A balanced diet is crucial for good health. Getting to and maintaining a healthy weight is important, not only for your self esteem, but also for the way that you feel. Your health can be directly impacted by how much you weigh. No one is saying that the last five pounds that you think you need to shave off is hurting anything besides your ego, but most people are more overweight than that. There are 34 million people who are classified as clinically obese. (Source: www.med.Stanford.edu) Ironically, the number of people who qualify as being on a diet at any given time is far lower, at a reported 20 million. (Source: www.thriveonline.com).
The type of diet that most people follow varies greatly. Some people will go to the doctor and ask for a sensible, healthy and, most of all, balanced diet plan that will carefully consider the need for all three of the macronutrients, which are fats, carbohydrates and proteins. They will include a variety of foods from all of the food groups so that all of the necessary vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that the body needs will be present. The doctor will address current or potential health risks with the patient and the best diet can be constructed. Sadly though, many more people will be lured in by the billion dollar strong diet industry and will kick off yet another diet fad. Some of them are ridiculous, making you eat foods that you do not like at times that do not work for you. Other people will develop an obsessive devotion to exercise, trying to burn off a piece of chocolate cake with two hours on the treadmill.
Protein becomes energy simply because we have eaten it, but it is not an infallible. Protein can turn to fat in the body if a person eats too much of it. However, there have been so many high protein diets that the average person cannot let go of that long held myth. We do need protein, but we need the right amount of protein. We need fats in our diet too, and again, we need the right amount as well as the right type. Despite all of the diet plans that tried to suggest otherwise, we do need carbohydrates, in the right amount and in the right type.
Because it is so important and because of the long-standing myths that surround it, protein has been the centerpiece of a number of different diet types. There have been high protein diets, all liquid protein diets and the supplement only diets. None of these work, at least not for the long term, and extremely high amounts of protein can be dangerous, especially to those who have diabetes, kidney disease or those who are at risk for these or other conditions. While it is important to finally manage to get your weight to a healthy number, it is just as important to do so by balancing the diet, including the amount of protein that you eat. Figuring out the amount that you need can be as simple as the answer to a few simple questions: how much do you weigh and how much exercise do you get? From these answers, you will know how many calories you need to take in to maintain your weight, how many to drop to lose weight and what percentage of those calories should be protein.
How Much Protein Do You Really Need?
Your body requires a certain number of calories to maintain its current weight. Even if you never move out of your bed, your body will use up some energy to breathe, to allow your heart to beat and to create hair, skin and nails. The more that you move around though, the more energy is being used up by the body, not only to do these reflexive activities that are vital to life, but also to do the other things that we want to do. We use energy to fold ourselves into pretzel shapes during yoga, to catch a ball, to take a slapshot at an opposing goalie or to lift weights. The more of these things that we do, the more energy we burn.
If we do not eat but we continue to push ourselves to do more and more exercise, especially endurance or high intensity exercise, our body will run out of its normal fuel that it typically burns and will turn instead to the muscles. During exercise, the body's production of proteins will decrease, sometimes dramatically. Proteins that are already in the system will be converted to free amino acids and then used to provide the energy to these hard-working muscles. Even after exercise has ended, this breakdown will continue, for as much as 24 hours afterward. At this point, the body enters what is called the recovery period. The body's goal at this time is to get more protein so that it can go to work repairing the muscles.
While you are exercising, you are causing small tears to appear in the muscle tissue, which is what may cause some of the achy, sore and fatigued feeling that you get after a hard workout. To repair these tears you need to first, take a day off (most serious body builders work one set of muscles at a time and work another the following day), and second, provide a supply of protein to work with. If there is not sufficient protein, the body will continue to break down its own protein supplies for energy, leading to a loss of lean muscle mass.
The amount of protein that you need depends on your weight and your activity level, but should never exceed a safe level. The American Heart Association suggests that a healthy diet should be no more than 35% protein. Men need more protein than women, simply because they tend to be bigger and weigh more. If you know the amount of daily calories that you need to eat, you can get a rough estimate of the best amounts of each nutrient that way.
To maintain weight, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that the diet be devised to provide 15% of the daily calories from protein, 35% from fat and 50% from carbohydrates. To lose weight, though, the numbers should be 30% protein, 20% fats and 50% carbohydrates. (Source: The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) The higher level of protein helps to keep satiety levels high so that there is no sense of deprivation. The body needs the right amount of protein because not only is too much a problem, too little can be a problem as well. If we do not get enough protein, our body will continue to eat other foods to get it, leading to the consumption of more calories than we need. (Source: Science Alert, Massey University) It is far more simple and healthy to get the right amount of all of the macronutrients from healthy sources rather than making the body crave what it needs. Why do we succumb to the lure of the fast food restaurant yet again? Is it because we are starving to death, or is it simply because we are lacking something in our system? To keep our bodies running well and in good health without feeling deprived or wasting calories on foods that are not good for us, we should make sure that we are eating plenty of complex carbohydrates, healthy fats and getting the right amount of protein every day.
Protein Supplements
Most of us lead busy lives. We may spend our entire day in front of a computer sceen or running around with nothing in front of us but tail lights and our steering wheel. We know that we should not stop at that drive-thru, but when there is no end to our errands and we can't fully remember our last meal, it may seem like salvation.
Adding protein supplements to the healthy diet plan can help to keep the extreme hunger at bay, especially when they are used as a between-meal snack. Protein is slow to digest in the body, working to stave off hunger in two ways. First, while the body is working to digest that protein-rich meal, it is not sending up new hunger signals. Second, the more slowly that a food digests, the less of a sugar spike there will be. Be careful with your choices, though, because many of them have more calories than they need, especially when your goal is weight loss. Profect, made by Protica, is only 100 calories but delivers a full 25 grams of hunger-busting protein, with high quality ingredients and delicious flavors.
