The Survival Guide

The TSFL Survival Guide

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Basics:

Why does a person lose weight safely and quickly?
Getting Into the Fat Burning State (FB)
Being in Fat Burning
Breaking Fat Burning
Resuming Fat Burning

Charts:

Nutritional Targets
Raw Vegetable Serving Chart
Cooked Vegetable Serving Chart
Lean Serving Chart
Meat Substitutes

More Tips:

General Doctoring of the Foods

Why does a person lose weight safely and quickly?
This program works by putting you in a “fat burning state”. This is more technically known as a very mild "dietary ketosis." Ketosis is a stage of metabolism where your body has depleted the reserves of its main form of energy – glycogen. Once those reserves are gone, your liver will begin breaking down stored fat in the body for use as energy. Breaking down the fat yields fatty acids and three types of ketone bodies (hence, the name ketosis). The ketones are then burned by the cells in your body as an alternative fuel. We try to stay away from the name “Ketosis” because of the negativity associated with it. We will call it “Fat Burning” or the “Fat Burning State”. 

Getting Into the Fat Burning State (FB)
Arguably, the worst part of being on the program is getting into FB. Our bodies have done what they’ve always done for millions of years – they’ve adapted to life as they know it. Our lives have led to us being overweight by indulging in bad foods in bad quantities. Our bodies are now used to that type of existence. Introducing a new nutritional paradigm (ketosis) to our bodies will necessitate it’s adapting to the new condition. This adaptation is stressful for the body and we will feel the effects.

First, your body will notice a dramatic drop in caloric intake at first. We’ve gotten our bodies used to abundant calories and carbohydrates for long periods of time or to an up and down pattern of calories/carbs which our bodies see as “feast or famine”. Either way, when we take the calories/carbs away, our bodies will react:

• Hunger – you’re going to feel hunger because your body is used to having more than it has now. Not atypical for dieting in general.
• Fatigue – you’re taking in dramatically less fuel (food) than you used to and your body will probably try to compensate by getting you to slow down your expenditure of energy. It does this by decreasing your metabolic rate. This can make you feel tired, even dizzy. It’s a type of warning that your body’s giving you saying “if you don’t get some food, I’m going to start burning fat!”
• Headache – some report headaches associated with “carbohydrate withdrawl”. Whether it’s truly withdrawl or not, I don’t know. However, it certainly seems that way to those who suffer its effects. The typical headache relief methods (ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin) are allowable while on MF, however your stomach may seem more sensitive to them because it’s no longer loaded with food. Try to use such products soon after having a meal and drink plenty of water.
• Irritability – when your hungry, tired and/or have a headache…you can be understandably irritable. Try to keep in mind that you may be more inclined to react negatively to things during this short time and don’t go off on those who don’t deserve it.

The good news is that this transition generally lasts only 2-4 days. Once you’re in FB, you’ll feel a difference in your energy level. It will go up significantly as your body begins to enjoy having an alternative fuel source – fat stores!

Being in Fat Burning
As the ketones pervade your bloodstream to supply the cells with energy, your state of FB begins to manifest some side effects. Some of those side effects are disquieting, but they’re not bad for you.

Ketones will show up in your urine, which are sometimes able to be detected with Ketostix, but the state of ketosis that MF evokes is so mild that often such tests won’t show a positive result on the Ketostix.

One of the three types of ketones is permeable to the lungs and can pass from the blood through the lung walls and becomes incorporated into your exhalations, the same way that carbon dioxide passes out of the body. This can cause “ketosis breath” and a slight metallic taste in the mouth. This is unpleasant, but can be easily overcome with frequent brushing of teeth (a few times a day) and sugarless gum/mints.

Menses can also be affected while in ketosis. Your cycle may be disrupted or cease all together. While this is an odd occurrence for a woman, it is not completely unexpected while in this state.

You may occasionally feel hunger while in FB, but it should be more mild than normal. Since you’re eating every few hours, you shouldn’t feel that gnawing sensation associated with hunger prior to being in ketosis. As your body adapts to the new circumstances, it may even develop an internal clock that will make you mildly hungry right around meal time. For some, there is no hunger at all and people need to remember or even be reminded that they need to eat!

Another side effect for some is an increased sensitivity to cold. Hands and feet can be particularly effected. I am normally very hot blooded, yet my hands and feet became ice cold when in FB. Hot drinks (tea, coffee, MF cocoa/chai tea/mocha/cappuccino), sweaters, heat packs, etc can all help with this.

