Getting the Skinny on High Protein Diets

By: Martha McKittrick, RD, CDE

Take a walk through your local bookstore and you will be bombarded with high-protein diets. Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Fried chicken for dinner. Eat all the cheese and steak you want.

Most of these diets allow unlimited quantities of fat and protein, but do not allow carrots or potatoes. In addition to promoting weight loss, such diets claim that they will improve your health by lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, and risk for diabetes. Sound too good to be true? It is!

High-protein diets are the rage now, having made a comeback from their heyday in the 1960s and 70s.

The diet pendulum seems to swing from low-fat, high-carbohydrate to high-protein, low-carbohydrate.

Low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets were popular until many people realized that they were gaining, not losing weight. But the real reason for the weight gain was that, in our obsession with avoiding fat, we overloaded our diets with fat-free foods, often in oversized portions and, although low in fat, they were still full of calories from other sources.

As a result, a backlash against carbohydrates has occurred and the pendulum has swung back to high-protein diets. What are these diets all about? Do they actually promote weight loss? Are they safe? Read More high protein diets are they safe!

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