We see these commercials for diet products, personal trainers, exercise equipment and gym chains. They look so nice don’t they? Get ripped in just five minutes a day they say. Eat the same foods you love and lose weight anyway. Come here for just $10 a month with no signup fee… wow sounds like these companies really care about us, they want us to slim down and want us to get in to the best shape of our lives.

NONSENSE!

The weight loss and diet business is a billion upon billion dollar industry and they care about one thing… selling you their products.

Weight Loss Products

How many weight loss products are out there that you can name off the top of your head? Atkins bars, Medifast, Weight Watchers frozen dinners, Nutrisystem, heck even Diet Pepsi. All designed to help you think they will help you lose weight. Sure you might lose weight for a little while on Medifast or the like, but do you want to eat freeze dried oatmeal the rest of your life?

Of course not, and the marketers behind all this stuff know you don’t. Their goal is to get you to buy it, have a little bit of success and quit. Then you’ll come crawling back for more like the diet junkie you are.

Made for TV Exercise Equipment

Im not going to say all exercise equipment is bad because quite frankly if you want to lose weight you need to get your butt on the treadmill, but you can’t go through five channels on TV without seeing a brand new “ab ripper machine” or “compact cardio blaster that folds up and fits under the bed”. Do you really think these things work? Do you think Chuck Norris got ripped because he uses the Total Gym for 10 minutes a day three times a week? Really?

You’ll do what everyone else does and hit your dieting low point and whip out the credit card thinking “this time for real” and when the box finally gets to your house it’ll sit in your basement for six months until you open it up. Then you’ll try it for a few times, not see 6 pack abs in 30 seconds and give up, only to go and buy the next “Fat Blaster X9000” that comes in three easy payments of $59.95.

Your Local Gym Chain

You need to go to your gym. Let me repeat. Get off your butt and go to the gym, work hard and you will lose weight.

So why are gym chains in the list of weight loss businesses that don’t care about you? Because they want you to come to the gym, sign up once (on a monthly rebilling membership) and never come back.

$10 a month sounds awesome right? Guess what? That’s just low enough for you to forget you have it, or not break your back to go cancel it. So every month you pay and more and more of you go in to the gym and sign up while they sit back and collect the checks.

Think about it if everyone who had a gym membership all went at the same time do you think there would be less than a 3 hour wait on every treadmill? Yea, plus the insurance companies that provide coverage to the gym in case someone blows out their pecks trying to bench 600 pounds don’t want that many people either. So next time you go sign up for a gym membership actually use it k?

Let me tell you something that nobody ever says in the diet industry: LOSING WEIGHT IS NOT EASY!

Ok now that we have that out of the way are you ready to work? Don’t just nod your head thinking that I’m full of it and losing weight really is easy because that infomercial on the super duper fat blaster told you that 3 minutes once a week is enough to get rid of that belly. Remember, the weight loss industry doesn’t care about you.

Ok, so you’re still with me, that’s a good start. Here’s what we’re going to do… we’re going to set a plan in motion that will help you get rid of the belly, get rid of the love handles and slim out those tree trunk legs. Sound good? Ok here we go.

What Foods Do You Eat?

You eat a lot of sugar and salt.

How can I say this without knowing what you have in your kitchen? Because we ALL eat too much sugar and salt. We do it all the time not even realizing it. We eat bread, crackers, soup, condiments, and I haven’t even mentioned cookies, pizza and ice cream. We stuff our faces full of this stuff and don’t even realize it.

So the first thing I want you to do is go through everything you eat on a regular basis and eliminate as much processed food as you can. If it comes in a box odds are it’s on our hit list, at least for now. Don’t like this idea? Go try your luck with Medifast and see how much you like drinking a freeze dried shake five times a day ok? Yea I thought so.

Things like bread, cereal, pasta, even chicken that comes in a box (yuck) are so packed with sugar and salt that it’s ridiculous. Eat natural things that are grown naturally and not pumped full of hormones and yellow #5. You will be shocked how much better you actually feel when these FDA approved toxins are out of your system.

Don’t Stop Eating

Our natural instinct when we try to lose weight is to eat less, or for some people stop eating all together. You want to make yourself sick and lose every muscle you have? Good then stop eating. Otherwise if you want to be healthy and actually look good you need to realize that you need to eat more often, just eat the right things.

I’m not saying stuff yourself with 8 slices of pizza, I’m saying eat more of things that are good for you. If you’re hungry go eat something else that is good for you because your body needs nourishment. You with me here? The reason why we need to do this is next up.

