Hello there,
Welcome to my first blog for a while. I wanted to find a way to share some of my thinking around nutrition and health, along with some recipes and ideas when they are relevant.
This first post is all about protein. Twelve years ago, when I first qualified as a nutritional therapist, I realised that when people make an effort to include enough protein in their diet, many things improved for them.
One of these is that we feel more satisfied with our food, and tend to snack less, and overeat less. This in turn has a positive effect on weight management, and often, people who wanted to lose a bit of weight started to do so without any great effort on their part.
This is a pretty magical way of losing weight - instead of constantly thinking 'eat less', the message is 'eat more' (protein).
To be clear, we aren't talking 'high' protein here, we are talking about the amount which our bodies need to function. I think that we've overlooked protein as an essential nutrient, and have assumed that we all eat enough. We also tend to assume that growing children, men and athletes need protein, and that women need less! This is a bit of an old-fashioned view, but I think it has a long hangover.
We need protein for so many things in the body. Some of them are:
Once people take this on board, they come back to me and say that they are snacking less, they have less desire to eat sweet things, their energy is better, they no longer have afternoon slumps, and even their sleep and digestion improves. And many start to lose weight, even after the first week, if that's what they want. It's quite a list of success stories.
There have been times when I've wondered if I am giving the right advice, but time and again, hearing these stories confirms that it has a positive effect.
In more recent years, there has been a lot of research highlighting the importance of maintaining muscle mass as we age, and that, as well as exercise, it's vital to eat enough protein. The tendency with older people, in my opinion, is that they feel they don't need as much food generally, and protein particularly.
This can lead to a downward spiral - less protein means muscle loss and wasting, which means less energy, less strength, poorer balance, higher risk of falls, and greater damage when they do fall. Not to mention the importance of the amino acids in protein for mental health and cognitive function.
There are many views on the amount of protein we need. I settled on an easy to calculate 1g per kg of body weight per day, which was a little bit more than the WHO recommendation of 0.8g. I'll explain just what this looks like, further on.
The muscle-conservation-in-old-age camp recommends upward of 1.2g per kg per day, and some recommend 1.5g or more, so you can see my suggestion is still quite conservative.
The numbers
Supposing somebody weighed 60kg, which is approximately 9 1/2 stone. At 1g/kg they would need 60 grams of protein a day. Now, this isn't 60 grams of meat, fish, eggs or whatever. Animal foods generally are around 25% protein, so 100g of meat or fish contain somewhere around 25g of protein.
Beans and pulses (cooked) contain around 10g of protein, give or take a couple of grams. This means a rough guide would be that 10% of pulses and beans is protein.
How to get 60g of protein
During a day, you could eat:
This totals 59-62g of protein.
The main message here is that protein needs to be included in every meal - so the breakfast we've got used to of cereals and toast is definitely not the best way to start the day!
Protein theory
I came across a recent article about the 'Protein Leverage Theory' proposed by Professors David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson (in 2005!). I had heard about this theory a couple of years ago, and at the time felt pleased that there was some science to back up what I'd been saying. There has now been a more recent study which supports the theory.
The theory is that humans (and animals) need a certain amount of protein to function, and that if we don't get enough from our food, our bodies will 'make' us keep eating until we've taken in enough for that day.
This has major implications for people struggling to lose weight. Carbohydrates usually contain very little protein compared to animal foods, and even non-animal protein sources, so if we are eating lots of carbs (think the typical breakfast), with very little protein, we are going to be short of our requirements. We then need to keep eating, and if what we are eating is a lower protein food, this inevitably means we are taking in more energy (calories) than we need. This has to be stored as fat if we aren't using it all up.
I have felt for some time that too much carbohydrate makes us store more fat, and although I still think this is true, I can see that it may not simply be about the carbs making us fat, but the fact that a diet is low in protein may lead to us eating more carbohydrate, in turn making us fat.
So to come full circle, my recommendation to eat protein with every meal could help people satisfy their bodies' needs for protein, resulting in satisfaction (satiation) with their meals and ultimately leading to a lower intake of energy and then weight loss and improved body composition.
Although one could calculate a number of grams of protein to eat every day, this should be personalised depending on the level of activity, stress, state of health and more, so as a general guide, I would suggest including some protein with every meal and see how it works for you.
There are some fears around high protein diets, but I would remind you that I am not talking about high protein, merely adequate protein. If you have any health conditions, I would suggest having a chat with your healthcare provider before making any major dietary changes.
Welcome to my first blog for a while. I wanted to find a way to share some of my thinking around nutrition and health, along with some recipes and ideas when they are relevant.
This first post is all about protein. Twelve years ago, when I first qualified as a nutritional therapist, I realised that when people make an effort to include enough protein in their diet, many things improved for them.
