I would like to know the answer too. Anyone here know what is the right answer. I'll do some research in Google and get back to you if I discover an anything. You should email the people at Medifast as they probably could answer your Medifast question..

I do the autoship with TSFL. I automatically receive 23 boxes once a month...

It depends on how long it takes for your food to get to you. I get mine within 2 days of ordering so I can wait longer if I have to. Although, I too have built up quite the stash over the last 4 months. I don't want to get to the point where I have to eat certain things because that is all I have left - I like to keep a variety and have extra in case money runs short one month - that way I can wait an extra week or two to order and not worry about it. But it takes awhile to build up to having extra...

It takes about ten days from the time I order (I always seem to order on the weekend, so that may be why) so I order 3 weeks before I need to if I have the money. This is just me, but because I really like a variety, I also do small orders when I discover I love something like the brownies or the hot cocoa. For some reason, when I order from TSFL, I get my orders much quicker. Those orders come from Colorado which is closer...

The amount of shipping time really varies based on your residence. Up until my last order, which only took 5 days from order to arrival, it's been taking 7 business days. I don't bother with the additional expedited fee as that does not speed up the actual shipping, just whether they get it out same day, or next day..

As I was stuck with a ton of food I couldn't stand on another diet about 5 years ago, I try not to order too far in advance. I want to force myself to use up what I have so I don't have a lot of yucky meals left when I begin maintenance (I've sold individual boxes on eBay twice because I was past the 30 day return date, one sale turned out to be an expensive hassle so won't do that again). Looking at my cupboard today, if I never placed another order, I would happily consume the remaining inventory..

As EMT mentioned, you DO NOT want to run out of food. I shudder at the thought of working so hard to stay OP, then falling out of ketosis because I'm out of my Medifast meals...

I have probably several months worth of food since I found some really good deals on ebay. I also do the autoship from TSFL so that I can order my favorites. I go through phases of what I like to eat so I like to have enough on hand to never deal with what happened my first month, where I realized I hated half the food. I ended up placing my second order 2 weeks later, so that I wouldn't go off the diet due to not liking the food I had left..

And if you do have food you don't like, someone mentioned a facebook group that might be a better option for trading, rather than dealing with ebay...