High Protein Diet

The high protein diet is all the rage right now and for good reason; it promotes rapid and sustainable weight loss.  However, choose your weight loss program carefully.  Not all protein diets are created equal and some are actually downright unhealthy.

Generally, a high protein diet usually means low or no carbohydrates.  And while it’s OK to totally eradicate carbs from your diet for a few days to speed up initial weight loss, any longer than that is not recommended without seeking medical advice. 

Despite their bad press, good carbs (vegetables, whole grains and fruit) are still an important part of any healthy eating program, even one that focuses on weight loss.  Just go easy on them and say NO to refined carbs (white bread, pasta, rice) as much as possible, in particular sugar (in the form of soft drinks, fruit juice and sweets).

OK, so your objective is to lose weight.  Is there any point in trying a low fat, high carb diet?  

Not if you’re really serious about weight loss.  Low fat, high carb diets (and we’re talking good carbs here) can work to some extent but you wouldn’t see the same results as you would with the low carb and high protein approach.  

And the reason is quite simple.  Low carbs mean that your blood sugar level doesn’t spike.  And that’s good for controlling diabetes which in turn, is good for controlling your weight.  It also helps reduce blood-triglyceride levels, which is good for the heart.

Another real advantage of a high protein diet is that it tends to slow down digestion making you less hungry and therefore eat less.

So clearly, low carb eating has many benefits ... while high carb eating overloads our metabolic process and leads to increased fat storage.  And don’t think that by consuming less calories it will even things out because that only results in the body going into starvation mode which encourages it to store even more fat.

Weight loss is about eating small lean protein meals along with fibrous carbohydrates regularly (say six times a day) for a healthy metabolic rate.   It’s that simple.