Without a doubt, the most popular section of this site is our Medifast Recipes. I can’t tell you how many people have e-mailed or commented about it. I still receive great recipe submissions every day. One of the seriously overlooked things about Medifast is the amazing community of people that has grown up around it and the amazing number of Medifast recipes have been an outgrowth of that.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to put together a free book of Medifast Recipes. It will be a freely downloadable e-Book. I think this will make everything a little bit easier to search as opposed to logging onto the website to look for recipes. I’m to make lots of the recipes myself and take photos. There is absolutely zero profit motive for this book, I just want to make something cool that the Medifast community can really make use of.

Here’s where I need your help! I would love for this project to have a lot of input from the Medifast community. Do you know of any great Medifast recipes that we’re missing? Would you consider contributing your recipes or general cooking tips? If so, please email me at getskinnybehappy [at] gmail.com.

We’re now almost halfway into January and I am happy to report that I’m still experiencing quick weight loss. I have slipped up a couple of times and that was mainly due to alcohol and not food. Regardless, I’m excited about the progress I am making. I’ll announce the numbers on Monday. According to Health Magazine: “Incredibly, over 70 percent of us keep our New Year’s resolutions only one week.” I am still plugging away on my quick weight loss program. How are you guys doing. Based on my search engine results, it seems like everybody was interested in getting started on a quick weight loss diet in January, but the interest seems to be fading.

The thing that makes it a little bit easier for me is that I lost 13 pounds in a month last summer. And I definitely wasn’t 100% on program. So I know that Medifast works. But some of you might be trying Medifast for the first time and may have some psychological hurdles to believing it will help you lose weight quickly. I’ve put together this article to help you with the psychological side of the weight loss

1. Think “Baby Steps”

People don’t start Medifast because they are looking for slow and steady results. They start because they are in a desperate situation and realize they seriously need to lose weight. They look at it exclusively as a quick weight loss diet. It’s a lot more than that. If you follow it to the letter, I have no doubt that it’s the most effective way to lose weight fast. But if you’re looking at the scale every morning anticipating a huge drop – you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

The exciting thing about Medifast is the huge drop that usually happens in the first week. It’s enough to get you really pumped and then when your system settles into week 2, it can be a little disappointing. I would encourage you to look at each week as a Baby Step. Most Medifasters end up averaging about 2-3 pounds of weight lost per week. It may not be as dramatic as The Biggest Loser, but it’s still remarkably quick weight loss. Add that up over 4 weeks and you’ve lost between 8-12 pounds in a month. For health reasons, it’s also about as fast as you want to lose weight. So keep the long term in mind and take baby steps towards your end goal.

2. Deal With Your Emotions

An intense, quick weight loss diet like Medifast is going to put you in an extreme situation. At some point you are going to be forced to confront WHY you eat. Are you an emotional eater? A bored eater? What type of emotional state are you in when you splurge on dessert or a bottle of wine?

This program is going to force you to look into your soul and really deal with the underlying issues that got you into this in the first place. If you don’t face these issues, you will always struggle to take control of your weight. This is probably THE biggest single issue I’ve had to struggle with during this process. It’s forcing me to confront some dark things about myself. I’m not sure I have great advice on how to deal with this, but realize that it’s going to happen and welcome the experience. Look at it as a chance to reprogram the operating system of your brain.

3. Set a Specific Goal

The more specific you can make your goal, the more likely you will be succeed. My goal is to get to 190 pounds before summer. After I get to that point I am going to give myself a 5 pound range to stay within. Your goal could be to lose 10 pounds. Or it could be to lose 100.

I recommend picking an ideal weight that YOU are happy with. This doesn’t have to be your “medically approved” weight. People have different body types and different desires for life. Pick a number that you can personally be happy with. Divide that number by 2. That’s how many weeks you’re realistically looking at being on Medifast. Let that time frame sink into your head. Mark it on a calendar.

