I’m often asked to compare the Medifast diet with other diets - in terms of results, food, experience, convenience, and cost. I was recently asked to do a current comparison of medifast pricing and Jenny Craig pricing. The following article will be my attempt to do this.

Upfront Fees Or Membership Costs For Medifast And Jenny Craig: Medifast only charges you money for their food. There is no cost to join and the counseling and resources are also free. One of the reasons for this though is that there are no weigh ins and personal one on one meetings with this diet. Everything is pretty much done online rather than being done in person. And, some people prefer this. I personally do not have the time to check in with someone on a regular basis, nor does it seem all that appealing.

But I know that many people disagree with me. Some people tell me that they really do need that accountability. You do get this with Jenny Craig. But, there are membership fees associated with this from what I can tell. This seems to depend on how long you plan to be with the program. To make it easy to compare these two programs, I’m going to be looking at both on a month to month basis. But, Jenny does seem to have a yearly program that costs $399 per year for membership. Looking at it from a month to month standpoint though, you often see offers like $20 per 20 pounds or $36 for six weeks.

Food Costs: Medifast Versus Jenny Craig: Most people would agree that the main costs associated with both of these diets is going to be the food. And, these plans approach these charges differently. While Medifast does sell their foods individually, this is not the way that most people go about it, in my experience. It makes a lot more sense to purchase a package with this diet as it works out to be much less per meal this way. Again, I’m trying to compare apples to apples here so I’m going to be using the Basic 5 plus 1 womens’ plan.

This basic plan is priced at $299 before shipping (shipping runs anywhere from around $6 to around $25, depending on how fast you want for it to get there.) This gives you 143 meals, which is supposed to last you for a month. If you aren’t using coupons and if you are buying the most expensive and fast shipping available, that’s about $81 per week or about $2.25 per meal. This can be even less if you use the latest coupons.

Now let’s look at Jenny Craig. This program sells the meals individually. Typically, you chose your meals weekly. Your counselor will have food lists, and depending on your goals, you will pick out the meals that you prefer to help you meet those goals. From the research that I’ve done, there doesn’t seem to be much debate that the Jenny Craig food is more expensive than the Medifast food. As an example, the shelf stable dinners seem to run about $5.00 each while the frozen ones are around $5.50 each, on average. Most of the reviews and overviews that I read indicated that the cost of a week of Jenny food runs anywhere from around $120 - $180 per week. This is in addition to the membership fees.

Other Considerations: Now, the cost of the food provided is not the only thing to consider. Both diets require that you do add in your own fresh foods. With Jenny, you add in fresh sides with your meals. With Medifast, you don’t need to add in sides, but you will provide one fresh meal each day. (Most people do this at dinner time.) So, no matter which of these you ultimately decide on, there will be some groceries involved on top of your diet food.

Also, for some, the costs are not the only considerations. These diets seem to appeal to different types of consumers, at least as I see it. People who like Jenny Craig seem to be drawn to seeing someone in person and choosing their foods for the week. They like this involvement. On the other hand, people who like Medifast like knowing that the free counseling is there (and often do use it,) but they don’t necessarily want to make the time for one on one interactions.

And of course, the cost of the diets are not going to matter so much if you don’t like the experience and ultimately abandon it. It’s not cost effective if it does not work or if you don’t eat the food. So, if seeing a counselor is not going to be conducive to your sticking with it, you might have more success with medifast. But, if you really do need that one on one support, then the higher cost of Jenny might not be the most important thing to you at the end of the day.

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