Thin So Fast - questions

[ericamill23]

protein power, book,

[LisaS]

IIRC, Thin So Fast is a rather old book - so the shake recommendations might be based on what was commonly available for people at that time and cost efficient and might not be anything like what the Eades might recommend today for a similar quick-start.

look for the journal from improper_username - I think she was using TTF for awhile. IIRC, she was making the shakes with the nf milk but omitting the fructose. Or maybe she'll see this post and respond.

If I were to do something like this (and I've been tempted) - I think I'd just forget the recipe itself and roll-my-own using equiv protein value from shakes made with protein powder and some berries. Probably include the no-salt since fresh veggies and other sources for potassium are so limited. Then again, it may be that the milk is included not just for protein & creaminess but for micronutrients as well.

[laughingW]

Speaking of more modern... If I were going after super fast low carb weight loss, I'd pop on over to kimkins.com. They are doing exactly that, basically with 70-90 g protein a day and 3 c fibrous veggies.

The lady who started it lost 160 pounds in 7 months. Strict ketogenic and all that.

[Mitra]

Welcome to the board :).

51g carb sounds a little bit high, but not impossible. Protein Power had a limit of 30g per day, and in Protein Power Lifeplan the limit was about 40g divided between however many meals and snacks you have in a day - but no more than about 10g at one time.

The protein figure sounds reasonable - both PP and PPLP have more individualised protein recommendations. PP has a more accurate calculation, based on your lean body mass, but the PPLP one is simpler, just using your height and weight. [edit - I've looked at the tables in PPLP, and they recommend at least 46g protein for each meal (assuming 3 per day) for someone of your height and weight, but it drops down to 40 at 295 lbs, and stays at 40g down to 220 lbs.]

[deirdra]

Thin So Fast (1989) was written when fructose & skim milk were thought to be elixirs of life, fat evil, and a calorie is a calorie is a calorie (i.e. low-cal, low-fat was the only way to lose). And fructose was thought to have no effect on blood sugar, but now we know that saliva quickly breaks it down into simple sugars we don't need. You might want to try modifying the shake idea to fit current PP/PPLP protein & carb levels by using more protein powder (to levels suggested by Mitra) and using heavy cream or half & half instead of the skim milk powder to keep your carbs for the day at 30g (and no more than 10g at a sitting). I'd include as much fat as you need to feel satisfied - physically & mentally. Cream makes a shake decadently delicious. You feel like you are pampering yourself and it quells hunger for much longer. A skim milk shake would leave me starving after ~2 hrs, leading to food obsession & feelings of deprivation. A shake with enough cream to last me at least 4 hours leaves me satisfied & not thinking about food. With 150 lbs to lose, you should still lose at a fair clip with the added fat calories in your shakes. On <30g carbs per day, I found I could eat 300 extra calories of fat per day and lose at the exact same rate as I did on higher carb low-cal and extremely low-cal diets. (As a 35 yr diet veteran, I have plenty of graphs to back this up, and am finally maintaining a normal weight, with a normal relationship with food for the first time since I was ~14). 300 extra calories is 6T of heavy cream (w/2.4g carbs) or a cup of half & half (w/10.1g carbs) per day.

If you are as carb sensitive as I am, 51g/day would set up cravings, making it impossible to stick with such a low-cal low-fat diet for long; the hunger & deprivation would set me up for a huge binge. Whereas on 30gECC/day & plenty of protein & fat, I don't get cravings or obsess about food.

In the early days I had 1-2 shakes per day. At home I used heavy cream (33% fat) and I kept protein powder & a shaker in my office for emergencies. Since I had access to vials of half-&-half (10% fat) in the breakroom, I'd make a simple shake with water, powder and H&H that got me through many late work sessions & days when I didn't have time to make/bring lunch. I still do this occasionally, making shakes with protein powder and vials of H&H to get the proportions of calories from fat/protein/carbs that work best for me: 65%/25%/10%. I also keep a NoSalt (KCl) shaker in my office to sprinkle on lunch or into a shake.

