Using Meal Replacement Shakes For Weight Loss

When it comes to losing weight, most people find that it's an uphill battle. Simply because food just tastes so good, and the pleasure of eating is just so compelling, the battle is lost at the first bite. Heck, even at the first whiff of that delightful apple pie fresh from your gramma's oven, you've lost the war with the scale right then and there.

Temptations abound for every dieter. Weight loss no longer remains a challenge to overcome, weight loss efforts have become an excruciating ordeal to deal with.

Meal Replacement Shakes may be a solution to someone who is bent on losing all that extra flab. The formula for these dietary supplements is generally high protein, low fat. This ensures that someone with the goal to lose weight will be able to shed the fat they need to lose, because building muscle ensures that the fat in a person aiming to lose weight gets burned. Recall a concept in nutrition that muscle burns energy, as measured in calories. Thus, building muscle helps a person burn fat and ultimately lose weight.

Meal Replacement Shakes for weight loss seek to achieve one thing: lower the calories per serving of every meal. Another concept in nutrition is that weight loss is achieved by lowering the overall calorie content of a meal, creating a deficit of calories consumed. This deficit causes the body to rely on its reserves of energy, as stored in body fat, thus causing weight loss.

What Makes a Good Meal Replacement Shake?

While we've associated "meal replacement shake" with brands like Ultra Slim Fast, which are actually loaded with sugar and carbohydrates, there are great brands of meal replacements which are healthy and pack vitamins and minerals in a meal replacement shake. The best meal replacement shake is thus characterized by the following features: 

It should contain whey protein, which is derived from cheese production. It is not only a good source of protein, it was also found to boost the immune system of the body.

Another source of protein in a good meal replacement shake should be soy protein. Soy protein is considered "the most complete protein." Soy contains isoflavones, which potentially prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer.

A good meal replacement shake should thus contain more protein, and be low carb. Carbohydrates convert to sugar, which then convert to fat, thus encouraging weight gain. Making sure that your meal replacement shakes are low carb would be your assurance that you won't be sabotaging your efforts in weight loss.

As a weight loss meal, shakes could be had either during breakfast, which nobody should skip, for dinner, which most of us could use having less calories with, as we burn less calories when we sleep, or as a part of a six-smaller-meal diet program. These strategies in one's diet are engineered to maximize the calorie-burning mechanism of the body, while maintaining the dieter's health.

If you are thinking about just modifying the calorie quantity of your food intake, but maintaining the 3-meal-a-day schedule, then a diet milkshake could take the place of either your breakfast or dinner, or, it could take the place of both your breakfast and dinner, for a more aggressive weight loss plan. You could have the milkshake with a piece of fruit, or a cup of high-fiber, low-fat, low sugar cereal. 

If you want to speed up your metabolism, then having 6 smaller meals is advised. You could halve the portions of what you usually eat for your smaller meals. Here is a sample weight loss meal plan for your benefit:

Breakfast: 1 protein-rich meal replacement shake, 1 hard boiled egg, or 1 cup cereal with 1/4 to 1/3 cup milk, or 1 piece of fruit.

Mid-morning mini-meal: 1 banana, 1/2 cup strawberries and half a sandwich. Sandwich is composed of 2 slices whole wheat bread, 2 to 4 leaves lettuce, 1 to 2 slices tomato, 1 slice cheese, 1 slice lean cut meat or leftover chicken breast, 1/2 teaspoon fat-free or light dressing. Don't forget to slice the sandwich in half and just have one-half of it for the mid-morning mini-meal.

Lunch: The other half of the sandwich, 1 glass milk or 1 glass melon slush: Just 1/2 to 1 cup melon pulp, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, no milk.

Mid-afternoon mini-meal: 1/2 cup nuts, 3 pieces Dark Chocolate Hershey's Kisses (live a little!), and 1 piece banana or a slice of another kind of fruit.

Dinner: 1 protein-rich meal replacement shake, 1 piece of cheese.

This is just a suggestion, but we hope you get the idea of how to plan your meals. When you plan your other meals, make sure that your food choices are:

• Low in fat
• Low in sugar
• High in protein
• High in fiber
• High in nutrients, vitamins and minerals
• Contain healthy, herbal supplements, if you like.

As for your meal replacement shakes, make sure that the products you choose contain good stuff. Again, high-fiber, high-protein, low-fat, low-sugar. It would be great if they contain seaweed or seaweed extracts, too. Seaweeds actually bind to fat, thus making your fat loss efforts faster. 

Make your food and meal replacement choices wisely, exercise properly, and you'll be sure to lose weight effectively!