Question

• What weight loss organization did you choose? Please include the name and website.
• Describe the food program promoted by the organization. Is the same basic diet used throughout the program, or does the diet have several stages or variations? Is the program flexible enough to allow people with different food ways and different lifestyles to use it successfully? Is it adaptable? Is it easy to follow? Does it provide variety? Does it provide for weight maintenance after goal weight is achieved?

Answer 1

Medifast is a meal replacement program for weight loss.

The company ships prepackaged meals and ready-to-eat snacks to your home. These are designed to help you reduce your calorie intake and lose weight.

This independent and unbiased review will explain what Medifast is and whether it really works for weight loss.

Their meals include dried shake powders, snacks and dehydrated meals that can be shipped and stored safely, then quickly prepared at home without additional ingredients.

These meals will replace most food. Depending on your plan, you will still eat one normal meal per day that is self-selected, plus possibly one self-selected snack.

Medifast dieters eat small, frequent meals — six meals in a day. Some meals are smaller snacks. They offer two plans: “Go!” and “Flex.”

The Go! plan prioritizes simplicity by providing all but one daily meal. It provides five meal replacements, as well as directions on how to choose a “lean and green” meal for dinner.

“Lean and green” refers to a low-fat protein source combined with non-starchy vegetables. This excludes potatoes, corn, carrots, squash and peas.

The Flex plan allows more personalization and variety, providing four Medifast meal replacements — a breakfast and additional shakes or bars — while allowing a self-selected “lean and green” lunch and dinner.

Medifast provides guidelines and educational materials about approved self-selected meals and snacks, including restaurant options. These encourage dieters to eat low-calorie and low-carb foods.

Dieters can continue Medifast as long as they want. On average, Medifast dieters lose weight over eight weeks.

After this, some dieters return to their self-selected diets, and some continue using Medifast products on a more limited basis to maintain weight loss.

Medifast also offers a longer-term weight maintenance program called “Thrive,” which provides a smaller number of meal replacements and offers further education for selecting high-protein, low-calorie meals.

A number of studies have examined the Medifast diet, comparing it to more general, self-selected diet plans.

In a 16-week study of 90 obese adults, Medifast led to a 12% loss of body weight, compared to 7% in a control group following a self-selected, low-calorie diet.

Although Medifast dieters regained more of this weight in the 24 weeks of monitoring after the diet, their final weight at the end of 40 total weeks was lower than that of the control dieters .

This may be because they had lost more weight in the initial 16 weeks.

In another non-randomized study of 1,351 dieters using Medifast, study volunteers who stayed with the program lost an average of 26 pounds (12 kg) over one year.

In this study, only 25% of volunteers continued to the one-year mark. Volunteers who dropped out early still lost weight, but less than those who continued the diet for a full year .

In another study, 77 overweight adults lost about 10% of their body weight over 12 weeks of a Medifast diet. The diet was Medifast’s 5 & 1 meal plan, which provides five meal replacements daily, and requires dieters to provide one self-selected meal .

In a second, longer study of the Medifast 5 & 1 meal plan, dieters lost 16.5 pounds (7.5 kg) over 26 weeks, while the control group lost 8 pounds (4 kg) on a regular, self-selected weight loss diet.

A year after starting the diets, both diet groups regained some of this weight. Medifast dieters ended up 11 pounds (5 kg) lighter than when they started, compared to 4.4 pounds (2 kg) lighter for the control group.

In this study, Medifast dieters also lost more inches off the waist — 2.4 inches (6 cm) versus 1.6 inches (4 cm) for the control group