Did you know that proteins help you lose weight?
It is essential that they are in the right amount in your diet. Discover how proteins help you lose weight!
Proteins are essential for building structures in our body, such as muscles. Proteins have a big benefit: they help us lose weight, due to the impact they cause on our metabolism and the structural characteristics of their molecules.
It is not about making a diet based on proteins exclusively , but if we know how to take them in the right measure, they can help us a lot to lose weight.
Proteins have a greater satiating effect
Foods rich in protein provide us with a longer satiating effect than other food groups, which is not the case with carbohydrates, for example, and even less with sugars that have the opposite effect. A meal rich in protein leaves us satiated for longer with a lower caloric intake .
This can be used to our advantage, eating more protein at the time of day when we feel the most anxiety about eating . With the same amount of carbohydrates, sugars or fat, proteins are the ones that first generate a feeling of satiety and in this way, we will eat less and what we eat will have a lower caloric intake.
The more muscle mass, the more energy expenditure
Anyone, whether they are sedentary or if they exercise regularly, to lose weight should follow a low-calorie diet and exercise more. In this way, we can lose weight if there is a sufficient energy deficit, but if we do not provide the necessary proteins, the body will use that of our own muscle mass to obtain it and we will lose muscle mass instead of fat.
It is very important to lose weight, protect muscle mass, and even what we must look for is to increase it with a hypertrophy routine. Muscle is the tissue that is more metabolically active, even when we are at rest, the muscle is burning calories. The more muscle we have, the more fat we can burn. We can make a diet in which we reduce calories, but we have to be very careful to maintain an adequate protein intake in which their needs are covered. To get an idea of the proteins we need daily, they are 1.2 or 1.5 grams of protein daily for every kilo of weight. That is, a person who weighs 60 kilos should ingest between 72 and 90 grams of pure protein daily.
Paradox
Sometimes it is very paradoxical for people who start to exercise that instead of losing weight, they increase it and sometimes they think that exercise is not working. But it is the opposite, every kilo that we gain of muscle mass is a long-term investment of tissue that will be burning calories like an oven that is always on .
Thanks to proteins, muscle building is increased
It is closely related to the previous point . They help us to create more muscle mass that will make our body more metabolically active and consume calories more quickly. The amino acids that we ingest in the diet are a stimulus for protein synthesis in our body and thus we will avoid the loss of muscle mass and we can even increase it.
When ingesting protein foods, there are changes in the levels of essential amino acids such as leucine, which produces a stimulus for the pathways that lead to protein synthesis but if the stimulus occurs, but we have not ingested enough proteins for creation to occur of muscle, this will not occur.
Protein burns more calories when it comes to being digested
In addition, a consumption of protein foods produces a greater energy expenditure that our body uses to digest them, which leads to a thermal effect known as thermogenesis. As proteins are elements with a more complex molecular composition, they need more resources than other nutrients in order to be digested.
A food rich in sugar is relatively easily absorbed, especially refined sugars, but an amino acid derived from meat proteins, however, is not so easily absorbed . Carbohydrates and fats need 10-15% of energy from food to be digested, but nevertheless proteins need no less than 25% of their caloric content to be consumed. That is, the calories they provide are not total calories, since their energy intake is spent while our body tries to assimilate them.
Conclusions
Basing a diet exclusively on protein is detrimental to health, as it overloads the liver and kidneys and can have dire consequences in the long run . But if we include them in the diet in the right amount, they will help us lose weight faster.
Due to the body’s circadian rhythms and our biorhythms, it is known that in the afternoon, our body’s metabolic rates drop. Also during sleep hours, caloric expenditure is minimal and therefore if we eat foods rich in carbohydrates that provide us with more calories, as our body is at rest, they tend to store fat. However , if after seven in the afternoon we eat only protein, we will help weight loss faster.
A correct intake of protein will help us protect the muscle mass that we have that will help us burn more calories and will also give our body the ability to create new muscle mass that helps us burn even more calories.
Consuming proteins correctly in a weight loss diet will give our body the boost it needs to lose weight in an easier, faster and healthier way.