Slim Fast diets are very popular, and the Optima diet is the cutting edge of Slim Fast's diet plans. It has shown successes with many people, but no diet program works for everyone. Otherwise, we'd only need one plan. There are some problems you may encounter if you use the Slim Fast Optima plan.
The Slim Fast plan has you substitute a Slim Fast “Meal on the Go” for one meal, and combine another with a bit of “regular” food, and then eat one sensible meal without a shake or bar. It sounds easy, but many people have found that the shakes don't taste good, they cost a lot, and you are always hungry.
The chocolate flavored shakes, some dieters have found, taste OK when you take your first few sips, but they have an after-taste that some people find distasteful. The aftertaste most people feel is the worst is after the chocolate flavor shake, and the least aftertaste is found from the cappuccino flavor shake.
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The shakes are supposed to fill you up between meals, but some dieters have found that they feel hungry almost immediately after drinking a shake, which is the opposite of the effect it is supposed to have. The people who don't like the taste of the shakes have better luck with the snack bars, but some say that those don't fill you up, either.
The second problem brought up most often is the cost of the Slim Fast foods. The shakes and snack bars will add up to about $20 a week, which doesn't sound too expensive. But if they don't fill you up, might you have been better off spending $20 on fruits and veggies that are healthy and would do a better job of filling you up?
The third problem most often found by people who didn't lose weight successfully with the Slim Fast Optima plan is that there isn't enough in the diet to make you feel full. After the calories of the shakes or snack bars are added up, you may only have 200 calories left for the shake + healthy food meal, and that is hard to fill up on. The 500 calories left for your “sensible” meal sound like plenty, but if you have been hungry all day long, it's hard to stop after 500 calories.
With a daily intake of about 1300 calories on average, people who have tried and quit the Slim Fast Optima diet feel hungry all the time, and it doesn't take them long to go off the diet and back onto regular food. If you can control your hunger pangs, you may be able to be more successful than the people who haven't found this plan filling enough. But if you can stand hunger pains, you can probably suffice on a diet of healthy fruits and vegetables, without the added expenditure for the Slim Fast Optima shakes and snack bars.