Will a meal replacement shake help me lose weight?

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MSBKyle
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23 Feb 2018, 10:01 am

After getting on the scale yesterday I really need to start watching what I eat. I have been eating so many sweets and junk lately and I did not realize my weight has gotten to where it is. I plan to replace breakfast with a meal replacement shake. The shake is 210 calories and it contains vitamins A, C, E, iron, and calcium. I plan to be drinking it everyday in the morning for at least the next month instead of eating solid food. If I replace this shake for breakfast for the next month, will I see results? I don't plan on snacking. I will eat normal lunches and dinners with vegetables. I am back at the weight I was when I was in middle school and my freshman and sophomore years of high school when I was overweight. I had lost a bunch of weight during my junior year of high school without trying because I was dealing with some issues. I have managed to keep that weight off all these years until now. I really need to do something because I don't want my early teen weight back.



Closet Genious
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23 Feb 2018, 11:10 am

If you consume less calories than your body expends, you will lose weight.



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24 Feb 2018, 10:07 am

Guinness Stout; it has less calories than SlimFast.



justRob
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24 Feb 2018, 1:09 pm

What sort of meal is it replacing? I'd generally rate a shake as better than junk / highly processed food (like sugar / non-whole grain cereal) but not as good as a whole food breakfast (like whole oats).

Part of it depends on the shake, how much sugar it has. Liquid sugar in the morning is one of the worst things you can do for weigh loss, for a variety of reasons.

A couple of things that are important but often over looked

1. Some people's metabolic systems handle carbs/sugars better, and others handle fat better. Best way to test this is by lowering carbs (or even going keto) and monitoring your energy levels and ease of weight loss... if cutting down carbs helps dramatically, that's a pretty strong sign, and if it feels like death even after 3 weeks, then low fat is probably better for you.

2. The blend of microbes in your gut is key for weight loss and health in general. If you eat a lot of sugar and highly processed foods, then you're going to favor the gut microbes that eat that stuff... these tend to be the "bad" microbes. And some recent studies are showing that your gut microbes literally communicate with your central nervous system, so a healthy gut is a big deal for reasons beyond. This is the biggest reason IMO to eat whole foods and lots of fiber, to favor good microbes. It only takes a matter of days or weeks of sticking to whole foods to reconfigure the mix down there, of course it only takes another few days or weeks of eating poorly to throw it back out of whack.... but it's something to be aware of, and I'm skeptical that a canned shake will promote good gut health.

Big picture is, it sounds like you're on a good track, but I don't know that the shake is going to optimize your breakfast.



Esmerelda Weatherwax
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24 Feb 2018, 1:25 pm

I gained a bit of weight during my last couple years working, because I was deskbound for 12 hours or more a day during the work week, and up to 10 hours a day on the weekends. Yes it sucked, but it kept me employed long enough to retire...

Best weight loss experience I ever had was an accidental one - I started eating romaine lettuce to get more green leafy veg in my diet (had a Caesar salad for lunch daily for about two weeks). SURPRISE! It suppressed my usual snack cravings completely. I was down a whole clothes size in two weeks. Did some rooting around on the Net and discovered that it's quite high in B vitamins and a few minerals, and apparently this, with the fiber content, turns off the cravings switch.

I did try meal replacements but they backfired - tasted too good, so I'd eat two of them. Oopsie.

Unfortunately, here on the US East Coast, stores now like to keep their produce soaked, which promotes bacterial growth. No can eat, even if I give it a vinegar wash (don't ask, just don't, you'll be happier not knowing). So I use B-complex, and manage with canned and frozen veg.

(Public service announcement - please don't believe the cant that canned veg has no nutritional value. If that were true, generations of farm families would have died of malnutrition from eating their own home-canned food. Use the little grey cells.)


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MSBKyle
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24 Feb 2018, 1:39 pm

I should also add that I am a big diet soda drinker. I know diet soda is bad for you. I am going to give that up as well. I believe that my diet soda habits have been leading me to overeat which is why I have gained all of this weight.



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24 Feb 2018, 2:37 pm

^^ Oh gosh yes. Purdue did a meta-analysis of studies and concluded that diet soda not only doesn't help with weight loss, it gets in the way. Here's a link to their press release

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/release ... blems.html


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25 Feb 2018, 3:54 am

All you need is a calorie deficit, your body is going to use the energy it needs regardless.
Keto is not more effective, and neither is low fat, the notion that these are better is psuedo science.



Temeraire
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25 Feb 2018, 8:07 am

I lost about 20 pounds in January due to vertigo and nausea.
The main reason the weight fell off was because I was eating far less calories.

I couldn't stomach anything fatty and ate small bland meals.
Usually soup and dry wholemeal toast or scrambled egg and dry toast.

I didn't eat between meals and when my appetite started to come back I sought out foods which filled me up.
Jacket potato was a friend to me when I wanted to refrain from snacking.

