Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the Southwest Style Eggs. Of course, I’m probably mostly at fault. These were introduced not long before my previous quit and I never got around to ordering them, probably because I read the ingredient list. When I think of Southwest food, I think “spicy”. Apparently, when Medifast hears Southwest, they think “bell peppers”. Which I hate! Naturally I didn’t think to check the ingredients until my box of food had arrived though and because I like the original eggs I just went ahead and ordered a full box instead of a sample packet.

I did decide to go ahead and try them anyway though because I thought the bell peppers might be minced up well enough for me to not mind them. My issue with them is texture rather than flavor. And what actually happened is that when I went to prepare the eggs, most of the non-liquid ingredients remained stuck to my mixing bowl. I could have scraped them off into my pan, but I decided not to.

Based on how the eggs tasted, I think I made the right decision. The flecks of pepper that were in the eggs tasted nasty and crunchy to me. If you happen to like peppers though I think this is easily solved. Most of the powdered meals that need to be reconstituted with water respond very well to soaking. So if you are going to order the Southwest style Eggs I recommend that after mixing them with water, you let them soak for an hour or two before preparing them. If you enjoy eggs for breakfast, you can always soak them the night before so you don’t have to wait around.

To make losing weight even easier, there are Medifast coupons codes which you can use when you place your order. With savings between $25 and $50 dollars you would be crazy not to use a coupon code for Medifast orders. Here’s the latest batch of Medifast coupon codes! Just click the links to get your discount.

July 2011 Coupons for Medifast

Medifast – $50 off any purchase of $275 or more! Use Coupon Code: JUL31H good until 7-31-11

Medifast – $25 off any purchase of $150 or more! Use Coupon Code: JUL31H25 good until 7-31-11

When you place your first order, enter your Medifast coupon code in the promo box. Also make sure you sign up for the automatic delivery program as that will save you even more money over time, especially after you use up all the available discounts. You can cancel the auto delivery shipments easily and also change your orders to add favorite items and remove the ones you don’t care for as much so it is a smart move to sign up for it.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

Medifast Centers are available in numerous states across the nation and with more opening all the time. The good thing is that you can get that professional face to face communication that really can’t be duplicated online. This also means that you might have to drive a ways to get to a Medifast center near you though, because right now not every state has its own Medifast weight loss center. In fact, Medifast weight loss centers are only located in 10 states – Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. Texas gets the best representation overall with 24 locations throughout the state.

Thankfully, the scarcity of Medifast locations that you can visit doesn’t mean that you can’t go on the diet if you don’t leave near one of their locations. While you won’t be able to sit down with someone face to face, you can get many of the same features and perks that you can find in any center online for free. You can do all of your ordering through Medifast’s website, plus visit their forums and read tips that are posted almost on a daily basis. You won’t have to worry about getting out in bad weather to drive to the center; instead, you can visit a virtual center online. In fact, the support available freely from Medifast is one of the many reasons Medifast diet reviews tend to be so positive about the results you can expect with this diet.

Being able to get all of your information and products online, without having to go through a middle man in the process will save you loads of money in the long run. Unlike other name brand dietary programs around, Medifast allows you to get everything you need online without having to pay higher prices for visiting an actual building in a town that isn’t all that close to you. This can make things a lot easier on you and your family, and still give you the confidence to continue on with your dieting needs.

It won’t be long at all before you are able to get those “Friday Night Jeans” back on and you won’t even have to leave your house. Well, you WILL have to get the mail when it arrives. If you had to choose between driving for hours to one of the Medifast centers, or sitting at home and ordering online, which one would you prefer? Given the gas prices of late, NOT having to drive somewhere may be true motivation to ordering online.

Now that you know your options, your next step is to find out the current deals. Medifast is always running specials. Click here to Get the Latest Medifast Specials.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

To make the Medifast brownies, you only need to empty one packet of mix into the provided tray. Next, you add 3 tablespoons, or 1.5 ounces, of water. Mix it all together well. Then all you have to do is put the tray in your microwave or conventional oven and bake them. Soon, you’ll be enjoying a fragrant chocolate aroma emanating from your kitchen. These brownies are not only tasty, but they provide protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals.

The Medifast Brownies are available in a box of seven servings and priced at $15.50 per box.  Calories per serving are 110 and there are 15 calories from fat. These tasty brownies are lactose free, heart healthy, non-Kosher, good for vegetarians to eat, and contain 9 mg of caffeine.

