Meal Replacement Shakes

Meal replacement actually come in different forms. They can come in the form of shakes, powder, bars, soups etc. As the name suggests, the idea is to replace a real meal with a prepackaged product.
In Europe, there are regulations that dictate how many calories, fat, vitamins, and minerals the package should contain. Unfortunately, in the US shakes are classified as dietary supplements and are not subject to the same regulations as other foods. These shakes can actually contain so much fat and sugar, as much as in a regular meal, so reading the nutrition labels is crucial.

So what’s the deal? Who would want to drink some engineered shake instead of eating tasty healthy food? Regular meals also offer a better balance of nutrients, and if you want to maintain your weight loss you need to be able to eat well-balanced regular food.

Well, I think that in certain circumstances, these shakes do make sense:

If you are obese (BMI>30)and need to lose a lot of weight. I wouldn’t suggest that you just buy some meal replacement off the shelf, but there are clinics that offer well-balanced medical shakes as part of their program. Depending on your weight, they may suggest that you strictly use the shakes in lieu of real food. That means you will actually be fasting, as you’ll drink about 750 calories worth of shakes per day. I’m not suggesting that anyone try such a diet by themselves at home. You have to do this through a clinic, where the doctor meets with you before you start the program, they check your heart and run some blood tests. If you are cleared to go on such a diet you will be monitored once a week, and they’ll continue doing routine blood works. There will also be a dietician to consult you. I think this could definitely be an option to consider if you are obese.
Planning what to eat when you’re dieting is hard work. Not only do you need to plan and make sure you have all the ingredients, but you need to weigh the food portions to know how much you’re eating. You also need to calculate how many calories does each ingredient in the meal contain. True, there are some great software out there that can help you with this task (Fitbit, anyone?), but you still need to invest a lot of time into this. If you’re busy, this might be a reason which will cause you not to stick to your plan. Having a convenient ready-made shake, where you just need to add water, could be a good solution for replacement of one meal a day. You know you’re getting the needed nutrients (more or less, depending on the brand), and you can manage to eat within your diet limits without having to stress about preparing dinner. This is a good option if you’re eating healthy on the other meals.
If you tend NOT to eat healthy during most meals, the shakes could also be a temporary solution for you. Many people eat high-fat, high carb, processed food. Even when they’re dieting, they just try to eat smaller portions. These shakes tend to have more proteins and fewer carbs than such meals, so you would potentially have better nutrition if you replace your regular meal with a shake every once in a while.

Now you are probably wondering if there are any specific brand that I recommend; I know there are medically shake products that have excellent nutritious values (I am aware of the ones manufactured by Doctors Answer – MNP) but you can get them only through a diet program. When I look at available products for consumers, I look mostly for products that have small amounts of added sugar and have a variety of vitamins and minerals. It seems to me that Plant Based Balanced Meals has good nutritious values as do Orgain Organic Protein Plant-Based Powder . I will do product reviews on these shakes in the future.

If you have recommendations for other shakes, please share!

It’s important to get cleared by your doctor before you start replacing meals with meal replacement shakes. Remember that this is not a long-term strategy, and to also use the shakes in combination with other healthy weight-loss choices.

How Many Daily Calories to Eat

We know that in order to lose weight we need to eat enough food, otherwise, our body will go into an emergency mode. It will start using muscle tissues instead of carbohydrates and fat, and our metabolism will slow down. Y ou can read more about it in this post. I should note that there is an option of fasting as well, which is actually both very healthy and helps you lose weight, but you need to make sure you do it right. Otherwise, instead of boosting your metabolism you may slow it down. Read more about this here.

So how many calories should you eat a day in order to lose weight?

First, let’s find out your basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR measures how many calories your body consumes while at complete rest. Gender, age, height, and weight all play a role in determining your BMR. This is only a statistical estimate of course, but it still gives you a pretty good ballpark figure.

BMR Calculator:

Now, in order to adjust the figure to your activity level, you’ll need to multiply your BMR according to this chart:


Amount of Exercise	Daily Calories Needed
Little to no exercise	BMR x 1.2
Light exercise (1 to 3 days per week)	BMR x1.375
Moderate exercise (3 to 5 days per week)	BMR x 1.55
Heavy exercise (6 to 7 days per week)	BMR x 1.725
Very heavy exercise (intense workouts twice per day)	BMR x 1.9

Now you know how many calories you need to eat daily in order to maintain your weight.

Let’s continue. One pound of body weight has about 3,500 calories. In order to lose 1 pound, you’ll need to eat 3,500 fewer calories over time. If you eat every day 500 calories less than the amount needed to maintain your current weight, you will lose one pound in a week (500×7=3,500). The typical recommendation is to lose 1-2 pounds a week. If you try to lose much more, it means that you are probably putting in too much effort in dieting and exercising, and that could be unhealthy for you. Chances are you will also not be able to stick with what you’re doing to maintain as a permanent lifestyle change. Also, when you lose weight fast, you’ll lose more weight from water and muscles than when you lose weight at a moderate pace. Dieting in moderation lets you burn more fat tissues than in crash diets.

