Optavia Diet Review (SR)

Optavia Diet Overview

You might have recently seen the buzz on social media about a diet company marketing meal replacements and weight loss. Optavia is a program that says it can help you adopt healthy habits and apply them to your everyday life.

Founded in 2002, Optavia is owned by parent company Medifast, popularly known for selling weight loss and health-related products, often through multilevel marketing.

To learn more about Optavia’s weight loss plans and offerings, I tested the products and spoke with a nutritionist. Here’s what I found.

What is Optavia?

Optavia is a diet company that sells bars, shakes, snacks, and easy-to-prepare recipes. It places emphasis on both good eating and good living. The company’s message is that if you learn healthy habits, you can lead a healthy life.

Optavia first caught people’s attention on Instagram in 2018 when Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro, shared his weight loss success. In a post on his profile he wrote, “A lot of people have been asking me how I’ve slimmed down lately … I’ve used the Optavia program. I think everybody is different and you should do whatever suits you but this is what I’m doing and I’m very happy with the results so far!” He says he is not sponsored.

Let’s jump into how Optavia helped Cake Boss lose weight.

How does it work?

The diet company relies on meal replacements called “fuelings,” which are branded products designed to keep you full until your next fueling. No matter which meal plan you choose, you’ll be eating a meal every 2 to 3 hours, resulting in six meals a day.

However, one to three (depending on your plan) meals will be a dish you make at home using fresh ingredients. The program also recommends avoiding alcohol, sugary drinks and desserts, high-calorie condiments, starchy vegetables, and whole grains.

Each fueling product contains around 100 to 150 calories. Optavia’s minimal-calorie diet has clients consuming about 800 to 1,100 calories a day, depending on the plan and the number of homemade meals. According to the USDA’s dietary guidelines for adults, women should consume 1,600 to 2,400 calories per day, and men 2,200 to 3,200 calories.

This calorie deficit causes rapid weight loss at the start of the diet. Health professionals recommend a 500-calorie deficit for healthy weight loss. Always consult with your doctor before making changes to your diet to ensure you’re consuming enough calories.

Optavia meal plans

Optavia offers three meal plans:

• Optimal Weight 5-and-1 Plan (five fuelings and one lean-and-green meal a day)
• Optimal Weight 4-and-2-and-1 Plan (four fuelings, two lean-and-green meals, and one snack a day)
• Optimal Health 3-and-3 Plan (three fuelings and three lean-and-green meals a day)

Personal coaching

Losing weight is hard, and it’s even harder if you do it alone. A personal coach can help to motivate and ease the stress of beginning a weight loss journey. You can connect with Octavia’s personal coaches through text, email, or in-person if distance allows.

A majority of Optavia’s coaches were clients themselves. After training provided by the company, you can become a paid coach to newcomers. While the training session that Optavia provides seems to be extensive, coaches don’t go through professional training. This is where aspects of its parent company, Medifast, come in — multilevel marketing to bring in new clients and coaches.

Is Optavia food any good?

I was sent eight bars, two snack sticks, four shake packets, four potato packets, four pancake mixes, and one box of chocolate brownie mix (containing seven packets). This was a small sample of what to expect in either the Optimal Weight 4-and-2-and-1 Plan or the Optimal Weight 5-and-1 Plan.

I’m not a professional food critic, but I did put myself in the shoes of someone on the Optavia diet. I made sure to pay special attention to taste, texture, nutritional value, portion sizes, and the effort it took to prepare the meals.

A day on the Optavia diet

Here’s an example of a day’s meals on the 5-and-1 Plan. Keep in mind that you would eat every 2 hours.

• Golden chocolate chip pancakes
• Wild strawberry shake
• Homestyle chick’n noodle soup
• Honey mustard and onion sticks
• Salmon, broccoli with lemon, thyme, and ginger (lean-and-green meal)
• Creamy double peanut butter crisp bar

Pricing

Each meal plan contains enough food items for 30 days.

• Optimal Weight 5-and-1 Plan: $378.25 (includes 17 boxes of essential fuelings)
• Optimal Weight 4-and-2-and-1 Plan: $423 (includes 18 boxes of essential fuelings and two boxes of snacks)
• Optimal Health 3-and-3 Plan: $20.75 box/$249 case (you have the option between a box and a case of two fuelings or two shakes)

What do nutritionists say?

I spoke with Dr. Melina B. Jampolis, a physician nutrition specialist and host of the podcast Practically Healthy by Dr. Melina, to further understand the safety of diet programs such as Optavia.

“As a weight loss doctor, I completely understand why people turn to diets like this, as we have to make several hundred foods and beverage decisions each day,” Jampolis says. “So, trying to ‘diet’ can quickly lead to decision fatigue and leave people making the wrong choices.”

She went on to note, “Most people state that lack of time preparing the right foods is a factor in their diet failure and eating out is very challenging as portion sizes are generally much larger than needed, and you honestly have no idea what goes into recipes when eating out.”

Diet programs attempt to simplify this process by providing easy-to-make meals with built-in portion control, so you don’t need to guess how much fat, protein, or fiber you need each day.

However, Jampolis states her concerns with diet programs that are made up of highly processed foods. “They may not be as naturally satiating as whole foods closer to their natural form, and they certainly are not as healthy,” she said. In addition, most diet programs “don’t teach people how to navigate their diets on their own so once they stop ordering the food, they could simply go back to their old ways.”

On the other hand, Jampolis points to studies. “Research definitely shows that meal replacements do help with both weight loss and weight maintenance, so if people want to use this to kick-start their weight loss they just need to make sure to apply the principles for continued weight loss-weight maintenance. So, perhaps, they could find a healthier meal (with whole grains and vegetables) to replace lunch or dinner on occasion or have a smoothie or protein bar for breakfast or a snack to build in portion control.”

Potential drawbacks

You’ll need to pay for the diet program and grocery store items for lean-and-green meals.
Low-calorie meals can slow metabolism and cause extreme fatigue.

The most common complaints about Optavia on Better Business Bureau include terrible customer service, constant billing issues, unexpected weight gain after the program, and feeling bloated and sick.

Bottom line: Is Optavia for you?

Optavia has helped people lose weight, but it isn’t healthy for everyone. Any diet program can have devastating effects like triggering disordered eating or yo-yo dieting. Consult with a physician before starting Optavia or any other weight loss program.