Can increasing your protein intake aid your fat loss goals?
The summer holidays are coming our personal trainers are busy getting our clients in the shape for their summer holidays. In preparation for the shredding those few extra pounds of fat for the desired beach body, for our personal training clients we suggest increasing protein intake and logging how much protein you are ingesting on a daily basis to make sure we are hitting our protein targets for the day. If your numbers are too low, that may be slowing down your fat loss progress and in some situations you may lose muscle mass.
Protein can reduce hunger, increase meal satiety and keep you feeling fuller for longer as protein food sources are slow to digest.
Protein has higher TEF (thermic effect of food) than carbohydrates and fats which means you burn more calories in the processing of the protein.
Increasing your protein intake can assist your fat loss goals via the preservation of your muscle tissue if you are in a calorie deficit, and increase protein synthesis which will in-turn increase your basal metabolic rate.
Protein suggestions :
Grass Fed Organic red meat
Free range Poultry
Game
Fish ideally wild or organic
Free range eggs
Nuts and Seeds
Beans and Legumes
For vegans we recommend combining nuts and seeds with beans and legumes to complete the amino acid profile of the meal you are eating.
For example combining lentils with pumpkin seeds or chickpeas with sunflower seeds will give you all the amino acids.
At Soma a large amount of personal training clients are vegetarian or vegan which makes hitting protein targets a little challenging but with a little attention to detail with total calorie intake and combining foods it is still possible to hit your targets.
Variety :
Try having 3 different protein sources per day
Recommended intake :
1.8 g – 2.5 g per kilo of body weight.
Increasing your protein intake will assist your fat loss goals however sticking within the calorie boundaries and maintaining the energy balance ratio is vital towards your fat loss goals. We ultimately need to burn more calories than we are eating to burn fat.
To book a free consultation with one of our expert coaches contact us at Soma Fitness and we can help you further towards achieving your weight loss and body composition goals with our personal training and nutritional programmes.
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