I have tried to keep to eating fewer calories now I have begun a healthier way of eating.
Making a big pot of healthy broth helps so I can eat seconds and not worry.

It is not easy to change the way you are eating as it becomes a habit or a comfort for some of us.
If you can find other ways to utilise your time and to comfort yourself it will get easier to lose weight.

So it is not just the food you put in your mouth but the psychological side some of us have to deal with.



justRob
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25 Feb 2018, 9:29 am

Closet Genious wrote:
All you need is a calorie deficit, your body is going to use the energy it needs regardless.
Keto is not more effective, and neither is low fat, the notion that these are better is psuedo science.


Actually, low carb being equivalent to high fat for weight loss is a myth. You may have heard this idea because some studies have concluded their equivalence as weight loss tool as an overall average. But this perspective fails to account for the range of responses to these diets, there is quite a lot of individual specificity, and there are many studies where low carb and keto diets show more weight loss on average than low fat (with that said, weight loss studies in general have big problems with reproducibility... but they make big headlines anyway).

Large sub-groups of the population have been shown to react very positively to low carb and keto diets vs low fat. Generally speaking, anyone with metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetic or worse) will benefit from eating low carb or keto. And that's 1 in 3 adults, in the US at least. There's a ton of peer reviewed research out there showing this, it is definitely not pseudoscience.

So I'm not saying that low carb is better than low fat for the OP, but I'm definitely suggesting to try both and see which works better. I've known too many people (myself included) who have struggled with traditional low fat weight loss and found shockingly fast and easy results with keto. But agreed that this is not the case for everyone, my assumption is that I/we had some metabolic stress/insulin resistance from too more processed carbs over the years than my body could handle, even being a runner and triathlete. Keto relieved the stress and our bodies naturally shed the weight. Won't be the case for everyone, there are lots of other reasons for weight gain than insulin resistance, but it's a very prevalent one.

Found this site with a list of studies, it's become a pretty deep subject in recent years:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/23 ... #section10



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25 Feb 2018, 11:57 am

justRob wrote:
Closet Genious wrote:
All you need is a calorie deficit, your body is going to use the energy it needs regardless.
Keto is not more effective, and neither is low fat, the notion that these are better is psuedo science.


Actually, low carb being equivalent to high fat for weight loss is a myth. You may have heard this idea because some studies have concluded their equivalence as weight loss tool as an overall average. But this perspective fails to account for the range of responses to these diets, there is quite a lot of individual specificity, and there are many studies where low carb and keto diets show more weight loss on average than low fat (with that said, weight loss studies in general have big problems with reproducibility... but they make big headlines anyway).

Large sub-groups of the population have been shown to react very positively to low carb and keto diets vs low fat. Generally speaking, anyone with metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetic or worse) will benefit from eating low carb or keto. And that's 1 in 3 adults, in the US at least. There's a ton of peer reviewed research out there showing this, it is definitely not pseudoscience.

So I'm not saying that low carb is better than low fat for the OP, but I'm definitely suggesting to try both and see which works better. I've known too many people (myself included) who have struggled with traditional low fat weight loss and found shockingly fast and easy results with keto. But agreed that this is not the case for everyone, my assumption is that I/we had some metabolic stress/insulin resistance from too more processed carbs over the years than my body could handle, even being a runner and triathlete. Keto relieved the stress and our bodies naturally shed the weight. Won't be the case for everyone, there are lots of other reasons for weight gain than insulin resistance, but it's a very prevalent one.

Found this site with a list of studies, it's become a pretty deep subject in recent years:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/23 ... #section10


It might be good if a person is pre diabetic, that's the one scenario where I will agree that it makes sense.
But most people who are pre diabetic, are also overweight or obese, in which case, the insulin resistance has more to do with consuming an enormous amount of carbohydrates, than it has to do with simply consuming carbohydrates. One doesn't just become obese eating 2000 calories a day, that's physically and biologically impossible.

I am saying, do neither of those. For a normal person, the carb/fat ratio barely matters at all. There's a ton of studies comparing different macro-nutrient compositions, and none of them has any metabolic advantage, as long as protein is constant.

The only reason people find they lose weight on keto, is because they tend to consume less calories when they switch, and they aren't monitoring their calorie intake, so now they think it is magic. They probably also end up consuming more protein, which can be advantageous. I've seen this scenario many, many times. "Keto" is not magic. Personally, I find it much easier to stay lean simply monitoring my calorie intake, and mind you, I stay extremely lean. This is my biggest problem with "ketoers", I don't care whether you go low fat, or low carb, your calorie intake is by far the most important variable, no matter how you go about it. Personally, I also find it easier to build muscle with carbs, but that's another discussion.



justRob
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25 Feb 2018, 1:44 pm

With 1 in 3 people (in America) pre-diabetic (whether they know it or not), and the OP saying he has a lot of sugar in his diet and has been gaining weight, it seems like he might be one to benefit from low carb or keto. I tried to make it clear in my original post that this isn't the solution for everyone, but for those where it addresses a problem, it really is a magic bullet. But for any one person, YMMV.

