Is it Possible to Eat the Medifast Way Without Buying the Food?

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I recently had someone contact me and tell me that she was very impressed with what she’d been reading in her research about the Medifast diet. She felt that something similar might work for her, but she hesitated to spend the money on the diet’s food. She wanted to know if it was possible to eat similar foods with items she was able to buy from the grocery store. This is a relatively common question that I had myself. And previously, I did try to accomplish something similar. I will discuss this more in the following article.

What You’d Need To Accomplish If You Were Trying To Eat The Medifast Way On Your Own: One big reason for the success that most people have on this diet is that it is able to get you in ketosis where you are rapidly burning your own fat. You’re typically able to do this because the calorie to carb to protein ratio is so specific and favorable. I know from experience that it’s quite a challenge to come up with foods that are going to meet this criteria. And, if you are able to do so, it’s generally pretty expensive and time consuming.

Also keep in mind that you’ll be eating six times per day. When you’re on this diet, you eat five of the plan’s prepackaged meals and then you make one larger main meal on your own. This is necessary for a couple of reasons. First, eating so often helps to keep hunger at bay and it keeps your metabolism humming along for ketosis purposes. And yet, while you’re eating so much, you’re also only taking in around 1,000 calories per day. Not only that, but the carb to protein ratio is mostly kept at even.

If you’ve not yet researched the foods that you’re going to use to accomplish this, I can tell you that the “safe” goods under this umbrella are difficult to come by. Many will have way too much sugars and carbs which isn’t friendly to ketosis. It’s common to compensate for low amounts of calories and fat with additional sugar so that the taste is still pleasant.

I’ll look at Medifast’s new brownies as an example of what you’d need to accomplish. This product has only 110 calories and 2 grams of fat. There are 15 grams of carbs, but this is balanced out with a very high 11 grams of protein. There are only 8 grams of sugars and 4 grams of fiber. Even if you look at health food stores, it’s going to be quite difficult to find a comparable product with so much protein and fiber. And, even if you do, you’re likely to find that it’s more expensive and you’d still have to come up with four similar meals for the day.

I know that many people research DIY Medifast because they think that by “doing it themselves” they’re going to save some money. But in my experience, this just isn’t the case. If you use the good Medifast coupons, your cost per meal for Medifast is just over $2 per meal. It’s extremely difficult to come up with meals that costs less than this, especially since you will need a lot of specialty ingredients. I tried something similar when I was on the zone diet. Not only do I think that I never ever got close to the calorie to carb to protein ratio of Medifast, but I also know that I spend a lot more than $10 per day for 6 meals.

That’s not to say that if money isn’t an issue and you just like to cook that you can’t come up with something that has a low amount of calories and carbs while packing in high amounts of fiber and protein. I’m sure that this probably is possible for at least a few meals per day. But, I also suspect that it would be quite time consuming, expensive, and challenging. However, I’m generally someone who doesn’t have a lot of patience and who prefers convenience.