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.

Getting a plan together for losing that weight is the first step you need to take. Do not just go into it and try to figure it out as you go or you will end up getting frustrated and possibly giving up. You do not want that to happen. You want to have a good plan in place that will help you make sure you reach your goals. Losing weight is a very important task to take on and it takes dedication and work but it is so worth it. The healthier you are, the happier you will be over all and that is a wonderful thing.

To get started with your weight loss endeavor, you need to decide how you plan to go about it. Cutting down on your portions and maybe even counting calories is a great start, but for some people trying to keep track of portion sizes and counting calories, carbs or fats is just a pain. When I decided to get serious with weight loss, I took a look at some of the Medifast info and decided that their program was the way to go because it allowed me to free myself of a lot of the worry. I only have to put together one meal for myself each day. The other meals were Medifast plan foods. The great thing about Medifast is it also let me lose more weight. I actually lost closer to 35 lbs in the first two months, rather than just 20.

If you eat like most people do, cutting down on your portions will help you tremendously. Most of us eat way too much at meal time. A serving size is much smaller than the amount most of us eat. Most restaurants serve much more than an actual serving size as well.

Picking the right foods is very important too. You want to keep your meals lean and green. Fruits and vegetables are always an excellent choice of food. You can eat your vegetables fresh or streamed and eat as much of them as you want. Fruits make great a great snack when you are wanting something a little sweet. Chicken and Fish are the best meats choices. If you want beef or pork just make sure and pick the leanest cut you can get.

Do not forget to incorporate a good exercise program when losing weight as well. Walking on a daily basis for at least 30 minutes is a great goal and a great start to exercising. You can also visit your local gym and use their equipment which will help you to burn more calories. Finding a good workout routine for home is a great idea.

If you follow these simple suggestions, you should be able to lose 20 pounds in 60 days with no problem at all. Just get your plan together and stick to it.

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.

First of all, I want a diet that does not require tons of cooking and fiddling around with ingredients. I’m not a chef and I don’t want to spend tons of time in the kitchen. I like easy diets and any diet that requires a lot of time in the kitchen, where the food prep takes longer than the eating, isn’t my idea of an easy diet plan!

I’m also not a huge fan of weighing and measuring every bite of food I put in my mouth and I hate having to look up and register all of the calories I eat every day. It’s time consuming, annoying and the majority of the time I’ll just forget to do it anyway, so what happens is I’ll spend the next day guessing on what I ate the day before and estimating the quantities. That’s the fast track to failure for me as I’ll just give up out of frustration.

This is pretty much why I’m not a fan of Weight Watchers where you have to always be counting stuff. Sure, it may be easier to count “points” rather than calories, but for a lot of foods you still wind up looking up or calculating the stupid points. I tried Weight watchers twice and found it a completely frustrating experience. It is also not a particularly fast way to lose weight. Plus I really hate going to meetings and the weigh-ins and pretty much everything else about it! So I guess that is another criteria — no meetings. I’m not interested in “checking in” once a week, even by phone. If that’s a requirement of a specific diet, that knocks it off the list for me. I’m a big fan of just ordering my food online and waiting for it to arrive at my front door.

I also do not want to be hungry! I find a lot of regular low fat diets leave me starving and that totally breaks down my will to leave, never mind my dieting willpower. So for the most part, I stick to carb-restricted diets, rather than low fat diets. Lower carb and either higher protein or higher fat diets leave me much more satiated than other types of diets.

So let’s talk about some specific diets then that more or less meet my criteria.

The Medifast Diet

Medifast is the diet I’ve had the most success with. I’ve lost between 50-60 lbs on it and while I still have quite a way to go, I feel like it can sustain me through the long term. This is my second go round with Medifast and I kick myself for quitting it previously. At the time I was giving up smoking and I was feeling too deprived to both diet and quit smoking at the same time LOL That was pretty stupid though as I gained back nearly 25 lbs over the year or so I wasn’t dieting!

