Defragged

• Food Portion Control:
Although I realize the meal portions I am eating on the Medifast Diet is designed to help me lose weight, it has certainly opened my eyes to the amount of food I was consuming per meal. I'm already looking forward to learning how the Medifast Maintenance program works.
• Meal Frequency: I used to eat whenever I got hungry or when it was convenient. Since I work from home, and love what I do, I can focus in on a project for hours and not realize the amount of time that has passed. This isn't good especially when I skip meals and then eat one huge meal at the end of my 12 hour work day. The Medifast Diet is teaching me to eat 6 meals spaced evenly apart so that my body doesn't think it is being starved and fights back by lowering my metabolism.
• Eat Meals Slowly: I admit it. I used to eat fast because I was hungry having starved myself most of the day. Or I ate fast because I was in a hurry and didn't want to waste time doing something I could do while working. Medifast teaches to chew each of my meals slowly and to take 15 minutes eating each meal. At first it was sometimes hard to do. I mean ... how was I ever going to stretch out eating 4 oz. of pudding into 15 minutes. But it is possible and it's getting easier to do.
• Drink Lots of Water Every Day: I have been drinking a lot of water for as long as I can remember. I've been told I'm borderline diabetic, so I attribute the thirst with that possible cause. So drinking eight 8 oz glasses of water a day wasn't too hard for me. However, Medifast teaches that the more water you drink, the more likely you'll be able to lose more weight than if you don't drink eight glasses. I found this to be true, so I'm learning to increase my water intake by another four 8 oz glasses (whenever possible) making it a total of 96 oz of water a day.
• Exercise - Keep Active: I am still learning that I can step away from my computer and take time out to go for a brisk walk with my dogs. I started doing this a year or so before I started Medifast. But Medifast has taught me that I need to push myself to do more. I'm working hard at trying to fit into my day another brisk walking session with my dogs. Even if only to give my brain and body a time out from the computer screen and computer chair. I'll keep you posted on how this experiment goes.
• Spicing Up My Food: Over on the MyMedifast board I found tons of ideas and recipes that folks post to assist others in spicing up their MF food. I'm not much of a gourmet cook, but I'm learning about spices, extracts, sugar free syrups and herbs that add flavorings to food that helps immensely to create variety in my meals.
• Food Variety: The Medifast Diet has many different foods (they call them meals) to choose from. All of the Medifast food is pre-measured, and I just add water to prepare them. I'm learning that mixing and matching different meals at different times of the day and combining portions of my Lean & Green meal with Medifast meals, breaks any monotony that generally causes any diet I am on fail.
• Weighing Food: I don’t recall ever weighing my food on other diets. The Medifast Diet 5&1 plan consists of 5 Medifast pre-packaged meals plus one Lean & Green meal. Generally I would guess at how much a turkey burger weighed. And I did the first week I was on Medifast. To my surprise when I started weighing my meats, my guesses were way off. I wasn't eating enough meat or vegetables and even though I lost 6.5 pounds that first week, I could have likely lost more if my body wasn't forced to feel like I was starving it. Now I weigh all my meats and measure all of my vegetables to be sure that I'm getting in all 6 meals and that I'm eating a balanced diet.

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