Fasting

On a previous post, I discussed how it is important not to eat too little, as then the body goes into emergency mode and slows down the metabolism.

Then why am I now writing a post about fasting? Seems counter-intuitive, isn’t it? Wouldn’t fasting cause the body to spend as little energy as possible?

There’s no simple answer. Unless the fasting person works out vigorously, they will lose muscle tissues as well as fat, and this could lead to a decreased metabolism. Eventually, they will have to stop fasting, and then they’ll gain everything back again, including some additional extra pounds due to the slower metabolism. However, this happens only in prolonged fasting. Intermittent fasting can actually have very positive impacts on our bodies.

I’ve read the very interesting book The FastDiet written by Michael Mosley. In the book, Dr. Mosley discusses a very interesting study conducted by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In the study, the researchers 2 groups of mice and fed them a high-fat diet. All the mice got the exact same amount of food, the only difference being that the mice in group one were allowed to eat whenever they wanted, while the mice in group two had to eat their food within an 8 hour time period. This meant that there were 16 hours of the day in which they were fasting. After 100 days, the mice from group one, who ate whenever they wanted, had developed high cholesterol and high blood glucose and had liver damage. The mice from group two, who had to fast for 16 hours a day, put on far less weight (28%) less and suffered much less liver damage, despite having eaten the exact same amount and type of food. They also had lower levels of chronic inflammation, which suggests they had reduced risks of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer’s. The researchers explained that when you’re eating, your insulin levels are elevated and your body is stuck in a fat-storing mode. Only after a few hours of fasting is your body able to turn off the fat-storing and turn on the fat-burning mechanisms.

Other research found that Human growth hormone (HGH) goes up during fasting. This hormone aids in increasing muscle tissue gain and decreasing fat. Two other studies found that fasting for about 2 days increase metabolism by 3.6%-14%, however, fasting for more than 2 days can slow down the metabolism rate.

The scientific evidence sound convincing, and it’s no wonder that intermittent fasting diets are becoming more and more popular.

There are several common methods for intermittent fasting, with the most common one being the 5:2 diet (the Fast Diet) which is recommended by Dr. Mosley. It involves eating regularly for 5 days, and for the other two days of the week eat only 500-600 calories per day, making sure to eat foods that have a glycemic index less than 50. You can read more on the glycemic index here.

There are other ways to do intermittent fasting, for example, eat-stop-eat method which involves fasting for 24 hours once or twice a week. Another popular one is the 16/8 method, in which you fast for 16 hours and eat for 8 hours each day. The Alternate Day fasting proposes fasting every other day.

If you are interested in fasting, I recommend buying The FastDiet, it includes a lot of good information and tips on how to succeed in such a diet.

Glycemic Index and Insulin

The glycemic index is used to rank food on a scale from 1 to 100. The scale is used to tells us how the carbohydrate in the food affects our blood sugar.

Food with high glycemic-index digests quickly in the digestive system. A large amount of glucose is being released to the blood stream quickly, and that naturally sharply raises the blood sugar level. Due to the sudden high level of blood sugar, a large amount of insulin is released. Insulin is needed to regulate the level of blood sugar. The more sugar (glucose) that is present in the blood, the more insulin that will be released from the pancreas. Without insulin, sugar can not enter the various cells in our body. The insulin signals cells to absorb sugar from the bloodstream to be used for energy. If there’s more sugar in the blood than the body needs, insulin will “direct” it to be stored in the liver or muscles as glycogen, to be released at a later time, when the blood sugar level is low.

It is important to know that insulin inhibits the breakdown of stored body fat. It also forces fat cells to take up and store fat from the blood. High levels of insulin lead to increased fat storage, whereas low levels of insulin lead to fat depletion.

Food with low glycemic-index digests slower, the blood sugar level is raised in moderation and over time. The added benefits of having consistent low blood sugar levels are that less muscle tissue loss is minimal, the body uses energy that is stored in the body as fat, and we feel full longer.

High blood sugar level is bad for you on so many levels. The pancreas has to make high levels of insulin, and over time the pancreas can get damaged and not produce the necessary levels of insulin, which may lead to diabetes type II. In addition, high blood sugar levels damage blood vessels which can cause heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney failure, poor circulation to legs, and more.

To make a long story short, we DO NOT want to have high blood sugar.

One way is to decrease the amount of high glycemic food we eat. Foods with levels up to 55 are considered to have low glycemic index (GI), 56-69 are considered medium, and 70 and higher are considered to be high. Therefore, eating rice (27) is better than eating baked potato (121).

As a rule of thumb, foods with simple sugar, starch food, processed food and cooked food have higher GI. Fiber and protein help lower the GI. Here is a link to a list of 100 common foods published by the Harvard Health Publication.

It’s important to remember that food with high GI can be a good choice under some circumstances (e.g., when you need to recover after exercise).