Do you want to lose weight or get muscular fast? Are you considering a liquid diet with this? Before making a final decision about your future intentions, it is important to really know what you are doing, after all your future health and well-being is at stake. The last thing you want to do is invest your time and energy in something that isn’t for you. Here we will outline the origins of liquid diets and trace them to the present day, showing you the positives and negatives of such an approach to weight loss. Here we go:
The first liquid diets can be traced back to the 1930s when Dr. Stoll’s “Diet Aid” was advertised in the beauty salons of the day, next came the liquid protein diets like “The Last Chance Diet” in the 1970’s, followed by the low carbohydrate diets of the 1990’s. Today, liquid nutrition typically takes the form of soda cans purchased at the local store.
Liquid days weren’t always safe, and in fact, some people believe they still aren’t. The real danger lies in the fact that a liquid diet may not provide you with all the vitamins and minerals needed to sustain life. In fact, in 1977, according to the FDA, 58 adult deaths were reported from people following these strict diets.
You’d think such occurrences would put them out of favor forever, but thanks to their various incarnations, they keep coming back in different forms and of course, they receive endless interest from people desperate to lose weight or get muscular fast. A company received over a million calls in one day following an Oprah Winfrey show in the 1980s when she slipped the name of the liquid diet program she was using at the time, according to the New York Times.
These days, 100% liquid diets aren’t generally found in all that many places, and usually involve the participant consuming at least some complete whole foods during a day, but are interspersed with canned liquid beverages.
First of all, the effect of following them these days is that people lose weight and sometimes even get ripped quickly. The part that isn’t true, however, is that you can’t get the same results by simply following a diet of only whole foods, you can. The other part is that following a liquid diet doesn’t teach you how to maintain the weight in a healthy way for life, and in the long run these diets often don’t fully work, and here’s why.
Some of these diets also fall into the category of low calorie diets, meaning that daily energy needs are reduced by only 800-1000 calories.
What does this mean and why is this bad for weight loss, surely such a deficit would be good for weight loss? Unfortunately, this is completely wrong and it’s a trap that too many people fall into and can ruin their attempts at weight loss. Here’s why:
1) Diets so low in calories will cause your body to initiate a “hunger response.” When your body has a severely reduced caloric intake, it responds by attempting to conserve and hold on to whatever energy it has left in order to keep itself alive. It basically does this by slowing down the body’s metabolism and preparing itself to pack on weight as soon as it gets a chance. Both, of course, are completely anti-weight loss.
2) Liquid diets do not teach the participant good eating habits for life and only offer a quick fix. This means that once they stop dieting, they tend to put on at least all the weight back on! They can also develop unhealthy attitudes towards food that make them suffer more in the long run.
3) Frequently, the liquid supplement provides energy in the form of high-sugar ingredients like corn syrup. This is the highly refined sugar that is blamed for its high levels of obesity in the general population in the US. Do yourself a favor and at least check the ingredients list! They are not healthy foods.
4) Even if you happen to come across a wholesome, healthy food supplement in liquid form, do you really think it does something that a complete whole food diet can’t? It is not! All of the ingredients can be found in everyday foods, they do not contain a miracle weight loss formula, although this is often what their marketing would have you believe!
The only place a liquid supplement could play is to provide you with calories at a time when you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to prepare a proper meal, and with a little prior planning that will be avoided got to. However, please keep in mind that even the newest and most expensive powdered liquid drinks will never be as nutritious or well-fortified with vitamins as regular foods, we still can’t beat Mother Nature on that score. In fact, eating whole foods has an advantage in weight loss because the body actually needs energy to digest the food that a liquid diet doesn’t require, aiding the calorie burning process.
After all of this, you might be wondering how exactly are we supposed to gain muscle fast or lose weight permanently. The truth is that scientists have shown us how the body works time and time again. They showed us that working with the body’s systems instead of against them can guarantee weight loss. If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, follow the links below.
Thanks to T Ryan
