High protein diet can help you lose weight effectively: Study

New Delhi : Replacing your regular meals with the high protein diet options can boost your weight-loss journey, said a study.

People who replaced their diet with high protein meals were found to lose weight rapidly than the normal ones, said the study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Researchers from the University of Alberta studied 43 healthy adults without obesity, testing their metabolism during two different 32-hour diets. In the first, participants consumed all their daily calories in the form of high-protein meal replacement shakes, with a ratio of 35% carbohydrates, 40% protein, and 25% fat. In the second, they ate the same number of calories in the form of everyday foods like fruit, turkey wraps and stir-fry. This time, the ratio was about 55% of daily calories from carbohydrates, 15% from protein, and 30% from fat.

All the participants tried both diets in a random order, with a period of several weeks in between the different diets.

After the analysis, the researchers found that the ones who had high protein diet burned an average of 80 calories more than the ones who had normal diet.

The basic fact behind this is that the protein takes more time to digest, resulting in use of more calories. Protein has a higher thermic effect, or takes more energy to process, than fat or carbs. As a result, the body has to work harder to digest a high-protein diet, and has more potential to burn calories and body fat in doing so.

The volunteers in the study experienced a calorie deficit which means that they were burning more calories than they were having, eventually resulting in more fat burning.

This is supported by previous research that found high-protein diets can help people lose weight and reduce body fat while retaining muscle.