Protein is the MOST Important Thing for Weight Loss | 11 Comprehensive Studies

Learn More Now

this video is going to be your complete guide to protein for weight loss now it's going to go through the evidence-based data helping us understand why protein is so unique for weight loss and for weight loss maintenance but I don't like just giving data I like to translate it into practical stuff that you can take away and use so grab a notepad grab a pen grab some paper whatever take down notes on this that you can have takeaways to improve the effectiveness of what you're doing right now but then you'll also get a full science lesson in the process because that's just how this channel rolls and if you like this kind of data and you like this kind of Channel don't forget to smash that subscribe button so you can always see what we're talking about let's jump right into the weight loss category first okay now the American General clinical nutrition had published a very interesting paper that really highlighted just how powerful protein is for fat loss in general even when calories are matched so this study took a look at a high protein diet versus a high carb diet in equally matched calories okay what they found is that in a weight loss setting when they reduce calories both groups lost weight no real surprise there but when you have high amounts of protein like in the case of the high protein group they lost more fat okay so yes thermodynamics matter how many calories you take in but things are influenced dramatically so high protein means they lost the same amount of weight but they preserved more muscle and lost more fat but what was interesting is that the high protein group also had lower triglycerides not only is this good on your lab work but this is great because it indicates the body was better at utilizing fats so you are in turn conditioning your body to utilize fats better by potentially increasing your protein intake now that's great I think most of us know that protein is great when it comes down to weight loss and there's not a whole lot of an argument there but the maintenance piece is what's most important for me I lost 100 pounds and keeping the weight off at least for the first couple of years is one of the more difficult tasks well with this we look at a study that's published in the international Journal of obesity they had subjects go on a very low calorie diet for four weeks to lose weight now normally when this happens this crushes your metabolism quite a bit and the rate of weight regain can be quite significant so then after this they had subjects go into one of two groups one group ate basically the recommended daily allowance that is we're told we should consume a protein if you were to look at a label the percentage of protein you should be going to like have a happy healthy life okay the other group consumed 48 grams more protein so about a 15 to 18 increase above the other group what they found is that there is 50 percent less fat Mass regain in the high protein group not to mention significant Improvement in satiety so what this tells us is that once our weight loss journey is kind of done and we're just trying to maintain ratcheting up that protein intake by 15 or so can decrease your chances of regaining fat or reduce the amount of fat regained by 50 without really doing anything else here's what I recommend you do for weight loss before we move into the next category if you're trying to lose weight simply replace 25 of your carbohydrate intake with protein it's that simple calculate how many carbs you're eating in a day do it for one day do it for two days and replace 25 percent of those carbs with 25 percent more protein that is it calorie for calorie you're swapping out a carbohydrate which is four calories per gram with a protein which is four calories per gram that alone can make a Monumental difference and it's not just because of the calories because there's other things at play which we'll talk about here in just a second now if you've already lost your weight what I recommend you do just increase your protein by 15 percent don't worry about the calories too much that will more than likely sort itself out when you increase the protein 15 to 20 increase in protein without worrying about anything else if you have to then you start worrying about other things but usually that alone in people that I've worked with and people that I've seen does the trick for maintenance so now let's move into this next category which is the thermic effect this is why protein is Monumental when it comes down to weight loss but also when it comes down to just satiety in general it's the thermic effect so we can't throw calories in calories out completely out the window but we can rain on the fact that it's over generalized and the Nuance isn't discussed enough protein has a thermic effect which means that it influences the calories out aspect of calories and calories out if I consume a thousand calories and I burn a thousand calories I'm at net neutral but it's difficult for me to think about burning a thousand calories but if the protein that I'm consuming is burning those calories for me then it's influencing my calories out right and that's where the thermic effect of protein is so unique but do carbs and fat have a thermic effect yes they do but if we look at sort of this Monumental study that was published in 1993 the one that really paved a lot of the initial research for protein and thermic effect it studied basically the rate of thermic effect with different foods it found that the thermic effect of protein is about 20 to 30 percent meaning for every 100 calories of protein that you consume you're only sucking up and utilizing about 70 to 80 percent of those calories 20 to 30 of those calories are just being used in literally just dealing with the protein in the first place you want to know what fat is zero to three percent you want to know what carbs are about five to ten percent I love my high fat foods I love doing a low carb diet with high fat but I also have to understand that I have nine calories per gram with fat combined with a very low thermic effect so almost 100 percent of those calories that are coming in from fat are going to affect thermoregulation or thermodynamics in this case not saying avoid fat I'm saying increase protein but what about short-term stuff like in the really short term after you consume something well the American College of nutrition published something really interesting in this case they