The Amway diet is not for you and here's why

There are so many ways in which to lose weight. One that I’ve received several messages the last week is about a programme that is run through Amway and that encourages

• Three protein only days (serving size 70g meat or an egg – equivalent to 18g protein or 8g protein)
• Protein every 60-90 minutes as a snack – ½ a serving size (1/2 boiled egg, an Amyway protein bar)
• Walking 8000 steps each morning before 8am

After the initial 3 days you get to add grains and fruit. For example, a piece of toast with your egg, a piece of fruit alongside your meat portion. Then lunch is 1 serve of protein 1 vegetable serve, 1 fruit serve and 2 cups of greens. Then dinner is that same as lunch.

People have been wildly successful on this approach. If you count weight loss as ‘success’. Now I posted about this in an email and got many angry rebuttals, claiming it was not in my integrity to write about this diet, and then promote my own. I wholeheartedly disagreed. It is my responsibility, as a PhD qualified nutritionist with over 12y of university training and over 20 years clinical experience, to call this out. Otherwise, how would people realise that the results that are being posted all over Facebook are at best short term weight loss, and at worst detrimental to the long-term health and wellbeing of those undertaking it.

However, weight loss IS still success. I’m not arguing that it isn’t. Many people could improve their health by doing something that reduces the excess body fat contributing to an overall poor health status.

The quick wins you would get from the three days of protein only are awesome. Indeed, this is a tool I use in Mondays Matter, albeit we have non-consecutive days couched in an otherwise nutrient-dense diet. Couple this with reducing inflammation and carbohydrate stores due to the removal of all other food sources is motivating and will further help commit someone to the approach, so they continue with the rules of the diet.

 Walking first thing in the morning is awesome as it sets you up well for the day, you get in the steps that are often recommended for health and fat loss, and you don’t run the risk of NOT doing it because life gets in the way later in the day. We also know that you’ll burn more fat doing it on an empty stomach (note: this doesn’t mean you’ll lose more weight overall, just that your body is oxidising more fatty acids). Research shows that it doesn’t matter whether you train fed or fasted as long as calories are equated for.

BUT there are some concerning features to this (that raises red flags)

Protein is important. For sure. Having 3 x protein only days initially as a once off is no big deal really. FWIW.  However, we need a minimum amount AT ONE MEAL to stimulate muscle protein synthesis and initiate the repair and rebuild cycle. Your tissue is always turning over. We are either breaking down or building up muscle. If you don’t provide this minimum amount at one meal, you are never reaching that threshold to stop the catabolism (break down) to be able to build up. You’ll be forever breaking and burning muscle. Younger individuals (college age and younger) can do this on 15g of protein at a single meal, whereas research suggests those older than 45-50y need 40g of protein (equating to almost double the current recommendation for leucine). This reflects the blunting of muscle protein synthesis and, as such, as we age, we just need more. Spreading this in multiple sessions (regardless of the total amount of protein) will never optimse for muscle preservation. It makes no sense, and there is no evidence to suggest this is a good way to execute a diet plan. This type of strategy, something novel and different, is often employed in diets like this to set it apart from others, like there is some secret that no one else has figured out.

Dieting is a catabolic state. This is a low-calorie diet designed to break down tissue. You will be burning muscle AND fat, and likely to be losing more muscle than if you were protecting it with adequate protein and a strength-training programme.  The weight will be dropping off but you’re not eating enough protein in one meal to preserve muscle. This is a problem when it comes to maintaining your weight. There’s less of the muscle tissue that helps you preserve that metabolic rate (muscle helps protect metabolic rate). It would be difficult to meet overall protein requirements with the amount of protein recommended at each meal and snack. For fat loss, it is recommended to consume a minimum of 2g of protein per kg of body weight. If we do the math on the per meal and per snack amount of protein recommended, it might equate to 81g of protein across a day (allowing for 18g of protein in three meals, and 9g of protein for three snacks). That individual would be weighing in at around 40kg for this to be at the 2g/kg recommended amount of protein.

Practically speaking, eating every 90 min is distracting. You could be hungry a lot of the time, not able to concentrate on your actual life (outside of your diet) and more likely to cave under the weight of this hunger later in the day, the week or even later in the month. Even though there are clear guardrails on the amounts to eat in this diet, if you’re constantly under fuelling yourself, it is harder to adhere to the plan. And adherence is arguable the most important factor required for sustainable fat loss success. You may also be a person who requires the satiety signals from your gut to tell your brain you are satisfied. Appetite and satiety involves a complex interaction of hormones and signalling molecules from our gut and our brain that does require (for a lot of people) a certain volume of food in order to feel satisfied on a smaller amount of calories. This is why it’s best practice to AVOID having to eat as often as this and instead eat three full meals.

If you buy all of the supplements, it’s expensive. There’s nothing special about the Amway protein bars. Except that they are expensive. Real protein (egg whites, meat, fish) fill you up way more. And would be a better spend of that money. I had people report to me that there was a $700 buy in to do this programme. Others told me that wasn’t compulsory. Someone benefits but it’s not the person buying in (in the long run).

Almost everyone I spoke to about this dropped weight and along with it muscle. And regained the weight. That will further strengthen the narrative that diets don’t work. They may then give up altogether to find an approach that works for them. And they will then tie their self-worth to the outcome of this diet. It’s what happens in the diet space and anyone who has ever been on a diet (or several) will tell you that. The reality is, though, that diets CAN work. This is just an example of one pretty awful one, to be blunt. There is nothing worse than the promise of weight loss without the promise of a long-term solution.

Regardless of what I think, people will do what they will do. And my advice if someone were to do this would be to make the following changes:

• Triple the protein at each meal (at least, if you are consuming just one egg)
• Drop the snacks out
• Include strength-based training and some aerobic training if currently doing none
• Don’t rely on those Amway bars