Optavia
A listed, audited, zero-debt food company with the cleanest regulatory file on this site and one of the most honest income disclosures in the category - publishing a median annual coach gross of about $349 against a $199 kit and a $199 renewal, in a business whose revenue has fallen 75.9% from its 2022 peak.
The entry fee pays nobody a commission and the balance sheet is debt-free - but the company’s own 2025 disclosure puts the median coach at roughly $349 gross for the year, and the network being recruited into has lost 77.0% of its active earning coaches since the end of 2022.
Can you actually make money with Optavia?
No, on the company's own 2025 disclosure. The median United States coach grossed roughly $349 for the entire year. That is gross, before the $199 kit, before the $199 renewal, before events and travel, and before the coach's own product purchases, on which coaches earn nothing and which are credited to their sponsor instead. Some 23.28% of all United States coaches earned nothing at all.
Go further down the same table. 69.79% earned $1,000 or less for the year. 82.21% earned $2,500 or less. Only 1.37% earned over $50,000, and 0.15%, one in 667, earned over $200,000 after a median of 122 months in business. Under the Trilivy Compensation Plan, effective 1 August 2026, every coach earns a flat 10% Client Support Commission on client volume from the first day; a coach with five ordering entities and 1,500 FQV adds a Client Support Bonus of 10%, rising to 25% at 6,000 FQV.
The business underneath all of that is contracting hard, and these figures are audited rather than estimated. FY2025 revenue was $385.8 million, down 36.0% in a year and 75.87% below the FY2022 peak of $1,598.6 million. Active earning coaches stood at 14,000 in the first quarter of 2026, down 44.9% year on year and 77.0% from the peak of 60,900. Management guides to another year of decline.
Now the part that is genuinely better than almost anything else graded here. The $199 kit and the $199 annual renewal are expressly non-commissionable, so nobody upline earns a cent on a body walking through the door. There is no purchase requirement of any kind. Coaches cannot buy their own rank, because they earn nothing on personal orders. Anti-stockpiling is written into the policies. And the disclosure covers all United States coaches rather than only active ones, printing the non-earners on its face. Very few operators do any of that. This one does all of it.
Coach Business Kit at enrollment, then $199 every twelve months to renew - both explicitly non-commissionable, so no one in the upline earns anything on either
- Fast-start cash tied to clients who stay. The Coach Accelerator Bonus pays a new coach up to $3,500 in their first three months and the sponsor’s Accelerator Assist Bonus matches it, counting each new client who reaches 275 PQV in the month of their first orders; the plan sets no retention test on those clients.
- Rank advancement above Executive Director that is not a count of Executive Director teams. Regional Director needs one Executive Director team, Senior Regional two, National three, Global five, Senior Global seven and Presidential ten, on top of the Executive Director’s own 4,500 FQV and 6,000 GQV; one-time Rank Advancement Bonuses of $3,000 to $15,000 attach to those team counts.
- A real cure period for a missed $199 renewal. The downline rolls up to the sponsor at once; reinstatement within 30 days is at the company’s discretion and costs an administrative fee on top of the renewal, and after 30 days personally sponsored coaches are not restored.
- A stabilized earning base. The network being recruited into has lost 77.0% of its active earning coaches since the end of 2022, so a new coach is joining a shrinking field rather than a growing one.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL - and unusually so for this category. No federal or state regulator has ever brought an enforcement action against Medifast, Inc. or OPTAVIA, LLC: no FTC complaint, no consent order, no civil penalty, no injunction, no SEC order, no Wells notice, no cease-and-desist and no state attorney-general action was located. What the file does contain is two general FTC Notices of Penalty Offenses (October 2021 on money-making opportunities, April 2023 on product-claim substantiation) sent broadly across the sector - the 2021 notice went to roughly 1,100 companies - which are notices, not allegations and not findings; one self-regulatory case (DSSRC #252-2026) closed administratively on 10 March 2026 after the company removed all nine flagged posts; two advocacy-organization income-claims investigations by TINA.org in 2017 and 2023, which carry no legal force; a private ratings body’s pattern notice on refunds and cancellations; and one consumer auto-renewal class action, filed in 2022, which ended in a class settlement that a federal court in California approved, entering final judgment on 30 May 2025. A 2011 securities class action brought by investors, not participants, resolved in the company’s favor.
Confidence: High
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
Graded against the Trilivy Compensation Plan effective 1 August 2026. A weight-loss and metabolic-health program sold in the United States by independent contractors called Coaches, operating as the direct-selling channel of a company that has filed audited accounts with the SEC for more than thirty years. The product is portion-controlled meal-replacement food - "Fuelings" - sold as monthly kits, with the flagship Reset 5 & 1 Plan kit at $480 for 140 servings. The coach ladder runs Apprentice Coach, Senior Coach and Executive Director, then six ranks counted in Executive Director teams, from Regional Director to Presidential Director. The OPTAVIA brand was renamed Trilivy in an 8-K furnished on 17 July 2026, the Trilivy Compensation Plan took effect on 1 August 2026, and optavia.com redirects to trilivyhealth.com; both names describe the same business.
