Protein for Weight Loss: 5 Ways It Can Help, According to a Dietitian
Key takeaways:
Protein can help you lose weight by making you feel full, increasing the amount of calories your body burns, and reducing your appetite.
Some of the best protein foods for weight loss include fish, poultry, low-fat Greek yogurt, and plant foods like beans and whole grains.
When starting a high-protein diet, try to include a high-protein food at each meal and snack, and consume your protein before other foods at meals.
Table of contents
The media is full of health claims about foods that can help with weight loss. This may lead you to wonder what’s actually effective, and what’s just hype. Maybe you’ve wondered what the connection is between protein and weight loss. Read on to learn what science says about protein’s role in weight loss, and get some concrete tips for following a high-protein diet.
Is protein good for weight loss?
It can be. Protein has many health benefits, including helping with weight loss for people looking to reach a comfortable and balanced weight. But the type of protein food you eat matters. Consuming nutritious sources of protein can help you lose weight and keep it off. Choosing less-healthy protein sources — such as processed foods or those with high amounts of added sugar — won’t be as beneficial.
How can a high-protein diet help you lose weight?
A high-protein diet may help you lose weight in a variety of ways.
1. Helping you feel full
Satiety refers to the feeling of fullness that signals it’s time to stop eating. Research suggests that protein has a greater effect on satiety than carbohydrates or fat. Eating high amounts of protein can help you feel full more quickly and stay full for longer. This means you may consume fewer total calories, which can influence weight loss. So eating more protein can be a simple and effective way to reduce overall caloric intake.
For this same reason, eating a high-protein diet after weight loss can also help prevent regaining weight. This benefit is significant since weight regain is common after weight loss.
2. Reducing appetite
Protein may reduce appetite by decreasing levels of ghrelin, the hormone that makes you feel hungry. And protein may increase other hormones — including cholecystokinin and glucagon-like-peptide-1 (GLP-1) — that help reduce your appetite. Still, more longer-term studies are needed to confirm these findings.
Can you get enough protein without meat? Yes. If you follow a vegan or vegetarian diet, these are plant-based protein sources to emphasize in your diet.
Older adults and protein: Older adults need more protein in their diet to prevent muscle loss. Protein drinks are one way to help meet your protein goals.
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3. Burning more calories
Your body burns energy — in the form of calories — to digest food. This is called the thermic effect of food. And some nutrients burn more calories than others. Digesting protein burns more calories than digesting carbohydrates or fat.
For context, protein’s thermic effect is approximately 20% to 30%. This means that if you consume 100 calories worth of protein, your body will only use about 70 to 80 of those calories. The rest would be burned during digestion. Carbohydrates, on the other hand, have a thermic effect of 5% to 10%, and fat’s thermic effect is only 0% to 3%.
4. Building and maintaining muscle
Protein is essential for building and repairing muscle tissue. And muscles use more calories than fat, even when you’re resting. So, eating a high-protein diet — combined with doing muscle-building exercises — can increase your lean muscle mass and help your body burn more calories throughout the day.
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Sometimes people lose muscle when they lose weight. But following a high-protein diet can help prevent this from happening. Protein helps preserve your body’s fat-free mass (tissues in your body that are not fat, including muscle, bone, and organs). Maintaining this muscle mass can help keep your overall metabolism higher than it would be if you didn’t follow a high-protein diet.
5. Serving as an alternative energy source
Normally, your body uses carbohydrates as its primary source of energy. But when you follow a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, your body doesn’t always have enough carbohydrates available to be used for energy.
In these cases, your body can create energy (glucose) from noncarbohydrate sources, such as protein. This process is called gluconeogenesis. Research has reported that the process of gluconeogenesis can promote weight loss, in part by helping you feel full.
How long does it take to lose weight with a high-protein diet?
The amount of time it takes to lose weight on a high-protein diet is different for everyone. Your unique metabolism will respond to increased protein differently depending on your:
Age
Sex
Body size and composition
Activity or fitness level
Genetics
But research shows that losing weight quickly isn’t ideal. That’s because quick weight loss is often a result of losing muscle mass and/or water rather than fat. Losing weight too quickly makes you more likely to gain it back.
Studies suggest that people following a high-protein diet lose more weight and body fat over 6 to 12 months than those who don’t follow a high-protein diet. Some evidence suggests that high-protein intake can also help with weight maintenance beyond 12 months. But more longer-term studies are needed to confirm this.
What are the best sources of protein for weight loss?
Not all protein sources are created equally. Some foods high in protein are also high in total calories, added sugar, and saturated fat. This makes them a less healthy choice. For weight-loss benefits and overall health benefits, it’s best to focus on lean, nutrient-dense proteins.
Some of the best sources of protein for weight loss include:
Poultry like chicken and turkey breast
Seafood, including shrimp and fish
Nuts and seeds, and nut and seed butters
Beans and lentils
Plain low-fat milk, cheese, and Greek yogurt
Eggs
Whole grains like quinoa, oats, and barley
Certain protein powders, especially whey protein powder
How much protein do you need?
Before starting a high-protein diet, it’s helpful to know how much protein you need. That way you can have a goal in mind when planning your meals and snacks.
The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of protein for a healthy adult is:
Sedentary lifestyle: 0.8 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. So, for someone who weighs 180 lbs (81.8 kg), this would amount to about 65 g of protein per day.
Physically active: 1 g to 1.6 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. For someone who weighs 180 lbs, this amounts to 82 g to 131 g of protein per day.
How to create a high-protein diet plan
When starting a high-protein diet, here are some things to keep in mind:
Spread out your protein intake throughout the day. So, if you need 80 g of protein each day, you might aim for 20 g per meal, and 10 g per snack. The amounts don’t have to be perfect, but the goal is to spread out protein foods if you can.
Include a high-protein food in every meal and snack. Think about how you can increase the protein content of your meals and snacks.
Use protein powders as necessary. Protein powders can help increase the protein content of foods that would otherwise not contain much. They can be easily added to smoothies, oatmeal, or protein shakes. Protein powders can also be good for people who struggle to find high-protein foods they like.
Eat your protein first. High-protein foods can make you full, so you may notice you’re eating less. But by eating the protein foods at the beginning of each meal, you help ensure you get the protein you need, even if you save the rest of your plate for later.
Become familiar with how much protein is in common foods. You certainly don’t need to count calories or even protein grams each day. But it’s helpful to know approximately how much protein is in the foods you commonly eat. Then you’ll have a general sense of how much protein you’re eating at each meal and snack.
Frequently asked questions
Experts recommend limiting protein intake to 2 g (or 3.5 g for some people) per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 180 lb person, that would be roughly 164 g. Too much protein can be bad for the kidneys in people with chronic kidney disease (who are not on dialysis). But the source can make a difference: Plant-based protein may be easier on the kidneys than protein from animal sources.
Also, following a high-protein and low-carbohydrate diet can sometimes crowd out fiber from your diet. This can lead to constipation and other health issues.
Unless you have kidney disease (not on dialysis), you can likely follow a high-protein diet safely. This includes people who want to lose weight, as well as those who don’t. A high-protein diet can also be beneficial for those looking to build lean muscle mass and/or support bone health.
The bottom line
Increasing your protein intake — or simply being more mindful about spreading out your protein consumption throughout the day — can help with weight loss. Protein has many potential benefits for weight management, such as reducing your appetite and helping your body burn more calories. The healthiest protein foods are those that are as close to their natural state as possible, and low in excess calories, saturated fat, and added sugar.
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References
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