The Protein Cheat Code

A New Boring Diet Tactic

Given it’s January, it’s about time for another health / lifestyle optimization post. While self-experimentation in biochemistry is one of my hobbies, I’ve learned to limit how often I share updated practices given the all-too-human tendency towards short-lived placebo effects.

This one, however, is possibly the most impactful update I’ve shared in some time. In summary: protein, unique among macronutrients, both suppresses appetite and rarely, and perhaps never, can contribute to increased body fat, regardless of caloric intake. Further, there are now convenient engineered foods with sufficiently high protein content to make weight loss or weight maintenance relatively easy without eating (and lengthy preparation) of chicken breasts for every snack or meal.

Some here know I wrote a diet book a few years back called The Boring Diet under a pen name. The basis of that book was a metabolic ward study cited by Stephen Guyenet — IMO the most scientifically-competent popular nutrition writer — in The Hungry Brain which produced a novel effect: when essentially imprisoned with no other food and fed an all-you-can-eat, bland, nutritionally complete slurry, the body and brain of all subjects behaved rationally. Lean subjects spontaneously ate enough to maintain weight, whereas obese subjects spontaneously reduced their intake to a few hundred calories a day. I’m not aware of another study demonstrating an intervention where ad libitum feeding resulted in obese subjects spontaneously eating fewer calories than lean subjects.

This study illustrated Guyenet’s central thesis that obesity is a dysfunction more like drug addiction, driven by the brain, not gross macronutrient ratios. Take away the addictive aspects of food — flavor, texture, and variety, while keeping the nutrition — and obese subjects lose the motivation to overeat, and in fact reduce food intake below maintenance levels. Bland, boring food lowers the body’s weight set point.

In our obesogenic society, lean people eat primarily for nutrition, whereas obese people have genetics or life experiences¹ that predispose them to eat for hedonic pleasure. This is not to condemn the obese, as in the ancestral past the ability to overeat when food was plentiful provided a survival benefit, i.e. the ability to store fat when food was less plentiful. Combine this with the most advanced food science in history, where Ph.D.s compete to engineer the most addicting flavor and macronutrient combinations, and it seems like a miracle that anyone manages a healthy weight².

The problem is not with the genetics of the obese so much as a historically novel mismatch between our optimal design for most of our history and our miraculous “solving” of adequate nutrition through modern technology; the famine for which our genetics are optimized never comes. Every person alive today is disproportionately descended from those who could overeat in preparation for famine, as those who didn’t were more likely to starve and thus fail to pass on their more food-indifferent genetics.

Protein Overfeeding Studies

One reason to doubt all nutritional studies outside of 24/7 metabolic wards is the documented propensity of people to underreport how much they eat. Take for example the popular claim that “metabolism” is to blame for over-fatness. When food intake is precisely measured and controlled, study after study has demonstrated that there are no significant differences in metabolism per pound of body weight between the young and old, pre or post-menopause, or the obese and lean.

All humans have about the same caloric requirements per pound of body weight³. Given the laws of thermodynamics and the narrow range of human body temperature, this makes sense⁴. People who weigh more really do eat more, but report less⁵, and this is why reliable experiments must be conducted in a controlled environment instead of relying on self-reporting.

The problem is such studies are rare because they are exceptionally expensive to conduct, especially with enough subjects to power conclusions. However, they can often point to useful hypotheses for self-experimentation. Sometime in mid-2024 I was playing around with ChatGPT and asked it to describe the biochemical pathways through which different macronutrients are stored as body fat.

While carbohydrates and fats had rather straightforward pathways, it struggled to describe exactly how it worked with protein and eventually seemed to admit, when challenged, that maybe there wasn’t a pathway used at scale. The body can turn protein into glucose but seems to do so only when it must, in which case the glucose is burned for immediate needs. It seemed like the body recognized the amino acids in protein as uniquely valuable nutrition that it would only degrade to glucose through a convoluted and thermodynamically costly pathway when it absolutely had to. It might be more efficient, from the body’s point of view, to simply store excess protein as muscle tissue for future use when protein was scarce.

Thus, it seemed like the body had not one but two storage warehouses for famines: fat tissue for energy and muscle tissue for amino acids⁶. And given the age-driven problem of sarcopenia — the natural, absent resistance training, decline in muscle as we get older and possibly the true #1 cause of frailty and premature death — and the body’s decreasing ability to process protein as it ages (also key to resisting infections), it didn’t seem like a bad thing to store muscle rather than fat. That it looks better than fat helps too, and it looks better, as things tend to, because it’s healthier⁷.

