More Thoughts after week 1 of Medifast...

One full week of Medifast has come and gone and now I have to make sure I can keep this up for a few months to make my goals.

 So far, I think that's perfectly doable. I *like* a lot of the food. The shakes, the cereal, the crunch bars, the soft bakes, the puddings are all good. I would like to find a crunchy savory snack that i actually like, but  that won't be the end of the world.

 The macaroni and cheese, once you've 'enhanced' it with a laughing cow wedge, some Tony Chachere's, and maybe some mushrooms and an oz of lean protein is a good filling lunch.

For dinner, I'm eating a ton of mushrooms, can do lots of different things with ground turkey breast, chicken breast, shrimp, fish, and eggs. I need to incorporate some more veggies, and will probably start incorporating some squash soon, and it's about time to try to learn how to eat lettuce.

In a surprise twist, eating three servings of mushrooms and 5-7 oz of lean protein (after cooking weight) is actually too much food. So that will make it a lot easier to plan on my lunch taking some of that food over.

I believe the biggest boosts this diet will give me are the following:

Meal Plans - I eat 5 pre-packaged meals a day. This prevents me from skipping breakfast (which I did way too much), it makes it easy to eat lunch (which I often skipped or ate very late). It has a night-time 'dessert' planned in every night (a soft bake cookie/brownie or soft serve made from pudding mix).

No going out - I'm cooking real food every night. Since this is 'Just Required' we have meat and veggies in the house every night. We aren't going 'let's just order pizza or grab McDonald's on the way home'. If we get a habit of cooking every night and only going out for occasions and to socialize with friends, instead of it just being easier, then that is a huge win.

Stomach size - No lie, I think this will make it easier to eat smaller meals more often. In the past week I have not once gone 'ugh why did I eat all that'. As my stomach contracts and I get used to 6 meals a day, I think that I'll be able to keep that schedule going after it becomes habit.

 And that's the whole trick here, of course, is to use this to make good habits. Obviously eating meal bars and meal shakes isn't the habit I want... the habit is 'small healthy meals with reasonable snacks'. If I can get into a mode where I'm eating a reasonable breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with reasonable snacks, then I think this will stick.

 The hardest part so far is social eating. But, that's not been a big issue so far. Tonight I'm just having to skip a social meal (I'll be there, but won't eat) since it's at a pasta place, but honestly a small piece of lean meat and some low-carb veggies is doable a lot of places... I just have to expand my diet and start eating green things.

That's gonna be the hard part.