My Medifast Journey
Looking back on my Medifast journey I have to admit that it has been a very enlightening experience. I have learned to look into my emotions and see that there really is an addiction living somewhere inside of me. The addiction I speak of is an insatiable desire to eat massive amounts of food, well beyond the nutritional needs of my body. The interesting thing about what I have learned is that there is this battle going on where I struggle to eat and eat and eat some more. Because of my journey with Medifast I have learned that the only thing I need to do is understand that my body needs nutrition, and not mass quantities of food.
I learned the essential fact that if I give my body what it needs, I only need to feed it very small amounts. I have learned that if I eat nutritionally dense foods and forsake the high calorie foods with little nutrition, the weight stays off. I will admit that losing the 115 pounds was quite easy using Medifast, and the only real difficulty I had was after I lost all of my weight. I gained about 20 pounds after I reached my goal, but once I realized I was launching myself back to obesity, I started to understand why I was fat in the first place.
Before I journeyed with Medifast I never realized that I do not have to eat MASSIVE amounts of food to feel full. I used to think that I needed to eat plate after plate of food to be satisfied. It was only after I stared at a bowl of Medifast chili that I realized the fact that I was addicted to the act of eating food, and not food itself. I looked at the reaaaalllllllyyyyyy small portion of chili and thought that there was no way I could eat that stuff and not starve to death! I thought to myself that the reason why people lost weight with Medifast was because they were starving themselves because of the small portion sizes.
I was wrong, and I had the ENTIRE concept of Medifast distorted!
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I now understand that the portions of Medifast are indeed small, but there is so much nutrition packed into the food and that the portion size is just right. Granted, a person needs to get through the first 3 days of Medifast before thay can relax, but after you get to that point…it really gets easy and it is quite effective. I have since learned that the portions are small, but 5 minutes after I eat a Medifast meal, the desire to eat has passed and I easily go on about my day for another few hours.
No longer do I think I need to eat a massive amount of food to feel full. I will not tell you that I have beaten all my food emotions into 100% submission, because I do not tell lies out here in the sacred space of my blog. I tell it like it is, and I will tell you that I still love food and it is very easy to still eat too much food. I will also tell you that Medifast was the only weight loss plan I ever used that has worked, and although I am 100 pounds thinner today….I still feel like there is this fat person trying to climb back inside me.
At this point in my life I have been able to keep the weight off for about 2 years, and I swear I will never go back to being obese. I do not follow the Medifast plan 100% anymore, because I no longer have to do so. I am just glad it was there when I needed it and I am also really glad it is there at night when I want a snack and I make up a Medifast chocolate brownie, or some Medifast chocolate mint soft serve. Because of my Medifast journey I now understand that it is easier to walk along-side my demons, than it is to run away from them. Because of Medifast I now understand me better.
If you need any help, or just want to talk about your weight problem and Medifast….give me a call, or drop me a line. I may not be a doctor, but I do understand.
Keith Quackenbush
KeithQBush@Gmail.com
850-449-0121
Medi Fast
Medi Fast has been one of the leading weight loss programs for years and is one of the methods of weight loss that has been approved by over 20,000 doctors. The entire method of losing weight is so deeply rooted with the program that naming it Medi Fast was more of a natural event than a marketing ploy. Although most people researching weight loss are familiar with the name, it is often mis-understood as to what the name means. Although many may think is has to do with fast weight loss, that is really not the revealing story.
Medi Fast is an easy to use weight loss program that uses meal replacements that are medically sound. They contain the nutrition needed for medically proven, sustainable weight loss. The term “Fast” in the name does not mean the weight loss program is fast, it means the program is a quick way to obtain the nutrition a person needs to not only achieve weight loss, but to be able to do it while living a busy lifestyle. The term “Fast” name merely applies to being able to obtain the medically needed nutrition consistently and quickly.
The current driving force behind the concept is a doctor that has gone on to prove the overall weight loss plan is one that ultimately does need a person to buy the meal replacements from Medi Fast. In his book he tells the reader how to prepare foods in a way that will give a person the needed nutrition to remain healthy and eat satisfying foods while being able to lose weight. The method used to lose weight is more of a required doctrine than it is meal replacement program.
