Cruel Gruel
[Please click "WARNING & DISCLAIMER" before reading.]
Anyone expecting to lose 30% of their body weight and reduce BMI and body fat by 50% while still fully enjoying all their meals and snacks is delusional. When you’re that far gone, serious sacrifice of taste-bud pleasure and gastronomic delight will be required.
Anticipating my six-month 63×63 ordeal, I suffered no such delusions. But the reality of what MediFast markets as actual food still lives down to my lowest expectations.
Basically, each ‘meal’ is an incredibly overprocessed and absurdly overpriced ounce of powdery or compressed mystery stuff whose ingredients read more like a medical school chemistry experiment than anything resembling actual food. The actual experience of consuming the rehydrated goo raises military MREs to level of haute cuisine. Consider the sales soundbite and the requisite list of ingredients for what sells as oatmeal:
Medifast Oatmeal is delicious at breakfast or any other time. A piping hot bowl of Apple Cinnamon, Peach, Blueberry, or Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal warms you up and gives you energy, along with vital nutrients.
Kosher Dairy, Lactose Free, Caffeine Free, Heart Healthy, Vegetarian
Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal
Rolled oats, soy protein isolate, oat fiber, brown sugar, calcium phosphate, modified food starch, soy lecithin, potassium chloride, salt, natural & artificial flavors, maltodextrin, acesulfame potassium (non-nutritive sweetener), magnesium oxide, dl-methionine, sucrose, propylene glycol, ascorbic acid, ferric orthophosphate, dicalcium phosphate, d-l alpha tocopheryl acetate, niacinamide, zinc oxide, manganese sulfate, d-calcium pantothenate, copper sulfate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin A palmitate, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, chromium chloride, sodium molybdate, folic acid, biotin, potassium iodide, sodium selenite, vitamin K-1, vitamin D3, cyanocobalamin.
Contains: wheat and soy.
Despite what appears to be a wide variety of offerings, thus far I haven’t been able to find a significant difference in any of MediFast’s product ingredients. Medifasters pay $2.12 to $2.50 per (slightly more than) 1 oz serving for what probably costs 50 cents to produce, market, sell, and distribute per pound. I’m only guessing, of course, but if I’m even close MediFast’s profit margins may be the envy of everyone but petrosheikhs, kleptocrat banksters, and narco-terrorists.
OK – not really. If their profit margins were that great their market capitalization and stock price history would paint a different picture. As a multilevel marketing organization, however, I’d be surprised if the pharaohs at the top of that pyramid weren’t raking in the megabucks. In a separate post I’ll explore the corporate profile of MediFast in further detail.
Meanwhile I’ll keep inflicting myself with the cruel gruel I’ve served myself for this effort. No doubt others will wonder why I’m staying this course – other than the 63×63 goal itself. Why MediFast?
The answer is simple: where I work, I’ve seen at least half a dozen people who were much as I am – way past a little overweight into serious obesity, converging on type II diabetes and other complications of carrying 25% or more weight than their bodies were designed to bear. Each of them is now in a ‘maintenance’ stage of healthy body weight and have been for many months. They all got there with MediFast. So the simple answer is, from direct and personal observation, it clearly works … for them at least.
We’ll see if it works for me as well. All was going well for the first 8 days – lost an average of 1.9lbs/day with a total loss of 14.9lbs. Then on the 9th day (today), with no significant change in the diet, I suddenly gained 1.5lbs – nearly a full day’s setback. Needless to say, I’m curious to see what tomorrow’s result will be.
