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High-Protein Diet and Weight Loss

BY YIFAN WANG APRIL 15 2021

As the prevalence of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases keep increasing, people are
paying more and more attention to their diets. Different types of diets, such as high-protein diet
(HPD), ketogenic diet, and vegetarian diet, are labeled with various health benefits and
functions. Among these diets, HPD has the most popularity and acceptance because it is
friendly to most people. It has been favored by fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilders because
they think this diet can help them maintain a charming body shape while being healthy. They are
addicted to consuming large amounts of protein as their biggest part of their energy resource.
Does HPD have those benefits on health and bodybuilding? Does HPD help you lose weight
and keep healthy? Jaecheol Moon and Gwanpyo Koh’s answer is YES.

Basic Information about Protein and HPD

First, let’s figure out what is protein and what kind of food is high in protein. Our body is made
up of thousands of proteins, so protein intake is crucial for our health. Protein is made up of 20
different amino acids and is categorized in mainly two types: animal protein and plant protein.
Animal proteins include lean meats, poultry, dairy products, seafood, and eggs. Plant proteins
include nuts, legumes, and beans.1
A standard-protein diet requires 48-56 grams of protein intake per day for most people, which
take up 10%-15% of daily energy expenditure.2 HPD needs “27%-35% of daily energy intake
consumed as protein”. Therefore, ensuring adequate protein intake is the key to HPD.

1
“Protein,” BetterHealth, accessed April 18 2021, https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/protein.
2
Jaecheol Moon and Gwanpyo Koh. “Clinical Evidence and Mechanisms of High-Protein Diet-Induced Weight
Loss,” Journal of Obesity & Metabolic Syndrome 29, no. 3 (September 2020): 167,
https://doi.org/10.7570/jomes20028.
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What Benefits HPD Will Bring to You and Why

According to Moon and Koh’s research, the positive outcomes of HPD from many clinical trials
include weight loss, improving body composition, and preventing weight regain.3 This definitely
is good news for people who want and need to lose weight, because they don’t need to suffer
from hunger and a strong desire for food. HPD only requires you to have a higher protein-intake
proportion of daily energy intake.
You might wonder how and why HPD has these benefits. Let’s talk about it. HPD helps people
lose body weight by increasing satiety, energy expenditure, and fat-free mass (FFM).4 The level
of hormones related to increased satiety and decreased appetite are secreted by HPD, so the
fullness will increase and people will decrease food intake. Also, Protein absorption is active
absorption, which requires energy and special proteins. In other words, the more protein you
eat, the more energy you need to absorb and metabolize.

Seeing here, you may already be eager to try HPD! Here is a one-day high-protein diet for you!
Breakfast:
● Half non-oil fried chicken breast
● One whole egg and an egg white
● 10 small tomatoes
● One piece of brown bread
● A tall glass of milk or soy milk
Snack:
● 150g fat-free Greek yogurt
Lunch:
● 200g spicy roasted shrimp
● 3 piece of grilled Tofu
● 1.5-cup quinoa
● 100g roasted broccoli and kale
Snack:
● A protein bar
● An apple
Dinner:
● 50g fried edamame
● 100g vegetable salad (Using fat-free salad sauce is preferred.)
● 150g Grilled steak
● One boiled corn and 5 small potatoes

Remember: patience is also the key to success, so you need to stick to HPD for a period of time
to be effective.

3
Moon and Koh, 167.
4
Moon and Koh, 169.
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Explication Essay of Writing Project 1

Yifan Wang

Writing 2: Academic Writing

April 26, 2021

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Have you ever struggled with finding a type of diet that can both satisfy your mouth and

stomach and benefit your health? In the peer-reviewed article “Clinical Evidence and

Mechanisms of High-Protein Diet-Induced Weight Loss,” the authors, Jaecheol Moon and

Gwanpyo Koh, discuss the effects of high-protein diet (HPD) and its mechanisms from the

disciplines of biology and medicine. They combined the results from past clinical studies to

indicate the relationship between HPD and weight loss and give explanations of the mechanisms

under HPD. I translated this peer-reviewed article to a popular science blog in order to inform

more people that HPD has the potential to help them lose weight in a safe and effective fashion.

