A dear friend of mine just finished up her first week on a medically supervised liquid diet where she gets four shakes a day plus one meal consisting of 3-4 oz of lean protein and a veggie. She weighs at least near 300 pounds (I don't know) and expected lose big the first week but only lost 3 pounds. Does anyone have any experience here? I wondered if maybe she shocked her system with 800 calories and maybe her body is holding onto the weight for dear life.

What do you think?

(By the way, I'm not advocating the diet in any way...I wish she were going a different route. But that's neither here nor there. )

I did something like this unsupervised - Slim Fast, I estimated my calories at about 1,000 a day, and I actually gained weight. But, if I drop my calories below 1,400 consistently I always gain. I hope she has better success with it - I'd also be shocked to only lose 3 pounds.

-Aimee

Sounds like her body is in starvation mode. It holds on to everything if you don't give it enough.Medicaly supervised or not it sounds dangerous and unrealistic. not something you could keep up for the long run and if she did loose big on this "diet" she would likely gain it back. Under 1200 cal is too low. Under 800 is dangerous. They feed you more than that if you are iin a comma.

I think it's between her and her medical advisors, since she is on a medical program. If she is disappointed, she should bring it up with them. That's what she's paying them for.

Jay

I have a friend who did this three years ago, although she did 12 weeks of just shakes and bars, and later added in the one meal. I was really concerned about it, even though it was medically supervised. She lost 80 lbs. in just over 9 months. Most weeks she had lost 3 lbs, even in the beginning. Every once in a while she'd see 4 or 5.

Two and a half years of maintenance and she's actually down three pounds, and has definitely kept up healthy eating and exercise. Of course, she knew how to eat healthily before doing the program, but had difficulty not eating too much of the good stuff. So for her, the program worked. I know that for people who don't really know how to eat healthily, weight gain after the program is a big possibility.

I was a big skeptic in the beginning, but seeing her go through it, knowing it was medically supervised, and seeing her succeed into maintenance has changed my mind a little about the vlc diet thing, even if it's not for me.

Personally, I would wonderwhether she's not being 100% compliant with the diet. Although most people can't stick with them long term and end up going back to their old ways afterwards, there is a lot of evidence out there that Very Low Calorie diets do work.

But I agree with JayEll and would tell her to talk to her doctor and let them work out any changes. On a VLCD, she should be having frequent medical follow up anyway.

I'm sure she will talk to her doctor, but right now she's disgruntled. She goes to a sort of group therapy and sees someone one on one too, but I guess it isn't going well. I highly doubt she's cheating, though of course I can't know for sure. She's spending a lot of money on this and I know she worked really hard last week. She's very tired, of course!!

I feel for her. She has some strange allergies including tree allergies that are so severe she can't eat most things that come from trees, like fruits and she's allergic to most vegetables, especially raw. She's severely allergic to soy and also garlic. So she was really hoping to get a jump start with the liquid diet and learn how SHE can eat healthfully along the way.

Apparently she eats this 800 calories for 6, 12, or 18 weeks, her choice. Then she goes into a maintenance phase for 6 weeks and can start up again if she so desires.

I can attest to that. For one week I did a slim fast shake, bar and light popcorn diet. I took in about a thousand calories a day and that week I lost 10 pounds. I was exactly 260 when I got on the scale and was very happy. Also I did another 1000 calories a day eating plan to jump start my weight loss and 11 pounds came off so yes low calorie diets do work. Now I was only ordered to be on mine for a week and it worked. I cheated though and did it for another week and only about 4 pounds came off. I was disappointed and decided ultimately to add more calories and much more weight came off.

I've been on a number of starvation diets (during much of high school only on weekends, would I eat more than 400 calories a day).

Losing less than 4 lbs, per week was the norm, not the exception (and yes, I was being 100% compliant). And during some of the diets, I didn't always lose anything in the first week. Sometimes nothing came off during week 1 and then a huge loss came on the second or third week.

If she's been a chronic dieter, or if she has blood sugar, thyroid, or other endocrine issues 3 lbs may be all her body can give up. Also, while it's a popular myth, it is not true that on any diet, everyone loses the most weight in the first week. Sometimes the weight loss doesn't show up until the second or third week. Most folks don't lose absolutely linearly. There are a lot of people who will only see a weight drop every two to three weeks, and might show little or no loss the first week.

Unrealistic expectations are the number one killer of weight loss attempts. People quit because they feel like they're failing when they're actually doing awesome. A three pound loss in a single week is nothing to sneeze at. It's an awesome loss.

One week, whether it's the first week or any other week is not enough time to draw any conclusions. In the scheme of things it's like dieting for 15 minutes and wondering why the scale isn't moving yet. A week isn't a long enough experiment. She could be retaining water that's masking some of her "real" loss, or this might just be normal for her.

Even if this is the most weight she can lose, it's an excellent loss. Losing 1% of your body weight is not a small loss, even at 300 lbs on 800 calories. There's no "only" about it.

By the way, it horrifies me that such a great loss would be dismissed so lightly and even worse used as grounds for speculations that she's not being compliant, just because she had a great loss and not a miraculous one.

I think The Biggest Loser has warped people's ideas of what a good loss looks like.


If she was eating 1300 calories and had lost 2 lbs, fewer people would be criticising, but it's the same math. Anyone who loses 2 lbs on 1300 calories should lose about 3 lbs on 800.

It sickens me that such a large loss is being treated like a failure instead of the success that it truly is.

Sorry that it was taken that way but I was speaking from my experiences. If she is supervised, then that is good. Doing it on your own is not good however maybe if her calories were upped she would for one feel better and not be upset if she doesn't lose the weight she wanted to but yes three pounds is good.