[cmcole]

I'm with you, Deidra. I keep protein powder in my desk for "emergencies", plus small cans of tuna, sardines, etc. The "decadence" of using cream or h&h in my shakes far outweigh the feeling of deprivation that would result in skim milk, no taste powdered stuff, but that's my opinion.

I could not survive on that many carbs without the "monster" returning and raising it's ugly head by instilling cravings and illness.

I realize each person is different, but I'd try to stick with lower carbs to begin with, and then increase them if necessary, once I started to understand what my body could handle.

[deirdra]

cmcole: I've also got cans of sardines, tuna & salmon in my office, along with a container of unsalted almonds w/60cc scoop that came with some protein powder. The sardines in oil with mustard or tomato have my perfect fat/protein ratio, as do the tuna/salmon + 1 scoop almonds. And the looks on people's faces when they see the sardines (or just the sardine tins) are priceless!

Erica: One reason I couldn't do mostly shakes & only 1 "real" meal for long is that I'd get the urge to chew something and gum didn't cut it. So if you start feeling "peckish", you may want to move to 2 (or more) real meals on days you feel like this. I never knew what the Brits meant by peckish until I tried SlimFast.
You also might want to put some full fat dressing on your salad and butter on your veggies. If they taste like boring diet food, the feelings of deprivation will set in, and make the diet hard to follow. You want a diet that relies on satiety, not white-knuckle willpower, to keep you on it.

Erica: The 1 tsp of salt substitute (NoSalt) in Thin So Fast contains 2600 mg of potassium, so you will need to add some to what is included in your protein powder. This sounds like a lot, but I average 2000mg from food and the Eades currently recommend adding 400mg when you are eating food, so Thin So Fast's 2600mg total per day is still valid.
Since protein is a diuretic, you will be excreting a lot of potassium. If you don't add the salt substitute, you will feel weak, tired, dizzy &/or get muscle cramps (what Atkins followers call "induction flu"). NoSalt or similar stuff is readily available near the regular salt in most large grocery stores in the US & Canada & probably elsewhere, since so many doctors put their patients with high blood pressure on low-sodium diets. The Eades now also recommend taking a magnesium supplement (400mg/day) to keep electrolytes at the proper levels; I take it at night as it helps make me sleepy.

[Belfrybat]

Thin So Fast works well, but it needs to be followed as the book describes, especially the transition diet he lists (which is basically Protein Power). The reason 50+ grams of carb is not too high in the initial stage (4 shakes plus protein meal) is also low fat and ends up less than 1000 calories a day. When you transition to the second stage, you increase fat and lower carbs to around 30 which raises the calories. All this is explained in the book.

Dr. Eades does suggest one can use other complete protein drinks than his formula, but at the time the book was written, there weren't many around. If I were to follow the plan today, I would use a commercial protein drink that has added vitamins and minerals (Walker Diet is my favourite for taste and texture), but I would still add the potassium salts he recommends. Depending on the protein drink used, the carbs would be cut to about 30 ECC a day, but the calories would be about the same. This should produce a really quick loss. I believe the transition portion of TSF is very important and is where many people "fail".

The benefits of TSF for folks who have a lot of weight to lose (over 100#) is that it takes all the guesswork out of eating, plus cuts the appetite to zero. The downside is it is boring and if the transition is not followed through on, it is possible to gain the lost weight in an incredible short time.

My suggestion, although you didn't ask for it, would be to follow something like TSF for a couple of months to jumpstart weight loss and then transition to PP or PPLP to continue the loss and train your body in new eating habits.

[deirdra]

I actually lost more weight by adding cream to the shakes & fat to the veggies than I did following the TSF diet exactly as written, but my body stalls out on <1150 calories/day on all types of diet. This still took out the guesswork - and freed up more time to read bulletin boards like this one and learn about PP-friendly recipes before I needed them. Since I was using PP proportions of protein & carbs, the transition to more real meals was easy. I've gone back to the shakes when I had periodontal surgery & other dental procedures.