Shakes and bars as meal replacement

Trojan

Hi all,

I'm trying to wean myself of my terrible 2 meal a day diet. It consists of no breakfast, small but semi-healthy lunch, semi-healthy but huge dinner late at night. (Yep, I know how stupid it is.) The best thing is a significant amount of water each day (2.5-4L).

I'm finding the 5/6 smaller meals a day thing tough to work out. I can probably do 4 pretty well, starting with porridge with added fibre breakfast, some sort of wholemeal & protein sandwich for lunch, smaller dinner & wholemeal sandwich or soup supper. Sometimes I get a soya milk/banana/matcha green tea smoothie in there.

To keep it to 5 and even 6 consistently will be difficult. One thing I've been looking at is the meal replacement shakes and bars from Maximuscle etc. I bought a couple of the bars to try them out (Promax, Promax Diet, Viper) and they're a lot more filling and better tasting than I expected. I can see them being useful when travelling/busy/shops closed etc. I haven't used the shakes yet, might buy a smaller tub to experiment.

What I'm wondering is does anyone here actually use these type of bars and shakes as a meal replacement?

Any other comments or suggestions?

Thanks!



Training: full body weights session 2 days per week, rugby training (heavy cardio, some anerobic) 1-2 days per week (varies), 60 mins cardio (cycling) 1-2 times per week, minimal cardio on off days.

Weight: 105 kg.
Daily Kcal requirement: 3 399.7 (I'd like to run at a 500 Kcal deficit for a month or 2)

EileenG

I won't say I never use them, but I keep them strictly for emergencies. I've got one in my bike bag for if I get stranded on the side of a mountain somewhere with no food, and I carry a couple if I'm travelling and miss meals to catch planes etc.

Other than that, I try to avoid them. They are either loaded with sugar or with sugar alcohols. Both are bad. They have a surprizing amount of calories for the size of them, and I'd be very dubious about the quality of protein in them. They are also very expensive for what they are.

I always try to take a whey shake after lifting weights, but I don't generally use them as meal replacements.

Boil a dozen eggs, and eat a hard boiled egg when you need a quick snack. You can buy tubs of cottage cheese very cheaply in any supermarket, and they have lots of slow-release protein which keeps you feeling full. A packet of nuts is a handy snack, almonds are better than peanuts.

g'em

Eileen is bang on - they're great as an emergency, but not really something to be relied upon. I know it can feel *extremely* daunting trying to perfect your diet, but don't worry if you don't get it right straight off the bat.

Three meals will be better than two, four meals will be better than three, and sooner or later 5 meals will become entirely normal to you. Find easy to eat, easy to transport snacks and you're laughing. Fruit, nuts, yoghurts, dried fruit - all fine to eat.

EileenG

Opps, this prompted me to check the bar in my bike bag. It expired in 2005.

ApeXaviour

Trojan wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm trying to wean myself of my terrible 2 meal a day diet. It consists of no breakfast, small but semi-healthy lunch, semi-healthy but huge dinner late at night. (Yep, I know how stupid it is.)

Hi, just wondering what you think is wrong with two meals a day? There's a growing popularity among the healthy eating / evolutionary fitness crowd with intermittent fasting. It has plenty of benefits, like decreased insulin resistance.
I'd say it's more important what you're eating in that big dinner?

As far as snacks go, stay away from the bars. As eileen said nuts are great for a snack (not peanuts, they're really legumes and just nasty things), walnuts or almonds are the best. They've got a decent (if not ideal) ratio of omega 3 to omega 6. Plus they're oily which, if you give them a few minutes, will make you feel full for longer.

g'em

EileenG wrote: »

Opps, this prompted me to check the bar in my bike bag. It expired in 2005.

ROFL

ApeXaviour wrote: »

Hi, just wondering what you think is wrong with two meals a day? There's a growing popularity among the healthy eating / evolutionary fitness crowd with intermittent fasting. It has plenty of benefits, like decreased insulin resistance.
I'd say it's more important what you're eating in that big dinner?

In this instance I'd imagine that a 105kg (presumably) male individual who is weight training, rugby training and cycling every week will fare better obtaining their 4,000 cals per day from smaller meals spread throughout the day rather than cramming them into two big ones?

ApeXaviour

g'em wrote: »

In this instance I'd imagine that a 105kg (presumably) male individual who is weight training, rugby training and cycling every week will fare better obtaining their 4,000 cals per day from smaller meals spread throughout the day rather than cramming them into two big ones?

Why not? That's closer to the way we evolved to eat. Plus it's mostly athletes and body builders who are on this kind of diet, it appears to work best with intense exercise (as in fasting before exercising).

http://alanaragon.com/an-objective-look-at-intermittent-fasting.html

Whatever the results of Intermittent Fasting, and they are controversial I'll admit, it has shown one thing: increasing meal frequency gives no tangible improvement. It may lower cholesterol, but it won't change the ratio of HDL/LDL which is the important thing, plus some studies have shown it to decrease insulin sensitivity, undesirable. However, if one is not IFing, then skipping breakfast is generally a bad idea. The body is "metabolically primed" for food after a 12 hour night-time fast. Dietry protein is a good thing to include in breakfast (so not just coffee and a banana) since muscle protein synthesis is relatively low at this time.

