Medifast Diet Review
The Medifast Diet is a diet that involves eating Medifast’s pre-made meal replacement products to lose weight along with the Take Shape For Life weight loss coaching program. Here’s our review of the Medifast diet.
What is the Medifast Diet?
The Medifast Diet is a diet that involves following the “5 & 1 Plan”. That plan involves eating five Medifast meal replacements and one meal of your own every day. If you can follow that plan, then Medifast claims dieters can lose 2 to 5 pounds after following the plan for just two weeks. Medifast claims you can continue losing 1 to 2 pounds per week after that.
After reaching your weight goal, Medifast encourages you to gradually add calories back to your diet over a 6 week transition period. During this transition period, you might choose to follow the “3 & 3 Plan”, which involves taking three of your own meals plus three meal replacements indefinitely to keep off the weight.
What You Can and Can’t Eat on the Medifast Diet
When you’re following the Medifast diet, you have over 70 different meal replacement options from which to choose. You also get to add your own home cooked meal once daily.
Ideally, that home cooked meal includes 5 to 7 ounces of lean protein along with three servings of vegetables and two servings of healthy fats. You’re also free to add certain condiments and flavorings to your home cooked meal – including sauces and dressings.
In addition to the five Medifast meal replacements and one home cooked meal, you’re permitted one snack of your own daily. Recommended Medifast snacks include celery, Jell-O, pickles, gum, mints, or small servings of walnuts, pistachios, and almonds.
You’re only allowed to eat what’s on the Medifast approved foods list. Everything else – including alcohol, dairy products, fruits, and starches – is off limits.
Typical meal replacements on the Medifast diet include shakes, bars, cereals, and snacks like pretzel sticks. It is interesting that they do no promote weight loss supplements (see forskolin or garcinia).
Is the Medifast Diet Difficult to Follow?
WebMD.com ranks the diet’s level of difficulty as “Medium”.
WebMD gave the diet that ranking because the diet’s purchasing restrictions are relatively easy: there are more than 70 meal replacement options that you purchase ahead of time. When you’re hungry, you open the packaging and eat one of these meal replacements. Preparation is minimal.
The diet was also ranked as easy to follow because you’re not required to attend in-person meetings. However, if you choose to do so, then you’ll find over 100 nationwide Medifast Weight Control centers with the support you need.
The diet is also adaptable to certain dietary restrictions, including:
— Vegetarians and Vegans: Avoid high-carb legumes like peas, beans, and lentils until you reach your goal weight. The Medifast diet is relatively easy for vegetarians, since most of the meal replacement products don’t contain meat. However, vegans will struggle with the Medifast diet because many meal replacements are made using diary or eggs.
— Gluten-Free: Out of the 70 meal replacement options available through Medifast, 40 of them are classified as gluten-free. The Medifast website also lists its most popular gluten-free options, so it wholeheartedly supports the gluten-free lifestyle.
When you’re following the Medifast 5 & 1 Plan, you’ll be consuming about 800 to 1,000 calories per day. You eat every 2 to 3 hours.
How Much Does the Medifast Diet Cost?
Anytime you’re following a diet where you have to buy certain products from a certain company, you know it’s not going to be cheap.
Expect to pay about $300 plus shipping for a 4 week supply of meal replacements from Medifast.
You can also order additional 7 packs of meal replacements for $16.95 to $18.75. In other words, each meal replacement product costs you about $2.50.
Your Medifast purchase also gives you free access to the company’s Take Shape for Life program, which gives you access to a personal health coach and free access to journals, food guides, nutritional charts, weight loss blogs, forums, and chat rooms. Some people will find these tools useful for encouraging their weight loss, while others will never use them.
Medifast also has various promotions available throughout the year. For example, the Medifast Advantage 30 Day Plan now comes with free shipping, which means you only pay about $400 per month.
All purchases also come with a 30 day money back guarantee. Medifast claims you can “Cancel at any time and get your money back if you’re not satisfied.”
You can order individual Medifast products or buy bulk products as part of the 30 day kits and 2 week kits. Kits include:
— 2 Week Deluxe Kit: $209.40 (56 servings)
— 2 Week Trial Kit: $150 (56 servings)
— 30 Day Complete Kit: $446.80 (126 servings)
— 30 Day Select Kit: $396.90 (126 servings)
Medifast Diet Products
Medifast’s full lineup of products and meal replacements can be found at their online store here: Medifast1.com
At that store, you’ll find products separated into categories like:
— Bars
— Shakes
— Smoothies
— Drinks
— Breakfasts
— Desserts
— Snacks
There are also sections available for nutritional supplements, including probiotics, omega-3 supplements, and hydration-boosting infusers.