had subjects to a control diet for two days so they ate a prescribed diet for two days and then they had them go for one day on a high carb diet or a high protein diet okay they measured things after a 10 hour fast and then they measured the thermic effect two and a half hours postprandial after breakfast lunch and dinner what they found is that after a meal the high protein group had two times the thermic effect as the high carb group twice 100 increase by having protein at the high level versus carbs the high level so we're basically talking about increasing protein from like 15 to 30 percent and decreasing carbs accordingly and that had a 2X increase on the thermic effect just to put it into context this gives you about a hundred free calories a day just out of this so just by increasing the protein you are burning a hundred extra calories per day that's how long on a treadmill how much is your time worth to you right so what are my takeaways for this don't graze on protein consistently snacking is another reason why we have issues burning fat protein still spikes insulin it can still stand in the way of fat loss if you're constantly grazing on it all the time okay so instead of grazing on protein have Consolidated blocks of eating where you have sufficient enough protein with sufficient enough calories coming in from protein to really Stoke that metabolic fire make it worth it rather than grazing on five grams here or five grams there have a nice 30 40 50 gram serving get that thermic effect that thermic effect can carry over with other macronutrients too to a certain degree so Stoke that fire but it is entirely wrong to think about constantly stoking the metabolic Fire by constantly throwing a little bit of kindling on it I would rather you throw a big log on that fire and let it burn than sprinkle little Twigs throughout the course of the day the other thing that you need to do is you need to proportionally increase your protein along with the size of your meal right if for breakfast you have a relatively light breakfast and you have maybe you know a little bit of oatmeal a little bit of this and a little bit of protein I want at least 30 percent of your meal to be protein preferably going up to more like 40 percent okay and that is going to stay true no matter what the quantity of food that you eat is if you then go out to lunch and you have a giant lunch but you're disproportionate with your amounts of protein to other things that could be a problem okay protein should make up the majority of your plate in this particular case doesn't need to be meat you can do whatever you want to get protein in as long as you're factoring in that ratio right so with this these blocks of timing are important the grazing should not really be the case the blocks are really one of the most important things I pop the link down below as well for today's video sponsor which is Thrive Market if you want to check out a new way to grocery shop they have sustainable Meat and seafood options so they have your protein options they are a full online grocery store so if you need protein powders all different kinds of them if you need literally just snacks if you need fiber snacks you can sort my diet type if you need low carb it is endless and it makes it very easy and that link down below below is for 30 off your entire grocery order so when you use that link your entire shopping cart for your first grocery order is going to be 30 off plus you get a free fifty dollar gift when you use my special link down below okay so again you can sort by diet type you can sort by like sustainable meat and seafood and get fish get chicken get beef you can do whatever it's really that simple so that link is down below Top Line in the description just below the video now we have the satiety aspect how do you use protein to improve satiety so you don't feel like eating throughout the rest of the day how does this actually work because we've talked about how the thermic effect influences the calories out but what's really cool is the satiety aspect of protein influences the calories in it's not one in the same you see there's a multi-prong approach to how protein helps us burn fat so if we influence calories out we've increased the amount of calories we're burning now the next role is how do we influence what we take in so we have a double whammy so with this we look at a study published the American General clinical nutrition had subjects do a maintenance diet for two weeks basically what they would need to maintain weight they did this in a high protein fashion moderate protein fashion in low protein fashion then they did an ISO caloric two weeks where they all ate the same amount of calories high protein moderate protein low protein groups and then finally they had an ad libitim group for 12 weeks they had them go athletin for 12 weeks so basically they ate as much as they wanted to for 12 weeks as long as they kept with the right high protein ratio 30 protein what they found is that when they went adlibitum with the protein their satiety improved and they ultimately ended up consuming 441 less calories per day when they were left to their own devices to eat as much as they wanted as long as their protein was high they consumed over 400 calories less so that tells you the power of the satiety but I'm a mechanistic guy I like to know what's going on so with this we look at a study those published the American General clinical nutrition that took a look at high protein intake versus adequate protein intake so regular guidelines versus a little bit above regular guidelines they found that the protein increased satiety it decreased the hunger hormone ghrelin but here's what's Wild it really increased glucagon-like peptide one maybe you've heard all the rage about sort of the Hollywood drug called semiglutide right everyone's kind of using it for fat loss right now semiglutide works as what is called a glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor Agonist so it binds to the glp-1 receptor we don't need that stuff if protein is doing the job here right that's what's Wild wow I feel like this whole whole video is having a bunch of American Journal clinical nutrition research because there's another study published in ajcn that looks specifically at men that found that once again a high protein diet increased satiety increased glp-1 increased cholecystokenin which is another sort of signal a gustatory signal to the brain okay and it improved ghrelin levels lower ghrelin levels