Do Meal Replacement Drinks Work for Weight Loss? - 1

Many diets flood the market claiming to help you lose weight. Still popular are meal replacement drinks or liquid diets in the form of shakes.  They may work (at least temporarily) because they automatically cut excess calories out. In other words, much of the guesswork of calorie restriction with food intake has been taken out of the dieter's hands. (This is a relevant issue, as I've said repeatedly in my blogs, many people are in denial about how many calories they are actually consuming regularly, then complain about not losing weight!)

Even though shakes can help people lose weight quickly there are some drawbacks I want to point out:

• Many meal replacements are just too low in calories for most people. They are typically about 250 calories each. Adding a moderate dinner meal brings the calorie range to 1000 or 1200. For older people, middle aged women, and those who cannot exercise much, this calorie range may work effectively, but for the rest of the population it probably would not be enough food.
• Consuming just a shake at breakfast and lunch may make a person overly hungry resulting in over eating at dinner.
• Meal replacements can be boring. They lack variety and many complain they don’t get to "chew."  They really aren’t for the long term (I would say no more than 2-3 months).

Tomorrow I'll go into a few of the other challenges of these diet plans.