The two big advantages of Medifast for me are that 1.) it is a meal replacement program, so I don’t have to worry about meal preparation all the time; and 2.) hunger is not an issue. If you are looking for an easy diet plan to follow, that will also provide stunning results by providing the fastest weight loss possible, I think Medifast is the way to go.

With Medifast, you do eat a self-prepared lean and green meal every day, but I keep that very simple — most of the time I end up having a huge salad with lots of chicken. I can pretty much eat that every day and it is easy to prepare. Or I have some fish and a nice side of asparagus or spinach with mushrooms cooked in just a little bit of olive oil and with plenty of garlic.

As for hunger, as long as I stick to the Medifast program and don’t cheat, I’m not ever unreasonably hungry. You eat frequently on this plan! Six times a day, in fact. That’s five Medifast meals and the lean and green. So you are never more than a few hours from your next meal. Also, after the first few days on Medifast, you are in ketosis and that really helps curb the appetite substantially. it also contributes to the fast weight loss you will see as well. Most people who start with Medifast will lose a good 20 lbs the first month (though results really will vary, I find this is the case in a lot of stories I’ve seen on the topic of how quickly Medifast can help you lose weight.)

If I’ve convinced you that Medifast is the way to go, you can Order Medifast now and just wait for your product to arrive. I am an affiliate of theirs, because I believe strongly in their program and it has been working for me (and lots of other people too!). So I hope you will try and it see how great it works.

Diet to Go

Diet to Go is a diet delivery program, so that takes care of my first criteria — limited meal preparation time involved. They have multiple plans to choose from and I think their low carb is not only the best option for avoiding hunger, but the food also tastes better. The plan is very low in carbohydrates, maxing out at net 30 carbs per day, so it might even be suitable if you are following Atkins diet rules (after induction) or even South Beach. However, if you prefer low fat, there is that option as well. In addition, Diet to Go also has a diabetic menu which is great if you need to carefully monitor your blood sugar levels.

South Beach Diet

The South Beach Diet doesn’t completely meet my criteria for diets that work, mostly because you will spend more time with meal preparation. But how much time you spend is really up to you. You can get away with making very simple meals, but you will probably enjoy the program more if you like cooking. While South Beach don’t really advertise themselves as a “low carb” diet, they definitely have some carb restrictions. On the other hand, they allow a much great variety of food choices than the Atkins plan does. I tried the Atkins plan once and ultimately found it so restrictive that I felt I just could never really eat. Also, the food was expensive! Try leaving on a diet of steak and high fat foods like Atkins recommends? It will make diet delivery programs like Medifast, Nutrisystem and Diet to Go seem cheap by comparison. But like I said, South Beach has a higher carb count and so for most people it would probably be a bit easier to stick to and if you actually like to cook, then this might be a better option for you than either a meal replacement plan like Medifast, or a meal delivery plan like Diet to Go.

Now that I’ve given you a few options to consider, and they are all pretty easy weight loss diets, your best bet for choosing diets that work is to really figure out for yourself what you need from a diet. Would you do better not having to worry about food? Then meal replacement is probably the way to go. But if, on the other hand, you like to spend time trying out different recipes, etc. then a carb-restricted plan like the South Beach Diet might be the diet that works best for you.

Medifast is a great way to lose weight because it works quickly without making you feel like you are suffering. And using Medifast shakes, bars and other products to lose weight means you don’t have to be in the kitchen or the supermarket worrying about what to eat all the time. Medifast takes care of most of those details for you.

The only decision you have to make is what Lean and Green Meal to eat each day and even that’s an easy decision. Just pick a delicious protein with lots of leafy greens and other healthy vegetables and your dinner is ready.

So really the only thing that can make Medifast even better is saving money! And each month the Medifast company makes a variety of coupons and discounts available to help you. So if this is the year for you to lose weight, take advantage of the updated Medifast coupon links here when you order and you’ll be off to a great start. This list will be updated each month of 2010 to make sure you have the most current Medifast specials available.

