Do Meal Replacements Deliver Results?
You might have seen some fitness professionals suggesting meal replacement products to their clients to help them achieve their fitness goals.
With clients who have weight loss goals, three potential options to create an energy deficit is often discussed. A reduced-calorie diet and an increase in overall activities, or meal replacements (to create a deficit anyways)
What are Meal Replacements?
Meal replacements are replacements for staple food items, which generally keep a person full, or hungry as per their volume, requirement, and application. They can be beverages, prepackages of shelf-stable and/or frozen entrees, breakfast cereals, and meal/snack bars that are eaten to replace a higher calorie meal, or can be a high calorie, low volume meal themselves.
Commercial meal replacements are often marketed as vitamin, mineral, and protein-fortified foods. They are sometimes combined in a Restrictive calorie diet to reach the desired daily caloric deficit (Heymsfield et al., 2003).
When to use these replacements?
Till the time a person is able to meet the needs with whole foods, these meal replacement \supplemets aren't necessary. As soon as a person’s hunger levels and calorie requirements take over, they can consider these replacements.
While during a calorie deficit, these can help to tackle deficiencies and hunger, they can also help people meet the nutrient and calorie needs during a surplus.
How to Choose an Effective Meal Replacement?
Meal replacements should be considered after assessing the diet, nutrient intake, and hunger levels thoroughly.
Common examples:
- Mass gainers - They are packed with a lot of calories, and can help a person reach their calorie goals, even when a person isn’t able to eat a lot. Due to them being liquid in nature, they can be consumed easily.
- Peanut butter - Having similar benefits as mass gainer shakes, carries a lot of calories, and can help complete the calorie needs in a much easier way.
- Whey protein - It is a meal replacement as well as a protein supplement. Its applications are many, including completion of protein, and can help tackle hunger for some individuals.
Authors opinion:
Commercial meal replacements aren’t a good option to be considered during a fat loss journey. They put a person in an extreme calorie deficit by cutting down on whole foods and making a person survive on meal replacement shakes, or so-called superfoods. Apart from that, due to the transition of food choices from whole foods to these replacements, these meal replacements can hamper sustainability, as no one can find it easy to not eat anything and just survive on shakes and replacements for a lifetime. Last but not the least, they’re over expensive and can cost you too much apart from your money, YOUR HEALTH.
References:
Heymsfield, S.B., van Mierlo, C.A., van der Knaap, H.C., Heo, M., and Frier, H.I. (2003) Weight management using a meal replacement strategy: meta and pooling analysis from six studies. International Journal of Obesity, 27(5), 537-549.
