What if I am hungry when I start Medifast?

Sometimes I hear from people who are worried about being hungry and uncomfortable with Medifast. I heard someone say, “I’ve been on countless diets and I’m always hungry, so I strongly suspect I’m going to be uncomfortable on Medifast too. What do people do when they’re hungry?” In the following article, I’ll give you some tips on how to deal with hunger on this diet.

Know that you can have a snack: Many people don’t realize that you are allowed to eat one snack every day with Medifast. And this is on top of the six meals you’ll already be consuming. You can have 3 celery sticks, 2 pickles, 1 cup sugar-free Jell-O, 1 sugar-free popsicle, gum, or mints. You can also have one of the diet’s prepackaged snacks, such as chips or pretzels.

Brush your teeth: If you ate your snack and you’re still hungry, go brush your teeth. I know this sounds silly, but when your mouth is clean and fresh, you’ll be hesitant to ruin that fresh mouthfeel with food.

Drink some water and go for a walk: Studies show that sometimes people mistake thirst for hunger. So there’s a chance that if you think you’re hungry, drinking some water might help alleviate it. In addition, it helps to distract yourself. Go for a walk. However, if you don’t want to be physically active, read a book or listen to music. Anything that takes your mind off food can be helpful. Often you’re just building habits, so if you can get through the first few days things will get a lot better.

Be sure to space your meals: The good thing about this diet is that you are eating quite regularly, since you are eating six times a day (and more if you are eating that snack I just told you about). So if you’re doing things correctly, you should eat every couple of hours. I know this may seem inconvenient if you have a busy schedule, but eating so often really helps with hunger. In short, you don’t have that much time to be that hungry when you know you’ll be eating again very soon. When I hear this complaint from people, one of the first things I wonder is how far apart their meals are.

If all else fails, don’t cheat with junk, cheat with an extra Medifast meal: This is just my opinion that I have formed from my own experience and that of friends also on the diet. But we think if you’re hungry and need to cheat, you’re better off having another Medifast meal, since all foods are around 100 calories or less and are high in protein and low in carbs. An additional meal is not going to be as harmful. But a trip through a drive-through can be. So be smart with your cheats. It certainly isn’t the end of the world to have an extra 100 calories to get you through any problem. And you’ll know that you did everything you could to stay on the diet instead of off it.