Updated Medifast Coupons for October 2010

Medifast – $50 off any purchase of $275 or more!
Click Here to Use Coupon Code: OCT31G good until 10-31-10

New Coupon!
Medifast – $25 off any purchase of $150 or more!
Click Here to Use Coupon Code: OCT31G25 - good until 10/31/10

On-Going Monthly Medifast Special Link

Click here to Get 2 weeks of Medifast FREE! (Enter code GetTwo)

The Medifast products are the primary foods that you’ll be eating each day. So you don’t need to put a lot of thought into those. Just pick your five Medifast meals and you’re all set. The question of what’s allowed comes up when it is time to think about your lean and green meal. Since you prepare this yourself at home, you’ll need to do some grocery shopping. Naturally you want to know what’s on the shopping list.

As the name of the meal, lean and green, hints, you’ll be picking up lean protein and lots of vegetables. So let’s take a look at each side of the plate.

Lean Protein

The lean part of your meal consists of lean protein. You have both meat and vegetarian options here. Portion sizes depend on the fat content of your selected protein. So if you choose certain types of fish, you can have 7 ounces, but beef or pork choices will limit you to 5 ounces. Poultry falls right in the middle at 6 ounces. For vegetarian options, the choices range from 14 egg whites or 3 whole eggs, with the whole eggs clearly containing more fat. Other vegetarian options include items like Boca Burgers, Morningstar Farms patties and Tofu.

The Green Portion

The green side of your plate is made up of leafy green vegetables and other colorful veggies. Eliminated are foods like potatoes, corn, carrots and other high carb vegetables. Serving sizes, for your greens, are determined by carbohydrate level. So, for example, you can have a 1 cup serving of of nearly all leafy greens such as lettuce or spinach, but only a 1/2 cup serving of cauliflower or asparagus. Your entire green serving is three servings, keeping the portion restrictions in mind. So you could have three cups of leafy greens, or one cup of leafy greens and a 1/2 cup of portabella mushrooms and a 1/2 cup of peppers to make a nice, colorful salad.

Additional Fats

Finally, Medifast also adds some additional fats to your daily diet and the amount depends on how much fat is in the protein choices that you made. Fats are added because some vitamins and minerals are fat-soluble only, so fats are an important part of a healthy diet. For your fat serving, you get to choose from items such as black olives, low carb salad dressing, olive oil, canola oil and even trans-fat free margarine.

As you can see the main items that are eliminated from the Medifast diet are white flour and other high carbohydrate foods like rice and potatoes, etc. But overall you have quite a variety of allowable foods on Medifast and so you should be able to maintain some variety in your lean and green meals without feeling deprived.

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Some people feel that Medifast is too expensive or that it is just more convenient to buy Slimfast at the supermarket rather than order Medifast online. Or maybe they just prefer the taste of Slimfast, which admittedly does taste pretty good (but there’s a reason for that, which I will get into in a moment).

Or sometimes, a Medifast dieter has just mis-timed their latest order and so they are out of product for a few days and need a substitute that they can buy immediately so they don’t ruin their diet. Oftentimes, if you have to be off your diet for a few days it can really wreck your momentum and make it difficult to get back on the wagon, so to speak.

Slimfast really isn’t a suitable substitute for Medifast though. You can take a look at my Medifast review for more detail about how Medifast works, but basically their formulations are completely different and Slimfast shakes, unfortunately, are loaded with sugar. The main ingredients in Slimfast shakes are skim milk, sugar, fructose and cocoa. Three of those ingredients are just basically sugar. With this being the case, using Slimfast as a substitute for Medifast while you wait for your next Medifast order to arrive would drive you right out of ketosis.

Let’s do a direct comparison. I’m only going to look at the diet shakes, since there are so many other products, but you will easily see the difference here in the main product category.

