In the past year I've lost almost half my body weight in a medically supervised program featuring a liquid diet. The doctor in charge has been fine tuning things for over 20 years, so I suspect she knows what she's doing. The point in posting here is that, although they don't kick you out of the program for breaking the diet (as long as you show a good faith effort), they will drop you for failing to attend the weekly group sessions. From this I infer that a regular face to face relationship with a mentor and a group are an important element of success. ie. E-mail probably won't be good enough.

The major questions are: how much do you need to lose and why do you need to do it. Out of the approximately 15 in my group at the begining, 4 were left at the end of a year. All of us had serious medical issues. Major, permanent weight loss means changing your life. It can mean finding a new set of friends. If you want to know the kind of issues they covered, feel free to PM me. If the interest seems general, I'd be happy to respond here.