Weight Loss Tips

Protein isn’t just for muscle building, it serves many other vital functions. And if you don’t optimize your protein intake, your performance will suffer.

The bad news here is that many people are not fine tuning their protein consumption.

So here are 6 things about protein that you need to know:

1. It takes about 3 hours to digest protein from a meal: So don’t buy into the marketing claims which would have you eating protein more frequently. All you need for the best results is to eat protein every couple of hours in solid form.

2. You run out of amino acids very quickly: When your body digests protein it gets transformed into amino acids. And the reserve of amino acids in your blood is very limited. So every time you wait more than 3 hours before eating, you start to break down muscle protein.

3. Animal protein isn’t bad: It’s the saturated fat in animal protein that does harm. You see, animal saturated fat stiffens arteries and blocks the absorption of carbohydrates. So go ahead and have animal sources of protein so long as they are low in saturated fat.

4. Having a lot does more harm than good: You see, too much protein will have many ill effects on your body. One ill effect is a decrease in fat burning hormones. So make sure you balance your protein intake with other macronutrients.

5. Protein from food is superior to protein from powders: You see, protein from food does a great job at slowly digesting. And just like carbohydrates, your body works best on slow digesting protein. So try to get the majority of your protein intake from whole food.

6. Tofu will not spike your levels of estrogen: In fact, tofu has a lot of healthy fat that will increase your health. You really do not need to worry about tofu here because there is a lack of solid research proving its estrogen issues.

Now there are many macronutrients, protein isn’t the only one. Having said that, fine tuning your protein intake will help you increase energy and quality of life!

Tags: Weight Loss