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Very Low Calorie Diets (VLCD’s)
A Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) is a diet where normal meals are replaced with drinks, soups, or bars. The typical daily calorie intake is on or under the 800 mark – however the aim is to be as nutritionally balanced as possible.
Prescription Only
A VLCD is normally only used privately and in the medical profession to bring about rapid weight loss in the dangerously overweight person. These diets should be undertaken only under medical supervision. They are typically a high fat, high protein diet that will bring about Ketosis.
The diet is only undertaken for a short period of time (a few weeks). In some situations, the meal replacements may only be used for two meals a day – therefore bringing about slower but more manageable weight loss.
VLCD Diets
Medifast
This has been used by (apparently) over 1 million people, and is endorsed by John Hopkins University. It’s a meal replacement plan around the 800-1000 calories mark (which puts it outside the strict definition of a VLCD). It will put the body into a mild state of ketosis.
Optifast
Available at hundreds of clinics in the US and Canada. However many find it difficult to complete the program
The Cambridge Diet
Used in the UK, this diet has an even lower daily calorie level (400-600) and is a high protein, low fat, low carb diet.
How do you, and what do you need to eat to put on weight? I will probably have to go on insulin soon. But weigh 52kg, 5 foot 6. Low carbs, low calories. How do I put on weight??
Let me start by saying I am a nurse and by most accounts of my peers pretty well versed in nutrition. Vlcd diets are no fad, but the efficacy is just now being revisited after a few major studies by some very reputable universities. There was a great piece on Vlcd’s by vanderbilt university which watched for any EKG changes in at least 100, it may have been more, and after 3 months the two thirds that were able to comply had no EKG changes. They did say a few people had some, but were deemed unrelated to the diet and dismissed after they weren’t permanent, none of the changes were considered potentially fatal, minor changes such as prolonged qt intervals within normal limits were seen. The second study was conducted at Newcastle, it was a very small study with spectacular results, that woe need a larger group followed over a longer time to further verify the success. Diabetes, type 2, has never been considered to be permanent and is often controlled, if not reversible, if a patient is compliant with a healthy diet and exercise regimen. Very low calorie dieters with type 2 diabetes should Definitely see a physician or endocrinologist before start the diet, but the hypos can be avoided by properly titrating, that is backing off the dose for the newer lower caloric intake to avoid hypoglycemia. Anyone starting a new workout or diet regimen shod seek the advise of a physician who can adequately determine if your healthy enough, or overweight enough for a diet like this, Vlcd’s are great diets, but should only be attempted by those who are morbidly obese, that is 100 pounds overweight or more. Another key point to remember is the effects of Vlcd’s on the gall bladder, people who eat around 600 calories a day which is a true Vlcd, 600-800 calories daily, can get gall stones if they don’t eat between 7 and 15 grams of fat a day, the amount necessary for the gall bladder to contract. I hope this helps to dispell some rumors or myths.
I am diabetic. i heard about 600cal diet and decided to try. and found after 10 days my blood sugar level became lower. and now i successfully complete 39days now my fbs is 79.3 and pps is 113.2. it is very difficult to live like this but surely u got a good result.
@tom
MARRY ME
Additionally, it all comes down capitalist regime – we are brainwashed into buying the products (i.e. food) that looks pretty and smells nice, – paying money to put fat, diabetes, disease, cancer onto our bodies – and then pay more money to take it away. It is keeping you docile while large corporations are raking in the profits. So please, think before you eat and there will be simply no reason to go on a low calorie diet in the first place..
I am on phase 2 the VLCD can I eat cottage cheese?
