Shawna and I started a new diet yesterday. This isn’t one of those “we’re going to eat healthier” diets. It’s a Medi-Fast diet. You eat six times a day. Five of those “meals” are provided by Medi-Fast. The sixth meal is a “lean and green” meal. It consists of 5-7oz of lean meat and a veggie. This meal you provide yourself.
Each of the Medi-Fast meals is 100 calories. And they are entirely interchangeable. There are about 70 different things you can choose from. They all have basically the same nutritional profile.
So what we’re talking about is basically around 800-1000 calories per day. They actually warn you against exercising during the first 3-4 weeks of the diet. And they give you measures to take if you suffer from headache or dizziness as a result of the low caloric intake.
The Medi-Fast meals are interesting. Many of them are simply powder that you mix with water and microwave. Two such meals I had yesterday were eggs (egg whites) and vegetarian sloppy joes. These were both surprisingly good.
The program also calls for drinking a gallon of water per day, or 1oz of water for every 2lbs of body weight, whichever is greater.
It’s certainly too early to draw any conclusions. Based on our experience with day one, we think this is something we can do. And with one month of Medi-Fast food coming in at over $600, we had already decided that this was a commitment we were determined to make.
I personally think that one of the bigger factors in the success of this program will be the almost complete removal of decision making from our diet. We totally don’t have to think about it.