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Meal replacement drinks

Silver5374

Silver5374

Well-Known Member
Messages
62
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Hi, due to wok commitments I am struggling to eat a low carb menu and although it is still a bit healthy the weight is creeping back on and I was wondering what you all thought of meal replacement drinks like slimfast, Atkins or similar. I was thinking maybe doing this eating plan for 2 weeks till work got a bit less crazy as it means I don't need to think about what I was eating.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
 
Silver5374 said:
Hi, due to wok commitments I am struggling to eat a low carb menu and although it is still a bit healthy the weight is creeping back on and I was wondering what you all thought of meal replacement drinks like slimfast, Atkins or similar. I was thinking maybe doing this eating plan for 2 weeks till work got a bit less crazy as it means I don't need to think about what I was eating.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Obviously, it's entirely up to you how you deal with this, but meal replacements wouldn't be for me.

I guess, my questions would be to ask how often work gets silly, and therefore is this something you will do every time work gets hard? What would be the objective of the meal replacements? Lose/maintain weight, or just take food choices out of the equation? If you're looking to lose weight, perhaps it's not the best timing to tackle this when you have a lot of stressful activity in play? If you want to maintain, how many shakes would you be consuming at a mealtime? If only c200, would you need to make up the deficit at other times to maintain weight? Would the drinks sustain you, or would hunger conspire with the stress?

And finally (ish), I have never taken these shakes myself, but they do appear to be fairly high carb in their make-up, but the low calorie and otherwise calorie restriction of the likes of the Newcastle Diet, mean the day is still relatively low-cal/carb because of the other food restrictions.

Would it not be better to plan and be organised when you know things are stressy? So, either taking a suitable meal with you to work, that you can grab and eat as and when time allows, or compile a decent list of options from wherever you normally buy your food at work, so that you only have to pick something from your list, rather than be constantly making food choices.

Apologies if I've mis-interpreted your intentions.
 
There are low carb protein powders that you can mix with water (or milk, for higher carbs) - they are usually artificially sweetened and flavoured. I find them too sweet-tasting now that I've adapted to the LCHF diet, actually. But I don't think it would be sustainable to replace all food with drinks/shakes/bars - even the 600 Kcal Newcastle diet contains a plate of salad vegetables per day.
 
Thank you both for your replies, I only intend replacing breakfast and lunch, evening meal will still be low carb meat, veg.
 
If its just for a few weeks whilst work is busy and you have no time to plan, why not have same lowcarb thing each day.

I have low carb full fat yogurt with flax seed each work morning, its very quick and easy, low carb and low calories (no more than a shake!) and it keeps me full for 6 hours ( i am up just after 5am and don't have lunch till noon).

Then I have a packed lunch - cucumber or pepper strips, few olives, small piece of cheese. Lots of taste, low carb and again less calories than a typical shake, this keeps me full until evening meal at 6pm. Lunch takes me less than 5 mins to prepare night before so no hardship at all.

I find the crunchy and chewing with raw cucumber or pepper helps me feel that I have actually eaten something, I have tried the Atkins shakes, but they do contain a lot of sweeteners. More importantly they raised by BG levels more than the raw cucumber or pepper lunch does, so I would suggest you test before buying a few.
 
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