It does not take a dieter long to realize that with the Medi Fast doctrine a person does not have to be hungry, or deprive themselves of beloved foods for the rest of life. What any success stories will tell you is that losing weight becomes something that is second nature to the entire program. After a person learns the doctrine involved is deeply rooted in medical science, which is also based on research confirmed by Johns Hopkins, does the user realize the overall Medi Fast diet program goes beyond traditional dieting concepts. Although some people order the program and scoff at the foods, the truth is that they did not give the program a chance.
Medi Fast is much more than a diet. It is a program that is designed to provide a person seeking weight loss… the opportunity to have a wide selection of healthy foods in a hectic world. It is a proven fact that the program will be commended by virtually ANY doctor, which is where the term Medi comes from. The Fast refers to being able to eat the needed foods for weight loss simply by having them available quickly, when needed. Medically approved food that is available fast. How fast you lose the weight?…that is another story and is entirely up to….you!
Can I Drink Alcohol or Beer When On The Medifast Diet?
The question of whether or not a person can drink beer or alcohol while trying to lose weight with the Medifast diet plan has been asked many times on this site. The answer I provide is one that often shocks because it is not the one most expect to get. If you are on, or if you are thinking of using Medifast to lose weight, the answer to whether or not alcohol can be consumed is really a very simple answer because the answer is “yes.” There is nothing going to stop you from drinking liquor or booze or the occasional beer. Now that you have heard the good news about booze and Medifast, let me give you the not so good news.
The one thing about losing weight is that it is all about commitment. The more weight a person needs to lose, or wants to lose, requires the person to have that much more commitment. All too often I hear lip-service from those that say they are tired of being over weight and then do nothing about actually losing the weight. Medifast is really not that much different than ANY other weight loss plan when it comes down to commitment. That commitment level is what separates a person from being overweight and the person that is going to lose the weight. If a person wants to lose weight using Medifast then there will need to be a period of time that drinking alcohol cannot be consumed. Sure you can drink it…but not if you want to lose weight. Nobody is going to chain you down and stop you from drinking, but if you REALLY hope to lose weight, you will give up the booze while your weight loss attempt is occurring.
The point I am trying to make is that you are the one that decided it may be time to lose weight and regain some of your youth and your health. If you are looking to drink booze or beer during that time period merely shows a lack of commitment to the overall intention of actually doing something about being obese! Does this mean that if you drink a beer you are a weight loss failure? No, it does not but it is really a double-edged sword, that is very sharp.
Medifast is unlike most other diet or meal plans out there in the way a person loses the weight. A key reason for this is that the plan is low-glycemic and that means that if you follow the plan, you stay in a mild and continuous fat burning state. That fat burning is achieved and as long as the plan is followed, you will continue to burn fat and hence….lose weight. If you stray from the plan and drink just one beer, you have caused an influx of carbohydrates and sugars that will halt the fat burning process for up to 3 days. If you drink that beer you will simply forfeit up to 3 days of fat burning and how does that fit into your commitment? Nobody will stop you from drinking the vodka, but then nobody is making you do Medifast either. It simply comes down to how badly you want to lose weight and how firm is your weight loss commitment to yourself. If you truly want to lose weight then you need to get out of the way of yourself.
I also know that a person cannot live their life in a diet vacuum forever. If you have some special event coming up like a wedding or a cruise then schedule the event. Stop the plan for that occasion, enjoy yourself and then jump back onto the plan. The difficult or tricky part is getting back on plan. That tricky part is not unique to Medifast, it is common to any and all weight loss plans. The easy part is going off the plan by drinking a beer or some whiskey, the hard part is recommitting yourself the morning after.
So, to answer the question of whether or not you can drink alcohol while using Medifast is simple. Yes you can…but not if you want to keep losing weight.
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Medifast and Emotional Eating
We are talking about Medifast and emotional eating because this is one topic that must be addressed when considering using Medifast as a personal weight loss plan. Each and every person that struggles with weight loss has issues that revolve around what can be considered emotional eating. When we talk about emotional eating the definition is that the eating process is for something other than a biological need. If we all ate for only biological needs nobody would really be over weight, or obese. For Medifast to be a success in your life you will need to understand the relationship between Medifast and emotional eating.
