I recently heard from someone who was trying to get a good idea of what her life was going to be like on the medifast diet. She wanted to know what types of foods she was going to be eating and when (or how often) this was going to be happening. In the following article, I will give an overview of the types of foods available to you on the medifast diet. I’ll also explain how the diet works to help you understand what your experience might be like on it.
A Quick Overview Of Medifast: Basically, you’ll eat six times per day on this plan. For five of these, you will eat the plan’s prepackaged meals. Once per day, you’ll prepare a meal outside of the diet (called the lean and green meal,) and you’re given guidelines for this. Most people accomplish this frequent eating by having meals every few hours or so. However, how you accomplish this is really up to you.
At the end of every day, you’ll be taking in a low amount of calories, carbohydrates and sugars while taking in high amounts of fiber and protein. This combination encourages your body to go into ketosis where it is burning both fat and calories.
Medifast Breakfasts: Although you can eat any of the meals at any time and can switch them around as you see fit, some of the meals lend themselves more to breakfast. These are the eggs, oatmeal, shakes, bars, and cappuccino. Now, nothing says you can’t have the diet’s pudding, brownies, or one of the fruit drinks for your breakfast, but I find that the oatmeal and shakes are really popular choices.
Medifast Lunches: Again, you can chose any of the 70 or so food choices at any time, but the soups and chili are popular lunch choices. I’ve even known people who will make a wrap or burrito out of the eggs and chili. Of course, you could have a shake, bar, brownie, or other diet meal for lunch also if this sounds better to you.
Dinner Or Your Lean And Green Meal: You really can chose to have your non prepackaged meal at any time. But, I find that most people chose to have this at dinner since they are preparing a meal for their families anyway. The guidelines for this meal is really that you have five ounces of lean protein as well as three servings of vegetables. You’re given a lot of guidance on this, but I find that people make this more complicated than it needs to be. You can accomplish this with stir fries, soups, or one pot and traditional meals. You also can accomplish this when you eat out in restaurants if you make careful choices.
Medifast Snacks: Most people will get in their six daily meals by having breakfast, lunch, three snacks (usually at mid morning, mid afternoon, and at night time) and their lean and green meal. The diet offers pretzels and cheese puffs that make nice snacks, but you can have any of the prepackaged meals at snack time, with the exception of the maintenance bars both times. You’re only allowed to have one maintenance bar per day, but you are not limited with the crunch bars.
I usually have a bar for my mid morning snack because I’m very busy at that time. I like to have a shake for my afternoon snack because I have a little more time. I’ll have the pretzels or puffs at night because these lend themselves to eating in front of the TV. Of course, you have any of the meals at any time. So, you could also have pudding, soup, eggs, oatmeal, brownies, bars, or shakes for any meal and for any snack. This sort of flexibility is one of the things that makes the diet so convenient.
Medifast Recipes: If you spend any time on weight loss forums, you’ll often see that people come up with recipes that use the diet’s meals in the ingredients. Examples of this are cookies, muffins, cakes and lattes, to name only a few. Many of these recipes are quite tasty, but you’ll often need to count them as two meals when you are combining in this way. However, having the ability to have a diet friendly and safe piece of cake or a muffin can certainly make this worth it.