UK based Alternative to Slim Fast

walk into tesco or boots or look online, they have slim fast and others. myprotein.com may do something too.

Sugar is often used in these formulations as it's easy to measure, dissolves and has a precise composition. Sugar's just a carbohydrates and they are typically 50g protein, 20-30g fat and 100g of carbs per day or thereabouts.

As people have said, there isn't much love on here for meal replacements as it doesn't teach you anything about nutrition or re-train your habits into healthier lifestyle. Most meal replacements also operate as very low calorie diets - ie less than 1200 calories which is not recommended and is not great for your health.

If however, you definitely want to use them I have used them before I converted to being a MFP addict so would say the following (I am also based in the UK):

In the UK you can go into most Chemists and get Slim fast or any other myriad of meal replacement options. If you want to do it with some 'support' you can go for something a bit more expensive like Cambridge diet where you have a rep and buy your shakes through them. Google Cambridge diet to find a local rep.You get weighed each week. Also Lighter Life do an option whereby rather than full meal replacement you do it 'light' and replace two meals. This is more expensive than Cambridge and you attend weekly classes to learn why you got fat in the first place. There are other meal replacement options like exante but I haven't used these so can't comment. If you google meal replacement uk you will find tons os options. It's big business.

In most of these what they class as a healthy meal in the evening is in reality a very low carb small meal. Less than 600 calories. So if you are thinking that you can have a huge dinner at night and two shakes during the day and lose a ton of weight it might not work. When I did them I was hungry a lot. Very Very hungry. ALOT. And everything I lost I put straight back on in the following months as I had not learnt anything from doing them.

I occasionally use shakes as part of my calories counting but not as general meal replacements, more where I am trying to eat back some exercise calories or where I get home late from work and am under my 1200 calories. At the minute my shake of choice is JuicePlus complete as it doesn't have whey protein in so my tummy tolerates it better than any of the above. You can use these are meal replacement too. However, they are a bit of a nightmare to get an order from and if you order directly rather than through a rep there is zero customer service and if anything goes wrong you can't get hold of anyone. No replies to email, no phone numbers. So I am reluctant to re-order as last time they sent me the wrong order and I never got it rectified or any money back. If you google there are tons of people with problems with their customer service.

As I said, you won't find much love on here for this but thought you should have advice so you can make your own mind up.

This post is way old! So you're probably not looking for advice anymore, but try Exante. As well as shakes, I found they have a large range of foods, they're also lower cost compared to some of the more well known companies that do shakes. I'm happy to recommmend others if you don't like the sound of Exante, or just search VLCD (Very Low Calorie Diet) and they all pop up, just be careful not to end up on any dodgy websites!!