Protein & Weight Loss
Introduction

Protein is vital for controlling hunger while losing weight.

Many dieters do not eat enough protein while dieting -- and this triggers hunger. Some dieters eat much more protein than they need -- and this stops weight loss.

If your body begins to run low on protein, it triggers hunger, cravings, aches, pains, and low energy because it needs protein to keep you healthy -- and it wants you to eat so it can get what it needs to do its job.

However, managing protein on a diet is not quite as straightforward as some "high-protein" diet techniques may lead you to believe. This is because protein is a "dual-use" nutrient. Your body can either use it for tissue maintenance and repair, or burn it for energy.

Under normal circumstances, your body would "prefer" to use protein for tissue maintenance. But it will burn protein for energy instead (1) if you are starving, or (2) if you have just eaten so much protein that it needs to get rid of an excess.

Dieters aren't starving, (it just feels that way ), but with some techniques they are getting "too much" protein. "Too much" simply means that if your body is busy burning off the excess protein you just ate, then it is not burning off the excess fat in your fat cells. And that's not a good way to lose weight.

On the other hand, dieters do need more protein than non-dieters. This is because of the "protein-energy" relationship that has been well-known to physiologists for decades and is explained in the next pages of this section.

All of this just means that dieters need to eat enough protein to prevent hunger but not too much to stop weight loss ("Enough, but not too much", is a familiar theme of the Multi-Diet .)

With modern methods, it is easy to strike this protein balance, but you need to understand the issue in order to use the methods effectively.

Additionally, many protein foods contain other nutrients besides protein and some of these other nutrients also affect both hunger & weight loss in their own ways.

For example:

• High protein foods usually contain various fats. Fat is another "dual-use" nutrient. Some fats stop hunger, but most fats just stop you from losing weight. (See the Essential Fatty Acid Section of the site.)
• High protein foods usually contain large amounts of some of the macrominerals. Proper amounts of the macrominerals are essential for preventing hunger and too much of them can cause problems. (See the Vitamins & Minerals Section of the site.)

These issues are also easy to handle using the proper technique.

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