How Much Protein Do I Need?

How Much Protein Do I Need?

The current rage beginning within the low-carb community is blood ketone meters that measure the amount of ketones in your blood, rather than your urine. The sticks are somewhat expensive, but for those who have purchased and used them, they have received a very eye-opening revelation about their low-carb diet plan.

What people are discovering is not new. Both Stargazey and I have been saying this ever since we investigated and tried a no-carb diet several years ago. Stargazey has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and her blog is LowCarb4U if you’re interested. The series starts with a post on protein intake and blood glucose levels and runs for about half a dozen more posts, or so. Make sure you read all of the comments for each post as well.

Today, there are low-carb experts who say the same thing, so low carbers are beginning to sit up and take notice – especially since Ketone Blood Meters are making the problem more real. Regardless of what you want to believe, you most certainly can be eating more protein than your metabolism can handle adequately. According to Dr. Atkins, “A total of 58 percent of dietary protein is converted by the body into sugar.” When you’re young, this doesn’t seem to be as large a problem as it is for those over 50, but that depends on your degree of Insulin Resistance and how many healthy Beta Cells you have.

Is a Low-Carb Diet a High-Protein Diet?

Nutritional ketosis is a new term that describes the situation that occurs when you enter the state of ketosis due to carbohydrate restriction. Dr. Atkins used to call it dietary ketosis. It is defined as a blood ketone level of .5 to 3.0 mg/dl. You may, or may not, have ketones in your urine. Those ketones are irrelevant. What’s important is that your body makes the switch from predominantly burning glucose for fuel to burning fatty acids and ketones.

But...many low-carb dieters have never made the switch.

On a typical, low-calorie diet, protein intake is kept low. That results in as much as 50 percent of your weight loss actually coming from muscle tissue rather than body fat. So eating adequate amounts of protein is essential, but how much is that? Is a low-carb diet supposed to be a high-protein diet?

Protein supplies your body with the amino acids it needs to create hormones and repair or build muscle, organs and other body tissues. To do that, you need to eat about .6 grams of protein for every pound of lean body mass you have. That’s just for repair and basic body functions. It doesn’t take into account any extra for gluconeogenesis or the extra you need if you have an active lifestyle or lift weights.

For those with about 100 pounds of lean body mass, you need a minimum of 60 grams of protein per day. If you have 120 pounds of lean body mass, that comes to 72 grams. If you have a sedentary lifestyle by choice or due to health restrictions, you need a little less.

Either way, that doesn’t make a high-protein diet. That’s quite low when you consider that an ounce of meat or an egg contains about 6 to 7 grams of protein. Lean meats have higher protein counts than fatty meats. Depending on your meat, cheese and egg choices, that comes to about 10 to 12 eggs or ounces of meat and cheese per day. That’s far less than most people realize, especially when you take into account that you can easily consume 12 to 16 ounces in a single steak! And quite a few Atkins followers go out of their way to consume the 4 ounces of cheese they're allowed per day.

Is Nutritional Ketosis Necessary For Weight Loss?

So how necessary is Nutritional Ketosis? If most low-carb dieters are not in ketosis but are losing weight just fine, does it matter? The answer to that would depend on what your blood glucose levels are doing. When I first decided to start monitoring my blood glucose levels, I was shocked to discover they were so high. I was on a strict low-carb diet, never cheated, yet my numbers were above the margin for safety.

Some of the reason for that turned out to be gluten, dairy and corn intolerance, but those food sensitivities didn’t answer what happened when I moved to a completely no-carb diet in the summer of 2009. I was eating only beef and drinking only water, yet my blood glucose levels rose sharply after only a few days and continued to rise into diabetic levels. In addition, since that experience, doing a simple Atkins Induction also caused my blood glucose to go out of whack!

Interestingly enough, my 12-week hHCG diet round or all of those weeks I spent doing my interpretation of the Kimkins Diet didn’t. So what made the difference?

The only difference I can see is the amount of protein I was eating. On hHCG and Kimkins, my protein was carefully monitored to stay within 60 to 72 grams per day. On Atkins and other versions of low carb, I didn’t monitor anything. I just ate when I was hungry. That’s how many low-carb dieters do it: eat to appetite, because that’s what we’ve been taught to do. Yet, that’s how the body gets the glucose it needs to keep burning glucose for fuel, rather than fatty acids and ketones. We are so used to grabbing a protein snack. We are used to filling our plates with cheese, eggs and meats, so we can shun the carbs.

For those who still have a decent insulin response to protein and are running on a calorie deficit, nutritional ketosis might not make any difference. As long as insulin levels quickly return to normal, it doesn’t matter how high they initially spike. It only matters how many hours of the day they remain normal or low. For those who have stalled in their weight loss effects, or the weight is coming off much slower than anticipated, the problem can very well be a lack of ketosis. That’s because getting into ketosis requires you to keep your protein, carbohydrates and dietary fats in balance.

The Eye-Opener for Me

I hate monitoring my food intake. I simply hate it! That’s why my maintenance break has started to get away from me lately. I have tried to return to lower carbs several times, but have only succeeded in making it through a day or two before my body goes into a crazy, unrealistic hunger fit. Whether I’m doing Induction, the Old Weight Watcher’s Exchange Program, or simply counting calories and making lower carbohydrate choices, the result is the same.

At first, I thought my body was fighting further attempts at weight loss. I thought it was tired and didn’t want to give up any more of my body fat stores. In fact, every time I’m exposed to one of my food sensitivities, I put on a couple of pounds. However, reading about the experiences of several low-carb dieters who have purchased one of these new ketone blood meters and measured their state of ketosis, I’ve realized that whether I’m falling face down into a pile of my husband’s chocolate chip cookies or cooking up an extra chicken breast – the result is the same: I’m feeding my hunger glucose!

That was a severe eye-opener for me. We think we are doing the right thing by turning to meats and other no-carb choices, but maybe we’re hurting ourselves more than we realize. Instead of grabbing those left-over baked chicken legs for a snack because they're easy and convenient, maybe we should be reaching for the left-over salad instead.

Photo By: Catherine Ford