so glp1 sends a signal to the brain it's called a gut increase it sends a signal to the brain it says Hey we've got food in the system let's modulate glucose let's upregulate fat utilization let's decrease appetite is a very important signal from the gut to the brain and protein independent of other mechanisms outside of the thermic effect and everything like that influences this so how do you take this information and do something with it the simplest advice I have for you here is start your day with high protein now high protein throughout the course of the day but the largest chunk of your protein coming in in the morning this way you get to capitalize on the thermic effect where you're burning more calories throughout the day but you also get to capitalize on the satiety effect what good is satiety if you're just going to bed right like going to bed full is kind of a waste of being full if you ask me like who cares if you go to bed a little bit hungry you're freaking asleep anyway right but if you go to bed full you're wasting your fullness be full in the morning that you can capitalize on your fullness and not want to eat leverage that fullness for you so eat more proteins that you're full in the morning now let's talk muscle for just a second the gift that sort of keeps on giving with protein right you consume protein it supports your muscle mass even helps you build muscle mass and that helps you incinerate calories for a longer period of time right so it's hard to measure how that's impacting you today because it might take months to build that muscle or at the very least preserve that muscle so with this we look at a study that was published in the journal nutrition how subjects go through a four-month weight loss regime okay they did regular protein consumption and higher carbohydrates and then higher carbohydrates plus exercise and then they had another group that was higher protein and another group that was a high protein plus exercise both high protein groups with or without exercise okay say that again high protein group with or without exercise lost more fat and preserved more muscle even without stimulus now you can imagine the exercise group had even better benefit what this tells us is that even if we're in a deficit as long as protein needs are met and if you have more protein you could literally have an additive effect you can literally build muscle in a caloric deficit you can get stronger in a caloric deficit so all this whole thing of like I don't want to reduce calories I don't want to be weak in the gym I don't want to lose my muscle this is total hogwash it doesn't matter unless you're like going extreme extreme so preserving muscle how do you do this well in this case it's more about what you don't have to do you used to think that right after a workout you have to increase your protein intake because you have muscle protein synthesis and then you have to capitalize on the anabolic window you have 30 minutes to make it happen nope the data has demonstrated that your protein synthesis stays elevated for 24 even 48 Hours the bottom line with that get enough protein over the next 24 hours even if it's four hours later with a larger higher protein meal if your choices are in your workout with you know one little piece of beef jerky because that's all you got laying around or wait for two hours and be able to actually go get the steak or the chicken breast that you need wait and go get the steak or the chicken breast because it's going to be better for you that way so let's recap and make it so that you've got some very simple takeaways minimum thirty percent protein minimum okay I don't care where your carbs and where your fats and where your veggies line up after that we can have a discussion until we're blue in the face about what ratio is better the bottom line is that 30 is the minimum I want your protein to be at okay don't be grazing on protein unless it's as a precautionary what do I mean by that protein still spikes insulin so eating it throughout the course of the day in small amounts is not the best thing but if it helps you control your appetite at the following meal I would rather your snack be protein than anything else so if you're going out to dinner and you're worried you're going to overeat have a protein shake or have a protein snack but have it in a clear defined snacking period not grazing and munching throughout the period where you're constantly spiking insulin periods where you eat periods where you don't eat eat stop eat stop ingrain that in your mind don't waste your fullness be full in the morning stack that protein allotment as much as you can in the morning so you're full throughout the course of the day and to recap the weight loss side replace 25 of your carbs with 25 percent more protein it's that simple for maintenance increase your protein 15 to 20 percent it's that simple don't stress your post-workout window get your protein in over the course of 24 hours and how much protein can you assimilate in one sitting while the research is starting to demonstrate that it all depends on demand and it all depends on the individual so how do you know too much is too much the good news is unless you're in a serious caloric Surplus too much protein isn't going to magically turn into fat that's a total myth what protein can do if in too much abundance and a caloric Surplus is it can increase the availability of other substrates to turn to fat so too much protein can make you start storing fat and carbs as fat easier but again in that case you need to be in a pretty significant Surplus and even then the data is pretty weak I talked to Dr Lane Norton about this pretty detailed on my channel a while back so what's the answer there eat as much protein as you can without it feeling toxic if you're eating six ribeye steaks it's probably a problem okay but load up on the protein it's probably not going to bother you is there an upper limit of protein that you should have how much protein should you have in general well I think the days of recommending 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight are long gone the general simple rule of thumb is 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight that you want to weigh okay so if you are 300 pounds don't eat 300 grams of protein if you want to weigh 200 pounds perhaps eat 200 grams of protein okay so at the end of the day put all this together and build your plan around that this has been your complete guide to protein I'll see you tomorrow