Medifast Diet Review
How Does Medifast Work?
Medifast is a diet program conceived of by a doctor who wanted to help patients lose weight for some surgeries. The fact that it resulted in quick and effective weight loss meant that it quickly became popular with regular everyday dieters and is now plastered across the internet as a fantastic way to lose weight.
Medifast in broad strokes, uses small six meals a day and Medifast approved snacks and meal replacement foods to help people suppress their appetite and lose weight.
The idea behind Medifast is to eat six smaller meals that are nutritionally and calorically balanced about three to four hours apart instead of the traditional six meals a day and then once you reach optimal weight, slowly go back to your regular foods, though still in moderation.
Medifast does this using a combination of meal replacements and ‘real’ foods to help people feel fuller and satiated with less food. Does it work?
Pros & Benefits
- Clinically proven to work through testing done by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health which showed that dieters on Medifast lost twice as much weight as those not on the program
- It’s recommended by over 20,000 doctors to over a million people worldwide for over thirty years!
- There are real testimonials to read
- Easy to follow diet plan which is nutritionally balanced
- Medifast also concentrates on helping you to change your lifestyle for sustainable weight loss
- Plans for men, women, diabetics and vegetarians
- Meals are delivered to your home
- A great online community to help you out
- There are currently Medifast coupons to help you get more for less money
Cons & Medifast Side Effects
- Pre-packaged food isn’t always so appealing
- Only one meal is home-cooked and that may not be so appealing
- You will have to do your own exercise program in order to lose weight
- Any support is strictly online
- Weaning off the Medifast program may be difficult for some people
- Medifast ONLY ships to the United States
- Medifast should only be used by someone who is badly overweight and Medifast and pregnancy do not get along because it basically focuses on a vast calorie reduction which is unhealthy for pregnant or only moderately overweight people.
Ingredients
There are over seventy pre-packaged meals and shake mixtures available through Medifast each with a range of vitamins and minerals to make sure you stay nutritionally balanced.
They are also all low-cal; the result being that you should only be eating about 800-1000 calories a day in order to lose weight.
Administration, Diet & Exercise
The Medifast program is called the 5 + 1 program for a reason. You will be eating six small meals a day, spaced around three hours apart. Five of these meals will be the Medifast meals or meal replacements (like the shakes) and then the One is a meal you make yourself that is made from lean meat and veggies, such as turkey, chicken, lean lamb, beef or pork and then vegetables. It is extremely easy to follow this diet plan because everything is laid out for you!
The Medifast diet has you cut out up to a thousand or more calories a day; the meals give you about 800-1000 calories a day. For this reason, it’s important to only go on this diet if you have a significant amount of weight to lose (BMI >30) because cutting out too many calories otherwise is unhealthy. However, you won’t have to worry about vitamin and mineral deficiencies on this diet because each meal is well fortified.
Exercise is still a very important factor in the Medifast diet and though Medifast itself does not offer any exercise program, you still have to do it regularly. Exercise is the best way to maintain your weight loss appropriately and so if you want the best results, you cannot neglect it!
Try hitting the gym or walking regularly and doing some weight training to bolster your Medifast weight loss.
Conclusion
Is Medifast right for you? Well, that depends on your circumstances. If you are heavily overweight and do best on a diet with pre-packaged meals, then Medifast may work well for you. However, you shouldn’t be on Medifast for much longer than a few weeks or so before starting to wean yourself off it because it does encourage a deep calorie deficiency that is hard (and unhealthy) to sustain in order to help you lose weight.
Medifast will help you lose weight if you stick to it; if you suddenly go from eating 2500 calories to 1000, of course you will lose weight!
The real secret to Medifast though is not only the ease of the foods and the calorie cut, but instead whether you will actually take anything away from it afterwards so that you can keep eating in moderation off the program. If you can pull that off, then Medifast will have done its job and well.
Right now, Medifast costs about $75.00 a week and there are Medifast coupons to knock the price down. The current ones are $25.00 off a $150 order (two weeks) or $50.00 off a $275 order.
There is also currently a deal giving you two weeks free if you join the VIP membership. So, if you’re going to try Medifast, now is a good time to start.
In short, if you want to lose weight fast on foods that are generally tolerable to eat (and sometimes quite good) and you prefer to be on a pre-packaged and carefully laid out regime, then Medifast may work well for you.
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