The good part is large and it belongs first, because it is unusual. Every material financial number in this report is audited and public - revenue, gross margin, SG&A, coach counts, guidance, cash and the going-concern assessment. The company publishes an Income Disclosure Statement covering ALL independent US coaches rather than only "active" ones, with a 23.28% non-earner bucket printed on the face of it. The $199 business kit and the $199 annual renewal are expressly non-commissionable, so nobody upline is paid for signing a body. Coaches earn nothing on their own purchases, which makes buying your own rank structurally impossible. Anti-stockpiling is written into the policies. There is no purchase requirement at all. There is a 90% buyback for twelve months, with no time limit in four jurisdictions. And no regulator, federal or state, has ever brought an enforcement action against the parent. That is a materially better compliance and disclosure posture than the large majority of income opportunities graded on this site.
And then the business the recruit is joining. FY2025 revenue was $385.8M, down 36.0% year on year and 75.87% below the FY2022 peak of $1,598.6M. Active earning coaches were 14,000 at Q1 2026, down 44.9% year on year - a Q1 2026 figure, not a FY2025 one; the year-end 2025 fall was 40.6%, to 16,100 - and 77.0% below the Q4 2022 peak of 60,900. FY2026 guidance of $270M to $300M implies a fourth consecutive year of decline after the FY2022 peak, and management has told investors so in writing. The cause is disclosed by the company itself: the Q1 2026 call attributes the coach decline in part to "the rapid adoption of GLP-1 medications, which continues to impact the traditional weight loss category," and management stated in February 2026 that roughly a quarter of its patients either have used or are on a GLP-1.
The participant arithmetic follows from the company’s own disclosure. Median annual gross earnings interpolate to about $349 - less than the $398 a coach pays in kit plus first renewal. 23.28% earned nothing, and the median tenure of that group is thirteen months, which describes the modal experience precisely: enroll, pay, earn zero, lapse at renewal. 69.79% earned $1,000 or less. Five committed clients on the flagship kit - $31,200 of client spend across the 13 four-week kits of a year at list price - yields roughly $5,670 under the Trilivy plan (our arithmetic), and only 11.42% of the entire US field earned more than $5,000 in 2025. The plan pays every coach a flat 10% on client volume from the first day, so a new coach with fewer than five ordering entities earns 10% where the January 2026 plan paid 15% for the first six months.
The structural criticism is narrow and precise, and it should not be overstated. Commissions are paid on movement of real consumable product out of a 71.3% gross margin, not out of entry fees. Promotion to Executive Director is by volume alone - 4,500 FQV and 6,000 GQV as a qualified Senior Coach - but every rank above it, Regional Director to Presidential Director, is set by the count of Executive Director teams in separate lines of sponsorship (one, two, three, five, seven and ten), and each carries a one-time Rank Advancement Bonus of $3,000 to $15,000; the sponsor of a new coach also collects an Accelerator Assist Bonus matching up to $3,500 of that coach’s fast-start bonus. And because a coach’s own orders are credited to their sponsor as client volume, an undisclosed share of what the plan counts as customer sales is coach self-consumption. That last figure is the single most important unknown in the whole file, and it is not published anywhere.
What all US coaches earned in 2025
From OPTAVIA’s own 2025 Income Disclosure Statement, which covers ALL independent US coaches operating under the US compensation plan - not a filtered "active" subset. Figures are annual gross earnings; the disclosure states in terms that they exclude any expenses coaches incurred in building their businesses.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Coach Business Kit (entry) The single most important Koscot-side fact in the plan. The Trilivy Compensation Plan defines Commissionable Goods as products "that can be consumed" and states that "Events, fees, taxes, business renewal, admin fees, and shipping are not Commissionable Goods," so no upline earns anything on the kit or the renewal. Includes a smart scale, digital resources, twelve months of a branded personal website and twelve months of business-management access. Shipping is free. |
$199.00 one-time |
$0 - non-commissionable |
| Annual business renewal Also pays no one a commission: the Trilivy plan lists the business renewal as non-commissionable. Neither the Trilivy plan nor the public coach page states the amount; the January 2026 plan put it at "currently $199.00 and is subject to change," and this report uses that figure. Missing it ends the coach business and forfeits commissions, and the downline rolls up to the sponsor. The Procedures allow reinstatement at the company’s discretion: within 30 days by paying an administrative fee plus the renewal, with the downline restored on the sponsor’s request; after 30 days only by buying a new kit and paying an administrative fee, and personally sponsored coaches are not restored. Renewal also requires passing the company’s Certification Exam. |
$199.00 annual |
$0 - non-commissionable |
| Reset 5 & 1 Plan kit The flagship, sold as the Optimal Weight 5 & 1 Plan Kit at $470.00 and 380 CV on the 5 June 2026 price list. About $3.43 per Fueling across 140 servings, or $384.00 on a first Premier+ order at 20% off. The Trilivy plan’s worked example credits each client with 390 CV and 355 QV, and no current price list publishes the kit’s own CV; on 390 CV a coach earns $39.00 a month at the flat 10%, or 8.1% of the $480 list price, $78.00 or 16.3% with five ordering entities and 1,500 FQV, and $136.50 or 28.4% at the top 25% Client Support Bonus tier (our arithmetic). |
$480.00 monthly kit, 140 servings |
390 CV in the plan’s own example - $39 at the flat 10% |
| GLP-1 Nutrition Support Kit Introduced in 2024 as the strategic response to pharmacological displacement - positioned around the research the company cites that 20–50% of weight lost on medically supported programs is lean muscle. It is a coherent product answer to the problem; it has not arrested the revenue decline. |
$397.50 monthly kit |
313 CV |
