#1: Helps you feel fuller for longer

You’ve stuck to your calorie budget for breakfast and lunch … then come 3 pm, and you’re starving.

 And chances are, when you give in to those (often intense) hunger pangs, you’ll gravitate to “comfort foods” — calorie-dense foods that don’t offer much nutritional value — because you “deserve it”.

 The result? You consume extra calories you hadn’t planned for (and are near impossible to “offset” during dinner), sabotaging your weight loss efforts.

 Good news: having protein make up a larger percentage of your calorie intake during your meals could help you avoid those progress-stalling mid-meal cravings by influencing several appetite-controlling hormones:

• Leptin: Known as the “satiety hormone” because it signals to your brain when you’re full and should stop eating. Studies show that protein-rich meals could help increase leptin sensitivity, which means your brain becomes more responsive to leptin signals, making you less likely to overeat. 
• Peptide YY (PYY) and cholecystokinin (CCK): Protein-rich meals increase your body’s secretion of PYY and CCK, hormones that, like leptin, enhance feelings of fullness and satisfaction after eating.
• Ghrelin: Known as the “hunger hormone” because its levels rise when you’re hungry, and it stimulates your appetite. Research shows that ghrelin levels drop more after a high-protein meal than after meals that are higher in carbs or fat. 

#2: Minimises lean body mass loss during a caloric deficit

You don’t just lose fat in a calorie deficit; you lose muscle mass, too. And while that’s unavoidable, you do want to minimize the amount of lean body mass loss because:

• Muscle mass influences insulin sensitivity: Muscle is a primary tissue for glucose storage and insulin action. Maintaining a healthy level of muscle mass helps improve insulin sensitivity, which, in turn, stabilises blood sugar levels and regulates hunger. This explains why an increasing number of studies show that individuals who experience a larger percentage of fat-free mass loss during a diet are more likely to regain weight later.
• It’s responsible for your strength and functionality: If you lose too much lean body mass, you might find sticking to a regular exercise routine (or even performing everyday tasks) more difficult. This lowers your total daily calorie expenditure (i.e., the number of calories your body burns daily), making achieving and maintaining a calorie deficit more challenging.
• It’s more metabolically active than fat mass: Lean body mass burns more calories than fat mass — even when you’re at rest. So, if you lose too much muscle while dieting, your metabolism will slow down, making it harder to maintain weight loss or continue losing weight.

#3: Requires the most energy to digest and absorb

When you eat food, your body has to break it down through digestion to absorb nutrients. This process requires energy and is known as the thermic effect of food (TEF). Several factors influence total TEF, one of it being the food’s macronutrient content:

• Protein: Has the highest thermic effect of all the macronutrients. Approximately 20% to 30% of the calories in protein sources are used by your body to break down and process the macronutrient. This means that if you consume 100 calories from protein, your body might burn 20 to 30 of those calories just digesting and absorbing it.
• Carbohydrates: Have a moderate thermic effect, around 5% to 10% of the calories consumed.
• Fats: Have the lowest thermic effect, typically around 0% to 3%.

Ultimately, since protein has a higher TEF than carbs or fats, eating more protein in your meals (without increasing your total calorie intake) can potentially slightly boost your metabolism, helping you burn more calories “without trying”.

How much protein should you eat for weight loss?

A general guideline is to aim for between 1.2 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Sounds like a huge range? You can narrow it based on your activity levels. If you’re:

• Sedentary or lightly active: Stick to the lower end of the protein range, around 1.2–1.4 g/kg of body weight.

By the way, if you’d like to increase your physical activity levels, here’s a guide on how to start exercising again after a long time (or as a complete newbie).

• Moderately active: Aim for a protein intake of around 1.4–1.8 g/kg of body weight.
• Highly active: You may find the higher end of the protein range, around 1.8–2.2 g/kg (or 0.8–1.0 g/lb), optimal.

That said, increasing your protein intake (even if you know how beneficial it is for weight loss) can be challenging for various reasons, the most common being time considerations (preparing protein-rich meals can be a time-suck) and a lack of variety (having limited or repetitive protein sources can make meals monotonous and boring, making sticking to a higher protein intake challenging).

But what if we told you there’s a simple solution for your protein woes?

The Collagen Co’s Glow Shake packs 29+ grams of protein per serving, helping you hit your daily protein requirements in just a few easy shakes. And for those deeply afraid of repetition, we have good news: Glow Shakes come in 8 different, but equally appetising, flavours (preview: Chocolate Milkshake, Iced Coffee, and Violet Crumble) that you can switch up whenever you need a little more excitement in your life.

Shop here!