Hi Everyone,

I'm relatively new to Medifast, and I'm having trouble eating six times a day. I never ate breakfast before, and ate a small lunch (bread, cheese, turkey) and a dinner + after dinner snack (popcorn, chips and salsa) every day. I'm on Medifast because I quit smoking and gained a nice 15 pounds that exercise alone isn't cutting. I suspect that my lunches and dinners were not as healthy as I calculated. On a side note, has anyone noticed whether or not Daily Plate overestimates exercise and underestimates calories? Sigh.

Anyway, I'm wondering if it will still work if I only eat 2-3 medifast meals a day with my lean and green dinner? Is there anything about the way that it works that demands eating every 2-3 hours? Can I just cut the bars in half? I just find that I'm not hungry until noon, and then not hungry again until dinner. It would certainly be cheaper for me if I could.

Thank you for all of your help!

Caitlin

NO!!!!! You will not be getting enough calories nor all your nutrition. You MUST get all the meals in. If you have to you can mix two of the shakes and have them at the same time, but you really do have to eat all the meals.

Caitlin,

The reason for eating small meals every 2.5-3 hours is to keep your body from triggering into its "starvation mode". When your body recognizes that it is receiving only 1000 calories/day (+,-), it thinks you are starving and to keep you alive for as long as possible it slows your metabolism down to a crawl. Pretty smart body, huh? It's only doing what it thinks is best for it/you. This means it's hanging onto your fat for dear life. It's next to impossible to lose weight this way. And it takes Foreeeever.

By eating 6 small meals at regular intervals, your body recognizes that although it is receiving far fewer calories you are continuing to feed it and often, therefore you are not starving and it is okay to burn up your fat stores.

Correct. I find it better to eat multiple small meals, like sample type meals all throughout the day, than to eat a huge meal then go to bed. This is why I've moved dinner up to about 7 oclock so i can eat, exercise a little, do whatever else, then go to bed and still have good chance to be burning a lot of that stuff off. :-p

Thank you, everyone.

I figured that might be the case.

It's just as well. It is better to have to eat more that you wanted than to not eat at all. As far as diets go, I guess I shouldn't complain, right?

Caitlin

Maybe a few of the snack type meals (puffs and pretzels) you can have at night like you used to. During the day, you can have just cold drinks or shakes if you are not in the mood for soup or something more filling. That way it is just drinks and the meals.
But, yeah, as far as things go, you got the good end of the stick!