4. Write Everything Down

I did this for a little while here on the blog until I figured it was probably boring everybody. But I still write everything down. What I’ve eaten, how much water I’ve drank and how much weight I’ve lost. It’s on my big calendar, where I’ve also marked various dates which are various goalposts for weight loss. I can’t recommend this step highly enough. Use the blocks on the calendar to mark off days and make notes to yourself. It’s impressive to look back and see a big row of days that you’ve stayed on program and to see the weigh-in numbers getting smaller and smaller.

Attempting a big weight loss may seem intimidating because the numbers don’t feel very real until you’re actually losing the weight. But a base estimate of losing 10 pounds or more in a month is a pretty quick and easy weight loss. And Medifast is pretty pleasant once you get started. Even if you’re looking at 6 months or more. Just take a few days and let the time frame sink in. You are putting a halt to your normal behaviors and attempting something that is totally outside the ordinary. Look at this as an important time period in which you are going to do some serious work on yourself – physically and mentally. It is going to change you – hopefully forever.

Alright, people. I am back on the program. I’m going to post quick recaps here – mainly to keep myself accountable – but also to give you an idea of what you can expect on Medifast.

Here’s what I ate:

• Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal
• Dutch Chocolate Shake
• Chicken Noodle Soup
• Dutch Chocolate Shake
• Salmon & Mixed Green Salad
• Chocolate Pudding

I also drank a lot of water and two cups of coffee. To be honest, it wasn’t the most fun day in recent memory. I was pretty much unleashed with my eating and drinking over the holidays so my body was not really prepared for the reduction in calories. In other words, I was pretty hungry throughout the day. But, I remember this from my previous Medifast start-up. Right now, I’m feeling pretty cranky, but that’s a normal part of the Medifast detox. I’m really looking forward to Day 3.

In other news, I bought a new digital scale. Yes, I realize that I just bought a scale, but I cheaped out and bought an analog. I want to keep track of my weight every day during this run. I realize that most Medifasters recommend only a weekly weigh-in, but I’m way to impatient. I also want to start building the habit now of weighing in on a daily basis. There’s something about a digital scale that just feels more definite to me.

Starting Weight: 225. (not cool)

Photo by: bensonkua

If you publish a blog, it’s pretty customary to do a year-end post where you reflect on the past year and offer some thoughts about what you hope to accomplish in the new year. So bear with me…

2009 was a pretty insane year for me personally. I had a major business failure that left me with a personal financial situation that got increasingly worse over the year. I was so broke that I had to move in with my mom for several months. I sent out countless resumes in a very slow job market and heard very little in return. For most of the summer, I was really broke and life looked pretty hopeless.

As strange as it might sound, one of the bright spots of the year was Medifast. I had already started blogging about my personal experience with it so everything was already set up. But with extra time on my hands, I started to experiment with ways to get the most out of Medifast. These experiments ranged from figuring out how to cook the scrambled eggs to using the Rocket Blender to improve the Medifast shakes. Even though life was pretty crazy, I managed to lose 13 pounds in July.

Our Medifast Recipes section has expanded at a pretty impressive rate. Thanks to everybody who has added their own recipes to our collection. I’m determined to make this section of the site as comprehensive as possible and am updating it all the time – whether it’s reflected on the home page or not. But I have been going to lots of parties, drinking lots of beer and wine and eating pretty much anything put in front of me.

As a result, I am currently weighing in at 225 pounds. Not so cool.

The people I have met through this site and more indirectly in the Medifast community have definitely been a highlight of the year for me. I truly appreciate all the comments, e-mails and tweets. They always seemed to come through at a time when I was feeling low and they really helped me make it through the day.

Towards the end of 2009, things started to improve. I got a good job and moved back to Austin. I found a great apartment. Life is looking pretty good. However, my eating has not been so great. In fact, it hasn’t been very good at all. The holidays and just being back in my social circle have not been conducive to a healthy diet.

I am not trying to use this as an excuse. It’s just a fact. I’ve fallen off the wagon big time and am exhibiting the kind of behavior that got me into this situation in the first place. I think some of this has to do with the fact that I never went through the transition phase. This is a step I will not skip this time around.

