Can Protein make you fat?

Yes it can. As a general rule, anything in excess is bad. So anything we eat in excess of what we need cannot be good. Excess carbohydrates turn to fat and sugar. Excess protein gets converted mostly to energy but the other also gets converted to calories. Now for most people, a calorie is a calorie. It is something we want to burn. So why do people insist on a high protein diet? Here are some reasons.

Researches. Medical experts and nutritionists have frowned upon the belief of eating less carbohydrates and more protein to lose weight. Everything should be balanced. Recent studies, however, have stated that high protein diets (Atkins) prove to be more effective than others like low fat (Ornish diet) or a balanced (Zone) diet. Participants who went through the Atkins diet lost about 10lbs in six week, whereas, others lost only 5-6lbs.

Thermic Effect Of Food. Protein is one of the nutrients that the body can break down fastest. This is because it has a higher thermic effect of food (TEF or simply thermic effect). This means it has a higher possibility to get burned compared to carbohydrates and fats even when the body is not exercising and this is important specially for people who lives a sedentary lifestyle. Basically the food enters the mouth, gets digested, converted into the building blocks (peptides) that turns into whatever the body needs to replenish (for adults-- for kids, especially infants, it helps in the development and growth of the organs), tissues, etc and broken down further into amino acids and enters the bloodstream to perform other tasks the body needs like produce energy. But those that the body does not need is converted to calories and sent to the fat cells.

All these being said, why does high protein – low carb diets seem to work better than a low fat -- high carb one? One of the easiest explanations is that high-carb food like rice or baked potatos only makes us feel full faster but unlike high protein ones (such as fish, chicken and beef), they also get digested faster. Therefore, these types of food that get digested slower makes us feel full for a longer time we wont feel the need to eat until later. Another reason is that even though protein has a higher thermic effect, the body uses more energy to digest the high protein food than it does for fat and carbohydrates.

Bottomline about protein, it’s not as much about the diet but more on following the diet itself. Protein, in itself, does not make us lose weight. That is the most common misconception. Losing weight involves discipline and more importantly, understanding the basic facts of each nutrient we take and its effect on our body. Anything in excess to what our body needs may not be good for us. We can eat a lot of protein - rich food more than high carb or high fat food as long as it we don’t go overboard.

| Read More Articles | Main Page |