| Individual Fueling box (7 servings) Essential Fuelings are $23.50 a box and Reset Fuelings, the food in the Reset kit, $24.00: $3.36 and $3.43 a serving. Twenty Reset boxes cost the same $480 as the 140-serving kit (our arithmetic), so the kit carries no bulk discount. This is also the sampling cost: a coach giving boxes to prospects is spending real cash on which nothing is earned. |
$23.50 to $24.00 per box |
19 CV on a $23.50 box - $1.90 at the 10% rate |
| Trilivy Premier+ autoship (client) The subscription clients and coaches are steered onto: 20% off the first order and 15% off subsequent orders over $350, 10% at $250 to $349.99, no membership fee, cancellable any time, and a $12.95 standard shipping fee on each order in the contiguous United States from 1 October 2026. The written terms are not unreasonable. Modifications must be submitted by 6:00 pm ET the day before processing, and it is the enrollment path - not the terms - that drew a class action, which ended in a court-approved settlement in 2025. |
over $350/order for the full discount every 4 weeks |
per product CV |
| The coach’s own product Not mandatory, and the company is entitled to that credit: there is genuinely no purchase requirement. But the entire pitch is that coaches are products of the product, and the Trilivy plan states coaches "are considered the personal clients of their sponsor coach." A coach on the flagship kit pays $408 per four-week order on Premier+ after the 15% discount, plus the $12.95 shipping fee, about $421 in all; the $5,304 a year of product across 13 orders is credited to the person above them, and the coach earns nothing on it (our arithmetic). |
about $421 per order every 4 weeks |
$0 to the coach - credited to their sponsor |
| Events and national convention The company does not publish registration prices and this report asserts no figure. Q4 2025 SG&A included a $1.6M increase in coach event costs even as coach compensation, marketing and employee costs were cut, which confirms events remain central to field culture. Treat the cost as real and unquantified. |
not published annual |
— |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
A career direct-selling executive recruited from a legacy skincare-and-supplement direct seller, where he was president of global sales and operations. He presided over both halves of the story: revenue compounding from $301.6M in FY2017 to $1,598.6M in FY2022, and then the fall to $385.8M in FY2025. No regulatory action, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against him could be located in any source reviewed. The mark against him is commercial rather than legal - he also chaired the board that discontinued the quarterly cash dividend entirely on 13 December 2023 and redirected the cash into customer acquisition, technology and a $20M collaboration that was exited eighteen months later.
Joined the company in 2018 as market president of OPTAVIA USA, then president of coach and client experience in 2020 and chief field operations officer in 2022. Also came from the same legacy skincare-and-supplement direct seller, where he ran Latin America and US sales across 27 countries. No regulatory or criminal action against him could be located. The observation worth recording - and it is an observation, not an allegation - is that both the outgoing and the incoming chief executive are career direct-selling professionals rather than food scientists or clinicians, and the strategy shows it: the response to pharmacological displacement has been a distribution and branding response.
Signs the SG&A and coach-compensation disclosures this report relies on for the payout derivation. His Q4 2025 call commentary - SG&A down 31.5% year on year to $59.9M, driven by an $18.6M decrease in coach compensation, a $5.8M decrease in company-led marketing and a $4.2M realignment decrease - is the disclosure that makes it possible to derive the field payout rate at all. Very few operators in this category hand a reviewer that number, even indirectly.
Medifast, Inc. is a widely held NYSE-listed Delaware corporation. OPTAVIA, LLC is a wholly owned operating subsidiary. There is no controlling founder-shareholder, no offshore holding structure and no related-party opacity disclosed in the FY2025 10-K. The FY2025 net loss includes a $12.1M non-cash valuation allowance against deferred tax assets - $1.10 of the $1.70 loss per share - which is management formally concluding it may not generate enough future taxable income to use them. That is a governance signal about the durability of the decline, published by the company itself, and it is worth more than any outside commentary.
Registered address
Baltimore / Owings Mills, Maryland, USA
Every material financial figure in this report comes from audited SEC filings or from XBRL data tagged by the company itself - the FY2025 10-K filed 17 February 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-008656) and the Q1 2026 10-Q filed 4 May 2026. Nothing here rests on a trade-publication estimate, a leaked deck or a marketing release. That places this file in the top decile of this category for verifiability and it deserves to be said before anything else. FY2025 revenue was $385.8M, down 36.0% year on year, against a FY2022 peak of $1,598.6M - a fall of 75.87%. The company carries zero interest-bearing debt, $167.3M of cash and investments, $158.7M of working capital and no going-concern qualification. It is not financially distressed. It is commercially distressed: a $14.2M operating loss and an $18.7M net loss in FY2025, the first in the modern era, and FY2026 guidance of $270M to $300M that implies a fourth consecutive year of decline after the FY2022 peak.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
OK
OPTAVIA, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Medifast, Inc. (NYSE: MED), a widely held Delaware corporation with no controlling shareholder, filing audited accounts with the SEC for over thirty years. The brand was renamed Trilivy on 17 July 2026.
|
| What does it really cost? |
WATCH
$199 for the Coach Business Kit and $199 a year to renew - both non-commissionable, so nobody upline is paid on either. There is no purchase requirement, so that floor is real. The realistic figure for a coach who does what the culture expects is roughly $5,670 in year one, because the coach’s own flagship kit runs about $421 per four-week order on Premier+ with shipping, 13 orders a year, and earns them nothing (our arithmetic).
