If you do any form of exercise or workouts, one of the most common words you’ve heard of is ‘Protein’.

However, there are so many information floating around that actually makes us a bit concerned about what we are putting on our bodies.

 

Without a doubt, protein are very important for our body, not just for building extra muscles and getting bigger and stronger but to maintain our general health and repairing tissues in our body. A well balanced diet has carbohydrates, fats and proper amount of protein. The problem is most of our diet don’t have proper amount of protein hence we are told that we need to eat more protein in our diet. Traditionally speaking, our diet consists of high amounts of carbs and fats only.

 

Let’s talk science and data. Science however, doesn’t support that high protein diet is bad for your health, moreover it actually points out that people who have a higher protein consumption are leaner and have better health conditions. This means better body composition as well as improvements in better blood pressure and blood lipids.

Now let’s talk about higher consumption of protein. Usually for a healthy adult, the recommended dosage is somewhere around 1.2-1.4 gm/ kg of bodyweight of protein. However, for people who exercise, it’s a bit higher. Somewhere around 1.6-2.2 gm/kg of bodyweight is recommended. This is considered to be a high protein dosage.

 

However research has been done on resistance trained men with a very high consumption of protein, over 3 gms per kg of bodyweight and yet in the long term, there were no negative effects of the high protein diet.

Another concern is people with already existing kidney issues. This can be concerning however again, research shows that there were no negative impacts of high protein diet on such individuals. However, it would be wiser to get advice from your doctor regarding specific conditions.

To sum it all up, high protein diet is not only safe but is actually beneficial for your health, esp if you want to maintain a low bodyfat and a stronger body.

References:

High protein diet on lipid profile : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5036282/

High protein for fat loss : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26817506/

Very high protein diet on health : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5078648/

High protein diet and Kidney/ renal function : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1262767/