Breaking Fat Burning
Staying in Fat Burning revolves around keeping your body from getting excess carbohydrates. If your body comes to the conclusion that there are enough carbohydrates available to use as its main fuel source, it will end the FB state and resume using carbohydrates. This crash out of FB has some side effects as well:

• Hunger – your body will assume that since you’re getting enough carbs to end FB, there must be ample food available. Coming out of FB and having food available is exactly the type of situation that the body has adapted for over the millennia - “Feast or Famine”. Now, it sees it as a time to feast so that you can replenish the glycogen that you depleated while getting into FB. That replenishment requires more fuel – more food! Therefore, your body tells you to eat, eat and eat. You’ll be almost insatiably hungry.
• Immediate and dramatic weight gain – As your body restores its glycogen, you’re gaining weight…quickly. Several pounds in a period of a couple days is not uncommon.

Resuming Fat Burning
If you fall out of FB for some reason, the best thing to do is to start working to get right back in it. Follow the program as if you didn’t do anything to fall out.

If you “cheated” and had a candy bar or a hoagie or whatever, resume the program as if you hadn’t had it at all. Keep on your meal schedule and get in your 5 MF meals and a Lean and Green. Don’t abandon the day, weekend or week by just giving up on it because you’ve “screwed it up”. Just get right back into the program immediately.

Doing this helps to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to get back into FB. The longer you stay out of FB, the longer it takes to get back into it. So, hop right back on the wagon!

Charts
The following tables have useful data for your Lean and Green portions. They are compilations of data from the USDA, which you can look up for yourself at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/. NS cites using the USDA database as their source for nutritional information. If you ever want to know if an item would be legal on MF you can ask NS (Nutrition Support) or you can look it up at the USDA site to get an idea of if it would be legal or not.

Nutritional Targets
If you’re eating your 5 MF meals a day, you’re getting all your vitamins and minerals. After that, you’re basically targeting your calories/carbs (limiting them to keep yourself in ketosis), your protein (to keep yourself from losing muscle mass) and fat (to protect your cardiovascular system). Nutrition Support cites the following guidelines:

It is, in fact, important to keep yourself above 800 calories and below 100g carbs in order to maintain an efficient fat burning state. It is also important to get enough protein to protect your muscles (including important muscles like your heart!)

Under 800 calories can cause your body to think it is starving. When your body comes to that conclusion, it will become very conservative and slow down your metabolism to try and make your fat stores last as long as possible. This will manifest in a DECREASE in your rate of weight loss.

This is counter-intuitive in that people associate losing weight with taking in less calories. However, we’ve evolved over millions of years and during that evolution, our bodies have adapted to “feast or famine”. When calories are abundant, our bodies will store them up as fat. When they’re scarce, our bodies will try to stretch out whatever it has available so that it lasts as long as possible. The key to an efficient fat burning state is to make sure your body realizes that it’s getting everything that it really needs to survive long term. Part of that is the vitamins and minerals that are provided in the MF meals and part of that is ensuring you’re getting enough calories to comfort your body that it’s not in a situation where it’s starving.

Under 100g of carbs is the key to staying in FB. Your body will continue to burn fat for energy as long as it doesn’t think it has enough carbohydrates to use as its main fuel source.

Of course, these numbers are based on the average human physiology and specific numbers may vary. However, it’s very difficult to discern any one person’s tolerances for each of these numbers and therefore these are given as a guideline.

If you have a lot of muscle mass or are a very active person, you may need to have a different set of targets. It is best to discuss this type of specialized situation with your physician to ensure that you get the adequate nutrition for your particular situation.

Raw Vegetable Serving Chart
Medifast has recommendations of 1 ½ cups of cooked vegetables or 2 cups of salad greens and ½ cup of other veggies to make a salad. It’s often difficult to gauge what the measure of a vegetable is in terms of cups (try stuffing lettuce into a measuring cup without rendering it unappetizing, so weight becomes a better measure. Here is a table that provides a convenient conversion as well as the nutritional information:

The bolded, italicized entries in the table indicate values that are quite high in carbohydrates. They are not necessarily recommended by NS, but they are included for informational value. If you are monitoring your carbs and calories closely enough, you can use them and not throw yourself out of FB. However, following the simplistic “½ Cup of a veggie in addition to your 2 cups of a salad green” approach that is cited with the 5 & 1 plan should not include these items due to a higher carbohydrate value.

