lead to weight loss, but high protein calorie-reduced diets tend to confer additional advantages over low-protein diets.
In the standard calorie-reduced but relatively protein-poor diet, up to 30% of weight loss can come from lean mass (muscle/bone/water), which isn’t ideal for long-term body composition management.
In contrast, when protein intake is kept high during a diet phase, you won’t necessarily lose more weight on the scale, however, the overwhelming majority of the weight you do lose comes from body fat, and not lean mass.
When you preserve lean mass, you keep your metabolism robust and this is exactly the ticket to long-term success!
Today, we are going to hear from some researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton explaining the results from a study looking at the benefits of dieting while incorporating more high protein dairy choices.