Medifast 55 Shakes

90 calories per serving, 1g of fat, 11g of protein, 13g of carbs (8g of which is sugar)

Slimfast Original Shakes

220 Calories, 3g of fat, 10g of protein, 40g of carbs (34g of which is sugar).

Slimfast Optima Shakes

190 calories, 6g of fat, 10g of protein, 25g of carbs (18g of which is sugar).

As you can see, while the protein servings in Slimfast and Medifast are pretty close to each other, the sugar content of Slimfast is MUCH higher than what’s in Medifast shakes. In the Slimfast original shakes, the sugar content is four times as much and in the Optima shakes, it is still more than twice as much sugar as what’s in Medifast shakes.

So it should be pretty plain to see that Slimfast is not adequate as a substitute for Medifast shakes.

Now if you are a Medifast dieter and you’ve run out of Medifast product and you need to use substitutions for a few days, your best bet is probably to have a few lean & green meals each day and include a couple of glasses of low-fat milk. I believe Medifast used to recommend milk, but that recommendation is no longer on their website. Instead they recommend you contact them.

You would probably be fairly safe with a protein drink that is low in sugar. I would try and look for a product that has the same carb profile as Medifast and use that for a couple of days. But in the long run, your diet will be much easier if you are able to plan ahead and make sure you have plenty of Medifast foods on hand. This is why I like their Advantage delivery program which automatically sends out orders each month.

You can change orders whenever you like, but if you forget all about it, at least they will send you your standard order so you won’t be put in a position of having to scramble for something else suitable to eat. If you want to sign up for the Medifast Advantage delivery program, you can do so here: Get Medifast

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

Thankfully, Medifast can easily be used by teens to lose weight. There’s a few program changes to their standard diet that need to be added to any teen’s diet plan, but they are easy to implement. There are quite a few changes from the traditional Medifast 5 and 1 plan, as teenager’s developing bodies require more calories and nutrients, particularly protein, calcium and iron, than adult bodies do.

Medifast has two different plans for teens. One is called the Weight loss plan and the other is the Weight Maintenance Plan. Choosing the right plan is based on your teenager’s BMI and this is usually best determined by a pediatrician or general practitioner. So it’s a good idea to discuss the Medifast programs with your teen’s doctor so they can help determine the appropriate plan.

The Medifast weight loss plan for teens looks like this:

• 3 Medifast Meals per day
• 5 Servings Fruit and Vegetables (canned fruits are okay if they are packed in water)
• 2 servings of low fat dairy such as low-fat milk, soy milk or low fat yogurt (cheese is on the protein list instead of the dairy list)
• 2 servings of whole grains (ex: 1 slice whole grain bread)
• 2 servings lean protein (meat, beans, low fat cheese, etc.)
• 2 servings of fats (Tsp butter, margarine or cream)

The above servings are recommend for girls. For boys, an additional two servings of whole grains and one serving of fats are added to the plan.

You can find out more about how the diet for teens works on Medifast’s official website.

As you can see this is a common sense, healthy diet. The Medifast meals are mostly used to supplement the plan and I think they are a great way to stave off hunger. They ideally help with appetite control and making sure that the nutritional profile of each day is as perfect as possible. In addition, Medifast publishes a guide for teens which helps with recommendations for meals, suggestions for exercise and ways to get active. It also covers in depth the nutritional needs of teenagers which is useful for any parents concerned about how their kids are eating.

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

Now that you’re thinking about going on the Medifast Diet, you want to make sure that the Medifast plan is good for you. There’s a lot about it that seems too good to be true, especially when you see the dramatic results that some dieters get, but you can definitely lose up to 2-5 pounds a week if you follow the plan.

Also, lots of folks worry about whether or not a meal replacement diet is really good for them. Shouldn’t you be eating real food?