Therefore, people who read my blog no longer need to suffer from dangerous and painful ways

in order to lose weight and build their bodies. Since the purpose of my blog is to inform people

about HPD in a casual and interesting way, I choose to exclude those complicated data and

academic explanations about the mechanisms behind HPD. As a popular science blog, the

constraints of my translation are mainly related to my audience, who are interested in healthy

diets and who wish to lose weight. Given the rhetorical situation of my translation, my

translation is effective as a popular science blog because it contains conventions of the genre

including clear and easy-understandable structure, casual tone, the adoption of first-person and

second-person, and a case diet.5 These major and minor conventions work together to cater to

three components of the rhetorical situation of my translation.

The constraints of my popular science blog differ from those from the peer-reviewed

article in several ways, including unemployment jargon and ignoring acknowledgement. As a

popular science blog, it should be easy to read and understand. Otherwise, readers may quickly

give up looking and end up learning nothing because they are not likely to force themselves to

5
"Rhetorical Situation," College Composition and Communication, National Council of Teachers of English, 2010,
Gauchospace.
 5

read a boring and complicated blog, even though the content is very useful and educated.

Because of these constraints, I do not use the terminology presented in the peer-reviewed article,

such as diet-induced thermogenesis, aminostatic hypothesis, and gluconeogenesis. I rather

include some basic information about protein and HPD to make sure most people can

understand. It is analogous to my reference text that nearly does the author give up all

complicated academic words,and the hardest jargons in this blog are “blood glucose, insulin, and

glucagon levels.”6 In addition to jargon, another constraint of my blog is ignoring

acknowledgments. In the peer-reviewed article, Moon and Koh make two acknowledgments. The

first is “However, long-term clinical trials spanning more than 12 months should be conducted to

further substantiate HPD effects,” and the second is the claim that HPD may have negative

effects on the bones and kidneys.7 The reason I exclude acknowledgements is that it will occupy

limited space and blur the main point. As a popular science blog, it is unnecessary to include all

the information about one experiment or research. However, acknowledgement is important to

provide some extra information, specifically proffering some negative effects of HPD to readers.

This is one aspect that I lack in my translation and should add on. Hence, these conventions work

to fit the constraints of a popular science blog.

The audience, as another crucial component to inform people about HPD, is also

distinctive in my blog and the peer-reviewed journal and mainly people lack professional

knowledge about biology and medicine. In my translation, the primary audience is people who

would like to control or lose weight by changing their diets, some bodybuilders, and workout

fans. The secondary audience may be families or friends of the primary audience. These people

6
Claire Maldarelli. “How to Eat Sweet Foods on a Healthy Diet,” Popular Science, last modified April 2, 2021,
Accessed April 20, 2021, https://www.popsci.com/healthiest-way-to-eat-sweet-foods/.
7
Moon and Koh, 166.
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are not expected to know and comprehend academic explanations. Even if they have such an

academic background, they may lack patience and time to read carefully because a popular

science blog’s purpose is to inform and to recreate. Thus, I do not use lots of terminology. In

order to attract my audience, I adopt a casual tone, first-person, and second-person. For example,

“Here is a one-day high-protein diet for you!”8 These will give my audience a feeling that they

are listening and chatting with their friends. Compared to the blog, the peer-reviewed article’s

audience is experts, researchers, and students who study biology or medicine, so its tone is

scholarly and neutral and the authors of the peer-reviewed article do not need to consider if it’s

audience have enough academic background and knowledge to understand their article.

