Mimicking Medifast

As I mentioned in my first blog entry, I am starting a new health journey and I am going to mimic the Medifast meal plan. In the event you're unfamiliar with Medifast, you can go here to check it out in more rigid detail. But simply put, you eat 6 meals a day, 5 of which are pre-packaged Medifast meals and 1 healthy meal that consists of 1 lean (meat or meat substitute) and 3 greens (vegetables). Even more simply put it's referred to as the 5/1 (5 Medifast meals and 1 Lean & Green). 

Medifast is great program that I've had success on in the past and just felt this is the best way for me to start, but since its a little bit out of my budget right now, I think my best plan is to follow its lead. I'm a widow with one income and 2 kiddos, hence my copycat version of Medifast that I will be doing on my own will be with similar products/calorie counts etc that I will be purchasing from my local Wally world and beyond. I am not promising to be perfect in the vitamins/nutrients area, but I'm going to do my best, and plan to take a supplement to make sure I get the nutrients I need. 

I have also considered doing a couple of other diet or lifestyle changes including green smoothies, meal prep and I eventually would like to transition into a whole foods type of eating, but for several personal reasons, I am choosing right now to have a structured meal plan that is simple and easy for me to stick to that will encourage a fast but healthy type of weight loss to start. I've also looked into doing low carb meal prep, which I may use some forms of this during my diet, but I can't commit to doing this 100% right now, I just don't have time to do a bunch of meal prep.

So here's my basic plan. To mimic Medifast, most of their meal replacements are 90-110 calories. You eat 5 meals every 2-3 hours with the 6th meal being your lean and green. So I am choosing some meals close to those calorie counts that I know I will enjoy and are somewhat filling. This is some of what I'm starting out with for the meal replacements: individual low fat cottage cheese, 100 cal popcorn snacks, cheesestick and low cal/carb crackers, pre-portioned (by me) oatmeal w/stevia, 'shakes', and 'bars'.

I enjoy shakes in the mornings, so I am going to start with Walmart's Equate brand chocolate shakes. The calorie count is at 180 and is double of what Medifast's would be, so I will be drinking half a shake at a time. I bought a box of 10 or 12, I can't remember how many came in it. To be honest, although they taste yummy (like a thick chocolate milk), they are not very filling, especially when you only drink half of it and I'm ALWAYS hungry in a short amount of time afterwards and end up having to have a snack.

I'm hoping by the time they're almost gone, some other shakes I've ordered will come in for me to use instead of these. To solve the shake problem and not pay Medifast's price, I am trying IdealShape. They are about half or less the price of Medifast's and from reviews I've read online, seem to be pretty filling, lasting about 2-3 hours and are very comparable nutrition wise and effective in weight loss as well. 

I also love eating the meal replacement bars but again, the cost would kill me, so I am making my own meal replacement bar from a recipe I found online. I just have to go buy some more OJ because I'm a procrastinator and my kids drank it all before I could make my bars and now there's no OJ (one of the bar ingredients) to put it in it! Those kids!! Oh well, they were thirsty! Here's a youtube video on how to make the bars here and a link with the recipe here.

There are also some snacks that are allowed on the Medifast plan that you can have between meals if you absolutely have to have something, but you should if you could keep your snacks to a minimum. For me anyway, the more I snack the more I want to snack. I am a snacker! Anyway, my go to snacks are sugar free jello cups (lime is my fave!) or a low fat laughing cow cheese wedge w/a claussen pickle spear.

For the lean and greens, depending on the meat or veggie, there is a certain amount you can have and I use either measuring cups or a food scale to tend to this. The measurements Medifast suggests for their lean and green portions are shown here in their quick start guide. I 'think' I still have my food scale but I'll have to have my kids look because I'm short and I think it's way high in my cabinet. Otherwise I'll have to go buy another one this weekend. 

For my lean and greens, I have some quick meals that take mere minutes to prepare when I am in a super fast hurry and don't have time to cook: the John Soule's chicken fajita meat and a bag of steamfresh broccoli or broccoli and cauliflower. I just heat them up in the microwave, dump it all together, add a little salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and a laughing cow cheese wedge and mix it up. Other meat choices I use are the preportioned Gorton's grilled fish (tilapia or salmon), shredded chicken I make in my crockpot, ground turkey with seasoning, etc. I also like to cook ground turkey w/taco seasoning and make a taco salad out of it (minus tortillas/taco shells) or use iceberg lettuce for the shells.

I also have to get a little creative with my lean and greens and mix it up in order to keep myself satisfied. I have tried the cauliflower pizza recipe and loved it, and I've done a lot of pinterest pinning the last week for more low carb recipes, like a buffalo chicken dip I made yesterday to eat with celery instead of chips (delicious!!). I also like to refer to this blog here because although it is no longer being actively updated, there's a lot of great lean and green recipes and she also shares some good ideas for replacing Medifast meal replacement options as well.

So that's my plan to mimick Medifast meal replacements. I am hoping it will work for me. I know it's not quite the same as being on the actual plan itself, so I don't expect the same results I had, I may be hungrier and have to make some adjustments or change to a 4 and 2 plan instead of a 5 and 1 plan, but I'm going to take it day by day and give it my best shot. Still eating mostly low carb until I start. I'll be back here on day one to let you know how it goes!!

*FYI, I am not being paid by Medifast or IdealShape or Joan's replacement bars or Newbeautifulme blogspot to mention them. I'm just sharing useful information and blogging my journey and my ideas. I am not a doctor and am not advising anyone to model their health plan after my own. I am just working on taking steps to improving my health and doing what I am able to as I am able to do so. Good luck to you and good luck to me! Time to get rid of my badonkadonk!!!