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes, and an unusually honest one - it covers ALL US coaches, not just active ones, and prints the non-earner bucket on its face. It shows 23.28% earning nothing in 2025, an interpolated median of about $349, and 69.79% earning $1,000 or less.
|
| Regulatory action against the company, ever? |
OK
None. No FTC complaint, consent order or penalty; no SEC order; no state attorney-general action located. The file contains two general FTC industry notices sent to over a thousand companies, one self-regulatory closure resolved on remediation, two advocacy-group investigations, and a private ratings body’s complaint postings - none of which is a regulatory finding.
|
| Is the business growing or shrinking? |
RED
Shrinking, hard, and the company says so. FY2025 revenue $385.8M, down 36.0% year on year and 75.87% below the FY2022 peak of $1,598.6M. Active earning coaches 14,000 at Q1 2026, down 44.9% year on year and 77.0% from peak. FY2026 guidance of $270M to $300M implies a fourth straight year of decline.
|
| Where does the commission money come from? |
OK
Product margin, not inflow. Roughly 40% of revenue reaches the field, derived two independent ways, funded from a 71.3% gross margin on real food. Entry fees are excluded from the commission pool entirely. The mechanism is honest; the pool fell 75.9% from FY2022 to FY2025.
|
| Can you get your money back, and can you leave cleanly? |
CONCERN
90% buyback on unopened marketable kits and materials for twelve months, with no time limit in Maryland, Massachusetts, Wyoming and Puerto Rico. But disputes go to mandatory arbitration with a capitalized jury-trial waiver, a twelve-month post-termination non-solicit applies, and missing a $199 renewal rolls the entire downline up to the sponsor; reinstatement is at the company’s discretion, and after 30 days personally sponsored coaches are not restored.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
WATCH
Genuinely mixed, which is rare. The money is paid on movement of real consumable food and the entry fee pays nothing - that is merchant. But every rank above Executive Director, from Regional to Presidential, is defined by the count of Executive Director teams in the organization and pays a one-time Rank Advancement Bonus of $3,000 to $15,000, and a sponsor collects a matching fast-start bonus of up to $3,500 when a new coach brings in clients. Executive Director itself is reached on volume alone. It pays on product and promotes on recruitment.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Cover the mandatory cost in year one | $199 the Coach Business Kit, which includes twelve months of website and business tools. This floor is genuine - there is no purchase requirement behind it |
| Cover kit plus first renewal from commissions | $398 gross against an interpolated median annual gross of about $349. The median coach does not clear it |
| Earn the Client Support Bonus on top of the base commission | 5 ordering entities and 1,500 FQV on top of the flat 10% Client Support Commission, a Client Support Bonus of 10% at 1,500 FQV, 15% at 3,000, 20% at 4,500 and 25% at 6,000, for totals of 20% to 35%; the plan’s own example puts five clients at 355 QV each at 1,775 FQV |
| Cover the kit and 13 orders of your own product at ~$421 every four weeks | $5,671.35 gross which takes six committed clients on the flagship kit, not five: across 13 four-week orders five gross $5,667.50 in year one, $3.85 short, while six gross $6,584, $6,084 at the 20% tier plus the $500 Coach Accelerator Bonus, and clear it even without that bonus (our arithmetic) - above the $5,000 that only 11.42% of the entire US field exceeded in 2025 |
Read this twice
Two honest facts sit at the top of this arithmetic and they cut in the company’s favor. The floor is genuinely $199, because there is genuinely no purchase requirement - the Procedures say so in terms - and neither the kit nor the renewal pays anybody a commission. A coach who never buys product and finds two clients on the flagship kit grosses about $936 in year one at the flat 10% (two clients cannot make the five ordering entities the bonus needs), nets $737 after the kit, and breaks even in month three (our arithmetic). That is a real outcome and the plan permits it. But then read the same coach against the disclosure: $936 for the year would place them in the $500.01 to $1,000 band, above the 57.32% of all US coaches who earned $500 or less in 2025. Now the median. Interpolated median annual gross is about $349, against $398 of kit and first renewal - so the typical coach does not clear their own fees from commissions in the first two years. And the model expects them to be on the program themselves. At Premier+ pricing the $480 flagship kit is $408 per four-week order after the 15% discount, about $421 with the $12.95 shipping fee, and Premier+ ships every four weeks, so a median coach eating the product is out about $5,470 across the 13 orders of a year, on which they earn nothing, because the plan credits their orders to their sponsor. Net position: roughly −$5,320 a year (our arithmetic, applying the $12.95 shipping fee, in force from 1 October 2026, to the full year). The median coach breaks even only by never buying the product, which is precisely what the culture tells them not to do. The properly executed case is instructive rather than encouraging. Five committed clients each on the $480 kit, at the 390 CV in the plan’s own example, generate $390 per four-week order at the 20% first bonus tier from the first order, $5,070 across the 13 orders of a year on Premier+, plus a $500 Coach Accelerator Bonus