Most Medifast products are priced at around the same rate: you’ll pay about $18.75 for a box of 7 servings.
All Medifast products come with detailed ingredients lists and nutritional charts online, including preparation instructions (if any).
Take Shape for Life Review
Take Shape for Life (TSFL) is a healthy living company offering programs and products for people who want to adopt a healthier lifestyle and experience the journey of optimal health. It's also a business opportunity offering several different ways to participate.
Take Shape For Life Weight Loss Coaching Company
Take Shape for Life is a subsidiary of Medifast®, a 36-year old company based in Maryland. Medifast is traded publicly traded on they New York Stock Exchange and has a total equity worth $80.5 million as of 2014. They advertise their products on TV, sell through franchised businesses and medical professionals, and of course: network marketing.
Medifast ranked #1 on the list of “America's 100 Best Small Companies” in 2010, a list published each year by Forbes. There's one tiny black mark on their record: the did settle a lawsuit claiming false advertising about their weight-loss products.
Whereas Medifast is meal replacements, the Take Shape for Life company is the coaching part of the weight-loss program.
The TSFL Weight Loss Products
The products are a combination of Medifast® meal replacements and the TSFL Healthy Habit programs. These products, along with the help of a real live Health Coach (TSFL distributor) are designed to help people lose weight through a combination of body and mind lifestyle modifications.
Medifast meals plus the Habits for Health program supposedly allows clients to lose 2 to 5 pounds per week (for the first 2 weeks) and 1 to 2 pounds per week after that.
The Compensation Plan
Joining as a Health Coach/Health Professional will cost you $199 for the business kit. The Network Marketing MLM kit gives you:
— Access to one year of your own co-branded website (meaning a professional-looking website which looks like the TSFL site)
— Compensation plan details
— Business tools (Guidebook, catalog, newsletter etc)
— Marketing materials (brochures, etc)
— Training (access to videos)
In addition, there is a $99 annual fee to remain a Health Coach.
Support for health coaches comes in the form of:
— The Health Institute- study for and take competency exams for nutritional coaching
— Weekly support calls where you can ask questions
— Virtual back office has product info, tips on recruiting, materials you can use in your presentations, and the admin panel for setting up and running your TSFL website
— Customer service from the Home Office
— National convention
The TSFL compensation plan is a bit unusual in that Health Coaches do not get a discount on products. There is no “buy-wholesale-sell-retail” profiting here because clients order directly from TSFL. Instead, they earn income by receiving commission on retail sales of products. However, there is no commission on personal orders.
Here are the details of the 10 ways to earn income with TSFL:
— 15% of full retail dollar amount on orders place by your personally sponsored clients
— Get certified and receive an additional 3% bonus
— Extra 5% – 13% on commission as you move up the ranks
— Consistency Bonuses: $250 – $1,000 bonus for three months in a row of volume quotas
— $100 bonus in the first 30 days for 5 new clients/Health Coaches + minimum of $1,000 in Medifast Meal sales
— Team Building bonuses: 4% – 12% depending on rank when your team grows
— The plan uses compression
The Medifast & Take Shape For Life Verdict
Two things make the Take Shape for Life business opportunity stand out: the Medifast® products and the compensation plan in which commission is based on full retail value of products sold. In other words, if something costs $20 and the commission is 15%, then you're getting $3, not a fraction of that.
It's a simple way to calculate earnings on products which, by the way, do a lot to impress. Medifast® products are known by name, recommended by actual health care professionals, and are backed by a team of scientists worthy of the best nutritional programs you'll find out there.
The ultra-thorough training program, in which distributors are certified after passing exams, is also unusual. It means they are truly adding value to their clients' lives, not just pushing products.
All in all, it's a good program and the focus is truly on mentoring and helping people rather than turning a quick profit with retail sales and bonuses based on unsustainable practices, like so many other nutritional product MLMs seem to offer.
About Medifast
Medifast claims to be a clinically proven diet that has been the brand “recommended by more than 20,000 doctors since 1980.”
The company itself, Medifast, Inc., is headquartered at 11445 Cronhill Dr Ste 200 in Owings Hill, Maryland. The company was originally founded in July 1981 and employs 311 employees.
If you’re looking for Medifast online, make sure you type in the name correctly: Medifast.com is some sort of Asian medical services provider. The diet company is found online at: Medifast1.com