To look at it all in a very simplistic model we need to refer to the human brain and two distinct brain activities going on at any given time. There are two physical components of the brain that are also working side by side. The first side is the rational brain which can be considered the thinker of the two parts. This is the part of the brain that is the most rational part of the brain. The other activity going on is the emotional brain, which is more like a child. It wants what it wants and it wants it right now. The rational portion can be considered the parent while the emotional part is the more like the child.
How does all of this process work in the day to day moments that come along in every one’s life. The emotional brain has a distinct advantage and that is it can make choices very rapidly while the rational brain is much more deliberate in the thought process. As a person goes through the day these two portions of the brain are always working side by side. When we look at the reasons of why we eat the foods that we do, the entire process is easier to understand.
When you are talking to yourself and if you understand the existence of the emotional brain and the rational brain, it will be easier to make rational choices. Over time if we allow the emotional part of the brain to make the decisions, it has the possibility to simply become a habit. Over time the habit of emotional eating merely becomes the act of just giving in. To help you combat the emotions that are generated there is an easy to do question and answer session.
If you are struggling with emotional eating you should ask yourself where the desire to eat is coming from. Before you sit down to eat a meal or a snack you should decide if the thought to eat is a biological one from the rational part of the brain, or is it coming from the emotional part? All too often the over-eater will never make a distinction between eating to live and living to eat. By understanding how the brain is divided and how the brain works, a person will be able to make better decisions when speaking about food and eating.
If you are an over eater and started to dwell upon what was the origination of the thought that propelled you to the food, you may be able to move yourself into better food choices. By asking yourself whether the desire to eat originated from the emotional or the rational thought process will help you deal with the choices of eating. By understanding what portion of the thought process is driving the urge to eat, a person will be better able to combat the problem of eating with no biological need present.
As you close in on your food choices you should ask why you are about to eat what you have chosen. If the desire to eat is coming from the rational portion of the brain, the choice will be more grounded in what is an essential and healthy choice. If your desire to eat is from the emotional portion of the brain then you will have nothing to back up that desire. When recognizing emotional eating it can best be summed up in one word, which is “chocolate”. Using chocolate as an example, it is easy to recognize what emotional eating is all about. All too many people just “have to have a piece of chocolate” when no such need actually exists.
When a person is eating because of emotions, (grief, boredom, tired) the choices of the foods and the quantities are often going to be bad for your body. These emotional choices are what add up over time and ultimately are what adds the pounds to your body. By being able to recognize when the eating choice from the emotional side of the brain, a person will be able to resist emotional eating with much more fortitude. By being able to understand the human brain has two distinct thought process going on at the same time, a person can start to develop habits that resist emotional eating habits.
Emotional eating does not have to over-power a person, it just needs to be acknowledged and treated as habitual behaviour that can be overcome with practice. Medifast can help make a person overcome emotional eating issues because of the rigid times a person should eat. The eating every 2 to 3 hours, as Medifast requires, helps a person starts to develop new and much healthier eating habits. Since Medifast levels out a person’s blood sugar level, the presence of hunger rarely presents itself. By using The Medifast Program to lose weight a person can easily condition themselves to understand which thought process is generating the desire to eat. By following the 5 and 1 Meal Plan a person can over come the habits that forged the obesity in the first place. By establishing new eating habits, while acknowledging the presence of the emotional thinking, a person can conquer the choices that established the personal obesity in the first place.
Medifast is a great weight loss tool that can help a person deal with emotional eating. Emotional eating is nothing more than a habit that was developed over time and by acknowledging this fact, you can overcome emotional eating. Medifast is a tool that can be used to help you as long as you can target when you are eating out of emotion or when it is out of a biological need. You do not have to make emotional eating choices and the first step of making better choices will develop over time. Just start to think about why you want to eat and more importantly, where the thought to eat is originating from. Is that origination from the rational part of thinking or is it out of the emotional part of thinking?
Overal it is a simple question to ask and very easy to answer. What you do with that answer is the hard part of dealing with emotional eating.
What To Expect When Starting Medifast
If you are wondering what to expect when starting Medifast let me be the first to tell you all of the joys and all of the heartaches that you can expect. First off we need to sort of discuss your personal situation and since I do not know you, that makes it somewhat difficult to be accurate. The point I am trying to make is that the situation for everyone that starts Medifast will be different. Some people will be single and live alone while others may be married and yet still doing it all by them self. You need to consider the dynamics of the situation that is relevant only to your life at this moment in time. Below I have listed what I have learned about what to expect when starting Medifast.
