> A pound of 75% lean ground beef only has 72.22 grams of protein. If I go too low on protein, I become miserable. 
> There is a difference between weight loss diet ratios and maintenance diets. I need to remind myself of the difference. 
> -David 

For these calculations, and general tracking purposes, I always use cooked weight . That is, I weigh my portion after cooking, and look up the values accordingly. As we know, when ground beef is cooked, fat is lost. A pound of cooked 75% lean ground beef has about 106 g of protein. 

I recently read a study somewhere that showed that lab animals "eat to protein". That is, if you give them low-protein chow, they'll eat more of it until they hit a certain protein level. Fed high-protein chow, they eat to the same protein point, and so end up getting less calories overall. 

A lot is written about protein and satiety. The Jaminets, over at the Perfect Health Diet blog, favor low protein for overall health purposes, but higher protein for weight loss. In fact, it may be there that I read about the study I just mentioned. 

I'm giving careful thought to all the points that have been made here, and looking into other things as well. For example, I've been reading about the role of magnesium in inflammation and obesity. (See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20536778 for example), and the idea that obesity is a sign of a chronic inflammatory state. This is not a new idea, in itself. For years we've talked about the pro-inflammatory effects of PUFAs, for example. But I haven't really considered the magnesium issue in years. I recall reading about it in the Eades's first Protein Power book, in which they said that if they had to recommend one supplement, magnesium would be it. 

In the past, I've mentioned here that I don't digest leafy greens very well. A small salad is okay, but if I eat much more than that, I get very uncomfortable and may experience diarrhea. As I've been reading about Mg, it turns out that Mg deficiency is also implicated in poor digestion. So, about a week ago, I started supplementing with a fairly hefty amount of Mg chloride, getting about 800 mg of elemental Mg/day. Last night, I tried an experiment. With my meat, I had a nice plate of kale, pan-fried in butter. Very tasty, by the way. But this is the sort of thing that I normally could not tolerate well at all. Nevertheless, I ate it and experienced no distress. And I've lost a pound. That's not enough to be significant, but it's promising at least. Just possibly the Mg is helping. 

Todd