Fortunately, Medifast has been around for a long time (27 years now) and they’ve put a lot of time into research and development of their products. The Medifast diet program is even prescribed in some doctors’ office as well, and it has been recommended by over 20,000 doctors since 1980. Nowadays, the most common way to purchase it is probably from their website.

The big thing to note about the program is that if you follow the Medifast 5 and 1 plan as it was designed to be used you will get all of your nutrional needs met every day. Five of your meals will come from Medifast packaged foods and one meal will be made with fresh, whole ingredients that you shop for at your local grocery store. Each day’s worth of meals is nutritionally balanced to provide your body with everything it needs to function well, without taking any additional supplements.

High quality soy or whey proteins are the main sources of protein in Medifast foods, with the majority of products being soy-based. Soy is a completely protein with a variety of health benefits. The main benefits are that it helps to lower cholesterol and can help protect against osteoporosis.

Unfortunately, some folks may be allergic to soy, whey (a milk derivative) or both. so if you have an allergy to one or the other, then the Medifast plan might not be ideal for you. Some dieters are willing to work around their allergy since Medifast has a list of soy-free and whey-free foods so you can avoid ordering food with your particular allergen. It is just up to you whether it is worth the trouble.

There are also some health conditions which would contraindicate using Medifast to lose weight. If you have a health condition such as kidney disease, liver disease or or type 1 diabetes, your doctor will advise you against using Medifast to lose weight.

In fact, if you have any kind of serious health condition or take any medication regularly (such as diabetic medication), you really should talk to your doctor before you go on any kind of weight loss plan as some diets may not be appropriate, depending on your condition and what kind of medication you take. For example, soy protein can interfere with the absorption of thyroid medication, so you will want to check with your doctor about using a soy-based diet such as Medifast. It may be possible to still use the program to lose weight, but your doctor might recommend using more of the non-soy foods.

For most of us in good health however, Medifast will prove to be good for you and it works very well in your weight loss efforts. In fact, you’ll probably be getting better nutrition during the weight loss phase than you did previously, since a full day’s worth of Medifast foods and the lean & green meal provide complete daily nutrition.

If you would like to order Medifast, just use the link here to take advantage of the coupon code for free Medifast meals.

Click Here to Become a V.I.P. Member and get 2 weeks of meals FREE!
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Since Medifast works by limiting carbs as well as calories, it is important to pay attention to the carbohydrates in the “green” part of your Lean & Green meal. So some of the really starchy, carb-rich veggies aren’t allowed while you are in the weight loss phase of the plan. These no-no’s include potatoes, carrots and corn. You probably won’t be too surprised at that list, but would it surprise you to know that onions are excluded too? Yep, onions are pretty high in carbs. Peas and brussel sprouts are pretty high in carbs too, so be sure to exclude those as well until you hit your weight loss goals.

So what is allowed?

Well, you can start with all kinds of salad greens. You can have butterhead, iceberg and romaine lettuce. In fact, enjoy any lettuce that you find at your grocer. Try picking up some of the different mixes of salad greens available for some variety, such as the Spring mix. Since you can have three vegetables servings with each meal, I like to have two cups of salad and then another higher carb vegetable such as a 1/2 cup of broccoli or tomato to round things out.

Some other favorite veggies I like to eat with my lean & green meal are asparagus; summer or winter squash and all kinds of mushrooms. Oh, and don’t forget spinach, zucchini and cauliflower.

I find the best thing to do, so I’m getting a variety of vegetables every week, is to pack the list of Medifast approved vegetables in my purse. This way when I go shopping each week, I can pull the list out while I’m in the Vegetable aisle and just let my eyes pick out the nicest looking veggies to add to my cart. And whatever vegetables don’t end up in salads, I’ll lightly steam or roast. Pick up a salad dressing spritzer made with olive oil and use that to lightly spritz veggies for roasting for a delicious flavor that adds negligible calories.

Want to Order Medifast? Check the Current Medifast Specials