High protein diet

Over the past few years, high protein diets have been the biggest weight loss fad. While they vary in the details, most recommend that you get from between 30 to 40 per cent of your calories from protein.

This also means that many carbohydrates, such as sugars, pastas, breads, cereals and potatoes, are either limited or excluded altogether.

There are good reasons why a high protein diet can be effective. The biggest advantage of a high protein diet is that by eliminating or severely restricting your intake of carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates, enables you to better control your blood sugar and insulin levels

Refined carbohydrates give you a rapid increase in blood sugar, which results in raised insulin levels. Insulin is a hormone that takes sugar from your blood, either giving it to your cells to use as energy, or storing it as fat. The more insulin is released, the sooner your blood sugar dips, the faster you feel hungry again.

On the other hand, the high protein diet appears to stimulate protein synthesis in muscle. This reduces muscle loss while slimming, and eating less carbohydrates reduces insulin output, which allows the body to burn fat.

Most of the bad press for this type of eating plan comes from those programmes that encourage eating any type of protein - the problem is that this can also dramatically increase your fat consumption, which is not recommended.

The solution is to focus on proteins that are lower in fat, particularly saturated fat, such as fish, poultry, and the various beans that contain protein. In addition, carbohydrate consumption should be focused on quality sources such as fruit vegetables and whole grains, rather than refined 'white' sources such as sugar, white bread, pasta and potatoes.