Trojan

ApeXaviour wrote: »

Hi, just wondering what you think is wrong with two meals a day?

Because my 2 meals were at waking+6 and waking+12, I was absolutely starving for 6+ hours a day, so I held it off with copious amounts of coffee. Not a great way to do things I'll be the first to admit!

Perhaps 2 big meals shifted 6 hours backward that could work, but I think I'll experiment with 4/5/6 meals first


To clarify regarding type of bar I mentioned in the OP for meal replacement purposes, I meant protein heavy, relatively low GI & Kcal bars, not the honey and chocolate nut bars you get in Centra. I'll use the example of the Promax bar contents only because I've tried this one - I'd love to know about other, similar and better tasting bars (though I think they taste pretty ok actually!)

Promax Bar info wrote:

Nutrition Information: Per 60gm bar
Energy 206Kcal/868kJ
Protein 21g
Carbohydrate 17.4g
of which sugars 9.5g
of which polyols 4.4g
Fat 6g
of which saturates 2.7g
Fibre 3.9g
Sodium 0.08g

Ingredients:
BIOMAX™ (a Maximuscle proprietary high quality blend of whey protein), milk proteins, inverted sugar syrup, dark chocolate, oligofructose, carrier: maltitol, vegetable fats, natural strawberry flavour (4%), stabilisers: glycerol, sorbitol, barley malt extract, vegetable oil, flavouring, colour: E124.

g'em

ApeXaviour wrote: »

Why not? That's closer to the way we evolved to eat. Plus it's mostly athletes and body builders who are on this kind of diet, it appears to work best with intense exercise (as in fasting before exercising).

We didn't evolve in order to eat any way. We don't evolve anything with a purpopse in mind. No-one is entirely sure how our ancestors ate, they would have had food in abundance at certain times of the year and probably ate often, and had food more scarcely at other times of the year so fasting was probably not preferred, but forced. You can also throw in regional and geographical differences.

And that's one forum that shows BBers and athletes eating like that. I guarantee you that they are in the minority. Many and most athletes or individuals who undergo intense training on a routine basis will say that eating regularly is the best way to stay energised and nutrient-happy.

ApeXaviour wrote: »

Whatever the results of Intermittent Fasting, and they are controversial I'll admit, it has shown one thing: increasing meal frequency gives no tangible improvement.

Study links?

From an athletes pov, frequent eating will also help keep the body in an anabolic environment, by maintaining the positive nitrogen balance. Regular meals will tend to lead to less overall calorie intake.

It will of course all come down to personal preference for the individual, but anecdotally and personally I've found that smaller, evenly spaced meals will help me attain physique and sports goals much easier than big infrequent feedings.

just to throw these in:
Regular eating has beneficial effects on fasting lipid and postprandial insulin profiles and thermogenesis
^^ this was done on obese women though..

...irregular meal frequency appears to produce a degree of insulin resistance and higher fasting lipid profiles
lean women, but again teeny tiny sample, only 9 this time.

EileenG

Yes, I think we knew what type of bar you were talking about, but if you look, there's still a lot of junk in that. Quite apart from "propriertry blend" protein, which always makes me suspicious, you've got sugar syrup, maltitol, sorbitol, vegetable oil (always suspicious if they don't name it), glycerol, colouring and flavouring.

There are a lot of recipes floating around for homemade protein bars, which would be much better quality than those. Cheaper too.

Everytime I'm tempted by one of those bars, I look at the calorie count and realise I could have a small steak and big lump of broccoli for the same calories.

ApeXaviour

g'em wrote: »

We didn't evolve in order to eat any way. We don't evolve anything with a purpopse in mind.

I disagree somewhat there. It could be said we evolved with survival in mind, and anything that helped us live optimally in our environment was kept. That of course doesn't mean forced fasting is the optimal way for us to live, but there's something to be said for it. Most of us I imagine, fast somewhat before exercising.

g'em wrote: »

No-one is entirely sure how our ancestors ate, they would have had food in abundance at certain times of the year and probably ate often, and had food more scarcely at other times of the year so fasting was probably not preferred, but forced. You can also throw in regional and geographical differences.

Yes yes we're not sure etc. But reasonable assumptions can be made based on modern hunter gatherer diets, and assuming the Recent African Origin theory is correct, availability. It isn't really conceivable that they ate 5-6 times a day though.

From: http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/99/6/2128

url above wrote:

Insulin resistance is currently a major health problem. This may be because of a marked decrease in daily physical activity during recent decades combined with constant food abundance. This lifestyle collides with our genome, which was most likely selected in the late Paleolithic era (50,000-10,000 BC) by criteria that favored survival in an environment characterized by fluctuations between periods of feast and famine. The theory of thrifty genes states that these fluctuations are required for optimal metabolic function.