and, if all five are new in the same month, a one-month 5% CSB+ of $97.50 - about $5,670 gross in year one, $5,468.50 net of the kit (our arithmetic). Those five clients spent $31,200 with the company across 13 kits each at list price; the coach kept 18% of it. And $5,670 lands in the $5,000.01 to $7,500 band: only 11.42% of US coaches earned more than $5,000 in 2025. If that coach is also on the plan themselves, the year-one net is about −$4: $5,468.50 against $5,472.35 of the coach’s own product (our arithmetic), so five committed clients leave the coach $3.85 short of covering their own product in year one, and a single convention trip - cost unpublished - deepens the loss. Steady state in year two is $5,070 gross, $4,871 after renewal (our arithmetic). Finally, the top. The 0.15% above $200,000 reached it after a median 122 months - ten years and two months - and at that level income comes overwhelmingly from Executive Director generation bonuses rather than client commissions: 4%, 4%, 3%, 3%, 2% and 2% across six generations under the Trilivy plan, 18% in all, where the January 2026 plan paid 12.0% plus three 0.5% Elite Leadership overrides. That position is real and it is large. It is also not reproducible today: it was built in an entry cohort, roughly 2017 to 2019, when revenue was compounding at 40 to 66% a year and the coach base was expanding. The coach base at Q1 2026 was 77.0% below its Q4 2022 peak.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
10% of 390 Compensation Volume, the figure the Trilivy Compensation Plan’s hypothetical worked example credits to each client, applied here to the 5 & 1 kit, which lists at $480 a month and whose own CV no current price list publishes: $39. That flat 10% is the Client Support Commission every coach earns from the first day under the plan effective 1 August 2026. It doubles to 20% in any month you hold five ordering entities and 1,500 Frontline Qualifying Volume and reaches 35% at 6,000, so the slider understates a coach above that gate; the one-time Coach Accelerator Bonus of up to $3,500 in your first three months is not modeled. Cost is the $199 annual renewal spread monthly, the amount the January 2026 plan states; the $199 kit is one-off and excluded. There is genuinely no purchase requirement, which is unusual and creditable - though most coaches are also on the program, about $421 per four-week order for the flagship kit on Premier+ with shipping, or about $5,470 across 13 orders a year (our arithmetic), which is not modeled here. For calibration: the company’s own 2025 disclosure puts the median coach at about $349 for the year and 23.28% at nothing at all. Your own subscription cost of $17/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
What the same capability costs on the open market, assembled by the customer. The comparison is deliberately generous to the program: it prices real food against real food, not against restaurant meals. The company’s own published price comparison benchmarks a promotional first-month plan day against a grocery-and-fast-food day at $24.42 and a grocery-and-fast-casual day at $33.36, priced in Philadelphia in October 2022 - $732.60 and $1,000.80 over thirty days, our arithmetic - which flatters it considerably. The honest comparison is against other meal replacements at the same calorie count.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| 140 high-protein meal-replacement servings a kit at ~$3.43 each | Supermarket and warehouse-club protein shakes (~$1.30), bars (~$1.20–1.75) and instant oats or soups (~$0.35–0.80), blended at ~$1.50 a serving | ~$210 |
| Structured plan, tracking and behavior change - bundled | A commercial weight-management program sold direct to consumers (~$23–70/mo), a mainstream tracking app (~$20/mo), or a free one | $0-70 |
| Human accountability from an unlicensed coach | A registered dietitian consultation at $100–150, frequently insurance-covered, or a free peer community | $0-25 |
| Smart scale, inside the $199 coach kit | A consumer smart scale bought once | ~$30 one-off |
| Reset 5 & 1 Plan kit - $480/month | The assembled equivalent above | $230-305 |
| First-month Fuelings on the company’s own sheet - $12.85 a day with five free boxes, $385.50 over 30 days | Same assembled equivalent | $230-305 |
| The comparison the market is actually making | Self-pay GLP-1: tirzepatide at $299–$449 through the manufacturer’s direct channel; semaglutide at $349, promotional doses $149–$199; the federal direct-purchase channel averaging $346–$350 | $149-449 |
| The same, for an insured patient | GLP-1 with commercial insurance coverage | $25-100 copay |
| Total as sold $480/month, or $5,760 a year |
Total, built yourself $230-305/month of comparable food and structure |
Price-to-value
A premium of roughly $175 to $250 a month, 57% to 109%, or $2,100 to $3,000 across a year (our arithmetic). That alone would be an expensive-but-defensible number for a branded program people like. The finding that decides this dimension is the last two rows: at $480 a month the kit costs more than every self-pay GLP-1 option surveyed in March 2026, and five to nineteen times an insured copay. The company’s own filings say roughly a quarter of its patients have used or are on one of these medicines. That is not a competitive-pressure risk; it is a price inversion against the substitute that is taking the market, and it is the clearest single explanation for why revenue and the coach base have both fallen roughly three-quarters. In fairness - and it is a real point - Fuelings are food and displace a grocery bill the customer would incur anyway, so the marginal cost over what they would have eaten regardless is nearer $230 a month than $480, and a prescription does not feed anyone. It is expensive. It is not fraudulent.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Coach who never buys the product
