Shake diets, or using meal replacement shakes to help speed up weight loss, have been around for years but are they really a good way to lose weight? Let's take a look at the pros and cons of using diet shakes as a weight loss aid to see if they are the right choice for you.
The Good Aspects of Meal Replacement Shakes
The biggest benefit to replacing some of your meals with shakes is that it is really easy and take a lot of the guesswork out of dieting. You just grab a shake for breakfast and another for lunch, so there is no need to try to plan a healthy, balanced meal or prepare food for those meals.
Shakes are particularly beneficial if you normally miss a meal because you don't have time. For instance, if you always skip breakfast it is much better to grab a meal replacement shake instead since it has been shown that eating breakfast helps to promote long-term weight control.
The Bad Aspects of Shake Diets
For the most part, the bad points of dieting with shakes outweigh the good points. First, there is really no substitute for the nutrients that you get from real food. Not only does eating fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein give your body the nutrients that it needs, but it also forces you to learn how to eat for long term weight loss.
When you use meal replacement shakes to lose weight you aren't developing eating skills that you can use going forward into your life. As a result, what happens to many people when they stop drinking the shakes is that they put any weight they have lost back on again.
Another problem with using diet shakes is that you still have to try to plan a healthy, balanced dinner each night. Many people wind up eating too much food for dinner or snacking in the evening because they are left feeling hungry. Often times people wind up eating more calories at night when they only drink shakes during the day than they normally would have eaten and as a result don't see any weight loss.
All in all there are much better ways to diet and to learn how to keep weight off for good than using diet shakes. For instance, following a diet like Fat Loss 4 Idiots is still very easy, but you eat real foods, give your body the nutrition and energy that it needs and learn healthy eating habits that you can use to maintain your weight loss for the rest of your life.
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Good luck!