Don't take me the wrong way please, I'm somewhat playing devil's advocate here. I'm not saying I.F. is the way forward, at all.

g'em wrote: »

And that's one forum that shows BBers and athletes eating like that. I guarantee you that they are in the minority. Many and most athletes or individuals who undergo intense training on a routine basis will say that eating regularly is the best way to stay energised and nutrient-happy.

Yes you're right. Some are even crazy enough to disturb their own sleep to down a protein shake, they're that afraid of catabolism.

g'em wrote: »

It will of course all come down to personal preference for the individual.

Absolutely. I knew an italian who'd eat once a day, though would be a ritual that would often last between about 8-10pm. He only slept 8 hours a night (something I can't get my head around). Not an athletic man by any regards. But he was lean, clever and had more energy than anybody I ever met.

g'em wrote: »

just to throw these in:
Regular eating has beneficial effects on fasting lipid and postprandial insulin profiles and thermogenesis
^^ this was done on obese women though..

...irregular meal frequency appears to produce a degree of insulin resistance and higher fasting lipid profiles
lean women, but again teeny tiny sample, only 9 this time.

It's important I feel to note here that infrequent does not mean irregular. Your metabolism "expects" food at certain times, and prepares for it. The better it can do this the more efficiently everything runs... it's just common sense. Even I.F.ers, as extreme as they are they eat regularly, if infrequently.

g'em

ApeXaviour wrote: »

I disagree somewhat there. It could be said we evolved with survival in mind, and anything that helped us live optimally in our environment was kept. That of course doesn't mean forced fasting is the optimal way for us to live, but there's something to be said for it. Most of us I imagine, fast somewhat before exercising.

I would argue that even survival was unintentional - mutations occurred, those with mutations that created an adaptation that conferred a better chance of survival lived long enough to pass on their genetic information, including the information contained in those mutations.

ApeXaviour wrote:

Yes you're right. Some are even crazy enough to disturb their own sleep to down a protein shake, they're that afraid of catabolism.

lol, touche!! Those BBers, I'd imagine, would be in the minority, much like the ones who find IF'ing suited to their needs

Yeah, I totally agree with what you're saying about IF, it's certainly a used and viable alternative. But for the majority of people, the frequent, small meal style of eating is easier to manage and easier to stick to?

ApeXaviour

g'em wrote: »

I would argue that even survival was unintentional - mutations occurred, those with mutations that created an adaptation that conferred a better chance of survival lived long enough to pass on their genetic information, including the information contained in those mutations.

Okay okay pedanticism aside, the result is the same.

g'em wrote: »

Yeah, I totally agree with what you're saying about IF, it's certainly a used and viable alternative. But for the majority of people, the frequent, small meal style of eating is easier to manage and easier to stick to?

Absolutely... I hear IF is damn difficult until you've been doing it a while.

Nothingcompares

ApeXaviour wrote: »

Okay okay pedanticism aside, the result is the same.

no, you're saying giraffes grew longer necks because they wanted to eat leaves at the top of the trees. this is wrong and demonstrates a lack of understanding of what evolution is, however, I know you know what evolution is.

trojan is your problem with the meals practical? You just don't have the time to sit down and have a meal 4/5 times a day or do you find it difficult to actually eat?

Trojan

Nothingcompares wrote:

trojan is your problem with the meals practical? You just don't have the time to sit down and have a meal 4/5 times a day or do you find it difficult to actually eat?

I've no problem actually eating, nope

It's mainly a combination of several things which have me searching for meals that are healthy, tasy, filling and convenient. The main ones are lack of consistency and routine in my daily plans, a fair amount of travel and lack of knowledge (which I'm fixing on here).

Interesting digression on this topic too


-

ApeXaviour

Nothingcompares wrote: »

no, you're saying giraffes grew longer necks because they wanted to eat leaves at the top of the trees. this is wrong and demonstrates a lack of understanding of what evolution is, however, I know you know what evolution is.

It's still pedantic. "You could say we evolved with survival in mind", which you could, the result is the same, it's a way of looking at it. I didn't say I was saying it.

Yes, if nit-picking is your thing, there was a error in how I phrased what I originally said, since it's just easier. For the sake of a point like that being made I think it better to say "we didn't evolve to eat grass" than to draw with something like: "the unintentional genetic mutations that drew away from grass consumption gave greater chance of this genetic information to be passed on and still be in existence today".

Nothingcompares

ApeXaviour wrote: »

It's still pedantic. "You could say we evolved with survival in mind", which you could, the result is the same, it's a way of looking at it. I didn't say I was saying it.

Yes, if nit-picking is your thing, there was a error in how I phrased what I originally said, since it's just easier. For the sake of a point like that being made I think it better to say "we didn't evolve to eat grass" than to draw with something like: "the unintentional genetic mutations that drew away from grass consumption gave greater chance of this genetic information to be passed on and still be in existence today".

I really don't understand the convoluted point you're trying to make especially with your badly written text in italics.

g'em

This is, after all, the Nutrition and Diet Forum. Discussing evolution with reference to dietary requirements is cool. Discussions about the mechanisms of evolution is probably better off in one of the Science fora Merci buckets.