When I made the conscious decision to get into shape, I weighed 259 pounds. So I haven’t completely erased my gains. However, I can’t help but think that if I had stayed on target, I could be at my goal weight of 190 pounds by now.

Now that my life has settled down a bit, I am committed to getting to my goal. As of today I am back on program. My goal is to be at my goal weight by April 19th. To do this, I only need to average around 2 pounds lost per week.

I will be documenting this process in quite a bit of detail here. Hopefully it won’t get too boring. Really, I’m keeping this blog for myself more than anything. It’s a way to be accountable to myself as much as to the community here. I will also be working hard to build out other sections of the site including a series devoted to home workouts.

In closing, I just want to wish you all a Happy New Year. Thanks for reading and thanks for commenting. Also, I would love to hear about your health and fitness years for 2010. The comments section is waiting for you!

Yesterday was a tough one because I went with my family to the State Fair. It was a perfect storm of eating temptations.

Corn Dogs.

Indian Tacos.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes on a Stick. (What?)

Luckily I had Medifast Crunch Bars.

It was great weather, the crowds were small and a really fun day. In a situation like this, it’s easy to get into the mindset of celebratory eating. After all the State Fair only rolls around once a year.

And isn’t eating ridiculous fried foods impaled on sticks the whole point of going to the State Fair?

Plus, there are all the sights, smells and other psychological triggers that really make you want to eat a freaking corn dog. I will admit that it was tough.

But at the end of the day, I can honestly look back on it and realize that I had a great time and my great time did not depend on eating food.

Todays Weigh-In: 213 pounds (-4 pounds total)

Trending downward.

Right now, the world (or at least the U.S.) seems to be obsessed with weight loss stories. I am probably somewhat guilty of this as well. The new television season is almost upon us and that means a new season of The Biggest Loser – the show that turns weight loss stories into a reality show spectacle. I will confess that a former guilty pleasure of mine used to be watching The Biggest Loser while pounding down enough Chinese food and beer to feed a family in China for a week. While I’m sure the show has inspired people to lose weight and gives out some good information between the silly games – I’m just not sure how applicable it is to the regular fat person sitting on their couch and wondering what to do next.

Since starting this site, I’ve stumbled across a few blogs that document the personal weight loss stories of their authors. I probably found them while looking for information on nutrition or exercise, but I’ve now started following them pretty regularly. I don’t know any of these writers personally, but after reading their blogs, I sort of feel like I do. If you’re interested in reading a few successful weight loss stories from real people, I suggest you check them out. I started reading them for information, now I just read them because I like them.

The Anti-Jared

Tony Posnanski was a 420 pound restaurant manager when he saw a picture of himself and decided that enough was enough. He completely overhauled his diet, started exercising and has since lost over 200 pounds. Even more impressive, he did all of this while working full time at a family-style Italian restaurant. He can literally reach out and grab food any time he wants it. But he has made the mental decision to say “no.” I love Tony’s weight loss story because it is so simple and old-school. His blog is hilarious and inspirational even if you don’t need to lose weight.

Mr. Low Body Fat’s Blog

Muata has transformed himself from a 310-pound fat guy into Mr. Low Body Fat. He is now thin, ripped and healthy and he is sharing his weight loss story with a rapidly growing audience. His advice is simple, easy-to-understand and inspirational. He describes his site as: “geared towards the average Joe, who’s tired of being fat and average. While women are more than welcome, please understand that the target audience of my blog is the fat guy that’s sitting on his duff, feeding his face, watching TV in your living room. I know him very well because I used to be him.” You’ll definitely find a lot of great weight loss and exercise advice on Mr. Low Body Fat’s Blog. He’s also recently started adding some great videos of his backyard workouts. But my favorite aspect of the site is the inspirational, brain-rewiring advice. This stuff is all worth reading – even if you’re a girl!

