Concious Food Behaviour

Increase satiety by adding protein

Protein is one of the three main macronutrients (the other two are fats and carbohydrates) that make up the food we eat. Unlike excess energy (which we can easily store in the body as fat), we don't store much excess protein. Protein is always used, processed, and sometimes excreted from the body. If we do not get enough protein, our body will begin to take it from the muscles first. Therefore, we must constantly replenish our protein stores by eating it.

We need protein. Protein is so important that without it we die or become seriously ill. All enzymes, all blood, all cellular structures, 100% of hair and nails, most of the muscles, bones and internal organs, and many hormones are composed primarily of protein. Therefore, protein provides most of the functions of our body. Simply put, our bodies are basically a bunch of protein. No protein, no life.

Eating protein helps us burn fat for several reasons:
1. When you eat more protein, you tend to feel full longer. Protein stimulates the release of satiety hormones in the intestines. So when you eat protein, you naturally tend to eat less without feeling hungry.

2. Protein makes your body work to digest it. Not all nutrients require the same amount of energy to digest. Fats and carbohydrates are fairly easy to digest and absorb by the body, but protein requires more energy to digest and absorb. If you eat 100 calories of protein, you will only get about 70 calories.

3. Protein also helps you maintain muscle mass while you lose weight by losing fat. When you are severely energy deficient (meaning you eat less than you expend), your body tries to throw out everything "extra" - fat, muscle, bones, hormones, etc. So our bodies don't tend to just shed fat and retain muscle...unless you're eating enough protein.

Want to increase satiety? Keep energy at a stable level? Save muscle? Include protein-rich foods at every meal, such as eggs, egg whites, seafood, meat, poultry, soy products, cottage cheese, or Greek yogurt.

How to calculate servings of protein?

Look at your palm. The optimal serving of protein for you is just the size of your palm - in size and thickness, not including fingers. Evaluating food in grams, calories or cups is not so convenient, and your hands are always with you.

Women need 4-6 servings of protein foods per day. Men - 6-8 servings. The more active the lifestyle, the more protein you need.

Number of servings per day:
🧎🏻‍♂️ Sedentary lifestyle (less than 3 hours of physical activity per week): 4 servings for women, 6 servings for men.
🚶🏻‍♂️ Moderately active lifestyle (3 to 10 hours of physical activity per week): 5 servings for women, 7 servings for men.
🏃🏻‍♂️ Active lifestyle (more than 10 hours of physical activity per week): 6 servings for women, 8 servings for men.

In the coming weeks, we're adding some protein to every main meal.
🍴 Add 1-2 palm-sized servings of protein to each main meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner).
🍴 Protein almost always comes with fat. For every day, choose less fat, more whole and fresh products with minimal processing.
🍴 Protein first, then any other food.
🍴 Please note that more than two servings of protein is difficult to digest in one sitting.

Now the focus is on protein products.

Sometimes it is difficult to navigate by hand, for example in the case of compound dishes. Then proceed from the fact that a serving is about 15-20 grams of pure protein.

It is important to learn to listen and hear your body. Try to distribute evenly your daily protein between meals.

Protein leverage hypothesis

The protein leverage hypothesis was born when two of University of Sydney entomologists Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer noticed that insect feeding behavior is based on a search for energy, that is, net calories, and this search will continue until the need for protein is satisfied.

The work of Simpson and Raubenheimer demonstrates that this pattern is consistent across all living things, from plants to insects to animals (including humans).

That is, if the food we eat contains a higher percentage of protein, we tend to consume fewer calories. Conversely, if our diet is diluted with refined and processed high-carb and high-fat ingredients, we tend to eat more.

Our protein cravings are the strongest of all appetite signals. Have you ever wondered why such dish as meat and potatoes is so popular?

Most people don't eat only potatoes all the time.

Most people don't eat lean steak ALL the time.

Even though cooked potatoes are delicious (because they provide a lot of energy from fats and carbohydrates combined), at the end of the day we crave protein. Our appetite sends us in search of a steak.

Conversely, if we started to just eat lean steak (i.e. protein with minimal fat), we would end up craving some fat and/or carbs to get the energy we need to be active because it's hard to convert pure protein into ATP (our body's energy currency).

Even people who follow a carnivore diet know they need enough fat to prevent hunger and excessive weight loss. We just can't eat enough lean protein to get enough energy.

