Protein is a key component to any weight loss plan because it's satiating and keeps you full, and it feeds your muscles. In this video, weight loss specialist Caroline Apovian, MD, discusses why eating protein is crucial for healthy weight loss.
Protein is a key component, and should be a key component, of any nutritious and healthy weight loss plan. Why is that? Protein first of all is [xx]. You eat up protein, you feel full because it is metabolized relatively slowly the other thing that protein does is it feed your muscle.
As you get older, after age 30, you lose 1% of your muscle every single year. In order to stop that process you have to do something active to keep that muscle from being lost, so you have to take in you protein and you also have to do some resistance exercise training. The process of losing muscle as you get older is called sarcopenia, I like to call it shrinking muscle syndrome.
You get the picture. You're going to lose your muscle if you don't use it and if you don't feed it, and the way you feed your muscle is from protein.
Caroline Apovian, MD is the director of the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center and director of Clinical Research at the Obesity Research Center at the Boston University Medical Campus.
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