Prior Fat Girl

Jen was a self-described “oompa-loompa” before she joined a gym and re-engineered her life to lose weight and get healthy. In the first year she lost 80-pounds. The strategy behind her weight loss success story is pretty simple: “Everything you hear those nutty nutritionist’s say – DO IT…they actually know what they are talking about! It hard – it is a pain in the ass. But guess what? It works! I work out about 5-6 days a week. Yep, it sounds like a lot – but if you want to be healthy (“skinny”) then you have to do the work. If you want something bad enough, you will do the work.” Jen’s blog is filled with great writing and a vibrant and positive community has developed in the comments section. It’s evolved into something much more than just someone documenting their weight-loss story. Even when Jen is writing about serious issues, her writing continues to be soul-bearing and inspirational.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. These are just three blogs that have personally hooked me. If you have a weight loss success story blog that you’d like to recommend, post a link in the comments below. I would love to check it out.

Although this site is primarily focused on losing weight with Medifast, I am always on the lookout for tools and ideas that I can add to my arsenal. This is one of those.

Thanks to a recent article by Philip Greenspun, a very simple diet has been getting a lot of publicity. The diet was conceived by an MIT professor named Steve Ward, back in the 1980′s. It’s now known as the Steve Ward diet or the Bang Bang Diet. The concept is based on treating your body like a robot or a piece of machinery that requires fuel. It is simple enough to be described in a single paragraph:

All that you need for my diet is graph paper, a ruler, and a pencil The horizontal axis is time, one line per day. The vertical axis is weight in lbs. You plot your current weight on the left side of the paper. You plot your desired weight on a desired date towards the right side, making sure that you’ve left the correct number of lines in between (one per day). You draw a line from the current weight/date to the desired weight/date. Every morning you weigh yourself and plot the result. If the point is below the line, you eat whatever you want all day. If the point is above the line, you eat nothing but broccoli or some other low-calorie food.

The result would look like the chart you see at the top of this post. If graph paper is too old school, there is even a new iPhone app that lets you chart your progress and gives you feedback on how you are doing.

I think this is a great concept for people who don’t have a significant amount of weight to lose. It breaks weight loss down to its most basic level: Consume less calories than you burn and you will lose weight.

Since it’s Sunday, I thought I would post something that I found inspiring. This doesn’t have anything to do with losing weight on the Medifast diet. It also doesn’t have anything to do with weight loss surgery. This guy – David Smith – lost his weight the old-school way. He cut calories and increased his physical activity. He is the subject of a documentary called 650 Pound Virgin currently airing on TLC that details his 400 pound weight loss airing on TLC.

Here’s a video of David before he started the program. As you can tell, he’s so overweight that it’s difficult for him to even move around. At this point in his life, he became a hermit and hated going into public. He wouldn’t even go into his own backyard until night time when it was dark. His obesity had caused him to psychologically retreat from the world.

He called up Chris, a personal trainer who he’d seen on TV. This video gives a little preview of how the two guys met and what kind of program Chris put David on. It consisted of smaller, healthier meals and and increased exercise. David was so obese that his exercise in the beginning was limited to bear crawls up the stairs and lifting milk jugs over his head. But gradually he was able to increase and now he is at 220 pounds and doing pull-ups. Pretty amazing.

I love this story and if you have a chance to check out 650 Pound Virgin, it’s definitely worth your time.

Regardless of how much you have to lose, you have committed to dramatically improving your life. Even if it’s just trying to get those last 10 pounds off.

[Via Mr. Low Body Fat's Blog]

The new Medifast products (pretzels and puffs) are now available. I’ll be putting my order in soon.

My biggest challenge with Medifast is that I crave crunchy, salty foods. I’m not sure how salty these foods will actually be, but I’m excited about adding them into the mix. These are going to be hugely popular and word from Medifast is that they are selling like crazy.

I should have some Chili Nacho Puffs here soon, since I won a Medifast contest on Twitter recently. I will post a review as soon as I have them in my possession. And if you’re not on Twitter, you should sign up and follow me and the other Medifasters. It’s a lot of fun and a good support group.

Medifast also introduced an interesting new product: Essential One for Digestive Health. This is not a food, but a supplement that is supposed to boost your immune system and reduce flatulence. It also promotes itself as “Support a healthy gut environment.” All of these things sound good, but I probably won’t be ordering it right away. My gut feels pretty healthy and I don’t have a flatulence problem – at the moment.