takes the $199 floor literally, a handful of friends ordering, no events
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 38% | −$140 |
| 6 mo | 44% | −$60 |
| 1 yr | 46% | +$150 |
| 3 yr | 41% | +$310 |
| 5 yr | 37% | +$390 |
Product-of-the-product coach
on the 5&1 plan herself at ~$421 every four weeks, two or three client orders, the most common real case
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 4% | −$1,460 |
| 6 mo | 4% | −$2,690 |
| 1 yr | 5% | −$5,320 |
| 3 yr | 6% | −$15,900 |
| 5 yr | 6% | −$26,600 |
Full-time builder
30+ hrs/wk, on the plan, recruiting toward Executive Director and beyond
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 3% | −$1,870 |
| 6 mo | 5% | −$3,240 |
| 1 yr | 8% | −$5,880 |
| 3 yr | 11% | −$15,000 |
| 5 yr | 12% | −$23,400 |
Methodology note. These are modeled outcome ranges, not claims, not company figures and not a prediction for any individual. ANCHORED to the company’s own published documents: the 2025 Income Disclosure Statement covering ALL US coaches (23.28% earning nothing; median band $250.01–$500, interpolating to about $349; 69.79% at or below $1,000; 82.21% at or below $2,500; 1.37% above $50,000; 0.15% above $200,000 after a median 122 months); the $199 Coach Business Kit and $199 annual renewal, both non-commissionable; the level-one rate table of the January 2026 plan the rows were modeled on (15% of Compensation Volume falling to 10% at month seven, with a 10% to 18% Client Support Bonus at five ordering entities and 1,200 FQV or more, for totals of 20% to 33%), against which the Trilivy plan in force from 1 August 2026 pays a flat 10% from the first day plus 10% to 25% from 1,500 FQV, totals of 20% to 35%, so the rows overstate a coach with fewer than five ordering entities in the first six months; the $470 flagship kit at 380 CV (the Reset kit lists at $480); the $250 accelerator and consistency bonuses of that plan (the Trilivy Coach Accelerator Bonus pays up to $3,500); and, for the coach’s own orders, the $480 Reset kit at the 15% Premier+ discount plus the $12.95 shipping fee, about $421 per four-week order and about $5,470 across 13 orders a year, with the fee, in force from 1 October 2026, applied to the full year (our arithmetic). MODELED by us: the cohort definitions, which the company does not segment; the share of each cohort in cumulative profit; and the expense side beyond published prices, because the disclosure states in terms that it excludes any expenses coaches incurred and publishes no expense figure. Two calibration notes cut in the company’s favor and are built into the first cohort. There is genuinely no purchase requirement, so a coach who declines to buy the product can be cash-positive on very modest client volume - that cohort is the only one on this page with a plausible route to profit, and it exists precisely because the entry fee is non-commissionable and self-purchase earns nothing. And events are excluded from every row above because the company does not publish a price; a single national convention would push the first cohort’s median negative and deepen the other two. One note cuts the other way: the top column in the third cohort reflects an entry cohort - roughly 2017 to 2019 - that joined a growing network; at Q1 2026 the network was 77.0% smaller than at its Q4 2022 peak.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151Revenue is down 75.87% from the FY2022 peak, and management guides to another year of decline
2The active earning coach base has fallen 77.0% from its peak
3The median US coach grossed roughly $349 for all of 2025
423.28% of all US coaches earned nothing at all in 2025
569.79% earned $1,000 or less; only 0.15% earned over $200,000
6A new coach starts at a flat 10%
7Coaches earn nothing on their own purchases, which are credited to their sponsor
8Every rank above Executive Director is a count of Executive Director teams, and each pays one-time cash
9The sponsor of a new coach is paid a matching fast-start bonus of up to $3,500
10Six generations of overrides sit above the working coach
11The product costs more per month than a self-pay GLP-1
12Missing the $199 renewal rolls the entire downline up to the sponsor
13Mandatory arbitration with a capitalized jury-trial waiver
14A self-regulatory inquiry found questioned earnings claims in the field
15A consumer class action over the subscription enrollment path ended in a court-approved settlement
Green flags
101The entry fee is not commissionable to anybody
2There is no purchase requirement of any kind
3Coaches cannot buy their own rank
4Anti-stockpiling is written into the policies
5The Income Disclosure Statement covers ALL US coaches and prints the non-earners
6Everything material is in audited SEC filings
7The payout is funded by product margin, not by inflow
8The balance sheet is genuinely strong
9No regulator has ever taken action against the parent
10A 90% buyback, weekly pay, and correct written claim rules
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Disclosing the split between genuine end-client volume and coach self-consumption. Because a coach’s own orders are credited to their sponsor as client volume, nobody outside the company knows what share of "sales to real customers" is coaches buying their own food. If that figure were published and it were high, it would be the single most powerful piece of evidence any operator in this category could produce.