Married and doing Medifast together is the situation that I live in at this very moment in time. My wife and I were both overweight and we tried many weight loss ideas before coming upon Medifast. The dynamic that we have is that we live alone and all of our children are grown up, which makes living the Medifast life fairly easy and very convenient. When we are at home together we simply wander into the kitchen and spend the five minutes or so getting one of our meals ready to eat. Since we are both on Medifast it is very easy to stay on plan, even when we go out to eat. What we have learned is that we are really saving quite alot of money on groceries and eating out. Overall the plan is very easy to follow and in the long run it is proving to be more cost effective than eating like we used to eat.
I see that there could be difficulties in a relationship if only one partner were to be doing the plan because with Medifast you are either on the plan or you are not on the plan. If your spouse or partner were to NOT be doing Medifast at the same time I can see it causing stress in the relationship. Eating out would be more difficult and the schedule of meals at home would be dramatically altered since a Medifast user eat six times a day. Also it might be difficult for one lone individual to resist the daily temptations in life that end up in a home that has little to no concern for preventing obesity and eating nutritiously.
What anyone can expect from starting Medifast is to lose weight and for it to happen fairly quickly. The first two weeks will be the fastest and then your body will settle into a slower pace. I lost about 18 pounds in the first two weeks, while my wife lost about 8. Currently I lose about 3/4 of a pound each and everyday. I know this is accurate because of the validation my BodyBugg provides for me. The math of the calories is quite simple. I eat about 900 calories a day and I burn about 3,500. If you do the math it works out, on the scale, that I am losing 3/4 of a pound daily.
One thing that I never expected to believe is that I can go each and everyday of my life eating less than 1,000 calories and yet still never be hungry. For the first few days on the plan I thought the portion sizes were tiny and I would be hungry all of the time. I soon found out that I was not going to starve and today I never get hungry at all. I eat my six meals daily like clockwork and I no longer rummage through the kitchen looking for snacks to eat. The interesting thing that befuddles me is that I am eating less and I am much more satisfied with the food I eat.
One thing I do know is that if I am out and I smell a cheeseburger or a slice of pizza…I long to have some. I love the foods that made me fat but the difference now is that this is the time I have chosen to become thin. I have set aside this time for the sole purpose to lower my weight, my cholesterol and end the family tradition of contracting type II diabetes. Despite the longing I have for what my nose sometimes smells, I am centered in the desire to make this weight loss attempt the one that succeeds. I am not saying that I will never have a burger or pizza again, I am just saying that I have lost 67 pounds along the way and I never want to return to the old me.
Another thing my wife and I have learned is that we shop for our clothing in thrift stores. Since I have lost 10 inches from my waist I have needed new clothing. I do not have the money to revamp my wardrobe and I now sort of just rent the clothing I need. I use the word rent because I know that in just a few weeks I will be donating them back as I search for an even smaller size. We have also been getting rid of all our old clothing entirely so it will not be easy to just start gaining weight again when this Medifast ride chops off all 97 pounds that need to go away.
Trying to be specific in my explaining what to expect when starting Medifast, I want you to know that the most important thing you will need to make this Medifast journey a success is determination and motivation for the long haul. If you are currently trying to improve your life by losing weight then do not let anybody tell you different. If there is a loved one telling you not to do it I would question their love or at least their motivation for saying so. If you are over weight and and the person in your relationship is not encouraging and helping you there is a deeper issue than weight loss. Anyone that loves you…I mean really loves and cherishes you will be there for you as you attempt to become healthier. If someone is trying to stop you and they themselves are overweight they may try to discourage you simply because they are not ready to make the change them self. If you are ready to make the change then go for it and don’t wait for someone that may die while they are getting ready to start.
The most important thing a person can expect when starting Medifast is that there will be changes and adjustments that you will experience. You may get constipated but that too will pass. (Pun intended) When you start Medifast you will think you will starve and yes, you may be tired for 2 or 3 days, but that is simply your body adjusting to the fact that you are not living on empty carbs and harmful fat. What you can expect is that after just a few days you will feel great and ready to go. If you follow the plan you can expect to see a thinner and happier person staring back at you in the mirror.
The single most important thing you can expect when starting Medifast is that you will lose weight.
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