Most people understand that protein is important if you're trying to build muscle. That's been drilled into us for years. Eat your protein, lift your weights, grow your muscles. What a lot of people don't realize is that protein may actually be even more important when you're trying to lose weight. I hear it all the time at AIM Athletic, someone decides they want to lose 20 pounds, starts tracking calories, and then sees my recommendation to eat 150 grams of protein per day. Their first reaction is usually, "How am I supposed to lose weight eating that much food?"
The reality is that fat loss requires a caloric deficit, there's is no way around it. If you consume more energy than you burn, you gain weight. If you consume less energy than you burn, you lose weight. Every successful diet in history works because it creates an energy deficit, whether people realize it or not. The problem is that when you create that deficit, your body doesn't automatically decide that all the weight you lose should come from body fat.
Every time you lift weights, run, skate, or train at AIM, you're burning energy, but you're also creating a little bit of damage to muscle tissue. That's not a bad thing, it's actually the entire reason training works. The body repairs that damage and when given the proper resources, comes back stronger than before. The challenge is that your body is also an energy conservation machine that is constantly trying to ensure a steady supply of energy to vital organs like the brain and heart.
Unfortunately, skeletal muscle is expensive. It requires energy 24 hours a day whether you're using it or not. From the body's perspective, fat is a much cheaper form of stored energy. This means that when calories become limited, the body may begin breaking down muscle tissue if it doesn't receive a strong enough signal that the muscle is still needed. In simple terms, your body lives in the moment. It doesn't care about your future beach body or deadlift PR. It cares about surviving today.
This is where protein becomes so important. When you consume protein, your body breaks it down into amino acids, which are used to repair and rebuild muscle tissue following exercise. Muscle is constantly undergoing a process of breakdown and repair known as protein turnover. During a calorie deficit, the balance between those two processes becomes harder to maintain. Resistance training tells the body that muscle is still required, while protein provides the raw materials needed to keep it around.
The part that surprises most people is that protein really isn't that calorie dense. One gram of protein contains approximately four calories. Even for myself, consuming 200 grams of protein only provides about 800 calories. While that sounds like a lot of protein, it would still leave plenty of room in a fat-loss diet for carbohydrates and fats. Suddenly eating 150-200 grams of protein doesn't seem quite as overwhelming as it first sounded.
Another benefit is that protein tends to keep you full longer than carbohydrates or fats. It also has the highest thermic effect of food, meaning your body burns more calories digesting and processing it. No, eating chicken breast isn't some magical fat-loss hack, but foods that are high in protein generally make dieting easier because they help control hunger while preserving muscle mass.
The last thing I'll mention is that when I tell members to eat more protein, I'm not automatically telling them to drink more protein shakes. I'm talking about food. Chicken, beef, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, tofu, and legumes are all excellent sources of protein. Protein powder is simply a convenient way to consume protein (that being said I personally I consider it food too). It's basically milk that has gone through a few extra steps before ending up in a shaker bottle.
My advice is to keep things simple. Calculate your protein target, divide it evenly across the number of meals you eat each day, and focus on consistency rather than perfection. Most people with fat-loss goals in our Small Group Personal Training and Personal Training programs are already doing the hard part by showing up and training consistently. The next step is making sure your nutrition supports the work you're putting in. If you want to lose fat while maintaining strength, muscle, and performance, protein isn't just important. It may be the most important nutrient in your entire diet.
You've got the info, now it's time to take AIM!
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