Many diets encourage restricting carbohydrates and upping the protein intake. While these plans might encourage some healthy eating habits, such as reducing intake of sugar and other refined carbohydrates, they are not without downsides. Focusing your diet on proteins, especially ones high in fat and cholesterol, can pose various health risks.
Basis of Protein Diets
Your body uses carbohydrates to produce glucose, your body's main fuel. To help move carbohydrates into the cells, your pancreas produces a hormone called insulin. Excess amounts of insulin can lead your body to use glucose less efficiently and store more as fat. By reducing carbohydrate intake, particularly quick-burning carbohydrates such as sugar and white-flour foods as well as starchy foods high in carbohydrates, you produce less glucose and insulin. This reduced production can also cause your body to burn fat as energy in the absence of glucose.
Water and Muscle Loss
The dramatic weight loss that comes from high-protein diets, particularly in the early stages, usually results from water loss and muscle loss. Your muscles use glucose in the form of glycogen for energy and when deprived of this source, begin to breakdown. Protein-rich foods produce uric acid and urea when they break down --- your kidneys and urinary tract use water from the body to help flush them out. The more protein you eat, the more water your body uses for this purpose.
Calorie Restriction
Eating lots of protein-rich foods usually increases fat intake. Fatty foods make you feel fuller, leading you to eat fewer calories, explains certified personal trainer and author Monique N. Gilbert, writing for the Feminist Women's Health Center. She notes that many high-protein diets lead you to consume over 50 percent of daily calories from fat. Any diet that restricts calories, regardless of what you eat, usually leads to weight loss. The wide range of foods this diet limits also contributes to reduced caloric intake.
High-Protein Diet Misconceptions
The Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group of physicians who advocate preventive medicine and provide health information to the public, explain many misconceptions exist about high-protein diets. While they claim dramatic weight loss, the PCRM points out that many studies show they do not work any better than other types of diets. It also points out that high-protein foods affect insulin levels as well and points out studies that have shown protein-rich foods, such as meat and fish, raised insulin levels more than carbohydrates. The claims that those who eat more carbohydrates tend to be heavier does not hold up to population studies that show otherwise.
Dangers
Katherine Zaretsky, R.D., writing for the Mayoclinic website asserts that high-protein diets can cause liver and kidney problems, as well as increase your risk for heart disease when followed long-term. The PRCRM reports that studies on low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets have found they produced side effects including constipation, headache, diarrhea, fatigue and bad breath. The PCRM points out diets rich in meat can increase the risk of colon cancer, as well as increase the loss of calcium in the urine, affecting bone health. Severely limiting carbohydrates can also lead to nutritional deficiencies.
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