Fitness and Health - One Day at a Time

Meal Replacement Shakes and Bars

Eating Healthy - Meal Replacement Shakes and Bars

A big part of leading a healthy lifestyle is eating right. Once you start working out and seeing some gains in the gym, you begin to realize that eating right will bring you even better results. Eating right does not just take place at lunch, dinner and breakfast, it must span the entire day. What s the hardest time of day for you to eat healthy? Well for me it was those hunger cravings that came in between the three square meals a day that I was used to.

I would start my day with a healthy breakfast that usually included egg whites from Better 'N Eggs, two slices of whole wheat toast and a glass of 1% white milk. This would get me ready for the trek to the office and the day of work ahead of me. Making the breakfast was easy because there were no e-mails, phone calls to answer, or work to be done. The hardest part of eating healthy came when I was at work.

I would destroy my plan of eating healthy throughout the day by being hungry an hour or two before lunch and then an hour before I left for work. Before lunch time constraints would always force me to get something fast which usually resulted in me raiding the vending machine. The same thing would happen an hour before I left to go workout. I wanted to have energy to workout but getting it from a bag of Doritos and a Snickers bar was just not the right way to go about it. That’s when I did some research and found an alternative to my unhealthy snacking at work.

Meal Replacement Shakes and Bars

Meal replacement supplements are a quick and easy way to get quality protein and carbohydrates along with healthy unsaturated fats. There are many forms of meal replacement supplements out there. I was not interested in the over marketed meal replacements supplements from Atkins, The South Beach Diet, or Jenny Craig. Have you seen the price tag on these? I was also not interested in the meal replacements that helped you to bulk up as my main fitness goal was to lose weight and gain lean muscle. I wanted something that would fill me up without emptying my wallet. I did my research and ended up narrowing my search down to either a lite protein shake or a lite protein bar for my meal replacement supplement.

Meal Replacement Shakes and Bars at the Local Vitamin Store

At the local vitamin store I narrowed my search first by price. After all, I wanted a healthy snack at work and before the gym, but I did not want to spend an arm and a leg on it. I bought a box of generic lite protein bars and a tub of lite protein to test out for my meal replacement supplement. Do you research before you go to the vitamin store becuase they are probably not going to sell you what’s right for you. They are going to try to sell you the product with the highest mark up, or a version of their own product.

Meal Replacement – Lite Protein Bars

The protein bars are easy because you can eat them anywhere. You can even eat them at work! They come in different flavors and come tailored to your needs (diet bars, energy bars, low carbohydrate bars, pure protein bars). I was going for the weight loss and lean muscle gains so I wanted a bar that was relatively high in protein, about 30 grams and one that had a moderate amount of carbohydrates, 15 or less grams. Since this was a generic bar I ended up paying $18.00 for a box of 12 which turns out to be $1.50 a bar. Eating two a day cost me about the same amount I would spend on snacks in the vending machine. The taste took some getting used to but the peanut butter chocolate bars were not as bad as I had expected. You can pay more for better tasting bars, but the company that makes the bar has to add more sugar to make that bar taste better, in turn making the bar less healthy.

Meal Replacement – Lite Protein Shakes

Now the shakes are not as portable as the bars but they are still time savers and are a much healthier alternative to Snickers and Doritos. I would suggest purchasing a "shaker" or "mixer" from the vitamin/supplement store. The one I got was available for $3.99. I had the same goals in mind when I purchased the protein shakes; weight loss and lean muscle gains. The protein meal replacement shakes came in three forms, a tub, individual packets, and ready-to-drink. Again, I wanted a healthy substitute but did not want to break the bank so I went with a tub of vanilla flavored protein. The generic tub I purchased had 44 servings for $30.00 which breaks down into $0.68 per serving or $1.36 total for the two servings daily I would consume. Again the taste was better than I thought. It was actually quite rich when mixed with skim milk, so I choose to just mix it with water. There was 30 grams of protein in the shake but only 8 grams of carbs. Less than what I wanted, but acceptable to me.

In Conclusion

I now currently use the protein shakes daily instead of the protein bars. My main selling point was more on price vs. convenience. The choice is up to you. Taste could also be a big factor when it comes to buying a meal replacement supplement. Here is how I narrowed down my choice.

1) Cost per serving was only $1.36 per day, less than what I would spend at the vending machine

2) The shakes tended to fill me up, and give me more energy than the bars did.

3) More vitamins and nutrients in the shake than in the bars.

posted by Oshburg @ Friday, March 03, 2006