Is a liquid diet the easiest way to lose weight? Considering that you are only consuming liquids, it could be the easiest way to provide nutrients to your body while maintain a good a calorie deficit. This could in turn help you lose weight, but should it be done?
Let’s break down the liquid diet one step at a time.
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What Are Liquid Diets?
A liquid diet consists of juices, shakes, or just healthy drinks. Your meals consist of just liquids and no solids, sounds kind of tough. Some easier variations of the liquid diet allow you to have a meal or two with a few snacks along with liquid meals.
We’ve recently published a small series of restrictive diets, and restrictive diets do work. As long as you are consuming less calories than you are burning, this deficit will cause you to burn fat. Your body needs a constant supply of energy, the more active you are, the more calories you need. If you start consuming less than needed, your body will start to burn fat and other tissues to meet its energy demand.
The results of just liquid diet may not last very long once you stop. Unless you make permanent additions to your eating habits, it’s highly likely you will regain the weight once you start eating normally. The best way to incorporate this in to your lifestyle is a mix and match with another diet.
Cutting out a meal or two and replacing with just liquids can help you stick to this regime longer. With a solid and liquid diet, you’ll be keeping the weight off for a longer period of time. This combination is much easier and healthier to follow than just a liquid diet by itself.
How Long Can You Do Just A Liquid Diet For?
A liquid diet is not something you just read about on the internet, buy a few meal plans and then start. This is a very drastic diet and you need supervision for it. Sticking to low calorie diets can lead to lack of proteins, carbs, essential fats and vitamins. Your body requires these nutrients for healthy growth and regulation.
A low calorie diet can also pause metabolism and have you feeling lethargic throughout the day. Long term use of this diet can lead to hair loss, dizziness, gallstones and heart damage because you are missing out on essential nutrient for a long period of time.
Sticking to full liquid diet and cutting out solids should not be done for more than a few days. This is due to the reasons stated above. There are certain medical conditions that require you to go on a liquid diet for a longer period of time. However, a health professional is usually monitoring these periods, so no worries then.
How To Safely Start A Liquid Diet
Do consult a health professional if you have diabetes or any other chronic illness before starting a liquid diet yourself.
When starting keep in mind that the drinks you choose have to provide you enough calories and nutrients to keep your body healthy. A blender will be your best friend in these days. Learning how to strain and puree fruits, vegetables and other solid foods can greatly help you make nutritious drinks.
The Best Foods For A Liquid Diet
Fruits and Vegetables: Juices are allowed as long as there are no solid parts in the drink, this includes pulp. You also have to avoid high fiber juices like prune juice, lemon juice and apple juice. You can also get a bit creative here and blend mashed potatoes with butter or gravy to make a liquid for consumption. Keep in mind they should be as the same consistency as smoothies for it to be a part of this diet plan.
Whole Grains: Cook any kind of healthy cereal and then thin it with either milk or water. Rice cereal is the best for this diet as it turns in to a liquid form fairly easily. Milk works better than water in this diet because you need all of the extra nutrients you can get.
Dairy Products: This is a no brainer. Dairy products are rich in fat and protein. There are just so many options in this food group. You can either consume them alone or mix it with fruits and vegetables to make smoothies. You can also consume cheese but it has to be in a liquid form. Cottage cheese is the easiest to blend into a liquid form. Other cheeses can be shredded, melted and then consumed.
Liquid Dessert: If you can blend a chocolate cake in to liquid smoothie, be my guest to try it. However, the approved foods for this are: ice cream, frozen yogurts, and ice pops. Basically, if it can melt at room temperature than it is allowed. Make sure these desserts don’t contain any solids that can’t melt at room temperature like nuts. Pudding is another dessert that you can easily thin to liquid consistency.
Other Drinks: Broth is a beverage that is loaded with calories, protein and essential nutrients. You can drink coffee, carbonated drinks, tea, lemonade, fruit punch, etc. There are literally a lot of beverages out there for you to try. You can also try chai, a drink made with tea, water and milk or espresso drinks. As long as there is no solid in your drink, you can incorporate it in this diet.
Create a meal plan with these above drinks or any other drinks that meet the requirements. To meet your calorie and nutrient requirements, you will have 7 to 8 liquid meals per day. Calculate the total calories your drinks have and then spread them out at times that you can easily indulge in these meals.
Important Liquid Diet Considerations
The goal is to consume between 800 to 1500 calories depending on the weight loss goal. Going under 800 calories can be harmful for your health. Even though you might not feel hungry after a while because your body has become accustomed to this routine, you still need to motion your intake of vitamins and minerals.
You can literally lose weight just by eating potatoes if you just consume fewer calories than required. That is just how our body works. Each body works differently, especially if you have been through some kind of medical procedures. If you have then there might be some liquids you should avoid. For example, you have to avoid orange juice and other acidic juices if you have had a gastric surgery.
If you suffer from diabetes, then maintaining sugar levels in your blood is of the utmost importance. This is where your doctor can tell you exactly how much carbohydrates you have to drink to maintain proper blood sugar. Being lactose intolerant means you’ll automatically have to avoid cow milk and other milk based liquids. If you are suffering from hypertension, you’ll need to avoid high sodium drinks.
You have to keep all of these things in mind before you start with a liquid diet. The purpose is to lose weight in a healthy manner without doing any harm to your body.
Key Takeaway
You can find numerous diets on the internet. From the famous keto diet to the infamous high carb and low fat diet, they only work once you do them with consistency. If you follow the rules, you will make breakthroughs quickly. The initial days are always hard, this is where you have to buck up and push yourself harder.
The liquid diet can most definitely help you lose weight but you shouldn’t do it for a long period of time. However, combining it with a solid diet, can lead to long term weight loss.