- Adding a volume route to the ranks above Executive Director, which are set by counts of one, two, three, five, seven and ten Executive Director teams, and tying the Coach Accelerator and Accelerator Assist bonuses to clients who are still ordering after the first three months rather than to first orders alone.
- Publishing earnings by rank and the denominator in the Income Disclosure Statement, adding typical expenses so it reports net rather than gross, publishing event and convention costs pre-enrollment, and adding a guaranteed cure period so that restoring an organization after a missed $199 renewal does not depend on the company’s discretion.
Downward
- Any FTC, SEC or state attorney-general enforcement action on the compensation plan or earnings claims, or a court certifying a pyramid-scheme class - any of which would replace the current clean regulatory file with a real one and would trigger a binding cap.
- Making the business kit or the renewal commissionable, introducing any fee-based bonus, or adding a personal-volume purchase requirement to qualify for commissions. Each of those would remove one of the four structural protections that carry this grade.
- Median disclosed earnings falling below $250 or the non-earner bucket exceeding 30%; the active earning coach base falling below 10,000, at which point the network effects the plan depends on stop functioning; or a going-concern qualification, covenant breach or dilutive capital raise.
Grade is C-. The cleanest regulatory file and one of the most honest income disclosures on this site, attached to a median annual gross of about $349 in a business that has lost three-quarters of its revenue and its field.
Say the good part properly first, because it is unusually large. Every financial figure here is audited and public. The $199 kit and the $199 renewal pay nobody a commission, so no one is rewarded for signing a body. Coaches earn nothing on their own orders, which makes buying a rank impossible. Inventory loading is prohibited by name. There is no purchase requirement whatsoever, so the floor really is $199. The buyback is 90% for twelve months and unlimited in four jurisdictions. Pay is weekly. The written rules on income and health claims are correct, and the rule barring clinically qualified coaches from being portrayed as clinicians while monitoring people on the program is better than anything comparable on this site. The Income Disclosure Statement covers all US coaches rather than only the active ones, and prints a 23.28% non-earner bucket on its face. And no regulator, federal or state, has ever brought an action against the parent. Those are the four structural things a regulator looks for, plus disclosure quality most listed companies would not bother with. They are all real and they are why this grade is C- rather than something lower.
The disclosure is where it turns, and again the company publishes it itself. Median annual gross earnings interpolate to roughly $349 for the whole of 2025 - less than the $398 of kit plus first renewal. 23.28% of all US coaches earned nothing, and that group’s median tenure is thirteen months, which is a precise description of the modal outcome: enroll, pay, earn zero, lapse. 69.79% earned $1,000 or less. Only 0.15% cleared $200,000, after a median 122 months. Those figures are gross, before the kit, the renewal, events, travel, samples and - decisively - before the coach’s own product, on which they earn nothing because their orders are credited to their sponsor. A median coach on the plan, paying about $421 per four-week order for the flagship kit on Premier+ with shipping, about $5,470 across 13 orders a year, is out about $5,320 for the year (our arithmetic). Doing it properly does not fix it: five committed clients spending $31,200 across the 13 four-week kits of a year returns about $5,670 to the coach under the Trilivy plan, 18% of what those clients spent and $3.85 short of the kit and the coach’s own product (our arithmetic), and only 11.42% of the entire field earned more than $5,000 in 2025. And the plan starts every coach at a flat 10% on client volume, the rate the January 2026 plan reached only at month seven.
The third element is the one to weigh longest, and it is not an allegation about anybody. This business is being displaced by a drug. Revenue fell from $1,598.6M in FY2022 to $385.8M in FY2025 and guidance says $270–300M in FY2026. Active earning coaches fell from 60,900 at Q4 2022 to 14,000 at Q1 2026, down 44.9% on a year earlier. Management’s own words carry the cause: the Q1 2026 call attributes the coach decline in part to "the rapid adoption of GLP-1 medications, which continues to impact the traditional weight loss category," and in February 2026 management said roughly a quarter of its patients have used or are on one. The strategic response is documented and coherent - a $20M collaboration with a virtual primary-care provider announced 13 December 2023 alongside the dividend being cut to zero, a GLP-1 Nutrition Support Kit in 2024, ASCEND mini-meals in 2025, the investment sold in Q2 2025, and a rebrand to Trilivy on 17 July 2026 with clinical claims furnished in an 8-K whose forward-looking statements list the risk "that future study results will be inconsistent with study results to date." Three straight years of revenue declines, of 32.9% to 43.8%, say it has not worked yet. At $480 a month the kit costs more than any self-pay prescription taking this market. A recruit today is buying a distribution position in a category whose primary customer need is being met faster and more cheaply by an injectable - and the company itself is the source for that.
Be a customer, not a coach, and take the discount without the ladder
If the food and the structure work for you - and for some people they genuinely do - the Premier+ subscription gives 20% off the first order and 15% after, with no membership fee and cancellation at any time. Note the deadline: changes must be in by 6:00 pm ET the day before processing, and that enrollment-and-cancellation path is exactly what a class action, settled with court approval in 2025, was about. Set a calendar reminder the day you sign up. You avoid the $199 kit, the $199 renewal and the twelve-month non-solicit entirely. The Premier+ terms carry their own mandatory individual arbitration and class-action and jury-trial waiver, which a new member may opt out of within 30 days of enrolling.
