Too much protein?

I reset my levels, as now I've all but hit my final weight loss target, I'm now trying to add more muscle. That said, you should be careful not to go over by too much over a long period of time as your liver will start to protest. In the short term, to prevent that in my case, I drink much more than my 8 drinks a day to compensate. HTH

NO! This is good --- I wish MFP would change their dang default settings. This question gets asked several times a day.

I changed my settings to 45% protein, 25% carb, 30% fat --- because I prefer a high protein/lower carb diet.
Protein is good for you and keeps you feeling full longer. I usually get 100-150g protein a day and 75-95g carb.

If you leave your settings on the MFP default I would AIM to at least double whatever it says.

I don't follow MFP's percentages at all. My personal goal is to get min of 100 g of protein a day, and usually get closer to 150 g of protein a day. I try to hit about 200 g of carbs a day and keep my fat low at 30 or under and my fiber at over 25. I do this w/o my issue by the foods I eat on a regular basis.

Hope that helps!

· Weight loss follows 2 basic laws of nature

Law #1
· Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another
· You don’t gain weight spontaneously. You gain weight when you consume excess energy, or calories that your body
doesn’t burn.

· This excess energy, in most cases transformed to fat in the average adult.
· You don’t lose weight from eating special foods or following magic diets. You lose weight when you consume fewer
calories that your body needs to maintain your weight.

· This forces your body to use stored energy from either body fat, stored carbohydrate (glycogen), or muscle (protein).

Law #2
· When the calores you consume equal the calories your burn, your weight remains stable.
· To lose weight you need to consume less than you burn, in other words you need to create a calorie deficit
· The bottom line is not what you eat, but how much you eat vs. burn


Too Much Protein

Considering sacrificing the carbohydrates for a protein-dominant diet. Drastically cutting carbohydrates from your diet may force your body to fight back.

Because a diet in which protein makes up more than 30% of your caloric intake causes a buildup of toxic ketones. So-called ketogenic diets can thrust your kidneys into overdrive in order to flush these ketones from your body. As your kidneys rid your body of these toxic ketones, you can lose a significant amount of water, which puts you at risk of dehydration, particularly if you exercise heavily.

That water loss often shows up on the scale as weight loss. But along with losing water, you lose muscle mass and bone calcium(Law #1). The dehydration also strains your kidneys and puts stress on your heart.

And dehydration from a ketogenic diet can make you feel weak and dizzy, give you bad breath, or lead to other problems.

How Much Protein Do I Need?

The amount of protein you require depends on your weight and your daily caloric intake. Most Americans consume more than enough protein in their daily diets. A protein deficiency is defined as eating (answer to question) 50% to 75% of the recommended amount of daily protein. That is is what is takes to be too much.

In a diet of 1,800 calories a day, for example, about 270 of those calories should come from protein.

It's Essential

Although limiting protein intake is important, you should also realize that protein is essential to our bodies' normal functions. It assists in synthesizing enzymes and hormones, maintaining fluid balance, and regulating such vital functions as building antibodies against infection, blood clotting, and scar formation.

Protein is also a building block for our muscles, bones, cartilage, skin, hair, and blood. Protein-rich foods include meat, cheese, milk, fish, and eggs. For vegetarians, protein can be found in soy products such as tofu as well as in combinations of foods, such as rice or corn with beans.

In order to makes sense of the zillions of different kinds of diet that are out there, its common to just say that all of them (the ones that work !) are based on reducing net caloric intake and choosing where you get your calories from. So instead of telling MFP that you are on the "Revolutionary New X Diet", you just tell it what percentage of your calories you want to consume as 1) carbs, 2) fats, and 3) protein. Frankly, I only care about total calories, so I turned all the other reporting off.

Anyway, if MFP says you went over on your protein, it just means that you consumed more calories worth of protein than that initial setting. So unless you are following a specific diet plan where that matters to you, you can just ignore the warning.

If you eat any reasonable balance of carbs, fat, and protein and meet your calorie targets you can stay healthy and lose weight. Different people have different opinions of what's reasonable, though !

· Weight loss follows 2 basic laws of nature

Law #1
· Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another
· You don’t gain weight spontaneously. You gain weight when you consume excess energy, or calories that your body
doesn’t burn.

· This excess energy, in most cases transformed to fat in the average adult.
· You don’t lose weight from eating special foods or following magic diets. You lose weight when you consume fewer
calories that your body needs to maintain your weight.

· This forces your body to use stored energy from either body fat, stored carbohydrate (glycogen), or muscle (protein).

Law #2
· When the calores you consume equal the calories your burn, your weight remains stable.
· To lose weight you need to consume less than you burn, in other words you need to create a calorie deficit
· The bottom line is not what you eat, but how much you eat vs. burn


Too Much Protein

Considering sacrificing the carbohydrates for a protein-dominant diet. Drastically cutting carbohydrates from your diet may force your body to fight back.

Because a diet in which protein makes up more than 30% of your caloric intake causes a buildup of toxic ketones. So-called ketogenic diets can thrust your kidneys into overdrive in order to flush these ketones from your body. As your kidneys rid your body of these toxic ketones, you can lose a significant amount of water, which puts you at risk of dehydration, particularly if you exercise heavily.

That water loss often shows up on the scale as weight loss. But along with losing water, you lose muscle mass and bone calcium(Law #1). The dehydration also strains your kidneys and puts stress on your heart.

And dehydration from a ketogenic diet can make you feel weak and dizzy, give you bad breath, or lead to other problems.

How Much Protein Do I Need?

The amount of protein you require depends on your weight and your daily caloric intake. Most Americans consume more than enough protein in their daily diets. A protein deficiency is defined as eating (answer to question) 50% to 75% of the recommended amount of daily protein. That is is what is takes to be too much.

In a diet of 1,800 calories a day, for example, about 270 of those calories should come from protein.

It's Essential

Although limiting protein intake is important, you should also realize that protein is essential to our bodies' normal functions. It assists in synthesizing enzymes and hormones, maintaining fluid balance, and regulating such vital functions as building antibodies against infection, blood clotting, and scar formation.

Protein is also a building block for our muscles, bones, cartilage, skin, hair, and blood. Protein-rich foods include meat, cheese, milk, fish, and eggs. For vegetarians, protein can be found in soy products such as tofu as well as in combinations of foods, such as rice or corn with beans.

Ketones are not toxic, and actually have nothing to do with protein. Ketones are created when fat is burned and are energy sources. The kidney does not flush ketones out of your body, it actually metabolizes the as part of the fat burning process. Protein can cause dehydration, but that's why you drink more water when you eat higher protein, just like you drink more water if you consume a lot of sodium.