The Best Way to Use a Meal Replacement Shake
If we are serious about weight loss, we know we need to be serious about meal planning.
But with busy lives, it is simply a fact that sometimes we run out of time to plan recipes ahead, draw up shopping lists, prep ingredients, and cook the meals we want to.
In short, some days we need a quick cheat.
But we still need to keep our eye on the goal of weight loss and as we are all too well aware, most grab-‘n’-go food is not a dieter’s friend.
In these cases, many dieters will turn to a meal replacement shake – quick, easy, tasty, and created to give our bodies the nutrients we need without overloading on carbs, sugars, and fats.
But it pays dividends to do some research – all meal replacement shakes are simply not the same. While some are very well designed and created, others can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing and may not be nearly as beneficial for our weight loss lifestyle as we are led to believe.
Take the time to do a bit of research into the nutritional labels on the side of the packaging and look into what is really inside your meal replacement. It is a multi-million dollar industry and there are a lot of companies looking for a share of it.
Our first warning sign is the amount of sugar in our shakes. Whether sugar, sugar alcohols, sugar syrups, or sugar alcohols, some manufacturers pack their shakes with the sweet stuff. They know we like sugar, and it can trick our bodies into thinking we have had a fulfilling meal replacement as we get a short-term boost of energy.
But as our quick rush of spiked blood sugar starts to fall, we can soon be left feeling wiped out again, and we have missed out on the essential vitamins and minerals we need for a balanced approach to a meal replacement shake – and worse, we feel hungry again quickly.
Surely artificial sweeteners are ok? They do not have the calorific content of sugar, true, but they get us used to very sweet foods as they are often much sweeter than sugar itself – which means our bodies will not be satisfied with a treat from naturally sweet goods like fruits as they will no longer seem so sweet to us.
As we are looking to replace a whole meal with a shake, we also need to think about ingredients we would not normally expect to be in a traditional milkshake.
Our bodies need protein, fiber, minerals, vitamins, and even healthy fats which we would gain from a well-prepared and balanced meal. Your meal replacement shake may be designed to look, feel and taste like a milkshake treat but it has to be working much harder for you. Look for ones made with fresh wholesome ingredients including fruits and vegetables.
Good ingredients to watch out for include whey, soy, brown rice, pea, and hemp for your proteins, sugars from natural sources such as cane sugar, and fats from plants, nuts, and seeds.
It is also replacing a whole meal which would come with a range of textures as we enjoy chewing and tasting, but as a shake, it will be just one – and one that can be drunk down quite quickly which may leave you feeling dissatisfied or unsated. If this is the case, try different brands as you may find your temptation to have a few extra snacks creeping into your day.
We should also be mindful that a shake is a meal replacement - not a replacement for eating altogether. A balanced meal is still best for our health, but an occasional replacement shake is fine – just keep it to one a day and do not look to regularly replace meals with them.
A good shake will be in the 300 to 400 calorie range and include 15-30 grams of protein and 10-15 grams of unsaturated fats. Watch out for shakes with 250 or fewer calories – they are more of a snack and less likely to tide you through.
Which meal you swap out for a shake is really up to you and knowing your body. Whether it is breakfast or lunch does not particularly make a difference to weight loss, but do not deprive yourself of the essential social interaction we all need by replacing any family meals with a shake – you will simply feel as if you are missing out.
