Why a High-Protein Diet May Make You Fatter

In this series of interviews I've conducted with extraordinary nutritional researchers and medical doctors, I've sought to understand the link between diet and health. The common refrain is resoundingly clear in that a plant-based diet is both preventive and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health. And now it's become abundantly evident that a high protein diet is not only making us sick, but it also makes us fat.

There is no one who has more peer reviewed research on the subject of weight loss and overall health than Dean Ornish, M.D. He has sparked a revolution in cardiology with his studies which show that heart disease can be reversed through comprehensive lifestyle changes. His current research is showing that those very changes also affect gene expression -- that you can turn on or turn off genes that affect cancer, heart disease and longevity. He is the founder and President of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Here's what he says about losing weight the healthy way, and keeping it off.

Kathy Freston: It's widely believed that people lose weight fastest on a high protein diet. True?

Dean Ornish: Initially, they may lose more weight because they are losing water weight. But by the end the year, the weight usually returns. In general, slower weight loss by eating more healthfully is more sustainable. Slow but steady wins the race.

KF: Why do some people have such a hard time losing weight and keeping it off?

DO: It's not enough to focus only on what we eat and other behaviors; we need to work at a deeper level. The real epidemic in our country is not only obesity but also depression, isolation, and loneliness. As one patient told me, "When I feel lonely and depressed, I eat a lot of fat. It fills the void. Fat coats my nerves and numbs the pain." People often overeat when they're feeling stressed, lonely, and depressed --"comfort foods."

Everyone knows that diet and exercise play a role in how much we weigh, but many are surprised to learn what a powerful role emotional stress has in causing us to gain weight and how stress management techniques can help us to lose it and keep it off.

Chronic emotional stress causes us to gain weight in several important ways:

• Many people overeat to cope with feeling stressed, and they often tend to eat foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar as well.

• Chronic emotional stress stimulates your brain to release hormones that cause you to gain weight, especially around your belly where it's most harmful and least attractive. Chronic stress also causes stimulation of hormones such as cytokines that promote inflammation. Also, obesity itself causes a low-grade inflammation which, in turn, tends to promote more obesity in a vicious cycle.

• Since chronic emotional stress promotes weight gain, stress management techniques may play a powerful role in helping you to lose weight and keep it off. The psychosocial, emotional and spiritual issues are as important to address if you want to lose weight and keep it off as the nutrition and exercise ones.

Most Americans eat too many refined carbohydrates. When they go on a typical high-protein diet, they reduce their intake of all carbohydrates, which for most Americans means they primarily reduce their intake of simple carbohydrates. This helps them to lose weight.

Whenever I debated Dr. Atkins before he died, he was usually described as the "low carb" doctor and I was the "low fat" doctor. But that was never accurate. I have always advocated that an optimal diet is lower in total fat, very low in "bad fats" (saturated fat, hydrogenated fats, and trans fatty acids), high in "good carbs" (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and soy products), low in "bad carbs" (sugar, white flour, processed foods) and with enough of the "good fats" (omega 3 fatty acids) and high-quality proteins.