The great thing about the brownies is that they are so easily incorporated into the Medifast 5 and 1 plan. The brownies have been created so that they’re so easy to make, which is quite appealing to everyone that lead busy lives and have no time to bake. When people are that busy, they certainly won’t have time to bake something that is this tasty while allowing them to stay on their diets. You can make these brownies to either eat right away or ahead of time to take with you for later. They’ll make the perfect office snack.

People that are in love with these Medifast Brownies often want to know just how many they’re allowed to eat in a day. Their calorie and carb content is low, so they’re actually not restricted in the way that some of the Medifast snacks are. You can have five of the brownies a day if you wanted to eat that many of them. On an eating plan that offers such a variety of food choices though, you may not want to risk getting bored by eating the same thing over and over again.  However, they are great for taking care of that sweet tooth.

If you are still waiting to place your first Medifast order, you can Become an Advantage Member and get Free Food, Free Shipping and 5% off!! Just Select Medifast Advantage at checkout!

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

Now, when you’re doing Medifast, you are to eat 6 small meals. Five of them will be the packaged diet meals that are shipped to you. They require hardly any work on your part. However, while they’re convenient, it’s not recommended that you only eat these prepackaged meals. Instead, you’re asked to prepare a “lean and green meal” made up of fresh vegetables and proteins once daily.

A lot of people assume that this meal must be eaten for dinner. While this is the most common practice, nothing says you HAVE to eat your main meal at dinner. You can just as easily have it for lunch and enjoy it in a restaurant. As long as you make the best selections, it will work fine and won’t affect your dieting results.

When it comes to selecting the lean and green meal at a restaurant, the requirements are rather simple. For example, if you have pork, lamb or beef, you can eat 5 ounces of it. If you choose to eat chicken, fish or turkey, you’re allowed to have as much as 7 ounces. Your serving size should be around the size of a deck of cards.  Now most restaurant portions are quite a bit larger than that, so I recommend that you cut your lean portion in half as soon as it is set before you and then just take the rest home with you for your next lean & green meal.

You’re also allowed to have 3 servings of vegetables along with your protein. You may decide to add a salad and green beans, but be sure to follow the instructions that come along with your meals. Stay away from junk food while eating out but if you choose healthy options available in most restaurants, you’ll be fine.

Don’t give in to the temptation of heavy sauces or gravies, and always get your salad dressing separately. Fast food is even possible if you choose wisely. For example, you can get grilled chicken, green beans and a small salad at many fast food restaurants. That’s a sound choice. Another great example is a lean stir fry.

There will be times that you may have to cheat just a bit. For example, quite a few fast food places have carrots as an option instead of fries. While carrots aren’t ideal for the lean & green, they are certainly preferable to French fries! So don’t worry about it too much; because for the most part, you’re going to be eating fewer calories and carbs than you normally eat when everything is taken into consideration. Everybody cheats at some point. You just need to get started again as soon as possible and forget about it. Most people blow their diet by thinking that cheating once means they should just fall off the wagon completely. But if you stick to the plan, that single cheat won’t make any real difference at all. Just keep at it!

Haven’t made your first Medifast order yet? Get Two Weeks of Free Medifast Food when you join the VIP Plan. Just be sure to use the code JoinNow at the checkout page.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

Any time you incorporate a regular exercise program with your Medifast program, you significantly increase your chances of reaching your weight loss goals in a reasonable time.

However, if you’re a rather sedentary person at the moment, they recommend that you wait at least three weeks after you begin the Medifast 5 and 1 Plan before you start a regular exercise regimen. If you’re already exercising, it’s recommended that you cut back on your current regimen by half during the first three weeks on the 5 and 1 Plan. Then you can build it back to where you were gradually.

Among the many things that exercise helps, besides staying in shape and trim, are preventing chronic diseases like heart, diabetes and strokes, decreasing high blood pressure, cutting back on stress, strengthening bones, muscles and joints, improving metabolism and energy level, staving off depression, strengthening the immune system, and helping to prevent osteoporosis. The three types of exercise that are recommended to stay healthy are aerobic exercise, lifestyle exercise and strength training.

Aerobic exercise works to strengthen the heart and lungs. Lifestyle exercise means things you do every day that can be used as exercise like walking your pet, using stairs instead of an elevator and parking further from your destination than you need to. Strength training will help your metabolism increase, which burns more calories, as well as tones your muscles.

There is a Medifast Exercise Guide that you can get that will offer tips on the best way to exercise, when to do it, and type of exercises to do. You will be introduced to the Medifast Walking Program, which is a 12 week walking program targeted at both beginners and veterans of exercise. You will also be shown how to incorporate a regular workout schedule into the rest of your activities.

As with any new physical activity, talk to your doctor before you start to be sure the program is safe enough for you. When you get the green light, start slowly and increase everything gradually. That’s how it will all work together for your greater good.

