In my view, this was another stupid diet which I did when I didn’t know any better and wanted a quick fix.

I’m not talking protein shakes for weight training; I’m talking about meal replacement shakes.

Firstly, I’m not discrediting meal replacement shakes altogether, as I’ve seen them work for obese, pre & post diabetics who are desperate, need help and have been told by their doctor to use them as part of a balanced nutritional plan for a short period of time.

However, aside from these extreme cases, meal replacement shakes just don’t fit in with my philosophy (which took many years and diets to arrive at) for the following reasons:

a) I don’t have the willpower to restrict myself

b) I love food, I love the taste, the texture, the smell and I love chewing so why would I want to drink a meal?

c) I learned nothing. Once finished I went back to my old eating habits.

For me this diet was short lived and had absolutely no lasting results. I find it’s marketed as a quick fix, doesn’t educate anyone on sustainable healthy lifestyles and is almost always unnecessary. You’re better off spending your money on organic food and a gym membership.

However, it does lead me to a funny story about what happened to me when someone tried to sell me the shake diet years after I had decided it was not suitable.

One day, in my previous career, our whole office ‘won a free lunch’. Awesome, who doesn’t love a free lunch? Previous to this, I’d won another office free lunch, which entailed the local Jiffy van dropping off all the stuff they couldn’t sell for the day.

You can imagine how excited we were at the thought of another lunch involving a smorgasbord of as many pies, sausage rolls and sandwiches as we could eat (keeping in mind this was my pre-healthy days; it’s pretty obvious why I was overweight and always looking to try the latest diet).

However, to our great surprise a woman turned up with a PowerPoint presentation to explain why we never needed to burden ourselves with eating another meal again. All we needed was this industrial sized bucket of powder and a running tap – no more kitchens!

Well it wasn’t quite like that but may as well have been. The room fell silent, not only because it sounded terrible but also because I was working in the farming industry. Imagine telling blokes from the bush that their industry was obsolete and they no longer needed to eat a T-bone steak, a chicken parmy or have bacon & eggs for breakfast. She certainly had the wrong office.

We drank our shakes to be polite, not surprisingly no one signed up and everyone felt deceived as they didn’t qualify the shake as a meal. It reminds me of the time I ‘won free carpet cleaning’ and it turned out to be an $8,000 vacuum cleaner presentation (although I was pleased that they vacuumed my lounge). Or the so called free dinner which turned out to be a presentation on a ridiculously expensive bed (yep I tried a lot of gimmicks. I was way too naïve in my youth)

Anyway, the really stupid thing about the diet shake story was that after the presentation everyone felt so hungry and unsatisfied, we all went to the coffee shop and ate yet another lunch.

If you decide to try a shake diet and believe it will work for you, I hope you are right and wish you well. Ensure you are getting sufficient nutrients and that you continue post diet with healthy and balanced eating habits. However, before going down that path I strongly recommend you consider hiring a professional such as a Nutritionist and/or Personal Trainer to learn healthy lifestyle habits that last.

Angela Gawthorne Mobile Personal Training Specialist Fitness Revolution