Are Meal Replacement Diets a Good Idea?

When you're overweight you just want the extra pounds you're carrying to be gone straightaway. You don't want to have face months of calorie-counting and deprivation just so you can call yourself skinny and so it is obviously tempting to look for the quickest route to weight loss. Clearly, if you're more than just a few pounds overweight, and are actually recognised as obese, you may be inclined to take drastic measures to reach your weight-loss goal as quickly as possible. One option is to go on a meal replacement diet, as this saves you the hassle of counting calories. Although there are lots of meal replacement diets to choose from, they are all designed to be nutritionally-balanced and very low in calories in order to speed up your weight loss.

Are meal replacement diets really a good idea, though? You have to be pretty desperate to stick to such an extreme diet. For a start, they aren't exactly cheap and if you have difficulty following such a restrictive diet to the letter you may be throwing money down the drain. With these kinds of diet you cannot eat 'normal' food; instead you have to rely on the pouches and packets you're given. All you have to do is mix the powder with water and you have a shake or soup ready to consume. You don't have to worry if there is too much or whether you're getting the right balance of nutrients. However, you may grow tired of eating the same bland 'meals' every day for months at a time and when you 'cheat' on such a diet it can be extremely difficult to get back on track.

Mind you, sticking to any kind of diet can be a challenge. However, meal replacement diets are very low in calories and so it can be hard to live an active lifestyle without the necessary amount of energy. You may lose weight quickly, but there is also a danger you will be left with excess skin that has become stretched due to your excessive weight. Plus, the chances are you will feel hungry and not particularly good for the first few days of the diet. This will probably pass in time, but there are other health risks associated with losing weight rapidly. You could develop gallstones, for instance, and end up in a lot of pain. There is also the possibility that you may not even be able to keep the weight off once you finish your diet.

This is true of all diets, though, which is why meal replacement diets are not automatically the solution to a weight problem. Clearly, if you're so heavy that your health is beginning to deteriorate, you may need to take drastic action to kick-start your weight loss, especially if you are easily demoralised and need to see huge losses to keep going. However, in the long run, going on a meal replacement diet isn't going to fundamentally change your relationship with food. If you simply go back to eating too much junk food once you finish with the diet, you will end up right back at square one – just as heavy as before and miserable about it.

Thus, in the long run you have to get used to exercising control over what you eat – in terms of the type of food you eat and the quantity – and the amount of physical activity you do. Going on a meal replacement diet may help you to lose the weight, but it certainly won't do anything to help you keep it off and so you have to determine whether this is really the best way to go about weight loss.