Whey Protien and Weightloss?

You should eat a minimum of half of your body weight in grams of protein. I drink 1-2 protein shakes a day. 1 first thing in the morning just to get my body working and one after a work out or right before bed if I'm hungry. you will not get big and buff like a body builder. You aren't genetically able with out the extra help of testosterone. So don't feel that extra protein will make you gigantic. Protein helps rebuild muscle. Muscle is lean, smooth and dense. The more you have the leaner you look and the more tone you will be. Plus, the more muscle you have the more fat you burn. You should keep track of body fat percentage (find a trainer at your local gym to measure your body fat).

The brands of protein powder I prefer are Muscle Milk (130 calories and 25 grams of protein per scoop) or EAS Myoplex (180 calories, 20 grams of protein and 1 g of sugar). There are many other options out there. Just drink what tastes best to you. You can go to a local health food store and buy sample packets of most. I prefer the powder since you can use it to add to pancake/waffle batter, muffin mix, etc. You can use it to make smoothies with fruit or add peanut butter/almond butter to it to make it more of a meal. I also prefer to mix mine with 1/2 c of nf milk and 1/2 c of water to make them a little thicker. The Ready to drink shakes are great for grab and go when you are in a hurry or to take with you to work for a snack.

Hey, well going over your calories is probably a good thing... do you track your exercise on MFP? Because you should be eatting your exercise calories, since it will give you extra anyway, it's okay if you are going over without tracking your exercise.

I am having trouble losing ever since I started exercising again. But I can tell you from experience I have tried whey protein, but not incorporated with MFP. I did a whey/soy protein type diet because I felt that I lost more weight the more protein I had. It is a generic of some more expensive diet plan, but it follows the same guidelines of 20g of soy protein a day & 20g of whey protein a day. Researching all of the benefits of soy & whey for women is what had me doing it to begin with. I would have 2 shakes a day (1 for breakfast & 1 for lunch) each would include enough soymilk to add up to 10g of soy protein and then about a half scoop of whey protein powder (10g). And add some frozen or fresh fruit to the shakes.

Of course my dinners would consist of fish and vegetables. I'd have fruit or nuts or 100 calorie pack snacks (2 a day). When I was doing that I was also going to the gym doing strength training and the elliptical and I was losing a lot of inches! Then I started losing about 2 lbs a week too.

I havent done that in awhile and I can't say if it was the whey or the soy/whey combination that helped, but I loved the shakes! And the fact that they were chocolate, vanilla, banana, chocolate peanut butter, etc helped me with not having sweet cravings. I think women can definitely lose weight with whey protein, as long as you don't use as much as a man would use and aren't doing really heavy strength training all the time.

it's probably not a bad idea to take some kind of protein. a lot of women have trouble getting an adequte amount of protein into their daily diet. my girl friend for example just isnt that crazy about meat and when she does eat it, she basically picks it apart. the slightest hint of fat and its "too fatty" and lord help if it's still on the bone. She also thinks lunch meat is disgusting. granted there are plenty of ways to supplement protein but in terms of ease, shakes arent a bad option at all. it'll help you to build lean muscle and lean muscle increases your metabolism.

someone mentioned you want to be careful because you don't want to get bulky. women lack the testosterone to really build huge muscle. unless your lifting like a professional body builder and drinking 4 shakes a day you should be ok. there will be some weight gain obviously from muscle gain, but it should balance out over time.