Don’t listen to one word of those who never tried the hcg diet because they are clueless in their starvation claims, as they don’t understand the body is breaking down fat stores which are providing thousands of calories on top of the 500 calories taken in daily. There’s no chance of starvation at all…just a bunch of idiotic fear mongering by people who read others idiotic fear mongering. The diet totally works. If its a fad, its one that’s been around for over 50 years. If it didn’t produce results, nobody would be using it. And as far as the FDA is concerned…LOL…please. these are the same people who hid the dangers of mammograms and the photocarcinogenic properties of vitamin A in sunscreens from the public for over 30 yrs. The same ones who approved aspartame. The same ones who approve rx drugs that gotta be yanked from circulation after the unwitting public finds out the hard way which side fx the FDA allowed the drug mfg to not report. Wake up. The reason the MDs and FDA don’t like the hcg diet is because it works, and its cheap. Instead these bums want you under their care (perpetual income stream) to swallow their deadly rx garbage, and to undergo lame unnecessary dangerous expensive surgical procedures like bariatric which runs in the neighbohood of $25k and even so, many put the weight back on! Talk about a ponzi scheme. But hey, nobody is stopping you from doing your so called healthy eating thing even though you might have screwed up metabolism from some past factor in which case none of that will amount to crap. Those of us who know better will follow a proven system developed 50 yrs ago when doctors still actually looked for cures instead of making millions on treatments designed to fail so patients must come back again and again at great cost. Your choice. But, don’t expect any of the informed to buy into your ignorant histrionics.
These types of diets should be monitored, but anyone can fast. Your body can technically speaking can last at least 40 days without food, (People with higher BMIs for longer, hence why we have fat stores in the first place, in times of famine) as long as you are taking in enough fluids. Obviously before undertaking fasting you should do your research and talk with your doctor. I know several people that fast for religious reasons and offen. They are of normal body mass and are healthy.
I have type 2 & was told it was for life. So foolishly I thought what the hell, just keep taking the pills.
Now there seems to light at the end of the tunnel. If it works then I want to do the 600 cal diet especially if “it does what it says on the tin”.
I’m fed up with popping pills & feeling knackered all the time.
My GP said that he couldn’t/wouldn’t officially help as it was not recognised medical practice but I should contact Newcastle University myself. Easier said than done.
If someone could please tell me how this should be done, maybe a proven diet, without making a mess of oneself I would be grateful.
Thanks
Im doing 600 cal a day, and now that ive found the right foods to eat it seems to work for me. I have half a low fat yogurt in the morning a lean cuisine at lunch and either soup or another lean cuisine with either a snack after lunch or dinner.. Im never starving and i like the food.. For me it was getting over the fast food addiction. But my life style helps too, i dont go out regularly.
You should read the study paper done by Newcastle University. 600 calorie diet CURES fatty liver in 1 week. Weight loss is continuous. Also cures diabetes. Read the study before you say, “Nah diabetes is for life this is stupid etc etc…”
People always say “You didn’t gain it in a month, you shouldn’t expect to lose it in a month.” But I did gain it that fast. After my 2nd baby, my thyroid went out and I gained 40 pounds the first month and 20 more the second and third. 80 pounds in 3 months before the doctor finally figured out the correct dosage. Then the dieting started, here is an example of one of them.
For four months I went on a 1500 calorie per day diet making sure that I stayed under 25% of my calories from fat. (But I have to admit that most of my calories were from simple carbs, early 1990s) I joined Curves and worked out 4 to 6 days a week for 45 min per session. Each month they would weigh and measure me, and each month they would explain that muscle weighs more than fat so that should explain the weight gain or lack of weight loss, and that the other person who took my measurement last month must have measured wrong. One month I gained an inch on my waist while losing an inch on my breasts. I was definitely getting rounder. At the end of 4 months I had lost 4 pounds and gained 1.5 inches on my waist. I had dropped to 216 pounds.
After 4 months of this, I had an uncontrollable craving and ate an entire German chocolate cake. I seriously considered purging but knew that’s the road to bulimia and didn’t want to take it. By the next day I had regained the entire 4 pounds and decided to just eat what I felt like eating and forget about the dieting for a while.
I heard about the Atkins diet and decided to give it a try since I didn’t have to count calories and could eat as much protein as I wanted. I went on, felt great, and ate a lot of lean meat, eggs, and cheese every day, it had to have been at least 1500 calories. I dropped 24 pounds in 23 days. Then I ate one cookie and it was all over. The urge to eat more carbs was very strong and I figured I could try the diet again later when my schedule wasn’t so crazy. But in all future attempts I never lost the weight as fast and it gave me headaches and mood swings. It took about 1 year to regain all the weight I had lost.
Tried a few diets here and there with limited success, but mostly just tried to limit my simple carbs and fats and follow good eating habits. Most days I averaged 1800 to 2200 calories, but it seemed that every week or two I would binge with a 10,000 calorie day. The longer I held off the binge, the bigger it was when I finally gave in.
