Protein and Medical Weight Loss (Part 2)

Eating enough protein to maintain muscle while only lose fat can be a challenge.  The reason is because it is so difficult to get this much protein from regular food while not exceeding your calorie/carbohydrate/fat allowances.  It turns out, based on every single medical research study that looked at the best way to lose fat, keep muscle  and improve health issues like hypertension, diabetes and other obesity related diseases the absolute best approach was adding in two protein based meal replacements per day.  Patients in the studies, when asked, preferred meal replacements because they were more convenient than regular food and less expensive than many other choices in addition to help keeping dieters from making “bad” choices.

 Meal replacements are not just protein shakes. It is confusing for most people as there are so many protein drinks on the market. There are basically four types of protein powders out there but it is important you understand the difference between them so you will be an educated consumer.

Pure Protein

These have only protein (whey, soy, rice etc) and have no micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals so they can be used to supplement protein requirements but are NOT to be used as a total or partial meal replacement which they were not designed for. These drinks are are used for performance and don’t really block hunger.

Bodybuilder Protein

These are designed to help bodybuilders gain muscle AND weight. They frequently have a lot of new. untested and artificially designed  ingredients aimed at making people look like  bodybuilders. if you are looking to look trimmer and fitter and not bulkier these are definitely not for you.  They also were not formulated to block hunger since body builders want to “stay hungry” so they can eat as much as possible to get bigger.

Meal Replacements (commercially available)

Available in stores or on the Internet these typically are  low in quantity/quality  of protein, vitamins, minerals etc. and are not used in physicians offices because of their low quality, low potency and lack of effectiveness and testing.

Medical Meal Replacements

Available only in physicians offices in physicians offices who offer medical weight loss programs, these are the highest quality and most regulated group of the four.  This is definitely want you want to be using for fat loss if you are lucky enough to have a physician who offers medical weight loss in their office.

So of all the medical meal replacements which is the best…the best  tasting, most nutritious, most effective and even least expensive?  That will be explored in the next section entitled Protein and Medical Weight Loss (Part 3) to learn about the best tasting, most effective and most nutritious medical meal replacement ever created.