Fat Free salad dressings that are less than 6 carbs for 2 Tblspns are acceptable. The Wishbone Salad Spritzers are ideal for this as they distribute the dressing around rather than having it pool up in one area…letting you use less of it overall while still getting dressing on every piece of the salad.

Cooked Vegetable Serving Chart
Cooked vegetables have a significant difference in size then raw vegetables. Specifically, you can pack a lot more of a cooked vegetable into the same unit of volume (like a measuring cup) than you can a raw vegetable. Therefore, the values for cooked vegetables differ than raw vegetables. The following table indicates the method of cooking, volume, weight and nutritional information for cooked vegetables:

The bolded, italicized entries in the table indicate values that are quite high in carbohydrates. They are not necessarily recommended by NS, but they are included for informational value. If you are monitoring your carbs and calories closely enough, you can use them and not throw yourself out of FB. However, following the simplistic “1 ½ Cup of a veggie” approach that is cited with the 5 & 1 plan should not include these items due to a higher carbohydrate value.

Lean Serving Chart

*Ground meat (any ground meat, even turkey) is generally less healthy than unprocessed meat. This is because when they grind the meat, they use fattier portions and it’s much less controlled. This leads to juicer meat, but it’s that way because of the added fat. According to Nutrition Support, 97% lean ground turkey is okay to use, up to 5oz as long as you log it according to the nutritional value on the package.

Meat Substitutes
Sometimes you simply may not want meat for your Lean or you may be a vegetarian/vegan. MF accommodates this by allowing substitution for meat as cited in the following table where each row constitutes 1 Lean portion:

General Doctoring Options

Just looking at the Medifast (MF) program, it looks interesting and like something you could swing. Once your on it, though, you may look for ways to vary your menu. There’s a bunch of options for Medifast meals and you may well be happy with all of them. Chances are, though, that there will be some you love and some you hate…limiting your menu in a hurry.

To overcome that limitation, Medifasters (MFers) can “doctor” their meals. Basically, this means adding various things to your meals to make them tastier. Additionally, there’s quite a bit of playing that can be done with your Lean and Green meal to achieve different menus and keep things from getting stale.

First, you should be aware of a few key things that are not discussed in the Medifast Quick Start Guide:

1. Shirataki noodles. These are a yam/tofu based pasta-like product. They are not traditional pasta, by any means, but they will do in a pinch. And Medifasting counts as being in a pinch! You can get them in some stores (Asian stores seem to have them), but online tends to be only sure fire way to find them. Some places online:

   • http://www.miraclenoodle.com/
   • http://www.konjacfoods.com/

   The consensus seems to be to stick with the angel hair version. 1 ½ cups of these noodles equals 1 Green.
   They have a fishy smell when coming out of the package, so.. rinse and drain them a few times, microwave for 1 minute, then drain again, or soak up water with a paper towel. You can use them as noodles or dice them up to make “rice”.
   It is, though, advisable to get the trial size and ensure you like them. Many people simply can’t tolerate the smell and won’t use them.
    

2. Walden Farms. This is a company specializing in low (usually zero) calorie/carb items. They can be found online at http://www.waldenfarms.com/. Not all items are zero cals/carbs, so be mindful of what you’re getting.
    
3. Sugar Free Syrups. There’s a ton of options out there for adding flavor to your foods. Torino and DaVinci each make a bunch of syrups you can use while on the program. DaVinci can be found at http://www.davincigourmet.com/products/sugar_free_flavored_syrups/. These are not completely freebee’s, and should be limited, as per Nutrition Support guidelines, to 4 tablespoons per day.
    
4. Butter/Olive Oil Sprays. A wonderful way to add flavor to your food. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray seems to be a favorite among MFers. NS recommends limiting it to 5 sprays. There’s other flavored sprays out there, just make sure you’re counting any calories/carbs you’re putting into your food.
    
5. True Lemon/True Lime. A great way to add a citrus flavor to your food with 0 carbs/cals. Visit http://www.truelemon.com/.

Second, use the support mechanisms available to you. Support in Motion is a great place for you to track your progress, log the meals you eat, your exercise, weight, measurements, etc. AND IT’S FREE! Visit www.tsflsupportinmotion.com and sign up.