The Importance of protein for the bariatric surgery patient:

• Protein aids in proper wound healing after bariatric surgery. It helps to build and repair body tissues including skin, muscle and major organs.

• Protein helps keep your hair, skin, bones and nails healthy.

• Protein helps form hormones, enzymes and immune system antibodies to help your body function properly.
• Protein helps your body burn fat instead of muscle for a healthier weight loss. When you are trying to lose weight after bariatric surgery, you reduce calories. Unfortunately, the human body tends to view fat stores as more precious than lean muscle tissue, and will burn or "catabolize" muscle tissue, before it goes to fat for energy. By consuming sufficient protein each day, you will spare and preserve your muscle tissue, which forces your metabolism to go to your fat for energy. This particular benefit of protein is often referred to as "protein sparing" or "anti-catabolic".

• Protein supports your natural metabolism so you lose weight quicker. The more muscle you have on your body, the higher your metabolism and the more fat calories your body will burn, even while at rest. Pound for pound, your lean muscle burns 25 times more calories than fat! Conversely, less muscle tissue means a slower metabolism. To illustrate this, one pound of muscle can burn 30 to 50 calories in a day, or 350 to 500 calories a week. On the other hand, one pound of fat only burns about 2 calories a day, or 14 calories a week. Therefore, building and preserving lean muscle tissue not only makes fat loss easier, put more permanent.

• Protein curb's your hunger between meals and avoid "snacking temptation". One of the amino acids in protein, tryptophan (a precursor of serotonin) has been shown to work on the satiety (hunger) center in the brain.

Your body is actually made up of thousands of different proteins. Because your body is constantly making new proteins and because you don't store amino acids (the building blocks of protein) as you do fats, you need to intake a new supply of protein each day. The body can make 13 amino acids, but 9 amino acids are essential, meaning they cannot be made by your body and must come from food sources. There are both complete and incomplete protein sources. Complete proteins contain all the essential amino acids needed for the body to make new protein. Incomplete proteins are lacking one or more essential amino acids. A good source of complete proteins is animal protein which includes meat, fish, eggs and dairy products. Vegetable or plant protein is incomplete protein.
As you follow your bariatric diet, keep in mind that plant proteins are not "complete" proteins. (A complete protein is one food item that contains all of the essential amino acids). Plant proteins should be used together with animal protein sources to provide you with all of the essential amino acids you need.

Protein Content of Foods