If you haven’t started dieting with Medifast yet and need to place your first order, just follow my link to Get Two Weeks of Medifast for Free. Just use the code JoinNow at check-out.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

The main reason that frozen dinners aren’t really appropriate for use as a lean and green meal is because of the way most frozen dinners are processed, they have too much sodium. Often, they don’t have enough protein either. But sodium aside, I thin even if you were to look long and hard at every frozen meal at your grocery store, you would have a hard time finding something suitable to match the ingredients of your lean and green.

Remember, your lean and green meal is pretty simple. It’s 5 to 7 ounces of lean protein, two cups of salad and 1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cups of raw or cooked vegetables. You can check the list of allowed foods on Medifast to get a better idea, but basically most frozen meals have all kinds of additional ingredients that you shouldn’t be eating (mostly fat) and not enough of what you need (protein and healthy carbs).

You’ll actually find that it would be pretty difficult to find a frozen dinner that contained as much protein as you need to eat. Medifast’s suggested serving is quite generous. You would probably need two frozen dinners to even get close to the right quantity of lean protein.

Now this isn’t to say that you can’t use frozen foods in your lean & green meals. You definitely can! Just avoid the the stuff that is packaged as “dinners” or “meals” and stick to frozen foods that are just packaged single ingredients.

There’s nothing wrong with most frozen meats or frozen vegetables. Just keep an eye on the sodium content and beware of any extra fats. So a bag of frozen broccoli or a block of frozen spinach is fine, but you wouldn’t want to get get frozen broccoli & cheese or frozen creamed spinach.

Plain frozen meats, fish or seafood is fine as well. So try some frozen plain salmon, or fish filets that are already grilled and just need to be reheated. How about some frozen shrimp? Frozen turkey burgers are great too. I’ve even seen frozen buffalo burgers at supermarkets like Whole Foods so you might want to give those a try as buffalo is on the Medifast lean meats list too.

For meatless options, Boca burgers are in the freezer aisle and they have lots of varieties and they are also on the approved Medifast list. There’s also Morningstar Farms products or GardenBurger patties. Any of their options are acceptable if the carb serving is under 6 grams. Even if you aren’t vegetarian, you should try some of these options. They are all quite tasty and quick to heat and serve.

Add some bagged salad greens to your shopping cart and you should easily be able to come up with Medifast lean & green meals that are far tastier than the packaged frozen dinners, but just as fast to heat and serve.

If you haven’t signed up for Medifast yet, be sure to check out the Medifast specials for this month.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

First of all, you should know that there are three different vegetarian brands of patties that you can eat when following the Medifast diet. They are Morningstar Farms, Boca Burger and GardenBurger.

For each of these brands, you want to check the Nutrition information as you need to select patties that have less than six grams of carbohydrates each. If none of these brands are available to you or there are some other meatless patties you would like to try, I think it would be fine to just follow the same guidelines, but I would also try and match the nutritional stats for the approved products when looking at a different brand.

Your serving size for the Morningstar Farms (or other brands) is two patties as part of your lean and green meal. As you can see the serving is quite generous and that should keep your appetite comfortably in check while taking care of your hunger and your nutritional needs for the day.

While you won’t be able to enjoy your Veggie burgers with a bun, since bread isn’t on the plan because of the high carbs, you might want to try some lettuce wrappers as a nice alternative. Romaine lettuce makes a great wrap, but for a little more crunch try some Iceberg lettuce. Other popular lettuces for making sandwich wraps are Red Lettuce, Butterhead letuce, Raddicchio and large spinach leaves.

To make your lettuce wraps, you can just slice up the Morningstar Farms veggie burgers, add some chopped onions, some cabbage and heat it all up to spoon into your lettuce wrappers. If you eat dairy, consider adding two tablespoons of low carb ranch dressing for a delicious option. And if you don’t eat dairy, you could cook your veggie patties in two teaspoons of canola oil rather than using a non-stick cooking spray. Or stick to the non-stick spray and cut up 5-10 black olives and add those to your lettuce wraps for a great tasting Medifast lean and green meal.

You can see now that it is pretty easy to use Medifast as your diet even when you are a vegetarian. And Medifast reviews are typically enthusiastic about how much weight you can expect to lose on the plan, so don’t hesitate to try it out. Order Medifast Now to Start Losing Weight.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

Peanut Butter Cookies the Medifast Way
For this recipe you will be using enough ingredients to count as two Medifast meals and one snack. Gather a package of MF vanilla pudding, one package of maple brown sugar oatmeal, two packs of Splenda, a tablespoon of peanut butter syrup, half a teaspoon of baking powder, one tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter and a fair size sprinkle of cinnamon.