Moreover, considering the knowledge background of the audience of my translation, I do not

choose to include data-related research results in my blog. Data is useful and indispensable to

support researchers’ hypotheses or propositions in peer-reviewed articles, but it will be prolix

and disturbing for most of the audience. As I explained above, the audience limits the use of

conventions in my blogs.

Last but not least, the purpose of my translation is to inform the audience by a recreated

and interesting method. That’s said the property of recreation is as vital as that of propagation. I

find that popular science usually contains a huge picture related to the topic just like in my

reference text.9 Therefore, at the beginning of my translation, I adopt this convention by adding a

big attention-grabbing picture that contains the subject discussed in my blog.10 It will give my

audience a glimpse of what I will be talking about in my blog. At the same time, the picture

8
Yifan Wang “High-Protein Diet and Weight Loss,” last modified April 16, 2021,
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pM8Lg8lGsGRBXwmSeVjlkpo3SD1e2oGJg2E7P4asrzI/edit?usp=sharing.
9
Maldarelli.
10
Wang.
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looks very delicious and colorful. Consequently, it has some positive effects to recreate my

audience by some psychological factors. Besides, including a diet is a typical convention of a

food-related topic blog. It will be boring and memoryless if only reading rigid text, so I add a

hand-written style diet at the end of my blog for the audience to try and reference. With this diet,

the probability of trying HPD would increase somehow because it is easier to implement with

this case diet. A clear and easy-understandable structure garaneente the other purpose, informing.

I split my blog into several parts by adding subtitles, like “Basic Information about Protein and

HPD” and “What Benefits HPD Will Bring to You and Why,” so it is very straightforward to

know what each part is about.11 The purpose of my translation, informing in fun, derives from me

choosing certain conventions. By contrast, the purpose of the peer-reviewed article is to share the

results and new findings about an academic topic, so the authors have to explain in detail about

their research and experiments. For example, in Moon and Koh’s article, they make a very

detailed table to display and compare the data of related chemicals about HPD from different

researchers. Hence, different writing purposes of the peer-reviewed articles and my blog lead to

different conventions used in writing.

Genre should not be the boundary of sharing useful information. Therefore, I translated a

peer-reviewed article to an interesting popular science blog and picked a topic that could offer

people new healthy lifestyles. Based on this purpose, my translation adopts some typical

conventions of blog to fit the rhetorical situation in an attempt to attract my primary and

secondary audience. These conventions include but are not limited to a succinct structure, casual

tone, the adoption of first-person and second-person, an interesting example diet, and addition of

pictures.

11
Wang.
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Bibliography

BetterHealth. “Protein.” https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/protein.

Johnson, Julie. “Chicago style citations.”

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gq20zu3rtSv1o8FCWWlIIsn4F1yQjMQbsiMAB
FBoxZg/edit#slide=id.g9ebca8b07a_0_89.

Maldarelli, Claire. “How to Eat Sweet Foods on a Healthy Diet.” Popular Science. Last modified
April 2, 2021. https://www.popsci.com/healthiest-way-to-eat-sweet-foods/.

Moon, Jaecheol and Gwanpyo Koh. “Clinical Evidence and Mechanisms of High-Protein
Diet-Induced Weight Loss,” Journal of Obesity & Metabolic Syndrome 29, no. 3
(September 2020): 166–173, https://doi.org/10.7570/jomes20028.

National Council of Teachers of English. "Rhetorical Situation." College Composition and

Communication. 2010. Gauchospace.

Szalay, Jessie. “What Is Protein,” Livescience. Last modified December 10, 2015.
https://www.livescience.com/53044-protein.html.

“Thesis Statements in Academic Writing.” Gauchospace.

Wang, Yifan. “High-Protein Diet and Weight Loss.” Last modified April 16, 2021.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pM8Lg8lGsGRBXwmSeVjlkpo3SD1e2oGJg2E7P
4asrzI/edit?usp=sharing.

“Why and How to Create a Useful Outline.” Purdue.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/developing_an_outline/h
ow_to_outline.html.