I have to admit that I’ve been receiving questions about this diet plan for a while and waited until now to write an article about it. The reason for this is partially because I don’t have any personal experience with the New Lifestyle diet. My experience lies with Medifast. However, after doing some research on the newer diet for a while, I’m going to offer some basic comparisons between the two diets in the following article.
The Basic Outline Of Both Diets And The Foods Offered Are Somewhat Similar: Actually when I first looked at the foods for New Lifestyle, I was wondering if I was on the wrong website. The foods are very similar to those offered on Medifast. What I mean by this is that the shakes, protein bars, soups, stews, cereals, chips, and hot chocolates are all there. The two overlap very much in this regard.
Also, the idea of both diets is meal replacement. You’re basically asked to eat the food that the diet company provides rather than your regular meals. Both of these plans have you eating 5 (Medifast) to 7 (New Lifestyle) meals per day and then one healthy meal that you make yourself which is mostly based on lean protein and low glycemic vegetables.
So your experience on both of these diets might be similar in terms of eating small meals often (most of which you don’t make yourself) and then eating a main meal once per day. In general, the foods should be high in proteins and low in sugars and carbs so that your body can get into ketosis where it’s not burning carbs but is burning your own body fat. This is what supposedly makes both of these diets work.
Costs Comparison: Both of these diet plans offer packages as well as individual items for sale. In my experience, most dieters will opt for the package as this makes the cost per unit quite a bit cheaper. I’ve been noticing this perception that New Lifestyle is cheaper, but I don’t find that to be the case in real life. Yes, if you compare both basic women’s programs, New Lifestyle runs $273.00 and Medifast runs $299. But, this does not tell the whole story. Because, at least from my own experience, Medifast almost always offers very generous coupons which take your price on a package down by at least $50 in many cases. This alone makes a huge difference and they will often offer free food.
Looking At The Ingredients: You may have already gathered that my experience lies with only one of these diets, which I’m pretty happy with. This fact alone might make me biased. I have had people ask me if I would consider switching based on costs. But, as I’ve said, I actually don’t believe that Medifast is more expensive when you use coupons.
However, one thing that I have noticed is some of the ingredients in the other diet (which include corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, and aspartame.) Now, by no means am I an expert, but I suspect that corn syrup might not be conducive to getting into ketosis. When I started Medifast, I was concerned about the taste of the soy, but that just has not been an issue at all. The foods taste normal to me. And using soy rather than milk as a base for many of the products means less carbs and sugars and more protein, which in my experience, helps in ketosis.
Again, my experience lies with only one of these diets, but my comparison has affirmed for me that I’m happy with my current regimen and won’t be changing over. Still, my experience with meal replacement diets such as these have been good. I’m just happy with the one that I am currently on. But I have found that meal replacement plans such as both of these are convenient and effective.
