Good luck, Radii. I'll be reading a long.
My wife and I started on Optavia, the latest version of Medifast, last week. So far, she's down 8.5 lbs and I'm down 11. Plan to stay on it for 2 months and see where we are. We've done Weight Watchers and lost weight, but needed something different to change things up. So far, it's working. The biggest adjustment is eating 6 times a day. What you can eat isn't bad and the one meal you chose for yourself is a protein and a lot of veggies, no carbs. We were talking about doing that anyway, so it hasn't been a big adjustment for our meals. The biggest adjustment for me has been cutting out the sweets.
Know you've got some moral support from the West coast.