And this is repeated in animal experiments over and over again. When they fed animal X or insect Y a lot of protein, and animal X or insect Y a lot of carbs+fat, and then allowed them to have access to both food sources, they amazingly ate exactly as much of the right food source as they needed to achieve their goals.

For many animals protein intake is tightly regulated. They don't want to consume too much or too little protein. The other two main sources of energy - carbohydrates and fats - to control their eating behavior and hunger are secondary. Of course, they play a certain role, but they are subject to the protein leverage.

Older people or athletes need a little more protein, while younger people manage to live with less. But despite this, our appetite has an incredible ability to return us to a balanced diet with just the right amount of protein that we need!

When foods do not contain very much protein, we instinctively start to eat more. If we eat foods high in protein, then the need for protein will soon be satisfied, we will feel full and stop eating food uncontrollably. Yes, we eat until the body gets what it needs, which means we overeat and gain weight.

Unfortunately, protein dilution is common in today's food environment. Wild meat usually contains much less fat than the farm-raised meat we normally eat (roughly 4g compared to 20g fat per 100g). If you eat processed foods, keep in mind that the protein in them is diluted due to the saturation of the products with fat and sugar.

How much protein do you need for weight loss and why does it work?

Previously, we figured out that:
- The percentage of protein in your diet greatly affects how much food you eat.
- Our brains also encourage us to consume more readily available energy from carbohydrates and fats, resulting in a craving for foods that are usually highly processed junk foods with less protein.

The key to increasing satiety and eating less food is to increase PROTEIN PERCENTAGE. Conversely, the way to eat more (build muscle or eat for a high level of activity) is to decrease the PROTEIN PERCENTAGE by adding more readily available energy from fats and carbohydrates.

The impact of protein percentage on energy intake is enormous. People who consume a higher percentage of protein tend to consume 60% fewer calories!

The main reason why increasing the percentage of protein leads to weight loss is that our body uses more energy to convert protein. As a result, we not only eat fewer calories, but also store less energy in the form of fat. Research consistently shows that eating more protein makes it hard to gain weight. In addition, it is difficult to maintain a high protein intake for a significant period of time due to the powerful satiety response.

However, sustainable weight loss is more about reducing the proportion of highly processed, readily available energy from non-fiber carbohydrates and fats than simply consuming more protein.

It's not just about eating more protein (which can be a significant amount of fat, and remember, fat lowers satiety). Instead, it's more important to focus on cutting down on processed carbs and fat, which results in more energy from protein and more satiety per calorie intake.

As a rule, the increase in satiety does not occur until we exceed 15-20% of protein. This is due to the fact that the body directs the required amount of protein primarily for the synthesis, growth and restoration of tissues of muscles, organs, bones, etc.

For those who are active or do heavy weight training, this "tipping point" may be higher (up to 30%, for example), while for those who are sedentary (perhaps as low as 10%), it may be lower.

The best satiety response and the fastest weight loss according to studies corresponds to an intake of about 1.8 g of protein per kg of lean mass.

To understand how to apply this data. In our palm serving system, one serving of a protein product corresponds to approximately 15 - 20 g of protein. For example, if you weigh 68kg at 32% body fat, your lean mass would be 46.2kg and your daily protein target would be 83.2g, which is about four to five palm-sized servings.

It is probably unwise and impractical to drastically increase your protein intake. However, if you want to get rid of fat in your body, you should slowly increase the percentage of protein, while reducing the amount of readily available energy from fats and carbohydrates until you reach your optimal weight.

Protein quality matters

Most people think about how much protein they are eating, but usually they don't think about the quality of the protein. There are huge differences in the chemical composition of different protein sources and how valuable this protein is from a nutritional point of view.

The protein in our food is made up of many different building blocks called amino acids. These amino acids are joined together by chemical bonds and then folded in different ways to create three-dimensional structures that are essential for our body to function.

There are two main categories of amino acids in the body. First, we have essential amino acids – those that the body cannot produce and therefore we must consume them in our diet.

Some amino acids are conditionally essential, which means that our bodies can't always produce as much as we need (for example, when we're under stress).

And we have non-essential amino acids—those that the body can normally produce on its own.

The higher the quality of the protein, the more easily it can provide your body with the amino acids it needs to grow, repair, and maintain your body.

The two big factors that make a protein high or low quality are:

Digestibility:
How easy is it to digest?
How much do you digest, absorb and use?

Amino acid composition:
What amino acids does it consist of?

Quality protein has a good ratio of essential amino acids and allows our body to use them effectively.