This led me down another rabbit hole in researching metabolic ward studies that deliberately overfed protein, several of which are well-documented here. In summary: even under ideal, overfed conditions for the body to store protein as fat, it simply won’t. The consequences of excess protein intake are only upside: increased fat-free mass and more spontaneous physical activity, what nutrition scientists call NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This is no free lunch — the master law of conservation⁸ taught in sophomore thermodynamics is obeyed — but rather the outcomes are positive rather than negative: more muscle, more energy and movement.

The Keto / Paleo / Low-Carb Trap

The science is now unequivocal that the mechanism by which lower carbohydrate diets succeed is through spontaneous lower calorie consumption. As Guyenet documents, the most palatable combination is fat and carbs, which are never found together in nature. These diets tend to work because the food is more boring, and less rewarding, through the minimization of refined carbohydrates. They work the same way as low-fat diets do — in particular the most effective of the low-fat diets, like Ornish, which exclude that other great hedonic motivator, refined sugar, and focus on boring natural, whole foods — by excluding one of the two ingredients of addictive food.

However, just like the low-fat craze before it, the food industry has now responded to these trends and produced numerous highly palatable junk food alternatives that can make these macronutrient combinations more palatable. It doesn’t help that some extremely palatable foods, like bacon or roasted, salted nuts, qualify as low-carb. Many an Atkins diet have been stalled by hitting the sizzle and salty bliss a little too hard. And since there’s no free lunch, if these foods cause one to eat more calories from fat than one needs, it will lead to weight gain.

I’m not saying these diets don’t work; they most certainly do when executed with whole, boring food, and unprocessed ingredients. No one is getting fat on a diet of ribeye steaks and EVOO sautéed spinach because, though high in calories, both satisfy hunger. They’re just extremely difficult to stick to permanently, and any amount of “cheating” will tend to pack on the pounds if the diet is otherwise high in calorie density, as keto-type diets tend to be.

No natural macronutrient, by itself, will make us fat, even sugar, as there are lean hunter-gatherers who consume 70% of their calories from honey. Humans, as Guyenet demonstrates in his books, are remarkable omnivores, showing healthy, lean phenotypes in a wide variety of ancestral eating patterns.

It’s only prepared foods in bounteous variety — the sort of diet agricultural populations might enjoy once a year at harvest time to fatten up for leaner times — that cause us to naturally overeat. As long as the diet is boring and repetitive, neither carbs nor fat cause us to gain excess weight. But the opposite is also true: provided in constant sufficient variety and prepared in combinations that stimulate our reward centers, any macronutrient matrix can cause us to overeat and store excess fat. The only exception is protein.

The Protein Cheat Code

The only biochemically valid cheat code is to eat foods that provide a majority of their calories from protein alone. Like the original Boring Diet, the methodology is to eat small to moderate meals for lunch and dinner and supplement as needed to fight hunger with either very low-calorie foods (e.g., apples, carrots) or high-protein, nearly fat-and-carb-free snacks. Protein has the additional quality of being incredibly satiating.

My self-experimentation over the last 6 months has been encouraging. In the original methodology of the Boring Diet, I was able to reduce myself at 5’10” to a healthy weight in the 160s from the 180s, but would always struggle to go much lower without additional hunger. Add in the occasional slippage at holidays or on vacation, and there seemed to be a cycle of maintenance, gain, and loss, that was manageable but unsatisfying and annoying. Sure, it was worth it, but it wasn’t always pleasant.

Under this new methodology, I have maintained weight in the mid-150s with less perceived effort and no loss of muscle strength or size⁹. My pants are now a (nominal) 31” waist, and 31s that were a little tight are now well-fitting or sometimes loose, and I can’t wear 32” anymore (outside of a European brand with honest sizing), necessitating a need to purge part of the closet. An additional benefit is extra energy, as documented earlier with protein’s effects on spontaneous movement; most tellingly, I find myself waking after about 7 hours of sleep instead of 7.5-8, adding hours to my productive day. It’s a total win that I see as much more sustainable for long-term health.

Most crucially, I am able to do this with little effort by finding engineered foods that are convenient and reasonably palatable, though not exciting. There may even be a cumulative effect, as high protein consumption is associated with higher insulin sensitivity¹⁰, which can mean a spontaneous reduction in food consumption after large meals, lowering the body’s weight “set point” without hunger.

