"High Protein Diets Suck!"

Most high protein diets suggest that lean animal protein is “our most powerful ally when attempting weight loss” since it has twice the thermic effect of either fats or carbs. Thermic effect means that protein ingestion heats your body and helps you burn more calories than if you ate fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds. It does this because animal protein is so much harder for your body to digest! Protein makes you feel full longer because it sits in your gut trying desperately to breakdown. Well yeah, sure your body burns more calories to break it down, but at the expense of your kidneys, liver and digestive health. Fiber (bulk) also makes you feel full longer on fewer calories, but it actually enhances healthy digestion. When your body tries to break down animal protein in the gut, it generates ammonia which is extremely toxic, especially to the liver and kidneys. To protect itself from this toxic substance, your liver converts it to urea, which is less toxic than ammonia, but it’s still a waste product and needs to be eliminated. Your kidneys remove urea from the bloodstream and eliminate it as urine. Once again, this creates more stress on the liver and kidneys. It requires a large amount of water loss in the urine to dilute and flush these compounds from our body.
These high animal protein diets don’t tell you to “drink like a fish ”, but they should with all this excess protein they’re prescribing. But hey, you lose lots of weight on those diets, right? Yeah at first, by becoming dehydrated, making your next high protein meal even harder on your system. Because excess animal protein consumption produces an acid load on the kidneys, another problem is created. The body has to neutralize the acid. It does this by stealing vital alkaline minerals, like calcium, potassium and magnesium from the bloodstream, muscles and bones. No wonder we need so much extra calcium these days. Raw plant foods are alkaline-based, not acidic. They not only prevent excess calcium loss; they also supply calcium to build strong bones while providing a good source of clean burning protein. Clean burning simply means, that raw plant foods release only carbon dioxide and water as byproducts when they are converted to sugar, which causes very little digestive stress. As you can see, eliminating carbs from your diet and replacing them with excess protein is not only absurd it’s dangerous. If you want to burn more total calories, while keeping your liver, kidneys and digestive system healthy and strong, just keep reading my blog, I’m here to help!
Copyright 2011 by Kathy Feldman. All rights reserved.