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All you want to know about Nutrisystem
Nutrisystem vs Medifast (Which Diet is Best?)
Would you like to know how the diets from Nutrisystem compare with Medifast for helping you lose weight effectively, easily and conveniently?
Both brands are hugely popular with dieters, so let's put them up against each other head to head and see how they perform!
This is a great way to see how two top home delivery dieting programs measure up to each other. I'll be looking at several determining factors for each of the popular diet programs including:
- How easy each is to use
- The quality of the food
- How well people can stick to the diets
- How good the support is
- The average cost to the customer
This will provide you with a good comparison of the two big brands so you can see for yourself which will be the best choice for you to help you lose that excess weight.
How Easy Are These Diets?
The Nutrisystem diet provides three main meals each day, plus two snacks (three snacks for men) and a protein shake. If you just worked with the food they provide (which you can), it means there is absolutely nothing else for you to do except to choose each meal, follow the simple instructions on the package and eat it!
You can choose to add some additional protein to the basic meals if you wish, such as adding low fat yogurt, healthy carbs, lean protein and fresh green vegetables. These you have to prepare and cook yourself, although many dieters opt for salad greens or cold, lean meats (usually chicken from the deli counter) which need no cooking.
With the most popular Medifast plan, there are also three main meals plus two additional snack meals plus a sixth meal (called the Lean and Green) that you prepare yourself from fresh ingredients which include 6 to 8oz of lean protein, selected vegetables and one to two small servings of healthy fats. This adds a little extra to the workload for this diet, but those that choose it prefer the variety in this way of eating.
Are they Customizable?
Both plans can be customized to suit your needs. As already mentioned, you can add extra foods to the set meals to add interest, increase their size and nutritional potency although the portion sizes must be kept very small to maintain the daily calorie limits.
With Medifast, you can choose from a wide daily menu that includes things like oatmeal, scrambled eggs, soups, brownies and even pretzels.
You can opt for as many as three of the meals to comprise only Medifast Health Management Shakes like the Medifast Plus designed especially for Joint Health, Women's Health or Coronary Health.
With Nutrisystem you can also highly customize your daily menu from over 150 different meals as well as snacks and flavored protein shakes.
Because of the extra work involved in running with the Medifast "GO" Plan (formerly the 5&1 Plan), the Basic and Core Nutrisystem diets are generally easier and more convenient.
How Good is the Food?
The food quality of the pre-prepared meals is about the same for either brand, so on comparison there is little to differentiate the two. Often it will come down to personal preference which you like the best out of the two.
If you go by customer reviews of each product, you'll always find a fairly mixed bag of opinions as to the taste, the texture and the overall quality. Most people are happy with the meals they eat although few will admit to rating them very highly, since they are mostly processed meals that can never come close to the quality of food prepared and home cooked from fresh ingredients.
There is also a small percentage or customers of both products who don't like the food and a very small minority who simply hated it! This is no different from any edible product as there will always be the ones who love it and those that hate it.
What About Nutritional Value?
Both products provide meals that have been prepared with nutritious ingredients and are correctly balanced between proteins, carbohydrates, fats and fiber. At the same time, they are each low enough in calories so that when they are combined into a day by day plan, they stay below a set calorie limit, depending on the individual needs of the dieter.
They both provide nutritional meals that provide everything a dieter needs to stay healthy while losing weight. There is little to separate them on that score.
Which Program is Easiest to Stick With?
Both Nutrisystem and Medifast provide very easy to follow dieting programs that are convenient, fast and very well planned to insure the maximum number of customers find them very easy to stay on. A lot comes down to the mindset of the dieter and whether they are weight-conscious enough to stick with their plan and see it through to the end and to the attainment of their weight goal.
Support
However, both brands provide very good on-going support that work with customers to insure they get the most from their diets and make it easier to stick with, especially when the going gets a little tough as it can do. External forces are always a potential problem for dieters and when things start going wrong in a person's life it is usually the diet that is first to suffer.
Having excellent support from staff who are not just regular folks at the other end of the phone, but consist of qualified counsellors, psychologists and nutritionists that are trained to help people get past personal problems that might interfere with their program.
Conclusion: Nutrisystem or Medifast: Which is Better?
The answer to that one is not quite so clear cut as you may believe it to be. Both programs have advantages that suit different people. Both programs are effective at helping dieters to lose weight as long as they stick with the plan and don't deviate or cheat.
Some will find the simplicity of Nutrisystem to be the deciding factor since there is almost nothing that needs to be done in addition to simply eating the food an losing the weight.
Others will prefer the greater number of smaller meals per day provided by Medifast and the variation to the food with the additional meal (in the GO Plan) that they prepare themselves.
If you have very particular or special dietary needs, for example you need gluten-free or lactose-free food for example, there are more varied solutions from Medifast as well as those catered for by their rivals. There are Nutrisystem diets for men or women, seniors, diabetics and vegetarians with tailored plans for those groups and can customize further for some special needs customers.
The Cost
However, for many the bottom line will be the hard cost to them in dollars from their bank accounts. This is often the biggest deciding factor when people are comparing two or more products and this is also relevant when it comes to dieting programs.
On cost, the two are fairly close, but not close enough for many potential new customers. Many see the monthly cost of each program and it is pretty plain that the cost of Nutrisystem per month is by far the cheaper of the two, especially when you take into account their on-going money off promotions and deals.
But even at full price, the cost of the basic Nutrisystem plans are cheaper than the equivalent Medifast plans. Naturally for this reason, I recommend Nutrisystem as the clear winner between the two since cost is an issue (and when is it not?) and people want a convenient, home delivery dieting system that provides everything they need to lose weight easily and with no fuss.
