The nutrition and supplement industry is constantly concocting new diets to entice individuals to spend extra money in the pursuit of weight loss. One such diet is a Protein Shake Diet plan (PSDP), which is a deprivation diet whereby the user eliminates most whole foods from his diet, replacing them with liquid nutrition. While individuals who use these types of diets usually report some weight loss, there are substantial drawbacks as well.
What is a Protein Shake Diet Plan?
The gravamen of a protein shake diet plan is readily explained by its name. That is to say, a PSDP revolves around consumption of protein shakes instead of whole meals. By converting your food intake from solid meals to designated formulas, the individual theoretically loses weight over the course of the diet.
The advantage to a PSDP is rigid enforcement to a preordained plan with completely decided food choices. The diet succeeds because, much more often than not, the meal replacement drinks provide far more healthy sustenance than what the dieter was consuming prior. The primary disadvantage to a PSDP is that beyond the length of the diet, it does little to nothing to develop healthy eating habits. It just does not translate well into learning real world eating practices.
Sample PSDP
A fair representation of a PSDP is the "Velocity Diet," developed by Chris Shugart. The Velocity, or "V" diet, is a 28 day plan which provides nutrition mainly through intake of protein shakes, with the occasional solid healthy meal (one per week). According to the built-in calculator, a 200lb man on the diet would be scheduled to consume around 1600 calories on non-workout days and 1900 on workout days. Five protein shakes are consumed every day, with the addition of a sixth shake following weight training sessions.
As far as exercise is concerned, the v-diet schedules three weight training sessions per week, with the additional admonishment to perform as much NEPA (non-exercise physical activity--aka walking) as possible on all days. This is key, because no matter what type of diet you choose to perform, without a properly regimented exercise plan all is in vain.
Individuals completing the V-diet see, on average, around 10 to 20 pounds of lost weight. Whether that weight stays off at the conclusion of the diet is unclear. The V-diet claims that the body's tastes are reprogrammed by depriving it of real food for 28 days, but this claim is unsubstantiated by anecdotal evidence, as many users report no evidence of lasting "taste changes." Likely this is just puffery used as a psychological selling point.
More information about the V-diet can be found by clicking the attached link in the Resources below. Even if you choose not to use the V-diet, you can still use the site's caloric calculator to help jumpstart your own version of a PSDP.
Other PSDPs
There are a number of other options available for individuals looking to engage in a PSDP, including the WonderSlim diet, the Meal Replacement Diet, the Liquid Diet Program and the High Protein diet. More information about these diets can be found by following the "Other PSDP Diets" link in the Resources section below. Regardless, they all share the same basic characteristics, so for those determined to engage in this course of action, one is roughly as good as any other.
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