Exercise More!

Tada! It’s the magic solution to weight loss… exercise!

I know I just lost about 90% of you who are off muttering “exercise sucks” as they click the close button, but if you’re serious and you want to lose weight you need to do real exercise and you need to do it EVERY SINGLE DAY.

You don’t have to bench press 600 pounds every day, you don’t need to run a marathon every day, but you need to do something other than laying there watching the TV all day. TV sucks anyway, unless you like diet infomercials of course.

Get out there and go for a jog, walk around in circles, do yoga, pilates, jumping jacks, plyometrics, I don’t care, just do more than you did the day before. Try to mix up the exercise too so you don’t focus on one muscle and ignore the others. The P90X guy likes to call this “muscle confusion” and he’s right, which is why his program kicks major butt.

So that’s it. What you wanted more? Maybe a magic food that burns 90% of your belly fat away if you eat it once a week? Good luck with that, but if you really want to lose weight read above, get your butt moving and you will.

The way it works is that when you don’t feed your body sugar it goes in to a process known as ketosis which makes the body burn stored fat (slow burning fuel) instead of sugar (fast burning fuel). The problem is that you need to get the sugar (aka glucose) out of your system before your body triggers ketosis.

Well, it does have its drawbacks. You know like you can’t eat bread, cereal, rice, sugar, milk, fruit, even carrots on the diet for as long as you’re doing this or the whole thing fails. Sounds super right?

Ketosis is also VERY sensitive, so if you are on the diet for a week or two, and break down and have a slice of bread with your friends at a party later that day it can snap your body out of it. As you can imagine I’m not a big fan of these all or nothing diets because at some point even the most disciplined professional athlete will fail on their diet and if they will fail, trust me you will fail at least once too.

A lot of people got sucked in to the low carb plans because they were promised that they could eat as much bacon cheeseburgers as they want, as long as they don’t eat the bun. It’s cool at first, but trust me after a while you never want to see a block of cheese or eat an egg again. It becomes very gross and it’s obviously unsustainable for the rest of your life.

There are tons of “helpful” products that the diet industry pumps out to take advantage of low carb dieters. Fake chocolate or peanut butter bars, shakes and other gross processed foods make for a quick solution, except that half of them are filled with nothing but chemicals and food coloring. Seriously if you need convenience and pre-packaging at least try Medifast that actually works.

So if you’re thinking about trying Atkins, do yourself a favor and try to lose weight the natural way first. Atkins sucks, trust me it does. It works for a little while and then you gain it all back when you start eating bread and cookies again (and you will at some point) because your body shifts back to normal. You’ll spend weeks eating gross food that’s not really good for you and you’ll be back at square one. Save yourself the frustration ok?

Medifast was designed by scientists to help people who were morbidly obese lose weight to help save their lives. Several studies have been done to test Medifast’s effectiveness such as this one from the USDA or this one from the NCBI so you know Medifast is effective. Originally it was mostly shakes that you drink that give you the nutrition that you need but prevent you from eating junk foods or large portion sizes that plague the obese community. Originally you needed a prescription from a doctor to buy it but now it has become so popular that you can buy it online directly from Medifast’s website.

There is a nice variety of food on the plan, their website features shakes, bars, brownies, oatmeal, soups, eggs and a bunch of snacks like pretzels and cheese puffs. Heck they even have soft serve ice cream, what kind of diet lets you eat ice cream? Apparently this one!

All of this food can get a little expensive though, which is where I don’t really like it. I found a few Medifast coupon codes that help you save $50 on $250, but these days $250 is a little expensive for my taste.

Speaking of taste I asked a lot of users what the food tasted like, and they weren’t thrilled with it but they said it was “good enough” that they could deal with it if it really helped them lose weight. Most of them had lost weight though so they were happy to stick it out. The plan also does cut out some specific food groups which was a concern in a recent NYU review of Medifast, so please consult your doctor to make sure you are getting everything you need before trying the program.

In the end Medifast does seem to work very well, most of the people I talked to lost at least 20 pounds which is a very good sign. One woman had an allergic reaction though so if you notice anything funny happening with your body it’s best to discontinue use until you talk to a doctor about it first.

Overall I would say Medifast is a quality diet. It’s probably not for someone who just wants to lose 10 pounds or less, but if you have a lot of weight to lose and don’t mind shelling out a few bucks to lose that weight then Medifast is probably a very nice option for you