Be sure to mix the wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately. When you combine them all together the batter will be very thick. Roll the batter into six separate balls and flatten them onto the cookie sheet for baking. Baking should take about twelve minutes in a 350 degree oven.

The Lean and Green Taco Salad
Who doesn’t love a delicious taco salad? You will be using five ounces of ground turkey, a tablespoon of taco seasoning, two tablespoons of salsa, a cup each of romaine and iceberg lettuce, a half cup of diced tomatoes and a tablespoon of water. This will count as your Lean and Green meal.

Start by browning your turkey. Drain the fat once the turkey turns white (turkey doesn’t turn brown per se). Add the tablespoon of water to the pan. Add your taco seasoning and stir it up good; be sure to chop up the turkey into tiny pieces and then let it simmer for five minutes. Prepare the leafy green vegetables and then toss in your tomatoes. Finally, add the turkey on top and top it with the salsa.

Remember, just because it is a diet it does not mean you must limit yourself. There is an advantage to knowing what you can do with the Medifast-approved foods in order to be able to stick with the meal plan for your health and weight. Losing weight is great, being healthy is better but enjoying life while doing both is the best reward of all.

If you still haven’t signed up for Medifast, you can Order Medifast Now.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

According to the Medifast lean and green plan, the foundation of your diet is three servings of Vegetables and one serving of a lean protein for your main meal. The proteins are probably the easiest part of the plan to keep track of. For the most part, you can eat virtually any lean meat. The portion sizes may change. For example, you will have a much larger serving of chicken or fish than of beef or pork, but a nice juicy steak or pork chop is still allowed on the plan.

For many folks, it is the vegetables that give them pause. Which vegetables are allowed and how do I get a little variety in my diet?

While for the most part any vegetable is on the table there are a few that are off limits. Let’s take a few moments to learn about some of the more important aspects of the Medifast lean and green plan and how you can use it to get leaner, healthier and have more fun with your diet.

Veggies that are on the Black List

The way that Medifast works is to reduce your calorie and carb intake and therefore reduce your weight. It does this by replacing a lot of the foods that you normally eat which are high in calories or carbs with vegetables that are rich in fiber and essential nutrients. It is important to make sure that you are staying with the approved list of veggies only. There are some things which you are going to want, but you cannot give into the craving for. These items include potatoes, corns, carrots, and onions. You may be surprised to learn that other items that are on the no-no list for being high in carbs or fat are peas and brussel sprouts.

Vegetables that are Medifast Lean and Green Rock Stars!

Okay so now that you know that most of the things that taste great are out of the cabinet, you may be wondering what is left to enjoy. The simple answer to that is A WHOLE LOT! For some lean and green ideas meal ideas, let’s start with the basic foundation of the plan, green leafy vegetables. This group means of course salads, salads and more salads, but the best part is that there are so many things that you can do with salads as a base that you will not get tired of them anytime soon. Salads let you get creative and have fun with your food in a personal way. Don’t worry, however, the world is not made up of salad alone. You can also enjoy broccoli, tomato, asparagus, and all kinds of mushrooms, spinach, zucchini, cauliflower, eggplant and more. There are hundreds of vegetables to choose from.

Make a List and Check it twice for the Veggies that are Naughty and Nice

One of the best ways to make sure that you stay on the good list and off the bad one is to plan out your meals a few days at a time. When you sit down to do this make sure that you have three things with you – the Good List, the Bad List and a vegetarian or vegetables cookbook (you can get one at most thrift stores for a couple of bucks) or access to a website like food.com or MarthaStewartCooking.com so that you can get some great recipes to make you meals interesting.

Experiment with the vegetables

One of the best things about vegetables is that they are so versatile. This is why it’s a great idea to have access to at least one vegetable-focused cookbook or a good food website while you are on the Medifast Lean and Green plan. There is a whole big world of vegetable dishes out there that you may never even look at a salad bowl again. Get creative and experiment. There are very few things that can go wrong with veggies. Don’t be scared of them, they are your friends.

Expecting Great Medifast Results

The Medifast diet plan usually shows good results for those who follow it carefully and with time you will see the pounds drop off and the inches melt away. It’s easy to live with the Medifast diet because their own foods are varied and taste great, and you will also have lots of interesting and flavorful fresh foods to eat in your Lean and Green meal every day.. In fact you may not even realize you’re on a diet!

Are you ready to start your diet? You can Order Medifast Now and start losing weight and looking great as soon as your shipment arrives.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.