A summary of what you might have missed if you're not following me on facebook

First off, over on wordpress I did a little review of The New Atkins Diet products, and in particular a price comparison between the New Atkins weight loss shakes and your choice of any Whey Protein Isolate you might buy from a decent gym or supplement store.

Now as the name implies, a WPI is just protein. Usually something like 98% protein with a couple of calories per serve coming from the flavouring, which depending on the brand can be quite delicious. The Atkins products... sorry, it's "the NEW Atkins" because I guess they've conceded that the "old" Atkins diet everyone was on back when I still worked in I.T backfired horrendously and now 10 or 15 years later even more people are even more obese than they were ever before. But I digress... the Atkins brand shakes are actually around 50% fat, and more than twice as expensive as a real protein shake.

Now in saying that... it's not to say "fat is bad" or "fat makes you fat". However, they're marketing these things on the basis that they're low carb, and therefore if you buy it you'll lose weight. Absolute nonsense. As I've said elsewhere, the use of a protein shake is to boost your total calories or to help better balance your macronutrient ratios to amounts more suitable for achieving and maintaining your healthy goal weight. Clearly this does not work so well when the shake is as much fat as protein, and it's certainly not helpful if the idea is to have the shake instead of eating a normal meal so that you can restrict to a misguided calorie target that falls far short of what you require for good health and great results from training.

For some reason this is what the diet industry and elements of the fitness industry promotes... this idea of restricting to "very low calorie diets. That used to mean 1200 calories... but that stopped working and now there's a few new ones at 800 calories, 600 calories, and so on. It is MADNESS. In fact if you interviewed someone killing themselves via an eating disorder you'd probably hear all the same ideas about weight loss as these products support. AKA, if you want to lose weight, eat as little as possible. If that doesn't work, eat even less. If you eat actual meals like a normal person, you'll get fat. You need to starve to get thin.

It is outrageous. Most of all it is not true, either. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As I explained in a post on my main business site for Personal Training In Brunswick,  if you want to get into great shape you need to train for the shape you want to be in. You also need to fuel accordingly to maintain your goal body type at goal weight. You simply cannot expect to be happy, healthy or see optimal results from training by starving on some ridiculous diet.

Now back to facebook, you can see the proof of what I'm talking about here in a post where a heap of us all talk about how you can Lose Weight By Eating More, Not Less. You should check that out and hear it from actual clients, real people out in the real world. Not just marketers.