How Important Are High Protein Food Snacks When Losing Weight
Speaking from personal experience, losing weight is much more complicated than exercising daily and doing your best to stick to a strict diet. Eating food is an addiction and having a sweet tooth makes things harder than they have to be. Moreover, the lifestyles many of us are forced to live – fast paced and stressful, makes meal preparation an issue, so we’re kinda forced to buy and consume food on-the-go.
Snacking is also an addiction, sometimes you just crave for a Snickers bar or a bag of chips or Coke. However, these tend to be very high in sugar and salt and won’t help your weight losing process at all. In fact, they’ll do the complete opposite, they’ll make it exponentially harder and longer. A lot of researches suggest that choosing high protein foods snacks is the best solution, as it provides several health benefits. Snacking on protein foods in the afternoon makes you feel more satiated as compared to snacking on common high-fat snacks. Here’s why protein foods snacks are an important factor in your diet.
Reduce Your Appetite
As aforementioned, high protein snacks help control your appetite. One of the main reasons behind this claim is the fact that protein reduces the level of the hunger hormone your body produces, known as Ghrelin. Moreover, it helps you feel fuller by boosting the satiety hormone Peptide-YY. So next time you crave for a snack, ensure it includes protein so you consume fewer calories.
Gain Muscle and Strength
It’s universally known that protein is the building block of muscles. Therefore, it’s quite obvious that if you want to build some lean muscle mass, you need to increase your protein intake. In case you want to challenge this fact, here’s a scientific study that proves that eating protein can increase muscle strength and mass.
Burn Calories
Consuming high protein snacks can help increase the amount of calories that you burn every day. People who eat high protein food burn about 250 more calories than those who eat low protein food. This means that munching on high protein snacks can be as effective as half an hour of moderate intensity cardio each day.
Low Blood Pressure
Today’s society is commonly afflicted with chronic kidney diseases, heart attacks and strokes, all of which are caused by high blood pressure. Thankfully, a high protein intake can lead to lower blood pressure. Moreover, consuming protein rich foods reduces bad cholesterol LDL. So next time you crave a snack, keep in mind the importance of your weight goal and the role protein plays in achieving it.