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 elected to use the Medifast program 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.

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 September 2010

Medifast – $50 off any purchase of $275 or more!
Click Here to Use Coupon Code: SEP30G good until 09-30-10

New Coupon!
Medifast – $25 off any purchase of $150 or more!
Click Here to Use Coupon Code: SEP30G25 - good until 09/30/10

On-Going Monthly Medifast Special Link

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