Low Carb High Protein Diet: Should You Use High Protein Low Carb Diets to Lose Weight Fast?
If you are trying to lose weight and are searching for information about the best ways to diet, you may have come across many ways to diet, such as high protein low carb diets, high carb low fat diets, high protein low fat diet, high fat high protein diet plans, etc., etc., with lots of conflicting information.
After a while you may feel overwhelmed with all the advertisements and claims about various weight-loss programs and products.
Unfortunately – apart from the exaggerated claims and hype that accompany most of these products and programs – some of them can be downright harmful to your body.
For instance, the high fat, high protein low carbohydrate diets are far from an ideal diet for humans and if used for an extended period of time can even be dangerous to your health.
Yet, despite of this fact, this type of diet is even recommended by some doctors to their patients, and eating loads of high protein snacks and foods on a daily basis are thought to be beneficial for weight loss.
How do high protein low carb weight loss diets work?
The average adult needs 46 to 56 grams of protein a day, depending on weight and overall health. As long as you’re eating a healthy diet, adding extra protein — either through protein shakes or other sources — isn’t necessary.
What your body needs most to function is carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars that are used for energy.
When you don’t supply your body with sufficient amount of carbohydrates – required for fuel by the muscle cells and brain – your body will try to find an emergency fuel to produce energy. This fuel is called ketones, and is usually used in times of fasting or famine.
So, basically, a high protein diet plan works by putting the body into a state of ketosis.
What are ketones? Ketones are a product of fat breakdown that can be used by many cells in an emergency situation, when carbohydrates are scarce. As the body produces ketones in increased quantities, the acids rise in the bloodstream – a condition that is called ketosis. The excess protein and acids must be eliminated from the body. This job is done by kidneys, which become overstressed and enlarged.
This differs from ketosis caused by fasting, because when fasting, there is no excess protein, the amount of acid in the bloodstream is small, and a fast usually does not last more than a few days.
However, what the institutes promoting these diet plans don’t say is that ketosis is regarded by doctors as a metabolic disorder, i.e. it’s not a good thing! Ketosis reduces a person’s metabolism and leaves them feeling tired, sluggish and lethargic. When the high protein diet is stopped, these symptoms usually go away. However, ketosis also causes the build-up of ketone bodies, which makes the blood overly acidic, which in turn can be fatal. Finally, ketosis also adversely affects mental processing and flexibility.
So, what basically happens when people are following a high-protein, low-carb diet for an extended period of time – they are damaging their kidneys and increasing their risk of kidney stones. They are putting a heavy burden on their liver, heart and intestines. They are also increasing their risk for osteoporosis, because many minerals stored in the bones get washed out with the acids.
Do not be a victim of such unhealthy diets, because you will have to pay the price down the road with eventual deterioration of your health.
The Shocking Truth About Protein: How much protein do we really need?
There is a lot of discussion about how much protein we need and a lot of misinformation regarding this subject. The need for protein has generally been greatly exaggerated by market forces, and protein’s functions have been misrepresented. Most people are convinced that we need large quantities of protein for energy or to keep us from getting sick. Nothing can be further from the truth.
The primary function of protein is growth, which is negligible in adults, as well as repair from injury and replacement of worn-out cells.
Despite the advertising hype of the meat and diary industries, humans require and extraordinarily low amount of protein in their diets. Proteins (or more accurately, amino acids) are the building blocks of living cells. Once we have done our growing, we have very little requirement for the raw materials of which we are made.
Many official groups, including the World Health Organization, suggest that eating a mere 10% of our total calories as protein is sufficient. In his book “The China Study, T.Colin Campbell, a renowned Cornell University professor states that we require only 5-6% of calories to come from protein in order to replace the protein we routinely lose. For comparison, mother’s milk provides an average about 6% of calories from protein for growing infants.
Consuming approximately 5% of calories from protein is easy if you are eating enough food to meet your daily calorie needs. All plant foods contain protein, and even if you ate a diet of only white rice (not recommended) you would end up with 8% protein for the day. Besides, our bodies efficiently recycle between 100 and 300 grams of our own protein every day.
Here is the protein content of some common foods:
- Apricots 10%
- Asparagus 27%
- Bananas 4%
- Broccoli 20%
- Cabbage 15%
- Cherries 5%
- Cucumbers 11%
- Kale 16%
- Lettuce 22%
- Peaches 8%
- Spinach 30%
- Strawberries 7%
- Tomatoes 12%
- Watermelon 7%
- Patatoes 7%
- Rice (white) 8%
- Spaghetti 14%
- Milk (whole) 23%
- Egg 37%
- Ice cream 8%
- Beef 50%
The 811 Diet
Many people may be shocked to learn that raw vegetables range from about 10% to 30% of protein.
The question remains what it is the highest quality of protein.
Common nutritional knowledge defines protein quality in terms of how efficiently the protein promotes body growth, rather than whether it produces health. Therefor, milk and egg protein are generally considered to be the best quality. Not all scientists agree, though. For example, T. Colin Campbell – the author of the China Study – and many others – considers the plant protein to be the healthiest type of protein for humans.
How much protein do we consume on average? It is calculated that the standard American diet, with all the meats, diary, and eggs, contains only between 11-21% of calories from protein. Only people who purposely eat high-protein diets come close to 30% or 40%.
How is this possible?
That’s because most of the foods commonly considered to be high protein foods – i.e. meat, eggs, diary, nuts and seeds, contain so much FAT that the percentage of protein in total calories consumed goes way down. So, there is really no such thing as “high protein diet” and even high protein supplements (e.g. spirulina) increase protein consumption as a percentage of daily calories very little.
Green Smoothies and Bodybuilding
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- you need to educate yourself about the potential problems that consuming too much protein can create. If you still determined, be sure to consult your physician, and choose the best protein powder that you can find. Here is a guest article that talks about the brands that you may want to consider.