The type of diet that most people follow varies greatly. Some people will go to the doctor and ask for a sensible, healthy and, most of all, balanced diet plan that will carefully consider the need for all three of the macronutrients, which are fats, carbohydrates and proteins. They will include a variety of foods from all of the food groups so that all of the necessary vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that the body needs will be present. The doctor will address current or potential health risks with the patient and the best diet can be constructed. Sadly though, many more people will be lured in by the billion dollar strong diet industry and will kick off yet another diet fad. Some of them are ridiculous, making you eat foods that you do not like at times that do not work for you. Other people will develop an obsessive devotion to exercise, trying to burn off a piece of chocolate cake with two hours on the treadmill.
Protein becomes energy simply because we have eaten it, but it is not an infallible. Protein can turn to fat in the body if a person eats too much of it. However, there have been so many high protein diets that the average person cannot let go of that long held myth. We do need protein, but we need the right amount of protein. We need fats in our diet too, and again, we need the right amount as well as the right type. Despite all of the diet plans that tried to suggest otherwise, we do need carbohydrates, in the right amount and in the right type.
Because it is so important and because of the long-standing myths that surround it, protein has been the centerpiece of a number of different diet types. There have been high protein diets, all liquid protein diets and the supplement only diets. None of these work, at least not for the long term, and extremely high amounts of protein can be dangerous, especially to those who have diabetes, kidney disease or those who are at risk for these or other conditions. While it is important to finally manage to get your weight to a healthy number, it is just as important to do so by balancing the diet, including the amount of protein that you eat. Figuring out the amount that you need can be as simple as the answer to a few simple questions: how much do you weigh and how much exercise do you get? From these answers, you will know how many calories you need to take in to maintain your weight, how many to drop to lose weight and what percentage of those calories should be protein.
How Much Protein Do You Really Need?
Your body requires a certain number of calories to maintain its current weight. Even if you never move out of your bed, your body will use up some energy to breathe, to allow your heart to beat and to create hair, skin and nails. The more that you move around though, the more energy is being used up by the body, not only to do these reflexive activities that are vital to life, but also to do the other things that we want to do. We use energy to fold ourselves into pretzel shapes during yoga, to catch a ball, to take a slapshot at an opposing goalie or to lift weights. The more of these things that we do, the more energy we burn.
If we do not eat but we continue to push ourselves to do more and more exercise, especially endurance or high intensity exercise, our body will run out of its normal fuel that it typically burns and will turn instead to the muscles. During exercise, the body's production of proteins will decrease, sometimes dramatically. Proteins that are already in the system will be converted to free amino acids and then used to provide the energy to these hard-working muscles. Even after exercise has ended, this breakdown will continue, for as much as 24 hours afterward. At this point, the body enters what is called the recovery period. The body's goal at this time is to get more protein so that it can go to work repairing the muscles.
While you are exercising, you are causing small tears to appear in the muscle tissue, which is what may cause some of the achy, sore and fatigued feeling that you get after a hard workout. To repair these tears you need to first, take a day off (most serious body builders work one set of muscles at a time and work another the following day), and second, provide a supply of protein to work with. If there is not sufficient protein, the body will continue to break down its own protein supplies for energy, leading to a loss of lean muscle mass.
The amount of protein that you need depends on your weight and your activity level, but should never exceed a safe level. The American Heart Association suggests that a healthy diet should be no more than 35% protein. Men need more protein than women, simply because they tend to be bigger and weigh more. If you know the amount of daily calories that you need to eat, you can get a rough estimate of the best amounts of each nutrient that way.
To maintain weight, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that the diet be devised to provide 15% of the daily calories from protein, 35% from fat and 50% from carbohydrates. To lose weight, though, the numbers should be 30% protein, 20% fats and 50% carbohydrates. (Source: The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) The higher level of protein helps to keep satiety levels high so that there is no sense of deprivation. The body needs the right amount of protein because not only is too much a problem, too little can be a problem as well. If we do not get enough protein, our body will continue to eat other foods to get it, leading to the consumption of more calories than we need. (Source: Science Alert, Massey University) It is far more simple and healthy to get the right amount of all of the macronutrients from healthy sources rather than making the body crave what it needs. Why do we succumb to the lure of the fast food restaurant yet again? Is it because we are starving to death, or is it simply because we are lacking something in our system? To keep our bodies running well and in good health without feeling deprived or wasting calories on foods that are not good for us, we should make sure that we are eating plenty of complex carbohydrates, healthy fats and getting the right amount of protein every day.
Protein Supplements
Most of us lead busy lives. We may spend our entire day in front of a computer sceen or running around with nothing in front of us but tail lights and our steering wheel. We know that we should not stop at that drive-thru, but when there is no end to our errands and we can't fully remember our last meal, it may seem like salvation.
Adding protein supplements to the healthy diet plan can help to keep the extreme hunger at bay, especially when they are used as a between-meal snack. Protein is slow to digest in the body, working to stave off hunger in two ways. First, while the body is working to digest that protein-rich meal, it is not sending up new hunger signals. Second, the more slowly that a food digests, the less of a sugar spike there will be. Be careful with your choices, though, because many of them have more calories than they need, especially when your goal is weight loss. Profect, made by Protica, is only 100 calories but delivers a full 25 grams of hunger-busting protein, with high quality ingredients and delicious flavors.
About the Author:
Protica Research (Protica, Inc.) specializes in the development of Capsulized Foods. Protica manufactures Profect, IsoMetric, Pediagro, Fruitasia and over 100 other brands, including Medicare-approved, whey liquid protein for weight loss surgery patients. You can learn more at Protica Research - Copyright
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