One of these is that we feel more satisfied with our food, and tend to snack less, and overeat less. This in turn has a positive effect on weight management, and often, people who wanted to lose a bit of weight started to do so without any great effort on their part.
This is a pretty magical way of losing weight - instead of constantly thinking 'eat less', the message is 'eat more' (protein).
To be clear, we aren't talking 'high' protein here, we are talking about the amount which our bodies need to function. I think that we've overlooked protein as an essential nutrient, and have assumed that we all eat enough. We also tend to assume that growing children, men and athletes need protein, and that women need less! This is a bit of an old-fashioned view, but I think it has a long hangover.
We need protein for so many things in the body. Some of them are:
- Manufacturing the structure of the body - an obvious one this - the muscles, bones, skin and other cells.
- As building blocks for enzymes - for digestion and for making chemical transformations in the body.
- To make neurotransmitters for our mood, mental and cognitive health.
- To repair and replace damaged tissues.
- To help our livers detoxify by-products of digestion and bodily processes, as well as toxins we encounter in our food and environment.
Once people take this on board, they come back to me and say that they are snacking less, they have less desire to eat sweet things, their energy is better, they no longer have afternoon slumps, and even their sleep and digestion improves. And many start to lose weight, even after the first week, if that's what they want. It's quite a list of success stories.
There have been times when I've wondered if I am giving the right advice, but time and again, hearing these stories confirms that it has a positive effect.
In more recent years, there has been a lot of research highlighting the importance of maintaining muscle mass as we age, and that, as well as exercise, it's vital to eat enough protein. The tendency with older people, in my opinion, is that they feel they don't need as much food generally, and protein particularly.
This can lead to a downward spiral - less protein means muscle loss and wasting, which means less energy, less strength, poorer balance, higher risk of falls, and greater damage when they do fall. Not to mention the importance of the amino acids in protein for mental health and cognitive function.
There are many views on the amount of protein we need. I settled on an easy to calculate 1g per kg of body weight per day, which was a little bit more than the WHO recommendation of 0.8g. I'll explain just what this looks like, further on.
The muscle-conservation-in-old-age camp recommends upward of 1.2g per kg per day, and some recommend 1.5g or more, so you can see my suggestion is still quite conservative.
The numbers
Supposing somebody weighed 60kg, which is approximately 9 1/2 stone. At 1g/kg they would need 60 grams of protein a day. Now, this isn't 60 grams of meat, fish, eggs or whatever. Animal foods generally are around 25% protein, so 100g of meat or fish contain somewhere around 25g of protein.
Beans and pulses (cooked) contain around 10g of protein, give or take a couple of grams. This means a rough guide would be that 10% of pulses and beans is protein.
How to get 60g of protein
During a day, you could eat:
- 2 eggs (16g)
- 1 tin sardines (22-25g)
- Half a tin of chick peas (10g)
- 30g of almonds (6g)
- 100g of natural yogurt (5g)
This totals 59-62g of protein.
The main message here is that protein needs to be included in every meal - so the breakfast we've got used to of cereals and toast is definitely not the best way to start the day!
Protein theory
I came across a recent article about the 'Protein Leverage Theory' proposed by Professors David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson (in 2005!). I had heard about this theory a couple of years ago, and at the time felt pleased that there was some science to back up what I'd been saying. There has now been a more recent study which supports the theory.
The theory is that humans (and animals) need a certain amount of protein to function, and that if we don't get enough from our food, our bodies will 'make' us keep eating until we've taken in enough for that day.
This has major implications for people struggling to lose weight. Carbohydrates usually contain very little protein compared to animal foods, and even non-animal protein sources, so if we are eating lots of carbs (think the typical breakfast), with very little protein, we are going to be short of our requirements. We then need to keep eating, and if what we are eating is a lower protein food, this inevitably means we are taking in more energy (calories) than we need. This has to be stored as fat if we aren't using it all up.
I have felt for some time that too much carbohydrate makes us store more fat, and although I still think this is true, I can see that it may not simply be about the carbs making us fat, but the fact that a diet is low in protein may lead to us eating more carbohydrate, in turn making us fat.
So to come full circle, my recommendation to eat protein with every meal could help people satisfy their bodies' needs for protein, resulting in satisfaction (satiation) with their meals and ultimately leading to a lower intake of energy and then weight loss and improved body composition.
Although one could calculate a number of grams of protein to eat every day, this should be personalised depending on the level of activity, stress, state of health and more, so as a general guide, I would suggest including some protein with every meal and see how it works for you.
There are some fears around high protein diets, but I would remind you that I am not talking about high protein, merely adequate protein. If you have any health conditions, I would suggest having a chat with your healthcare provider before making any major dietary changes.
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