Methodology

The basic methodology for weight loss is to eat no more than 1500 calories for men or 1200 calories for women among “normal” meals and snacks of the day; adjust upward or downward a bit for heights well above or below average, maybe 50 calories for each inch away from the male average of 5’8” and female average of 5’4”. The macronutrient profile of these meals doesn’t seem to matter, though of course the less processed the better given increased satiety per calorie and other health optimization parameters. This is much more easily executed if breakfast can consist of high-protein-only items from the list below, and thus not counted in the “normal” meal total.

For all other food intake, which can be taken as often as hungry, the selections must be extremely low-calorie like celery or apples, or extremely high protein, with less than 80 “waste calories¹¹” per 20 grams of protein intake, or stated differently, where the protein calories (protein grams x 4) are a majority of the total calories. Here are some example foods I’ve found useful and stock in my pantry:

At the top, we’ll see the Platonic ideal of high-protein food from the original Boring Diet: deli turkey breast. The Core Power Shakes are included because they are simply the most tolerable, best-tasting ready-to-drink protein shakes available, as they are simply concentrated, reduced-sugar filtered milk rather than protein powder dissolved in water. Likewise, the yogurt products (Oikos Pro, Ratio High Protein) taste like normal yogurt, unlike protein powders or protein bars (particularly those that would have enough protein calories to qualify) which I find repulsive for daily or frequent consumption¹².

The Oikos Pro drink is a particularly nice option for a quick appetite killer, and dirt cheap at the grocery store (Walmart stocks mine locally); no need to even find a spoon! The protein chips (Quest, Legendary) are a nice change of pace, good with a diet soda for a more traditional snack¹³; the Legendary chips in BBQ flavor are particularly good. Finally, the Vacadillos product, air-dried lean beef with southwest spices from mild chile lime to ghost pepper, is a good substitute for smoked beef jerky, as frequent consumption of smoked foods may be linked to cancers; it also requires about 10 minutes of dedicated chewing to consume, enhancing satiety.

Note all of these brands have products that are higher in fat to cater to the keto junk food market, so don’t assume any similarly branded product is necessarily acceptable unless the protein caloric content is a majority of the calories.

Compare these to my favorite “keto” junk food, the PowerCrunch Pro protein bar, which I allow myself twice a week as a reward after lifting weights. It is technically low carb, but packed with palm oil, and comes in at 300 calories for just 20 grams of protein, or 220 waste calories! They taste better than candy bars to me but must be limited even if marketed as healthy.

Some may protest that these foods aren’t all that exciting, particularly the yogurt. That’s exactly the point. I am personally indifferent to yogurt, particularly these less-sweet products; I neither like it nor dislike it. It’s very close to the nutritionally whole slurry in the study cited by Guyenet! The only “free lunch” here is avoiding hunger with no strict calorie counting, and this methodology may work by implementing the effects of a GLP1 drug backward; just as these drugs make all foods less exciting (and may lead to general anhedonia), eating less exciting foods, particularly protein, effectively controls appetite.

Arguably, Ozempic and similar drugs are a tool to “pre-commit” to a boring diet, in that by shutting down the food reward centers, all food becomes boring. They are wonderful tools when nothing else works and health risks are extreme, but I find it much preferable to simply eat boring foods most of the time without the expense of these drugs and possible side effects, while retaining the ability to enjoy food fully at reasonable meals and special occasions. There is no pathway, with current technology, for food to be a consistently highly pleasurable experience with no addictive overconsumption.

Some way wonder how one can eat an “unlimited” amount of these high protein foods; that’s more of a psychological trick than anything else. When negotiating with my hunger internally, offering a boring, satiating food negates my base animal instinct’s rationalization for pigging out for pleasure. A quick, targeted kill of the hunger signal heads off the temptation.

The net effect is I don’t eat all that much of these because they’re so satiating, though it varies by day. Typical consumption might include 3-4 selections on top of meals. But, I don’t feel limited, confident in the experimental data that if I’m extra hungry I can eat extra protein (sometimes 3+ selections between meals) without worrying about gaining fat. And I might actually need the protein, according to one well-respected hypothesis for why we sometimes are driven to overeat. The short-term subjective feeling is less satisfying than carbs or fat-heavy snacks, as these foods produce less hedonic reward, but the solution is to just keep eating protein until any desire to eat more stops.

