Slim-Fast Nutrition Guide

The Slim-Fast diet is one of the more well-known diet plans in the "dieting industry," having gained popularity in the 1980s and marketed as a 1500-calorie-a-day meal-replacement product. The brand has gone through ups and downs over the last two decades but has made its mark as a familiar brand. The Slim-Fast company has claimed that there are close to one billion overweight people in the world, and they've introduced new marketing plans and new products that cater to today's need for convenience.

Slim-Fast Shakes

• The main ingredients in original Slim-Fast shakes are skim milk, water and sugar in a variety of forms. The idea is to simply drink the shakes (at 220 calories apiece) to replace your morning and afternoon meals and then eat a healthy, portion-controlled dinner with a couple of small snacks in between. It sounds simple enough and aims to do what most dieting plans aims to do--find a way to distract your appetite and keep you from eating too many calories each day. It also aims to simplify balanced nutrition by supplying fiber and about a third of a person's daily value of certain vitamins and minerals. The shakes come in formulas other than original, including higher protein and lower carb.

Slim-Fast Bars

• Slim-Fast bars can be incorporated into the diet plan and used as between-meal snacks. They come in all types of "forbidden" flavors like cookie dough and s'mores, but their caloric and nutritional content stays within the guidelines of the Slim-Fast plan. They do contain sugar, but they also offer a wide variety of vitamins and minerals. In addition to the snack bars, Slim-Fast also offers meal bars that are higher in calories than the snack bars and are to be used in place of the shakes to replace breakfast and/or lunch.

Slim-Fast Meal Plans

• Your one full meal of the day should be a nutritious meal of 500 calories or so; a sample meal found at EveryDiet.org is 4 ounces of chicken breast with the skin removed, one small baked potato with 2 tablespoons of fat-free sour cream and 1 cup of steamed broccoli with 1 tablespoon of parmesan cheese. Slimfast.com recommends that the healthy meal should be made up of 1/4 protein from lean meats; 1/4 starch, preferably from whole grains; and 1/2 vegetables for balanced nutrition. You can find recipes that meet the Slim-Fast plan's calorie and nutrient guidelines in books such as "$3 Low-Calorie Meals" by Ellen Brown, among others. Giving yourself a lot of variety in these healthy meals will help keep you satisfied so that you're not tempted to fall off your diet plan.