6 Commonly Asked Questions on Dieting, Food Shopping, and Weight Loss

-As I've gotten older, I've gained weight. Why is this happening?
When you are younger, you have a higher metabolism and are more active. As we get older and take on more responsibilities, such as jobs and children, leisure activities become less of a priority. Work outs and healthy cooking falls to the wayside. Add an increasingly slower metabolism and what do you have? Weight gain

-How do I lose it?
In the simplest terms: Exercise, clean diet, and quality sleep.

-Can you elaborate more on clean diet?
Clean diet is just a term that I have used for years that means high quality and nutrient dense foods. People call me all the time and ask what they should be eating. If you need to ask, it's probably not good. If what you are eating was made in a factory, you probably do not want to eat it.

-What diet are you following?
I do not diet. I eat a diet full of nutrient dense foods and eating "bad" foods (ie. cake, ice cream, and cookies) in moderation. Some examples of nutrient dense foods are kale, spinach, broccoli sprouts, avocados, all berries, almonds, Brazil nuts, chia seeds, hemp seeds, cacao, raw honey, coconut oil, olive oil, grass-fed beef, free range poultry, salmon, tuna, beans, yerba mate, and green and white teas.

-I can't afford to buy everything organic, what should I do?
If you can't afford a totally organic diet, then only buy the "dirty dozen" organic. These 12 fruits and vegetables are found to be covered with the most pesticide residues and grown with chemical fertilizers. Also to save money, buy the "clean 15" conventionally. The produce on this list are found to have minimal pesticides on them whether they are grown conventionally or organically. As a rule of thumb, if the fruit or vegetable has a thick skin on it that is not eaten, it is safe to buy conventionally.

-What diet do you recommend?
I do not recommend diets for most people. Once you are on a diet, you start to get cravings because you are depriving yourself of something. That something is usually a food that you like (and possibly love). If I had to pick one, it would be the slow carb diet. I have had amazing results with it. I lost close to 20 pounds in almost 3 weeks. My flexibility, endurance, and overall athletic performance improved tremendously.

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If I'm Inactive, How Much Weight Can I Expect To Lose On Medifast?

I sometimes hear from people who want to know what to expect in terms of weight loss when they begin Medifast. Perhaps they've often seen the commercials or looked on the website and they've seen photos that show dramatic weight loss. They often wonder if something even remotely similar is going to be possible for them.

I heard from someone who said: "I've heard people say that they lost 20 or 30 pounds on Medifast. This seems a little excessive to me. The most weight that I have ever lost on a diet was 12 pounds. I need to lose a good deal more than that. How much weight can a normal and slightly lazy person realistically expect to lose on Medifast?" I will try to answer this question as best as I can below.

Unfortunately, the person didn't provide a lot of information. I didn't know their starting weight or if they were going to be on the 5 plus 1 plan. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to assume that the 5 plus 1 plan will be used since this is the most popular plan and it's a decent guess.

Research and studies show a range of 2 - 5 pounds lost per week in the first two weeks. After that, the range is 1 - 2 pounds per week. I don't think that the range is what is in question here. I think that the real variable is for how long this person intended to be on the diet. Because as long as you stay on the diet and you use it as designed, there's no reason to think that you shouldn't continue to be somewhere in that weight loss range. You could easily do the math to determine how much weight you could expect to lose for a set amount of time. The point is that the amount of weight that you can realistically lose on Medifast depends upon how long you are going to be on the diet and how well you comply with the plan. If you plan to exercise and to be very compliant with your lean and green meal and eat only approved snacks, then you are more likely to be on the higher end of the range. But if you cheat, are extremely inactive to the extreme, or end the diet early then you risk being on the lower end of the range.

And I'm not sure that laziness has much to do with it, particularly at first. Plenty of people do just fine on this diet without putting in a lot of sweat equity while just going about their day to day activities. I didn't really exercise at first and I was still happy with my results. However, as the results came in, I wanted to tone up so that I would look even better. It was only then did I add in exercise and I liked it so much that I am still doing it. I also find that exercise helps on those weeks where you hit a plateau.

But to answer the question posed, without knowing more information, it was hard for me to say how much weight loss this individual was looking at. But with reasonable compliance, those pounds do add it. But I can tell you that in my opinion a 20 - 30 pound weight loss on this diet most certainly isn't impossible. Sure, it would take some months, but it's not at all out of the question with a little patience and diligence.

If you'd like more information about what life is really like on Medifast, feel free to check out my free ebook "Getting The Most Out Of Medifast" at http://easiest-diet.com/free-medifast-ebook/html