Protein Weight Loss.
What's the big deal?

Protein weight loss is the latest trend and rightly so.

Adding high quality protein to your diet is the single most important supplement you can take to ramp up your weight lose. Quality protein helps your body sustain lean muscle, boosts your immune system, increase metabolism, satisfy appetite, balance blood sugars, support antioxidant function and a host of other benefits. Getting enough protein in your diet to overcoming stubborn weight loss is vital.

How Much Protein Do I Need for Weight Loss?

A significant body of scientific evidence indicates that protein levels higher than our government’s suggested levels are optimal for protein weight loss, as long as you simultaneously decrease carbohydrate intake. The national Library of Medicine recommends between 50 to 65 gram of protein daily.

High Quality Protein for Weight Loss

Protein is made up of various amino acids. In terms of weight loss, scientists are finding that the most important amino acids are the branch chain amino acids, especially leucine. If you get your protein intake high enough, especially in proteins that are rich in leucine, a number of very interesting things happen that can activate a sluggish metabolism and result in weight loss.

Leucine rich protein are needed for fitness, healthy protein weight loss, and to maintain weight following a weight loss program. This is a key to successful protein weight loss and keeping the weight off once you have lost it.

One of the key researchers in this area, Donald Layman, Ph.D, from the University of Illinois, has published many papers on the subject. He has found that the high protein, leucine rich diet, in combination with lower carbohydrates (150 grams or 600 calories per day) is effective to support weight loss, blood sugar metabolism, and a variety of factors that have an impact on cardiovascular health.

His research points out that during weight loss our bodies can easily lose muscle mass (and bone). Leucine has a direct signaling effect on muscle that prevents muscle loss during weight loss. This means that on a high protein diet, the weight that is lost is mostly fat, not muscle. Whereas on a high carbohydrate weight loss diet, much more muscle is lost.

Best Source of Leucine Rich Protein

One easy way to get a lot of leucine, without any fat, is to use high quality whey protein. The finest whey proteins use advanced filtration technology to leave all the protein molecules intact. In this process saturated fat, cholesterol, and lactose are removed, yielding a very useful leucine rich food for metabolic enhancement.

Other than whey protein, the highest sources of leucine containing foods are animal and dairy. Cottage cheese and red meat top the list; other sources include milk, cheese, eggs, pork, fish, chicken, legumes, peanuts, nuts, and seeds. If you avoid red meat and dairy products, it is difficult to get leucine containing foods in higher amounts. Using whey protein makes it easy. stay away from processed soy protein (like soy protein drinks), as it is anti-thyroid in higher amounts.

Eating two eggs for breakfast has been shown to boost weight loss by 65 percent, compared to the same amount of calories from carbohydrates, like a bagel.

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