I see where you're coming from, with all the hype around keto and my referring to it as a "magic" diet, it probably comes across like I'm pushing this for everybody, always, but if you look at my original post, I am not doing this at all. But it's 100% wrong to say that the benefits of low carb / keto is "pseudoscience". Agreed that there are many studies showing that macronutrients ratios barely matter, but there are also a ton of studies showing that macronutrients DO matter (see the studies I linked for examples of studies with both results). And macros DEFINITELY matter a lot for at least 1 in 3 Americans. So it's not something to brush off.

Nutrition and weight-loss research results are notoriously vague and un-reproducible. Most studies use some combination of small samples, weak controls, or looks at too few variables to be considered "proof" of anything. It's not because nutrition scientists are dumb, it's just that good and ethical study design is really hard, and the full set of biological and environmental variables at work that impact weight gain/loss are poorly understood and generally impossible to quantify. So you can cherry pick studies to show that macros don't matter (for those without insulin problems), and you can just as easily cherry pick those that show they do.

Blanket statements like "the only reason people lose weight on keto is because they generally also change X or Y" is actually pseudoscience itself (although it is sometimes taught in the mainstream), because this represents a cherry-picking of scientific evidence on macros and weight loss, when if you look objectively at the science, the actual results are all over the place. And this position is harmful to the hundreds of millions of people for whom studies have shown low carb/keto would definitely provide a health benefit, which are the 1 in 3 Americans who have clinically significant insulin resistance.

So if you define a "normal person" as a "healthy" person who has a good insulin response, then I'm inclined to agree with you that the carb/fat ratio barely matters. But I think that's misleading, because if you consider a "normal person" in this case to be an actual average person on these forums, and then on top of that you filter for people who have a lot of sugar in their diet and have been gaining weight (like the OP), then you are looking at a >50% chance that they have an insulin resistance issue and a low carb diet is a really good choice.



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26 Feb 2018, 12:16 am

The problem with most(if not all) of the studies, is that they don't control for fiber and protein. If you're suddenly eating 3 avacados a day, and veggies for dinner, that's alot of fiber.

You know what, I actually don't disagree with you. I guess just tend to play devils advocate on these matters, because I've debated too many people who became dogmatic about low carb, and then thought it was the only way to lose weight(in all scenarios).

Your point about what a normal person is, is a good one, but keep in mind that here in scandinavia for example, the normal person is quite different. Though without even looking at stats, I'm pretty certain that is changing too.

Ideally, people should test it out on an individual basis, and see what works best for them, I just can't stress enough, how important monitoring calorie intake is, otherwise you do not truly now what works best, and you do not know if you can't handle carbs well. I think this is a crucial mistake, because sometimes you see people become afraid of carbs, when they don't need to be, and they become unecessarily restrictive. I also think, that when people have come back to being normal weight, and reversed their insulin resistance, they should slowly reintroduce carbs.

I know for myself, I actually found it easier to get leaner once I added carbs back into my diet, but of course I was already healthy and fairly lean, so that could be because of lack of ghrelin stimulation, but then we're on the edge of what science can actually tell us. I speculate however, that if a person is already lean, and is doing resistance training on a regular basis, there might arise a number of problems because of lack of carbs.



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26 Feb 2018, 12:42 am

liquid calories are less filling than solid calories.

fruit juice is bad because you can easily down glass after glass, and hardly even notice that you've taken in many hundreds of calories and heaping spoonfuls of sugar.


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justRob
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26 Feb 2018, 7:22 am

Closet Genious wrote:
You know what, I actually don't disagree with you. I guess just tend to play devils advocate on these matters, because I've debated too many people who became dogmatic about low carb, and then thought it was the only way to lose weight(in all scenarios).

Your point about what a normal person is, is a good one, but keep in mind that here in scandinavia for example, the normal person is quite different. Though without even looking at stats, I'm pretty certain that is changing too.


I'm with you, man, thanks for saying. I can tell you are pretty informedon this stuff and agree there is too much dogmatism around low carb. That's an interesting point about studies not accounting for change in intake fiber, that definitely seems like a huge problem. As I mentioned I'm a big believer in maintaining a healthy gut biome, and fiber is a big part of that, so yeah if you're not tracking that, you're missing a huge piece of the puzzel.

It may not have been clear but I was recommending specific things for the OP based on what little I knew... he is American, has a high sugar intake, and has had recent weight gain. I get passionate about this and sound dogmatic, because it has helped me personally and it helps address a big health problem in the world (and the US in particular, I know many countries are better, and some are worse... again though, OP is from Ohio). But I should probably work on how I present to avoid triggering people's reactions, the dogmatic view for keto is just as wrong as yhe dogmatic view against it.

Good talk man. Glad there are other nutrition geeks around, we can keep each other honest.