In 2006, a friend asked me to be her diet buddy on a juice diet and I was very skeptical. I would only get 800 to 1200 cal per day making it a VLCD and I had always heard they weren’t safe. But I was up to 247 pounds and getting pretty desparate. In 8 weeks I lost 55 pounds drinking fresh homemade juices and eating a small dinner with no simple carbs. I was hungry from time to time, but never the unmanageable cravings before the binges. Then the holidays hit and I started eating a bit too much. We moved and I lost contact with my diet buddy. In the next 4 years I regained 35 pounds back. I discovered that I need someone to be accountable to to really stick with it.
That brings me to now. We moved back close to my diet buddy. She had cancer and had gained her weight back. At thanksgiving she was 197. She started the homeopathic HCG drops and dropped to 135 pounds and a size 6 by May. I started the HCG diet 11 days ago and I’m down 9 pounds. The coolest part is that it seems to mostly be coming off my waist instead of the breasts. I’m eating 500 calories per day and following the diet to the letter. I am a little hungry by mealtimes, but for the most part it isn’t too bad. I don’t really feel hungry, but I do feel empty. I’m not sure any other way to describe it. I’m not sure how hard it will be to adjust back to higher calories and if it will cause binges. But for now, I’m just glad to see progress again.
My point in saying all this is to try to show that those of us who are obese are really trying to lose weight. Losing weight slowly with good diet habits is usually the FIRST thing tried. It does work for some people, but once your body is messed up due to Thyroid or diabetic problems it doesn’t work. The metabolisim changes so you hold on to every last pound and the urges increase to make sure you stay put. Diets that cut out processed sugars are the only ones that work to change the metabolism and reduce the feeling that you are starving. You may not agree with the safety of VLCDs, but obese people often decide they are worth the risk, because they are the only diets that actually work.
Diet is great,results great but if you are diabetic how do you prevent hypos and with a fatty liver you cannot lose weight quickly
The new diabetic diet cure gives you 600 cal a day with above problems
Shirley
If all your doing is drinking water, tea, and coffee than thats called starvation not a diet. you are not teaching yourself how to eat healthy and in the long run your just doing damage to yourself. when you do eventually eat (and i hope you do because otherwise that means death) you are going to gain all that weight you loss right back. If you do it right the way first you wont ever have to repeat even if it takes longer.
If you gain muscle then you don’t have to worry about your metabolism – a pound of fat burns 4 cals a day and a pound of muscle burns 45. If you maintain the proper protein levels to support the amount of muscle you have you can maintain your resting metabolic rate.
I do agree that anyone on this diet should be under the direction of a doctor and a nutritionist who can verify that you’re getting the proper nutrition (i.e. plan out meals that cover all your bases)
Technically 800-1000 is not VLCD.
People on VLCD are called patients. I understand VLCD to be a medically supervised diet used to treat obesity. Your advice is stellar, but these people are not able to simply do what you suggest.
To ThinToBe: I think that is sooo funny!
Don’t know if you’re trying to be…
@ThinToBe:
Technically, it’s impossible to do a “0 calorie diet”.
I wish people would just eat less & exercise more, instead of starving themselves on VLCDs at harming themselves.
I’m scared now. Been on a vlcd called protein sparing modified fast from a bariatric clinic 8 weeks at 800-1000 cal/day. Taking multivitamin and potasium. Lost 18 pounds (1 week lost no weight). Felt great. BUT am losing hair, and blood test came back with high liver enzymes and now I’m scared. I was told I had a fatty liver about 4 years ago, but I didn’t know what that meant and now I read that rapid weight loss with fatty liver can result in liver damage. Wish I’d known. Now I have to go for tests and I don’t know what.
I was 100 pounds overweight – very obese. I heard somewhere that a lot of obese people have fatty livers.
I wish I was making this up. I just want people to know what can happen. The diet is the only thing I did different (they did blood tests when I started 8 weeks ago at the clinic and liver enzymes were normal, so I know it has happened since the diet).
P.S. I don’t drink alcohol at all.
I do the 0 calorie diet. All I drink is water, coffee, and green tea. I lose 3 pounds the first day and 1-2 a day on the 6 days after. Just be careful not to binge, it ruins everything.