Research
Energy balance
Excess protein intake, particularly when energy demand is low, can be converted to glucose or ketone bodies, potentially contributing to a positive energy balance and hindering weight loss.
Ensure you are in a caloric deficit. If you are sedentary, extremely high protein intake may be converted to glucose or ketones and stored as fat, negating weight loss efforts.
ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Finally, when energy demand is low, excess protein can be converted to glucose (via gluconeogenesis) or ketone bodies and contribute to a positive energy balance, which is undesirable if weight loss is the goal.
Why this rating
Cited as a general metabolic principle and observation in studies.
Source
A high-protein diet for reducing body fat: mechanisms and possible caveats
Dominik Pesta et al. · Nutrition & Metabolism · 2014
DOI 10.1186/1743-7075-11-53
narrative_reviewCited 263×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- High-protein diets (exceeding 0.8 g/kg BW) promote weight loss and fat mass reduction primarily by increasing satiety through anorexigenic hormones (GLP-1, CCK, PYY) and decreasing orexigenic hormones (ghrelin), while simultaneously increasing energy expenditure via the thermic effect of food (DIT).Good
- High intake of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) combined with a high-fat (western) diet may exacerbate metabolic disease risk by interfering with fatty acid oxidation and causing mitochondrial stress.Moderate
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