Does Protein Burn Fat?

Does protein burn fat? That's the question that many people starting up on a fat loss diet have and to get success, you need to find out the answer.

There is a lot of confusion today with weight loss diets in terms of what works and what doesn't. You see so many different diets out on the market such as low carb diets, isocalorie diets, high carb 'natural' diets, and so on that it can be hard to determine what's really going to help you get to your end goals.

One thing that some people often wonder is does protein burn fat? There is a lot of talk about protein in the weight loss industry and for good reason – it's important.

Not only is protein going to help reduce your overall appetite quite effectively especially when compared to carbohydrate rich foods, but it's also going to help preserve your lean muscle mass on the diet.

Since when you're on a reduced calorie intake you do have a higher chance of using lean muscle mass as a fuel source, you must be doing whatever you can to stop this process from occurring. If you lose lean muscle mass, your metabolism is going to slow as a result of that and you are going to have that much of a harder time maintaining any weight loss you do see.

So all of this said, let's dig further into the question of does protein burn fat and show you what you need to know.

Protein And The Thermic Effect Of Food

So the first thing that should be considered when answering the question does protein burn fat is something called the thermic effect of food. What this essentially entails is your body using up calories in order to digest a food that you've just eaten.

For example, each time you eat a meal, your body is going to have to expend so many calories just breaking that meal down. This is normal and occurs naturally as the digestion process ensues.

What's special about protein however is that the body is going to burn off the most calories through digestion when eating protein rich foods. This can be up to as much as 30% of the total calories that you consume, really taking a dent out of the total 'net' calories that you consume.

So essentially, when you eat a protein rich food, you can eat 30% more calories when compared to carbohydrate or fat rich foods and not gain weight because of it.

For anyone who doesn't like using a reduced calorie diet to lose weight, this is going to be a very good thing. By eating more protein in your diet, you will naturally burn off fat faster and will still be able to eat more food.

It's a win-win situation.

Protein And Your Total Calorie Intake

Second, the next thing that must be considered when answering the question does protein burn fat is how protein will influence your total calorie intake. How many calories you consume over the course of the day is going to have a big role in how quickly you lose weight.

Since you must burn off more calories than you consume through the foods you eat in order to get weight loss moving, the lower you can bring your calorie intake, typically the faster fat loss progress will be.

Since protein naturally helps to decrease your appetite level, this automatically should lead to you consuming fewer calories over all, hence making fat loss move that much quicker.

So Does Protein Burn Fat?

So to summarize the answer for you, yes, indirection protein does help burn off more body fat. It does this by increasing your metabolism so you burn calories faster, decreasing your appetite so you eat fewer calories throughout the day thus burning off more fat as fuel, and by making sure you don't lose any lean muscle mass so that you can keep your higher metabolic rate.

There's no question about it, if you do want to have success with your weight loss plan then getting in enough protein is going to be absolutely vital. The best sources to eat include chicken breast, turkey, fish, egg whites, and low-fat dairy products as these tend to be lowest in calories and have the highest amount of quality protein in them.

So now you have your answer to the question of does protein burn fat?

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