Since plowing into week 2 of losing weight with Medifast, I have decided to eliminate diet sodas. Although I can’t find any clear scientific proof that diet sodas inhibit weight loss – I do have some suspicions (based on using myself as a weight loss guinea pig). There are some posts on the Medifast forums as well with some personal experience from people on Medifast experiencing slowed down weight loss when they introduce diet soda.

So diet soda is out… but what about coffee. I’ve already given up alcohol, soda and delicious deep fried food. Do I have to give up coffee as well. (Medifast doesn’t take a strong stance on this, but they do recommend cutting way back on coffee intake because your body will be much more sensitive during the Medifast weight loss process.)

It turns out there is a lot of conflicting information about coffee out there as well. In fact, there is enough for 2 articles. Let’s start with the negative effects of coffee on weight loss.

1. Coffee may stimulate unexpected cravings

Most coffee drinkers are accustomed to consuming their coffee with breakfast foods – like donuts or pastries or a McDonalds Egg McMuffin. Or if you’re meeting a friend for coffee in the afternoon, you may be used to having a snack. There are triggers all around us, so if coffee might set them of, stay away from it. This one isn’t enough to keep me away.

2. Coffee may contain hidden calories

I drink my coffee black and bitter. During the summer I like it on ice. But I never add milk or cream. Sometimes I will add a little Splenda. A cup of black coffee only has a handful of calories. However, if you like “gourmet” coffee, you could be consuming calorie amounts that are more in keeping with a dessert. For example, a café mocha can set you back over 300 calories and over 20 grams of fat. Once again we are getting into the psychological side of things here. If you can’t handle black coffee – you must stay away from it completely. (And don’t get me started on the Medifast Cappuccino. That does not qualify as anything close to real coffee.)

3. Coffee jacks you up

That’s why I drink it. Not only do I like the taste, but I love the electric keyed up feeling of my caffeinated brain. Coffee has this energizing effect because it messes up the flow of adenosine in your brain. The adenosine is responsible for calming you down. When you are jacked-up and over-stimulated, the chances of you going “off-plan” are greater. I have experienced this personally. [Source: .doc file]

4. Coffee inhibits your sleep

Sleep is crucial to weight loss. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association: “lack of sleep may enhance hunger and effect the body’s metabolism, making it much more difficult to lose weight.” When you sleep, your body does a lot of metabolizing because sleep triggers the release of of cortisol which is an appetite control hormone. I like to think of sleep like rebooting a computer. The operating system is turned off and everything has a chance to reset. Ideally. To lose weight, you need to get a good nights sleep. [Source]

5. The diuretic effect may be depleting your body of nutrients

Coffee is a diuretic. Just another one of the reasons I love it. The diuretic nature of coffee may be throwing off your results on the scales and it could be flushing out some of the essential nutrients your body needs. You could be losing Vitamin B1, magnesium, and potassium.

6. Coffee may be keeping you out of ketosis.

I don’t pretend to be a doctor or scientist, nor to I understand the fragile and mysterious nature of ketosis. Ketosis is the accelerated fat-burning stage that your body enters a few days after starting Medifast. With the reduced amount of carbohydrates, your body becomes very efficient at burning fat. The Canadian Diabetics Association had this to say: Drinking caffeine in large amounts as coffee over a short period of time has been shown to raise blood sugar. Caffeine does this by enhancing the effect of two hormones (adrenaline and glucagon). If coffee affects your blood sugar, it is going to affect your bodies ability to stay in ketosis. This is the reason that coffee is banned on both the Atkins and Zone diets.

In summary…

There are some very valid reasons you need to be careful with coffee when you are on a weight loss program. With Medifast, you are going through a very severe calorie reduction. While you are getting your essential nutrients, etc. it’s important to be very conscious of everything you are putting into your body. Your body will be much more sensitive to caffeine that it was before you started losing weight with Medifast.

Am I going to stop drinking coffee during my Medifast weight loss? I’m not sure. I’ll make a decision after my next article: 10 Reasons to drink more Coffee!