Want to lose weight? Try eating more protein and fiber

Participants in a self-directed dietary education program who experienced the most success in weight loss over a 25-month period were those who consumed higher amounts of protein and fiber, according to a recent study. 

Personalization and flexibility were also crucial factors that helped these dieters stick to their plans over time.

Effective weight loss plans

At the one-year mark, 41% of the participants who were considered successful had lost an average of 12.9% of their body weight, while the rest of the study group lost just over 2% of their starting weight, as reported in a paper published in the journal Obesity Science and Practice.

The participants were involved in the Individualized Diet Improvement Program (iDip), which uses data visualization tools and intensive dietary education to enhance dieters’ understanding of key nutrients. 

This knowledge enables them to create personalized, safe, and effective weight-loss plans, explained Manabu T. Nakamura, a professor of nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the study’s lead researcher.

“Flexibility and personalization are key in creating programs that optimize dieters’ success at losing weight and keeping it off,” Nakamura said. 

“Sustainable dietary change, which varies from person to person, must be achieved to maintain a healthy weight. The iDip approach allows participants to experiment with various dietary iterations, and the knowledge and skills they develop while losing weight serve as the foundation for sustainable maintenance.”

Protein, fiber, and weight loss 

The iDip program is built on three main pillars: increasing protein and fiber intake while limiting daily calorie consumption to 1,500 calories or less.

To assist participants, the iDip team developed a unique two-dimensional quantitative data visualization tool based on dietary guidelines from the Institutes of Medicine. This tool plots the protein and fiber densities of foods per calorie and provides target ranges for each meal. 

Starting with foods they were already familiar with, participants tailored their diet plans, aiming to consume about 80 grams of protein and 20 grams of fiber each day.

The researchers tracked participants’ eating habits and weight using Wi-Fi-enabled scales, finding a strong inverse correlation between the percentages of protein and fiber consumed and the amount of weight lost.

“The research strongly suggests that increasing protein and fiber intake while simultaneously reducing calories is required to optimize the safety and efficacy of weight loss diets,” said Mindy H. Lee, the study’s first author and a then-graduate student at the University of Illinois, who also served as a registered dietitian-nutritionist for the iDip program.

Preventing muscle and bone loss

Nakamura emphasized the importance of preserving lean body mass during weight loss, particularly when using weight-loss medications.

“Recently, the popularity of injectable weight loss medications has been increasing,” he said. “However, using these medications when food intake is strongly limited will cause serious side effects of muscle and bone loss unless protein intake is increased during weight loss.”

Mental health and weight loss

The study involved 22 participants – nine men and 13 women – most of whom were between the ages of 30 and 64. These individuals had made two or more previous attempts to lose weight and reported various comorbidities: 54% had high cholesterol, 50% had skeletal issues, and 36% had hypertension and/or sleep apnea. Some participants were also diagnosed with diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cancer, and depression.

One notable finding was that the seven participants who reported a diagnosis of depression lost significantly less weight – about 2.4% of their starting weight – compared to those without depression, who lost 8.39% of their initial weight. 

Weight loss did not differ significantly among participants with other comorbidities or between different age groups, nor did it vary significantly between men and women.

Weight loss through fat reduction

Body composition analysis revealed that participants maintained their lean body mass, losing an average of 7.1 kilograms of fat mass with minimal muscle loss at the six-month mark. Among those who lost more than 5% of their starting weight, 78% of the weight loss was attributed to fat reduction.

Overall, participants reduced their fat mass from an average of 42.6 kilograms at the beginning of the program to 35.7 kilograms at the 15-month mark. They also saw a reduction in waist circumference by about 7 centimeters at six months and by a total of 9 centimeters at 15 months.

Sustainable dietary changes

Tracking dieters’ protein and fiber intake further underscored the strong correlation between these nutrients and weight loss at both three and twelve months.

“The strong correlation suggests that participants who were able to develop sustainable dietary changes within the first three months kept losing weight in the subsequent months, whereas those who had difficulty implementing sustainable dietary patterns early on rarely succeeded in changing their diet in the later months,” Nakamura said.

The researchers hypothesized that this correlation might also be linked to the early weight loss success experienced by some dieters, which could have enhanced their motivation and adherence to their program.

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