I write a lot about my experiences on Medifast. The other day, someone visited my blog and asked if it was possible to replicate Medifast yourself or to come up with some sort of “do it yourself” alternative. I’ll answer this question in the following article.
What You’d Have To Come Up With If You Wanted A DIY Medifast Plan: In order to replicate this diet, you’d be eating six times daily. For five of those times, you would eat small meals that are low in calories and high in protein. Almost every “meal” in this plan runs about 90 -110 calories and is chock full of decent nutrition.
I’ll use the very popular shakes as an example. They contain 90 calories and 10 grams of fat. In addition, they have 11 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber. They’re very low in sugar at only 8 grams. And, they’re pretty full of vitamins and minerals too. They contain 20% (or more) of your daily serving requirements for vitamins A, C, D, B6, and B12, just to name a few. And, they contain 30% of the iron you need each day, which is important for women.
Considering that you’re going to be consuming 4 more similar meals per day, you’ll be providing your body with more than what it needs nutritionally, but you’re also getting a low amount of calories and a high amount of protein. This works to put your body in a state called ketosis where not only are you not as hungry, but you’ll also begin to burn your own fat.
So obviously, you’ll want to hit this target with any alternative foods that you come up with. And, you’ll need to find five of these alternatives per day.
Once per day with this diet, you’ll prepare a “lean and green meal,” yourself. This meal should contain lean protein and up to three servings of vegetables. This is not too challenging and this can be accomplished at the grocery store or even at a restaurant, so replicating this is no big deal.
Why A Medifast Alternative Probably Would Not Be Cost Effective: Many people who ask about a DIY alternative do so because they are trying to save money. But, let’s think about this. In order to find foods that are as low in calories and sugar and as high in protein and nutrition, you’re likely going to have to go to a health food store. And, you’re going to need to buy enough so that you can eat these small meals five times per day. You’ll also probably want a bit of variety.
A regular monthly package from the company runs $299, but there are always coupon codes and specials running that can make this even more reasonable. Unless you have a very good relationship with your local health food store and can get the foods at cost, it’s going to be really hard to beat that when you have to buy approximately 145 of these applicable meals.
In short, I suppose with a lot of research and hard work, you could find some comparable foods at specialty stores, but they’d probably be a lot more expensive than what you’d pay to get the real thing.