Study Suggests Healthy Weight Loss is More Than Just Math
Sure, you can lose weight eating pizza and donuts. A nutrition professor accomplished that odd feat in 2010 by shedding twenty-seven pounds on a “Twinkie diet” comprised largely of convenience-store fare. All you have to do is burn more calories than you consume. Nevertheless, a new study published in Cell Reports suggests that improving health through dieting is more complicated than basic arithmetic.
The researchers put two sets of obese women on different weight-loss diets, one containing 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day and the other a high-protein regimen providing fifty percent more protein but roughly the same number of calories. While both diets helped the women lose around ten percent of their body weight, only the lower-protein diet improved how the participants’ muscles responded to insulin, a hormone important for controlling blood sugar. Because our body’s reaction to insulin plays a major role in adult-onset (type 2) diabetes, the results suggest high-protein weight-loss diets may be less helpful for preventing or reversing the condition.
However, the authors acknowledge that other factors could counteract protein’s potential downsides regarding diabetes. For example, the women eating more protein lost forty-five percent less muscle than their counterparts, meaning more of their weight reduction came from burning excess body fat, a key driver of many obesity-related medical problems. Moreover, numerous studies have suggested protein makes weight loss easier because it curbs appetite and requires more energy to digest than fats and carbohydrates, said Dr. Caroline Apovian, director of Boston Medical Center’s Nutrition and Weight Management Center.
“You can see from this study that what we eat does matter,” Apovian said.
So next time your bestie brags about losing ten pounds on a diet of grapefruit juice and baby food, just pat him on the back and make yourself a salad. Or maybe a nice, juicy chicken breast.
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