Mad Hatter Mom | Oregon Parenting Blog

So, I’m 2.5 weeks into my Take Shape for Life Journey.

If you aren’t familiar with TSFL, it’s a program that uses Medifast, but also incorporates the help and support of a Health Coach. Something you don’t get if you are just doing Medifast alone.

Some key things to point out.

• Yes, it is expensive.
• Some of the food is not very tasty
• It’s VERY hard in the beginning
• It’s life changing

I decided to do this program because I had watched several of my friends have great success with it. However, the money was holding me back. I couldn’t justify spending upwards of $300/month on food when I still needed to feed my family.

Then one morning I went to put my size 14 pants on (which I finally fit into after a year of working out) and they were so snug I couldn’t sit comfortably. I knew I was on a downward spiral and needed someone to keep me accountable (health coach) and a somewhat no brainer of a program. I mean, how do you put a price on a healthier lifestyle?

My first week on the program was somewhat rough. I did suffer a few headaches and felt tired more of the week. This was due to the drastic decrease in caloric intake. I’m sure I was averaging 1800 calories and on the TSFL program I now consume about 830 calories a day.

I’m sure this seems extreme, I know it did to me at first. What makes the program work is the fact that you eat something every 2.5 to 3 hours. This keeps your body from starvation mode and actually helps it burn fat by entering the Ketosis state after day 4 or 5.

Now the food. It’s true. Some of it is down right nasty. Thankfully, I relied on my friends and health coach to help me pick out the food that tasted the best. If you crave chocolate then the brownies ARE A MUST! I did not get enough boxes of these for my first order so my next order I’ve added many more.

The cool thing is really all the food is equal, so if you want to eat nothing but brownies for your 5 Medifast meals a day, then do it. I have a girlfriend that has made waffles with her brownie mixture and you can even create shakes with them. I think I would get brownie’d out in a hurry though. I keep a good selection of bars (for breakfast), some snack/crunchy items like pretzels and BBQ Bites, and some soups for lunch time consumption. After just the first week I went and changed my next order to reflect the things I definitely liked eating.

In my first 2 weeks on the program I have lost 8lbs!

This may not seem like a ton of weight, and honestly, I didn’t think so at first either, but that’s 8lbs more than I would have lost had I not taken the step of joining this program.

To give you an idea of what I’m starting from here is what I hope will forever be my BEFORE picture.

Stick around for next week.. I’ll have a video about the tips and tricks I’ve learned in order to make the food taste better.