JJ Virgin4x NYTimes Best Selling Author, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer

The Surprising Truth About PROTEIN Nobody Tells You

18 Dec 2024 · 1 min

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In this segment, JJ Virgin explains her recommendation to prioritize protein at the start of a meal and to reallocate calories from carbohydrates and fat to protein. She highlights the thermic effect of food, noting that only about 0.3% of fat calories are used for digestion, 5‑10% for carbohydrates, and 20‑30% for protein. Because protein requires more energy for digestion and for converting amino acids into muscle, shifting even a modest amount of calories from carbs or fat to protein can raise a person’s metabolic rate. The core message is that a simple dietary tweak—eating protein first and increasing its caloric share—can produce a measurable metabolic boost.

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This is why I tell people to eat protein first. One of the fastest ways to change things is to change what's at the end of your fork. When we think about eating, we think about eating 3 different things, right? You're going to eat your protein, you're going to eat carbohydrates, you're going to eat fat. Turns out that if you take some calories from carbs or fat and move them over to protein, that alone is going to give you a better metabolic effect. It takes basically no calories for fat to be digested and metabolized. Like 0.3% of the calories from fat are used in the digestion of it. For carbohydrates, it's somewhere are in the 5 to 10% range. Protein is the winner here. It takes somewhere between 20 and 30% of the calories from protein are used in the digestion and assimilation of protein, probably because your body has to take those amino acids from the protein to build muscle. So if all you did was take some of the calories from carbohydrates and fat and shift them over to protein, you are going to have a boost in your metabolic rate.