A recent Examine.com report evaluated 22 low-calorie diet interventions comparing meal replacements (including liquid formula, powdered mixes, soups, prepackaged food, and bars) with regular food.
What were the results?
As you might guess, just about everyone following these diets lost weight.
And the people using meal replacements lost slightly MORE weight.
Scientifically speaking, "Meal replacements had a very small but statistically significant advantage for weight loss compared to low-calorie diets".
So... To answer the original question:
YES. Meal replacements "work" for weight loss.
BUT...
Before you run out to buy meal replacements, consider this:
As always, there's more to the story than the simple result reported.
Take a look at some important details.
Starting with the amount of calories consumed:
270-1200 for Meal Replacements
1000-1500 for Regular Food
This is a HUGE difference!
So it's really not a fair comparison.
(That is, unless there's something in the meal replacements that makes people feel full so that they eat less.)
And, considering the people in the study are overweight and obese, it's simply not healthy to restrict calories so much.
Why?
If you eat too little, your body will do its best to hold on to fat and instead burn muscle.
This is why I say that you should eat as much as possible - while still losing fat.
That's right. Losing fat. Not losing weight.
This is why I put little credence into these weight loss studies. Sure, it's easy to measure weight. But what's more important is the entire body mass - both fat mass and muscle mass.
When the end goal is to lose weight, people tend to lose too much muscle which lowers their metabolism. To make matters worse, severely restricting calories can cause hormonal imbalances make healthy weight loss even more difficult.
So then...
My conclusion is that meal replacements do not work for long-term, healthy weight (and fat) loss.
What about you...
What's your experience?
If you've tried to lose weight, you've probably also tried meal replacements.
