I sometimes hear from folks who are getting ready to start the Medifast diet and who are looking for tips or tricks to have a lot of success in the most easy way possible.
I always try to offer whatever advice I can.
But I have to tell you that the diet probably isn't as difficult as you might expect.
You don't have to think a lot about it or do a lot of calculations.
Essentially, you eat the food they send you five times per day and then prepare only one meal on your own each day.
It's pretty easy even for people who've never really dieted before.
Your only real choices are which foods might sound good to you that day and what you'll choose for your one daily "lean and green" meal.
With that said, there are some things I can offer you which might help with your expectations and your comfort level going in.
I will offer those things below.
Don't Go Into This Expecting It To Be Difficult Or Thinking You Can't Do It: It's no coincidence that most people begin their diets on Monday.
The reason for this is that they are expecting to have a hard time.
They want to eat with wild abandon over the weekend only to "buckle down" and begin their diet first thing Monday morning.
As much as I understand this, this is a very much a defeatist attitude.
Why? Because you're expecting to have a less than easy time of it.
Don't go into to it thinking it's going to be awful.
Because this attitude almost has you giving up before you even begin.
Will you get to eat everything that you want all of the time? No.
But you will get to eat some pretty decent foods quite regularly.
It may not be as bad as you think.
But you won't know that until you try this with a decent attitude.
Try to see this an opportunity rather than a chore.
I can tell you from experience that there is no food on this earth that is so enjoyable to me that I would trade my new body to enjoy it.
You now have the opportunity to cultivate the same attitude.
Because many people agree that once the weight comes off, any effort that they have made has been more than worth it.
Accept That The Work Has Been Done For You And Do Not Over Think Things: One of the most common questions that I get from first timers is should they attempt to over achieve.
What I mean by this is they will look at the diet and think that six meals per day is just too much.
So before they have even tried the plan, they will decide that they will skip some of those meals because, they figure, there is just no way that they will lose a lot of weight eating so much.
Please don't do this to yourself.
The Medifast diet has been around for a very long time.
It has been repeatedly tested for effectiveness.
So it can be a real mistake to think that you know more than those who have tested it.
It can help to just trust that many people have succeeded wonderfully using the diet as designed.
All you really need to do is to follow along with the literature that they send you.
There is absolutely no reason to skip meals or to over exercise.
Have confidence that if you follow along, you will do just fine.
Don't Panic If One Week Doesn't Go Your Way: It goes without saying that we all want fast and steady results.
And much of the time, that is what we will get.
But sometimes, you might have an off week.
It happens to us all.
It's normal and there is no reason to get discouraged about this.
In fact, sometimes you can do everything right and you might still have an off week for reasons that you just can't pinpoint.
Don't worry too much about this.
I often find that if I have one off week, the next week comes with good results to make up for it.
People sometimes tell me that they are tempted to quit when they have one or two off weeks.
This is usually one big mistake because if you had just waited it out, you might have had one glorious week right on the horizon.
But you won't know because you quit.
Don't Be Shy About Making The Diet Your Own: Here's the last point I'd like to make.
Although I fully advocate sticking to the diet as written, I'm also a realist.
I know that sometimes you just need to take certain liberties.
For example, a couple weeks after I started the diet, I figured out that fat free cheese sure did taste fantastic with the chili.
I tried mixing together the latte and cappuccino and the results were fabulous.
I will admit that early on I had one more approved snack (you are allowed two per day) between the five meals.
I advocate doing whatever you need to do to get your through until you get used to the diet.
And frankly, I have never seen these liberties negatively affect my results.
If anything, they kept me chugging along so that I could reap the rewards of my efforts.