What Can A Meal Replacement Diet Do For Me?

Meal replacement diets have been around for a long time, in fact more than thirty years. They have been known by many different trade names. A diet plan by any other name is still a diet plan, the fundamentals are the ones that are important.

The fundamentals are basically the blueprint for a successful diet plan. But because not all diet plans are made the same, one aspect or more may be missing in a particular plan and that becomes the recipe for failure.

Many good diet programs have been unfairly tagged as "fad diet" simply because the dieters failed. Their failure is actually a result of their being misguided. For example, a person hears about how good X Diet Plan is from a friend and gets the list of recommended foods or recipes from the friend. The person follows the diet for a month then sees good results and eventually continues with the plan. After a while of following the same list of foods, the person gets bored and begins to see a stagnation in their weight loss. They revert to their old diet, gain all the weight back and calls the diet plan a failure.

Many experts agree that this particular example is one of the foremost reasons why meal replacement diets are being blamed for a dieter's failure. An effective program should guide the dieter from their initial weight loss phase into a transitional phase, that is from the replacement food to the normal food. There should be a nutritional and educational program in place to ensure that the transition is smooth and permanent. This is where many "word of mouth" or "bandwagon" dieters such as the one in the example above miss out on.

In answer to the question posed by the title of this article, the fundamentals of a good meal replacement diet should:

• replace your current diet with one that is low in calories with moderately balanced amounts of carbohydrates and protein;


• have a transition phase that helps guide the dieter from the replacement meal period back to a normal diet, minus the unhealthy foods;


• have an exercise plan, whether low- or high-impact;


• have a maintenance program that will educate the dieter on how to keep the weight off for the rest of his/her life.

In addition to the fundamentals described above, a meal replacement diet also relieves the dieter of additional stress by already having designed their daily meals for them. The dieter need not be concerned with the question of "what shall I eat today" or "what shall I cook today". Some diet plans even tell you to eat foods whose ingredients are hard to find. No such problem with replacement meals.

Many will describe a diet program as a long, drawn-out war where victory is next to impossible. Fortunately, science and research have produced nutritionally balanced foods, supplements and programs in the form of meal replacements that aid in the battle. A dieter just needs to put in a lot of dedication into a program and not divert from the battle plan.

Medifast is a replacement meal program that has helped more than a million people lose weight and keep it off. Visit us to learn more about what the Medifast meal replacement diet can do for you.