The Truth About Protein Intake

We have all been hearing the same story from just about every single trainer, body builder, and internet marketer on the subject, you have to eat protein and you have to eat a lot of it.

If it were that simple this article would come to an albeit brief conclusion, but there is a little more to it than that.

First, the real reason why it is critical to your diet is because it is the building block of all muscle tissue in your body. You are building your muscle tissue by eating animal muscle tissue because that is essentially what it is.

Protein gives us branched-chain-amino-acids that our body cannot produce and they are essential to ensure that we can rebuild our muscle tissue after we over-work it. These BCAA's are only found it animal-based protein foods and there are nine of twenty-two that our body cannot produce which makes it that much more important to get quality sources of protein into our daily food intake.

Yes, that is all well and good, but how much should I eat?

This question has bounced around every corner of the dieting universe and no one has been able to come up with a good answer. The best response is simple, eat a lot of it.

Some people will tell you to eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight and some would say two or three grams depending, but there is no exact science to it, but note this; the more you eat the more calories your body is ultimately going to burn.

Did you know that the breakdown of protein burns five times more calories than the process the body uses to breakdown carbohydrates?

Well, you do now.

Yes, but if I eat too much protein will it not just turn to fat if I am inactive?

That is another myth about protein. Muscle tissue does not turn to fat, if anything it will be broken down and used as energy when it is needed. Worst case scenario, you eat too much protein and maybe do too little activity to find out that you might not be as hungry as you thought you were, but that might also be another myth because the more calories you intake the more your body has to work to burn it off.

That sounds great, what about a protein supplement?

In recent years studies have been done proving that whole food is better for you than a protein supplement powder especially when it comes to the first meal of the day. Believe it or not but your body will actually function better with a meal of whole foods right away in the morning instead of a high-protein shake.

Another thing that you should be aware of with that protein supplement is that you do not know what is really inside that container. That is the beautiful part about whole food, a steak is a steak, eggs are eggs- when it comes to a powder you do not know if it is the high-quality protein that you were looking for or vanilla-flavored flour.

There are good products on the market, and if you choose to use them remember, it is a 'supplement' which means that it is supposed to supplement the foods that you already eat.