Lose Weight Program > Protein Calories

A protein calorie is a busy, energetic little fellow running a high temperature. It is unequaled in what nutritionists call specific dynamic action. All you have to remember of this technical term is the exciting word "dynamic." It is an apt description of proteins.



Suppose that every bite of food you ate contained wtthin itself some property that stimulated your body to dispose of every single calorie in the food. After you had used what you needed for heat and energy, the surplus calories would be disposed of by your body's chemical activities, and none would remain to be stored as fat. Happy days!

Food does' have this property of stimulating the body to increased output of energy. That is one reason why you can eat a little bit more than your theoretical needs and not gain an ounce of weight. Eat 100 calories of fat and the food itself stimulates you to burn up an additional 4.1 calories of energy, or a total of 104.1. A like quantity of pure carbohydrate causes an increased energy consumption of about 6 calories.

But suppose you eat 100 calories of protein. Miracle of miracles, it causes an energy output of 130 to 140 calories under ideal conditions! The beauty of it is that you don't have to exercise or do any voluntary work whatever to dispose of this 30-to-40-calorie bonus - it's all done for you by the action of protein in whipping up your metabolism. In a way, it makes your body exercise internally while you loaf. Calories flutter away from you in the form of body heat.

These 30-odd calories could just as well be stored in your body as fat if proteins didn't make them go to work. As slave-driver calories, proteins are six to eight times as efficient as fats and carbohydrates. When proteins are eaten along with carbohydrates and fats in the normal mixed diet, their whipping-up action is probably not quite so marked as in experiments limited to pure substances. Nevertheless, the advantage is there for you to make use of, and what may strike you as even more important is that protein foods tend to satisfy the appetite faster. It's the chocolate soda, the candy bar, the banana split, and the like that wreck one's resistance to dietary temptation on the whole, people don't carry frankfurters or store limburger cheese in their desks to nibble at furtively when , unobserved. You would find it rather difficult to get fat by eating all the lean beefsteak you could hold - that is, eliminating gravy or butter from the steak. Your appetite would cry quits before you could store away surplus fat calories. So a practical advantage of high-protein foods in a reducing diet is that you tend to be much less hungry, less tormented by food craving, than you otherwise would. Which makes it easier to stay on the diet.

Naturally you can't eat a diet of pure protein, altbough protein can be considered the indispensable food element since fractions of it can be converted into fat and carbohydrate, but not vice versa. You can see why tbe new slimming diets emphasize protein, because liberal allowances can be expected to cause greater loss of weight than would the same number of fat or carbohydrate calories. When you eat proteins you really hire a Simon Legree to crack the whip on lazy calories, making them buckle down to honest toil instead of picking daisies as they drift to your fat depots.

Nor is the slimming aspect of proteins their sole claim to your respect. They stimulate the general efficiency of your body, replace worn-out tissues, furnish materials for zippy gland hormones, and build vigor and stamina.


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