Eli5: why do people say to get at least 1g of protein for desired body weight when it comes to losing weight?
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It’s not a hard rule, but it’s kind of a bodybuilding folklore rule of thumb that 1g per lb of bodyweight is enough to increase muscle mass when doing high-intensity strength training. If you don’t eat enough protein to at least maintain your existing muscles, your body will break them down for energy when you are running a caloric deficit. If you lose muscle mass, you not only get weaker and look worse, but your resting metabolic rate goes down which makes it harder to continue losing fat.
It’s likely that you can achieve most weight loss goals without significant muscle mass reduction while eating less protein, but 1g/lb is not going to hurt you, and it’s almost certainly enough. It’s also easy to figure out so it sticks around as a rule.
The reason you need sufficient protein intake is that when your body goes into caloric deficit, it will start breaking down muscle tissue for energy. You want to minimize that as much as possible, so providing protein in your diet will both allow your body to keep/rebuild muscle tissue, and also provide a more ready energy source that isn’t as high-calorie or fat-storage-inducing as carbohydrates are.
To put it another way, if you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. Let’s say you burn 2,000 calories a day between your resting metabolic rate (the amount you burn just to survive) and any exercise you do. If you eat 1,500 calories of sugar each day, you’ll still lose weight, but you’ll feel hungry most of the time, you’ll lose muscle mass, and you might develop diabetes. You’ll probably end up skinny-fat, and if your diet changes back, you’ll put the weight back on as fat right away because you basically trained your body to deal with huge spikes of energy by storing it immediately, then breaking down muscle tissue for the essential proteins it needs. If, on the other hand, you ate 1,500 calories of protein (not really possible, but for the sake of the example let’s pretend it is), you’d lose about the same amount of weight, but develop all sorts of different problems like kidney damage, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues.
So, a much better plan is to eat normal foods (meaning, healthy grains, proteins, fruits and vegetables) but to reduce the total calories (so that you burn fat) but still make sure that you are getting enough protein to meet your body’s needs and not trigger muscle breakdown.
All that said, the “real” number you need is probably more like 0.4-0.5g per lb of bodyweight, unless you are also actively trying to build muscle as you lose fat. If you are trying to lose fat and are finding it hard to eat that much high-quality protein, you can likely reduce it quite a bit before it will cause real problems.
And all of _that_ said, for most people, if they just cut out most sources of sugar and eat reasonably balanced meals, they’ll lose weight pretty quickly. This is particularly true for calories you drink, like those found in soda, fruit juices, alcoholic beverages, and fancy coffee drinks.
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