health shakes

jobless

Hey all,

I recently visited a friend who is trying to keep fit/lose weight, he replaces his dinner two or three nights a week with home made health shakes…..he puts frozen yoghurts, fruit, and protein from a tub into them. They taste lovely to be honest.
What i’m wondering though is, is this a good thing to do to lose weight? I’m thinking of doing something similar but am worried that replacing a whole dinner (main meal of the day) is bad?

For those of you that male your own health shakes…..have you any good links to recipes?... or any of your own?

Thanks for any advice

rubadub

Well to lose weight it is best not to actually have a "main meal". Aim for 6 equally sized, equally spaced (timewise), meals per day. If any meal is to be bigger it should be breakfast. 6 small meals boosts your metabolism, you are less likely to snack as the next meal is never far away. Also you stomach never gets stretched so it shrinks, and you feel full quicker because of this.

He is eating fruit and protein in the shake so it is basically a meal, just liquidised up. Some consider whey only as a supplement to a "normal" diet. Well I like whey and it IS part of my normal diet, along with stuff that could be considered supplements if you people did not traditionally drink the milk of another species, or reconstituted concentrated fruit juice. Most will recommend whole foods, and most people do not need much extra protein, it is really needed if you are trying to put on muscle (highly recommended to lose fat).

There is no real advantage to it for losing wieght/fat, you lose fat by expending more calories than you ingest. If you drank 4000kcal of shakes a day you would be hard pushed to lose fat.

The stickies are well worth a read.

mack1

I would argue that it will actually hinder weight loss - the high sugar content of the fruit will cause insulin spikes that I would certainly rather limit to pre & post training. Not to mention that it can't really keep you full for that long.

OP - if you want to lose weight ignore the gimmicks, ignore the fads, just eat right (read the stickies) and do some exercise.

jobless

rubadub wrote: »

Well to lose weight it is best not to actually have a "main meal". Aim for 6 equally sized, equally spaced (timewise), meals per day. If any meal is to be bigger it should be breakfast. 6 small meals boosts your metabolism, you are less likely to snack as the next meal is never far away. Also you stomach never gets stretched so it shrinks, and you feel full quicker because of this.

6 meals a day equalled sized sounds good in theory, but if you're working in a an office its hard enough to achieve...
What size meal would your meal be normally?....
I normally just have breakfast, a lunch around midday and then a dinner (useually a lot bigger than lunch) at around 6-6.30...
is this really that bad?....
thanks 4 ur reply

amazingemmet

jobless wrote: »

6 meals a day equalled sized sounds good in theory, but if you're working in a an office its hard enough to achieve...

Well if you want to get into shape these are the things you have to do simple as really.

Figure out your total cals for the day and divide by six. Though personally I eat a much bigger meal cal wise at breakfast then the rest of the day.

Dragan

mack1 wrote: »

I would argue that it will actually hinder weight loss - the high sugar content of the fruit will cause insulin spikes that I would certainly rather limit to pre & post training. Not to mention that it can't really keep you full for that long.

OP - if you want to lose weight ignore the gimmicks, ignore the fads, just eat right (read the stickies) and do some exercise.

Hmmm..... since when was eating fruit not eating right? Personally i think people blow the effects of fruit way out of proportion when it comes to losing weight. I can only think of one concentrated cut where i did not eat fruit....every other time i happily eat fruit 3 to 4 times a day and do not feel like it has ever impeeded my weightloss.

If anything it kept energy levels up for more work in the gym and cravings for bad sugar sources down.

rubadub

I work in an office, I can eat quick enough though, and can sort of pick my own breaks, I take a few short ones.

You have to calculate what you need to be eating to lose fat. Have a look here

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50956807&postcount=4

Say I want 1900kcal a day. I could go 400 breakfast, and 300 for the other 5 meals. If you are in the office the other 5 could be made up of 200, 400, 200, 400, 300.

Or any combination you want, most could manage to eat an apple or banana at their desk. Many have this thing about "avoiding snacking" probably watching too many ads. You do not want to snack on junk food, but continually snacking on good food prevents "bad snacking".

HammerHeadGym

I think that mack 1 is referring to liquidised fruit, which contains no fibre and hence nothing to stop the fructose rapidly entering the blood stream and creating an insulin spike.

But I don't know.

Dragan

HammerHeadGym wrote: »

I think that mack 1 is referring to liquidised fruit, which contains no fibre and hence nothing to stop the fructose rapidly entering the blood stream and creating an insulin spike.

But I don't know.

Liquidised fruit will still contain plenty of fibre.....it is just pre masticated, so to speak.

I would consider thinking about something like that to be worrying about things a bit too much to be honest.

rubadub

HammerHeadGym wrote: »

I think that mack 1 is referring to liquidised fruit, which contains no fibre and hence nothing to stop the fructose rapidly entering the blood stream and creating an insulin spike.

But I don't know.

The fibre is still there, it is just equivalent to chewing it up really well. If totally liquidised it may be absorbed a little faster, but the fibre is still doing you good. It is fruit juice you want to avoid, esp. stuff made from concentrate, or any heat treated stuff.

