Is protein the magic ingredient for weight loss?

Is protein the magic ingredient for weight loss?
By Julianne Downes, R.D.
Certified Weight Management Trainer
Learn more about Julianne Downes and all of our Nutrilite health experts.

Protein has the best reputation of all the macronutrients. So, how does protein work toward weight loss and what are appropriate sources of protein in your diet?

Protein is a macronutrient, just like carbohydrate and fat. And a healthy diet includes a balance of carbohydrates to protein to fat calories. Each macronutrient has specific functions that are necessary for good health. Protein helps to curb your appetite – which may help you lose weight – and plays a crucial role in your body functions. Proteins provide structural features of body tissue and serve as immune-system antibodies or signaling molecules; and in the form of enzymes and hormones, proteins can help to regulate sleep, digestion, and ovulation.¹

For these functions and others, your body requires complete proteins.

• Complete proteins come from animal or soy foods and contain all nine essential amino acids that must be supplied by food or dietary protein.
• Incomplete proteins include plant proteins like vegetables, nuts, and legumes. They are called incomplete because they lack one or more of the nine essential amino acids. Yet, combinations of plant proteins that complement each other such as rice and beans, peanut butter and bread, or hummus and pita can meet your body’s protein requirements without eating meat or soy.

To maintain a healthy weight, don’t overdue your protein – or any macronutrients. If you consume more protein than you need, you could gain weight. Even if you are highly active (exercise daily for an hour or more), the recommendation is still that only 30% of your total daily calories – around one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight – should come from protein.

Consuming more calories than you need in a day, even if they are protein calories, will cause your body to store the extra calories as fat. In 2009, a top medical journal concluded that reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.² So, the moral of the weight-loss story, keep calories down and keep those all important macronutrients balanced.

Protein is essential for good health and for healthy weight loss. Focus on sources of lean meat and plant proteins. Remember to not eat more of one food item at the expense of others. Leaving out vegetables, grains, and other healthy foods, can deprive your body of essential nutrients – especially phytonutrients – that are essential to living a full, active lifestyle.

NUTRILITE^® Protein Powder provides 8 g of soy protein, 2 g of whey protein, nine essential amino acids, and 12.5 mg of isoflavones in each scoop.

AddingNutrilite Protein Bars to your diet can help you reach your healthy weight goals. Unlike other weight management protein bars, only the NUTRILITE Protein Bar offers 20 grams of high-quality, satisfying, and easy-to-digest protein. Sweetened with all-natural sweeteners, the bar is not only good for you, but delicious too.

¹SportFuel, Inc.: The Truth about protein and weight loss.
²New England Journal of Medicine: Volume 360:859-873.