In the New Year, my pharmacist tried talking to Nestle again about Optifast. Initially they were selling the box of 9 sachets of soup for about £30 with the various shakes just a bit lower for packs of 9 sachets. But when he called up again, they were talking about £200 for a 2 week programme.
Meanwhile, I had been continuing with BL (Biggest Loser) products - replacing breakfast and lunch but having regular supper. I've got to say that their range of flavours was more interesting than Optifast - for instance whereas Optifast only have vegetable soup, BL has Chicken, Vegetable and Curry soups which comes in a mixed box of 5 soups at £7 from Asda. The shake flavours are Chocolate, Mint Chocolate, Vanilla, Banana and Wild Berry. Tesco were selling the BL vanilla packs at just £0.50 each - needless to say I bought up quite a lot.
I compared the ingredients of BL with Optifast which had all the same ingredients except for Chloride and Fluoride which was in Optifast but not BL. The amounts varied a little but essentially they are pretty similar.
The other thing I did was to buy a decent pair of scales. Sainsbury had an offer on Weight Watchers branded scales that are quite good - £15 reduced from £30. These scales as well as measuring weight also measure BMI, Body Fat % and Body Water %.
Since 29 Dec my weight has gone down from 16st 2lb to 14st 7.5lb today - just over 1.5 stone. My BMI has reduced from 30.3 to 27.8 - I have gone from officially obese to overweight - which is great news. I also feel I have more energy and my stomach is definitely getting flatter.
My dilemma though is this - do I stick with what I'm doing with BL or still try to go on the Optifast plan. For Optifast you have to have a BMI of 30+, well now I am under that. On the other hand, although I am losing weight very happily, because I didn't do the rapid weight loss concept with Optifast then maybe I am not achieving the benefit of reversing my diabetes.
My wife has been very supportive of what I have been doing but I'm not sure she'll go with a full replacement plan - it's nice that we sit down together in the evening and share a meal (although I leave out the potatoes) - would be a shame to lose that.
Now I just telephoned Nestle to ask some more about Optifast and to clear up the question about ordering. At first they were telling me that Optifast is only prescribed as a two week programme for people about to undertake gastric band surgery who are required to not eat for two weeks - hence the two week programme. When I said I wanted to use it for weight loss only, they said their product is not meant for that. Then I told them that their own documentation on their website clearly advertises Optifast as a "nutritionally complete low-calorie meal replacement product developed specifically for medically controlled weight loss" and elsewhere "Total Diet Replacement for Weight Control".
They then said that it can only be used for two weeks - again I challenged this by quoting from their documentation which says "We recommend that Optifast is used under medical supervision, especially if using as a total diet replacement for more than three weeks".
Although they were aware of the study using Optifast to reverse diabetes, they refused to comment on this maintaining their product is just used prior to gastric band surgery.
The outcome is that the two week programme is based on 2 weeks at 4 sachets a day which equals 56 sachets and they said that the pharamacist would charge between £150 - £190 for this plus £25 for a private prescription. My doctor must write on the prescription what combinations of soups and shake flavours I want. Then I need another prescription in another 2 weeks. When I told them that Optifast is sold over the counter in Australia they said they didn't know what happens in other countries.
Seems very strange to me that they advertise Optifast as a meal replacement weight loss product on their website yet they don't really want to sell it to you. I suspect that they are making healthy profits from selling Optifast as a special highly priced product specifically for people undergoing gastric band surgery and do not want to devalue their brand by being seen to be selling it as a general diet product - after all it is not that much different from BL products or even the Asda own label meal replacement stuff. I'm thinking that there is a little bit of a racket going on here.
Even my pharmacist said he can't see what all the fuss is about - he said "after all its only a meal replacement product like all the others".
Now that I am very comfortable with BL products and they are easily available at reasonable prices, I'm thinking that maybe I'll do the Optifast total meal plan but using BL products. Lot less hassle for the same result. I will give this some serious thought.
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