Amino acid composition is more important than digestibility. If your diet is not diverse enough, you may get enough total protein, but not enough of a specific essential amino acid.

We need quite a few of these essential amino acids every day:
14 mg/kg histidine
19 mg/kg isoleucine
42 mg/kg leucine
38 mg/kg lysine
19 mg/kg methionine + cysteine
33 mg/kg phenylalanine + tyrosine
20 mg/kg threonine
5 mg/kg tryptophan
24 mg/kg valine

You can eat more protein than you need, but if the protein you eat is low in one of these amino acids (the limiting amino acid), it will create a bottleneck that will prevent your body from functioning properly (or at least slow it down). ).

Of course, this does not mean that you need to calibrate your protein intake to the level of amino acids. There is no need for protein mathematics. Just eat a variety of protein-rich foods and nature will do the rest. As long as you eat a mixture of different protein sources, you are getting all the amino acids you need.

If you don't eat animal products, getting enough protein will take some effort. After all, many plant foods are less rich in protein than animals. Just aim to get more protein from a wide variety of plant sources to make up for the difference in amino acid composition and meet your protein needs.

Eating a high-protein, plant-based diet has a positive effect on health compared to a low-protein diet. Again, it all comes down to the quality of your protein more than how much protein you eat.

If you mainly rely on animal products as a source of protein, do not forget to add some vegetable protein to your diet. Variety is very good. Pay attention to beans.

Is protein really bad?

For years, people have been concerned about the safety of eating too much protein. The most common questions associated with eating more protein are: likelihood of kidney damage, likelihood of liver damage, osteoporosis.
Let's explore them.

Claim: High protein levels cause kidney damage. This high protein and kidney concern began with a misunderstanding of why doctors advise people with poorly functioning kidneys (usually due to pre-existing kidney disease) to eat a low-protein diet.

Agree, there is a big difference between avoiding protein because your kidneys are already damaged, and protein actively damaging healthy kidneys. This can be compared to the difference between running with a broken leg and running with a perfectly healthy leg.

Running with a broken leg is definitely a bad idea. Doctors would probably tell you not to run if you have a broken leg. But does jogging cause leg fractures? No. The same thing happens with protein and kidneys.

Eating more protein increases the amount of work the kidneys do (glomerular filtration rate and creatinine clearance), just like running increases the amount of work for the leg muscles.

But protein hasn't been shown to cause kidney damage—again, just like running won't break a leg suddenly.

However, a high protein diet leads to an increase in the amount of metabolic waste excreted in the urine, so it is especially important to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.

Verdict: There is no evidence that a high protein diet (2.2 g/kg body weight) causes kidney damage in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein levels cause liver damage.
The liver, like the kidneys, is a major nutrient-processing organ. Same as the kidney statement: people with liver damage (such as cirrhosis) are told to eat less protein.

Yes, if you have liver damage or disease, you should eat less protein. But if your liver is healthy, then a high-protein diet will not cause liver damage.

Verdict: There is no evidence that a high-protein diet (from 2.2 g/kg body weight) causes liver damage in healthy adults.

Claim: High protein levels cause osteoporosis.
Eating more protein without increasing your intake of vegetables and fruits will increase calcium loss.

This discovery led some people to think that eating more protein will cause osteoporosis because you lose bone calcium.

But there is no evidence that high protein levels cause osteoporosis.

In any case, it has been proven that insufficient protein intake leads to bone loss. Bones are not just inert sticks of minerals - a significant proportion of bones are also composed of protein, mostly collagen-type proteins.

Like muscles, bone is an active tissue that is constantly being broken down and rebuilt. And like muscles, bones need the building blocks of amino acids.

Women aged 55 to 92 who eat more protein have higher bone density. Thus, eating more protein improves bone density in people most at risk of developing osteoporosis.

In addition, strength training increases bone density. So eating more protein plus adding strength training: a double win for bone density.

Verdict: High-protein diets do not cause osteoporosis and may actually prevent it.

Protein is one of the most important macronutrients. If we don't eat enough protein, we will create problems for the functioning of the body. Excess protein can create an additional burden for the body to process and eliminate it.

In our eating behavior, we are exposed to the risks of energy toxicity, which we can balance with protein leverage. You need to gradually increase the percentage of protein in your diet until you reach a healthy weight. Increasing the amount of protein in the diet is a temporary transformation. Once you reach a sustainable healthy weight and body fat percentage, you should be able to get more energy back from fats and carbohydrates.