My girlfriend lately has been eating that slimfast crap. I looked at it & it’s full of sugar & carbs. Does this stuff really help people lose fat? It’s been around for awhile now & people seem to have success with it. How, I don’t know. What are your thoughts?
Another anti-carb guy? I see so much of it on this page that it’s sickening… Although some people’s ass might expand from looking at a carb, normal people do not have to forego them to lose weight.
I lost 28 lbs a few years ago eating honey buns for breakfest, big mac meals for lunch, and a bowl of fruit loops for dinner. No problem. Lost about two pounds a week. It was the amount of calories dudes!!! Not a lack of carbs. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend such a diet now but low carb diets only make me dizzy and pissed off and feeling weak as hell.
Now back to your question, it’s the calories dude!! Drink one of those 200 calories drinks instead of eating 500 calories worth of bagel and cream cheese and your ass will shrink too!
I’m beginning to think that some of you guys are as brainwashed as all these women that are paying two more dollars for a food item cuz it has two less grams of fat in it.
I covered that topic in the “Diet Manifesto” article I think. (If not there,
just do a search at T-mag and it’ll pop up.)
Long story short: she'll lose a lot of LBM if she follows that plan and will end up rebounding horribly.
Michael Ray, thankyou, my thoughts exactly…
MR, I think what he’s getting at is the fact that the calories in the Slimfast shake could be made up of better nutrients.
Chris:
Every time I try a search on here nothing happens! What’s up?! Do u remember what issue that was? Thanks.
Perhaps suggest AP instead? Chris Shugart discribed it somewhere as ‘slim fast for smart people’ The problem with slim fast is IT WORKS! but only when you are on it. The minute you go back to ‘normal’ eating habits you balloon up again. The key is really to learn to eat correctly. Sure, you lose fat - and muscle - on the ‘slim fast plan’, but crap nutrition is crap nutrition. She’d lose wieght if she only ate 3 snickers bars a day too, any caloric deficit will do it. I would encourage you to work with her on her diet, have her read a few articles on t-mag. I have lost almost 20 pounds eating 5 times a day for the past 2.5 months - and taking MD6 and T2. She can do it in a much healthier manner, it will be slower, but will stay off.
Rudy- The search engine is working fine. Just be sure you’re using the one at T-mag, not here at the forum. (You have to click on the word “subject” or “author”, not hit enter at the forum, BTW. Those buttons don’t look like buttons so that’s partially our fault.)
The article where I explain why Slim Fast sucks is here: Strength Training, Bodybuilding & Online Supplement Store - T NATION
I’ll go ahead and post the info though:
Many of today’s sheep diets
(diets aimed at fat housewives) fall into this category. The
Slim Fast diet perfectly illustrates the idiocy of this type of low
fat, low protein, low calorie diet.
You’re supposed to drink a shake for breakfast, a shake for
lunch, and then have a “sensible” dinner. First off, not many
people can eat sensibly after having nothing but 24 ounces of
liquid “food” all day. Anyone on this diet will be wracked with
cravings.
Each Slim-Fast shake has 220 calories, ten grams of
poor-quality protein, 42 grams of carbs, and three grams of
fat. Throw in the sensible dinner, which is usually something
like chicken, a baked potato, and a couple of vegetable side
dishes. Total all that up, and you’ll get around 900 to 1,000
calories per day. Will a person lose weight on this plan? Yes,
but the weight lost will include several pounds of muscle.
In fact, if you lose 20 pounds on this diet, almost half will be from lost muscle tissue. According to a recent study, 25 to 50% of weight lost on reduced-calorie diets comes from muscle (especially if you drop below the 800-calorie mark). In case you didn't know, muscle tissue is largely responsible for how many calories you naturally burn each day (and, of course, how good you look). Since extremely low-calorie diets like the Slim-Fast plan will slowly destroy a person's metabolism, he or she might lose ten pounds, then gain back 12, lose 12, gain back 15, etc. After all that pain and suffering, the person is fatter in the end.
The lesson? If you really want to lose fat and keep it off, use
weight training to built some calorie eatin’ muscle and skip the
excessively low calorie diets.
it is all very simple. women are different. they want to lose “weight”-weight can be anything-muscle,water, fat. when you do any reduced calorie diet and exercise, you will lose weight. always. this is true because you will burn more than you’re eating.
however for guys that actually care about muscle, this doesn’t work. we want to lose fat, not “weight”, and this is done by controlling blood sugar and protein intake.
non fitness minded men want to lose “weight” too. It’s not a gender issue.
excuse me steve? please do not make this some sort of ‘women are stupid’ post. Just as many women know the difference between fat loss and muscle loss as men. I know women who are two sizes smaller than I am who have more cellulite and rolls than I do. Most people who say ‘I need to lose weight’ mean lose fat, YES it is the wrong terminology but they know what they mean. No one I have ever known wants to lose muscle, without muscle, no matter how slim you are you still look ‘flabby’.
to ironbabe- i said guys that care about muscle. don’t take it personal that i set the record straight. 
Okay, for those of you who are defending those people who say “I want to lose weight” and mean fat, just how do they measure that? Scale? I rest my case.
brider - the phrase is misleading… 99.99% of people want to lost fat, but keep muscle. quit splitting hairs. if someone sees you for the first time in three months and says ‘wow you look great, have you lost weight?’ you respond(correct me if i’m wrong) ‘thanks, yes i have’ you don’t say ‘well, i’ve lost 5% body fat but put on muscle so i actually weigh more now’ come on be realistic here. and how do i measure fat loss? easily…pants that were so tight that i couldn’t zip them up three months ago are now baggy. yes, i lost fat and gained muscle, though overall the numbers on the scale have gone down. but, like everyone else in the universe, if people ask me if i’m losing weight i just say ‘yes’
…I just saw a commercial for the product that will end Western Civilization as we know it…as our world is sucked completely dry of every nanogram of Testosterone…head for the hills , you guys…for now…at a supermarket near you…is “SLIM FAST with SOY”!!!.. Mufasa…
new feature at the World Gym ‘juice bar’ - for only $1 you can add 10g of soy protein to your shake… shaking where’s my AP???
Most people that use products such as Slim Fast are not necessarily into weight training at all. So, of course, without progressive resistance training, you will lose muscle on a reduced calorie diet. But I will bet my last 2 pennies, that if I did an experiment and used the Slim Fast program, while training with weights, I would keep alot of my muscle tissue and look great. Fat stores will always be used up before any protein in the body is broken down for fuel. You think the human body is stupid? Why would it dip into vital organs, muscle tissue, etc. when it can just use up it’s fatty acid and glycogen stores first?
Maclar- I don’t know, the way I see it is that the body “sees” muscle as not necessary. You stop lifting and you lose most of it, right? You don’t “need” big muscles. But the body sees fat as necessary for survival, although it isn’t really anymore, not in an evolutionary since of the word. So I think the body has no problem “eating up” muscle over fat, or at least what Chris wrote, 30 to 50% would be muscle loss on such low calories. But what about lifting you say? Well, I think you only get about 40 grams of protein per day on the Slim Fast plan (each shake is like 10 grams) so I’m not sure you’d be adding any muscle.
Mufasa- I saw that new commercial too! And they had a MAN in it, smiling and drinking his Soy Slim Fast!!! Jeez!
TEK: Maybe he was smiling because he was FINALLY becoming the woman that he always knew in his heart he was!!! :)----!!!