The Potency Of Protein As A Fat Burner

By: Robert Kokoska

There have been recent studies that confirm the old myth that eating more protein while on a lower calorie diet preserved more of your lean muscle tissue. This is something worth remembering, as the most important thing to avoid while dieting is the loss of any muscle or to minimize it. Your muscles use up calories, so the less you have, the less calories you will burn each day from a lowered metabolic rate. Some extreme diets ask you to stay away from protein. You should in turn, stay away from these diets.

Muscles reduce fat stores because they use calories for sustenance. You will burn more calories for the more muscle you have on your body. People who frequently use crash diets tend to lose lots of muscle mass. When they return to their usual diets, they will have a slower metabolism due to all of the muscle tissue that was lost. These people will most likely put on much more weight than originally lost, and in the future, it will be much harder for them to lose weight.

Protein is a word that literally means "of prime importance". It's a vital nutrient and is used primarily to build the body structures, especially muscle. Protein is also needed to construct hormones, hair, nails, organs and many other things. Your body can't function properly without a supply of quality protein. People who tend to have issues with their weight were found to eat much less protein than needed. If you exercise, or are very active mentally, your protein needs are actually much higher.

Protein is an excellent tool for aiding weight loss, and one way it helps is in its thermic value. Of all types of foods, it is protein that possesses the greatest thermic value and is also the hardest of foods to digest, which means it burns up more calories. As it takes a lot longer for digestion, it leaves you with a satisfied feeling for longer. It will also stop your blood sugar level from spiking too rapidly.

One important fact about protein is that it's constructed of smaller amino acids. There are in fact, 12 amino acids that are essential, meaning that the body cannot make them, and must get them from outside sources in our diet. Most people are actually deficient in some of the amino acids. This is either because they simply don't consume enough, or that they don't eat foods that have high quality protein within them, that the body can easily assimilate. Yogurt and eggs have protein of the highest biological value. What this means is that we can use this type of protein much easier than other types. Isolated whey powder is another excellent source.

If the food you regularly like to eat is not nutrient dense, you will need to eat more food and you will be hungrier more often. This happens, as it will need to eat more food to get the nutrients that it needs. If on the other hand, you started to eat nutrient-dense foods, the body will need less food and only need food when it needs calories for energy. This is actually one of the biggest reasons why people fail on crash or fad types of diets. They tend to be extremely hungry when they deprive their body from the things it needs.

It is worth mentioning here that when protein is cooked, parts of it actually get transformed and certain key amino acids are destroyed. As protein is sensitive to cooking and heat, it would be a great idea to eat some raw source of protein daily. These could include seeds, yogurt, nuts, fruit, some vegetables, whey and cheese. that have not been cooked. This provides you with all of the essential 12 amino acids that your body is craving. It is then able to create the other acids from those 12.

Another great way to preserve your lean muscle tissue is to perform regular training with weights or exercise. If your body needs its muscle for frequent motion, it will tend not to use them as fuel. It will begin using stores of fat to feed the muscles and cells in the body.

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Article Source: http://physicalfitnessarticles.net

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