On a typical day, I will consume a 42-gram Core Power shake upon waking, followed by a small serving of Catalina Crunch with blueberries. A morning snack might be a piece of fruit, followed by a reasonably sized lunch. Sometime in the afternoon, I will likely have a high-protein snack from the list, followed by a reasonably sized dinner. After dinner, I am most tempted by hunger, so will eat 1-3 of the high-protein snacks as needed to defeat hunger before bed. Again, this is what works for me, and folks with more weight to lose may need more protein given higher maintenance calories. The point is, if you’re willing to be bored with food you can be healthy without hunger.

Coda: Is It Safe?

I think our bodies, at times, have an enormous capacity and desire for protein that other foods barely satisfy. This makes intuitive sense. The family has been watching the reality television series Alone in which contestants are dropped into a wilderness with limited equipment and compete to see who can survive the longest. In one episode, a famished participant manages to catch a large salmon that yields 5 pounds of meat, which he eats in one sitting given his hunger, lack of refrigeration, and bulk need for calories which may not come again for days.

This is 458 grams of protein, and it is easy to imagine our ancestors being designed for such consumption, especially in times where plant foods are not available due to drought or winter. This is why early studies suggesting kidney problems from excess protein consumption have now been thoroughly debunked in healthy individuals without pre-existing kidney damage.

While inconvenient, large servings of unprocessed, whole-muscle meat are a preferred choice for regular meals when available. In my experience, nothing satisfies hunger as long or as well, and if I’m right, they do the body so much good.

1. Addictions are often associated in the literature with a lack of healthy relationships or early life trauma / instability. These of course interact with preexisting genetic tendencies.

2. Compare this to other behavioral addictions like porn use or gambling, which are mere substitutes but addictive enough to cause problems. Pornography isn’t actually sex, and gambling isn’t actually a way to make money. But Doritos have actual caloric value, a reward of direct primal importance.

3. Yes, muscle tissue indeed burns more calories than fat at rest, but these are rounding errors compared to our central metabolism and movement. A 20-lb gain in muscle tissue — nay impossible except in complete weight-lifting newbs or heavy steroid users — might burn an extra 100 calories per day, and researchers disagree if this is real or just a function of the increased spontaneous movement induced by the happier mood of stronger, fitter individuals. The benefits of resistance training are many and profound, but a blank check to eat isn’t one of them.

4. Heat loss, which accounts for 50% of our metabolism, is proportional to the difference in temperature per unit of surface area.

5. One study found that obese subjects underreported food consumption by 47% and over-reported physical activity by 51%.

6. Muscle also stores glycogen (about 1-2% of muscle mass), a ready energy source from carbohydrates. Thus, increased muscle mass serves as a sink for carbs, reducing the burden on insulin processes to store carbs as fat.

7. It’s a divine mercy that our instincts about what looks attractive are consistent with what’s healthy.

8. Accumulation = Input - Output + Generation - Consumption

9. One well-documented benefit of high-protein diets is their tendency to preserve lean muscle mass while losing weight. If I had to guess, this is why some of the Ozempic studies show disproportionate loss of muscle mass. People on Ozempic are disproportionately those who already eat low-quality, low-protein junk food for much of their diet. If the effect of the drug is to eat much less of a low-quality diet, then that diet is likely to be objectively deficient in protein, thus the loss of lean mass is not a mystery. The body is consuming its muscles because it needs amino acids for critical processes.

10. Guyenet would argue, correctly, that insulin sensitivity is simply a marker of leptin sensitivity, the real driver of weight gain. Some experimental evidence points to protein directly increasing leptin sensitivity.

11. Waste calories are all non-protein calories in a product that can possibly be stored as fat, so this is simply: Waste Calories = Total Calories - (Grams of Protein * 4 calories / gram)

12. Note the dairy products here are all lactose-free, including the lactase enzyme as part of their formulation. In addition, they are ultra-filtered to concentrate milk protein, of which the dominant casein component naturally gels in the stomach, further satisfying appetite.

13. Long-time readers may notice I have finally yielded to the overwhelming evidence for the safety of most non-nutritive sweeteners; I credit Layne Norton for this change of mind on my part. I notably do not find, as some predicted, any noticeable change in my cravings for sweets, but rather that they satisfy a desire for sweet quite well and make healthy eating more tolerable. Of note, because of a family history of strokes, I am still minimizing sugar alcohols which may be linked to blood clots. While natural, their lack of sweetness relative to sugar means they must be used in bulk quantities that are wholly unnatural. Whereas a Diet Coke contains 200 mg of aspartame easily dealt with by the liver, a pint of Halo Top contains 19 grams of sugar alcohols. I remain skeptical of bulk sugar substitutes like allulose for similar reasons.