Medifast

Has anyone in here tried medifast? and would you recomended I am looking in to getting theri 4week system.

a lot of the shakes are gross.  the tomato soup one tho is really good.

some of the food is gross.

and my mom has done medifast/hmr several times (loosing about 100 lbs each time) and always ends up gaining the weight back.  i have a good friend trying to do the medifast thing and finds it ridiculously hard to stick to.  that being said she has lost a good bit of weight.  and is keeping it off.  but she does have the problems with binging that she never had before that.... b/c she feels deprived.

if you really want to try it, i would say get the shakes OR the entrees and use them to supplement healthy eating on your own so you can learn your own portions.

yes, that was all anecdotal.  if you think it would help you learn portions and get your appetite under control or whatever else issue you are dealing with, more power to you!  different methods work for different people.

good luck with whatever you decide to do!  oh and one more thing, if you decide to do shakes alone (with or without veggies, but no other real food, you MUST have a dr's supervision!!!!)

There is a sight (you may have heard of) liquidietdiscussion.com. I am not advocating a liquid diet, different things work for different people. If you want some straight talk about what some of the most popular  ones are like (including medifast), this is a good place to start.  Good luck!  

Well I have started this and have lost 6 pounds so far. i am pretty happy with the results so far but I need motivation anyone doing in here

I hope it works out for you. 

But the problem with all these programs is that you do not learn how to maintain your weight once you reach your goal weight.  Sure, you will lose the pounds, but when you stop taking what the program gives, you are left back to your own, with your own habits.

You have not learned how to eat properly, what portions are correct, how to avoid certain avoids and get more of another food.

So you fall back to how you were.  Yes, the program is right, you will lose x pounds in a short period of time.  But as your mother has done, you will put it back. 

And then goes the yo-yo dieting, which will really screw up your metabolism and once you get off trying all these quick and easy program to lose weight, you will find it much harder to lose weight in a healthy way as your body is not used to being and eating normal.

I hope you are one of the rare exceptions that this works for.

I hope so tooo...because I tend to yo yo diet alot and i want to do this program cause I will loose some weight that will keep me motivate to keep loosing more and look at my eating habits. 

You may lose weight, but will gain it back when you're sick of the stuff and go back to your old bad habits.  Each time, the weight will come back faster and will include 5 more pounds than before.

There is no shortcut to developing good eating and exercise habits for life.  Just think - do the work and you'll never have to diet again as long as you live!

I'm not sure if it's physician supervised or not.  But if not, what I would do is to start on the full program and after you lose like 20% of your body weight start eating one regular meal, like maybe breakfast, that's an easy one.  Then after another 20% start eating another meal.  And so on.  Then you can gradually transition to healthy eating so you can maintain.  But you can take some weight off quickly at the beginning.  Of course I'm presuming that the meals meet the calorie guidelines that this site calculates for you.

"and my mom has done medifast/hmr several times (loosing about 100 lbs each time) and always ends up gaining the weight back. "

Heh, i just cant figure out how people can do that.... you would think after they woke up one day and realized they were WAYYY overweight (and then do all the work to lose a bunch!) they would learn not to eat in such horrible ways to trash their body...

hmm the way that an addict "learns" to not use?

trashing ones body happens in many ways and for many reasons.  one would think that one as enlightened as you (and i actually was quite happy to see you give a bit on the locked thread) would appreciate the intricate nature of self concept and its corresponding manifestations.

but perhaps one would be wrong.

Drugs and food are a little different heh

for a good many obese people and for a good many addicts, the "use" or "abuse" of the offending substance is a symptom of a greater pathology.

i would agree, a little different.  but not that much.  alcohol is just as good to use to make oneself feel better as is food as is cutting.  self destructive behavior is just that.

the need to maintain superiority is pathological in itself, in case you were curious.

edit: in the interest of not hijacking a thread, please feel free to visit my journal to continue this conversation, if you so choose.

I know I keep posting on this same forum but  it kind of motivates me to keep going so far I have lost 10 pounds abd I am sooooo happpy.

I started medifast to break a plateau. I've already changed my eating habits and I am walking 2+ miles a day at a pretty good pace. I tried to adjust my calorie intake (higher and lower), and originally I was walking less. Nothing I tried would let me drop any farther.
I decided to chage my lifestyle in January (well after the New Year's resolution thing.....). So I made small changes: eating out less, paying attention to the labels, not eating as much fat, etc. Exercising more has been an issue because it hurts because of my size. So I started a 1200 calorie diet here. Worked great for 5 months (maybe a little over a pound a week), and then I hit the plateau. I tried everything (including advice from my doc) to break it and couldn't.
I don't plan to stay on medifast for weeks at a time. It broke my plateau and I dropped 9 pounds the first week. Now I'm back to my new way (as of January) of eating and haven't regained anything. I'm very familiar with yoyo dieting, but I decided that I had to have control over this. No different than when I quit smoking 5 years ago. What I'm doing may not work for everyone, but so far it is working for me. I'm using my brain to lose weight. That's a new concept for me!

It is important to remember that Medifast is a diet for the extremely obese and should be seen as a last resort. It is a very low calorie diet that has saved the life of some (i.e. the extremely obese) but it will put your body though a gruelling process and so should not be considered lightly. Definitely talk to you doctor about it. You can read more at  Medifast Weight Loss Guide.

I lost 65 lbs. in 7 months on medifast. It's not a liquid diet. Just do a google search , go to their site, and you can see that it's far from a liquid diet. I'm in the process of transitioning off of it and have not regained an ounce.  Unless you've done the diet then you shouldn't bash it. It's given me my life back.