HammerHeadGym

I was under the impression that once it's liquidised in a blender, a combination of heat and trauma makes it useless. Is this wrong?

I hard the new machines that masticate rather than blend retain the majority of the fibre.

jobless

rubadub wrote: »

I work in an office, I can eat quick enough though, and can sort of pick my own breaks, I take a few short ones.

You have to calculate what you need to be eating to lose fat. Have a look here

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50956807&postcount=4

Say I want 1900kcal a day. I could go 400 breakfast, and 300 for the other 5 meals. If you are in the office the other 5 could be made up of 200, 400, 200, 400, 300.

Or any combination you want, most could manage to eat an apple or banana at their desk. Many have this thing about "avoiding snacking" probably watching too many ads. You do not want to snack on junk food, but continually snacking on good food prevents "bad snacking".

thanks again rubadub..
could you give me an example of the 5 snacks you may have during the day (i'm clueless).... i do have an apple and banana in the afternoons, would this constitute a sufficiant snack for you?....
Do you cut out a evening dinner completely from your diet then?

rubadub

HammerHeadGym wrote: »

I was under the impression that once it's liquidised in a blender, a combination of heat and trauma makes it useless. Is this wrong?

I hard the new machines that masticate rather than blend retain the majority of the fibre.

Never heard that, I do mine with ice usually so no real heat, even so the heat would not be that great. You can buy highly processed fibre extract which I presume does some good.

jobless wrote: »

i do have an apple and banana in the afternoons, would this constitute a sufficiant snack for you?....

Most will say to try and get a balanced meal in, and protein with every meal. I eat so frequently that I can probably get away with protein and then fruit. I might cook up a bit batch of spag bol, and calculated the calorie content, then weigh it into individual jars to be 350kcal each, then bring them into work and microwave as needed. I eat chicken fillets, using iceberg lettuce as wraps, with chilli sauce, or salad cream. Apples, oranges, most are around 100-150kcal depending on size, bananas are ok but higher in calories (more sugar content) and higher GI.

jobless wrote: »

Do you cut out a evening dinner completely from your diet then?

I try to, as in no huge/main meal. Sometimes I will have a slightly bigger dinner, but would usually be doing a workout afterwards so it fuels that. You could cook your dinner and simply eat half it at 6, half again at 8. I know younger people might still have their mother cooking for them, and could ask for some to be set aside for later. I can have 10+ "meals" a day, last night I was eating pork steaks at 11.30pm.

mack1

Dragan wrote: »

Hmmm..... since when was eating fruit not eating right? Personally i think people blow the effects of fruit way out of proportion when it comes to losing weight. I can only think of one concentrated cut where i did not eat fruit....every other time i happily eat fruit 3 to 4 times a day and do not feel like it has ever impeeded my weightloss.

If anything it kept energy levels up for more work in the gym and cravings for bad sugar sources down.

Not saying it's bad, just that it's not a replacement for dinner and it is high in sugar and hence has an affect on insulin, which probably isn't optimal for weight loss.

hardtrainer

A couple of things to consider.

Fibre is not damaged by blending food or even cooking food. Thats the nature of fibre. Otherwise cooking food and chewing it would be a really bad thing to do and we all know thats not the case. Just because you can't easily see the fibre, doesn't mean it's not doing it's job perfectly well.

Juicers are a very different thing since they separate the juice from fruits or veg, from the pulp (fibre). This is not good, unless you also consume the pulp (great for thickening veg soup!!).

As for the shakes being high in sugar, that depends on the proportion of the shake made up of fruit. Fruit is high in fructose, which is technically low in Gi but it does still have an effect on insulin, just not to the same degree as glucose or sucrose. There's lots of other little perculiarities to fructose too, like the liver's love for it, hence it's not the best choice for replenishing muscle glycogen after a workout.

'Health shakes' are not really a great choice for assisting weight loss in the same way that slim fast isn't a great choice. Part of the problem lies in habits of eating. One can very quickly and easily drink 600-1000 cals, whereas a well thought out meal can come in at under 400 cals and leave you feeling more full for longer.

The aim really with eating many regular meals throughout the day is to stabilise insulin levels to create the most optimal conditions for fat burning and avoid the conditions where fat storage occurs. You can do this relatively easily, even in an office, so long as you consume a steady supply of quality, complex carbohydrate. Oats are excellent and cheap and can be made very tasty. Homemade and healthy oatmeal bars, along with some carrot sticks and/or quality brown bread make a quick meal that you can eat at your desk in 5 or 10 mins while working.

g'em

^^^ Spot on hardtrainer, lovely post.

Roper

basically:

Fruit= Great

Fruit Juices= Good but not great.

However OP if your mate is replacing a meal that should have vitamins and protein with vitamins and protein I'd say he/she is wasting their time and should probably just learn to cook better meals.

A chicken breast with some nice veg would be far superior to what you described. What your mate is doing is just a fad.