Portion control: Why it won't work

Critics have traditionally said that higher-protein diets are unsustainable, that people will automatically rebound to carb craving. But research has not borne this out —in fact, quite the opposite. Numerous studies on higher-protein diets have now found that people who follow them are better able to sustain their weight loss for longer periods of time. They have better body compositions; they lower their cholesterol, triglyceride, blood sugar, and insulin levels; and they increase their metabolisms more than when they began. The longer you follow a diet with 30 per cent protein, the more the post-meal fat-burning effects work for you. Researchers found that someone who regularly eats a 30 per cent protein lunch may burn ten more extra calories per minute than the person who routinely eats less than 20 per cent protein. (This effect lasts for more than three hours after you eat —just in time for your next meal!)

Even concerns about the increased heart attack risk of higher-protein diets have begun to fall apart. One Swedish study found that 66 per cent of the control subjects who ate "normal" diets suffered a stroke or heart attack during the four-year study, versus only 8 percent of test subjects on the higher-protein diet.

I think I like those higher-protein odds a wee bit better.

Protein is good. Check.

We need carbs
All that being said, we humans simply cannot function without carbs. Carbs give us energy; without them, we couldn't think, walk, dance, drive, or do anything. We need them to live. One study found that women who severely restricted their carbs for three days belly-flopped into a vat of carbs by the fourth day, eating 44 percent more calories from carbohydrate foods than they had initially.

Carbs give our food texture and crunch, variety and color. They make us happy, literally, by feeding our neurotransmitters. And people who eat three servings of whole grains a day are 30 per cent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

Carbs are also the vehicles for so many of nature's disease fighters. Phytochemicals come only from plants, people—you can't get vitamin C from a bunless burger. Without carbs, we'd be sitting ducks for cancer, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, chronic inflammation and digestive problems.

Page 2 of 3 -- Do you know how many calories you should be eating? Find out on page 3.

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Excerpted from Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.