Do the $349-against-$398 sum before you enroll
Both numbers are the company’s own: median annual gross of about $349 from the 2025 Income Disclosure Statement, against $199 for the kit and $199 to renew. If the typical participant does not cover their own fees from commissions inside two years, the question is not whether anyone can win - 1.37% cleared $50,000 - but what specific, written reason you have to believe you are not the median. And check the second number: is the coach base you would be joining growing or shrinking? It was down 44.9% year on year at Q1 2026 and 48.7% year on year at Q2 2026, to 11,700.
If you do enroll, build to five ordering entities and 1,500 FQV
The Client Support Commission is a flat 10% from your first day. Five ordering entities and 1,500 FQV add a 10% Client Support Bonus in any month, rising to 15%, 20% and 25% at 3,000, 4,500 and 6,000 FQV, and qualification is counted month by month, so a month below five ordering entities pays 10%. Five clients on the flagship kit clears the first threshold - the plan’s own example puts five clients at 1,775 FQV and $390 a month - and with the fast-start bonus comes to about $5,670 in year one across 13 four-week orders (our arithmetic), a figure only 11.42% of the 2025 field exceeded - which tells you both how achievable and how rare five committed clients actually are. The $3,500 fast-start figure needs fifteen brand-new clients in your first three months, and the plan’s own footnote says only a very small number of coaches reach that range.
Sell into metabolic health without the plan
The category is enormous and the search intent - GLP-1 side effects, muscle loss on pharmacotherapy, what to eat while on a prescription, what happens when you stop - is growing precisely as this business shrinks. Honest, sourced comparison content on meal replacements, dietitian consultations and prescription costs is a merchant business with real demand, and it does not require a $199 kit, an annual renewal, pre-approval of your advertising, permission to speak to a journalist, or a twelve-month non-solicit on the way out.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- Medifast, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, filed 17 February 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-008656)
Medifast, Inc. FY2025 Form 10-K, accession 0001628280-26-008656, filed 17 February 2026 - FY2025 revenue $385,788,000 (−35.96% year on year); gross profit $275.2M on a 71.3% gross margin; SG&A $289.4M (75.0% of revenue); operating loss $14.2M; net loss $18.7M including a $12.1M non-cash valuation allowance against deferred tax assets; $167.3M cash and investments; zero interest-bearing debt; $3.5M of unconditional purchase obligations beyond one year; no going-concern qualification
- EDGAR filing index for Medifast FY2025 Form 10-K, accession 0001628280-26-008656 (exhibit list, XBRL data files and Exhibit 23.1 auditor consent)
- Medifast, Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 31 March 2026, filed 4 May 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-029898)
Medifast, Inc. Q1 2026 Form 10-Q, accession 0001628280-26-029898, filed 4 May 2026, and the Q1 2026 results release of the same date - revenue $76.0M against guidance of $65–80M; 14,000 active earning coaches, −44.9% year on year against 25,400 at Q1 2025; CFO attribution of the coach decline in part to "the rapid adoption of GLP-1 medications"
- Medifast Q1 2026 earnings release, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K of 4 May 2026 - revenue $76.0M, 14,000 active earning coaches against 25,400, revenue per coach $5,432, "rapid adoption of GLP-1 medications for weight loss"
- Medifast, Inc. Form 8-K of 4 May 2026 reporting Q1 2026 results (Items 2.02 and 9.01, accession 0001628280-26-029812)
- SEC XBRL company-concept API, Medifast Inc. (CIK 0000910329), us-gaap:Revenues - the machine-readable annual and quarterly revenue series
SEC XBRL company-concept data, CIK 0000910329 - the FY2016–FY2025 revenue series used for the peak comparison ($1,598,577,000 in FY2022, giving −75.87% to FY2025) and for cumulative FY2017 to FY2025 revenue of $7,636.0M; GrossProfit and SellingGeneralAndAdministrativeExpense concepts
- SEC EDGAR company submissions index for Medifast, Inc., CIK 0000910329 (full filing history in JSON)
- SEC EDGAR annual-report filing index for Medifast, Inc., CIK 0000910329 (FY2016–FY2025 Forms 10-K)
- Medifast Q4 and full-year 2025 earnings release, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K of 17 February 2026 - 16,100 active earning coaches (−40.6%), SG&A down 31.5% to $59.9M on an $18.6M decrease in coach compensation, FY2026 guidance $270–300M and loss per share $(1.55)–$(2.75)
Q4/FY2025 earnings release furnished on Form 8-K, 17 February 2026, and the Q4 2025 earnings call - 16,100 active earning coaches at year-end 2025 (−40.6%); SG&A down 31.5% year on year to $59.9M driven by an $18.6M decrease in coach compensation; a $1.6M increase in coach event costs; FY2026 guidance of $270–300M revenue and a loss per share of $(1.55)–$(2.75); the CEO’s remark on the Q4 2025 call that roughly a quarter of patients have used or are on a GLP-1 (call transcript, not the release)
Not established by this document: No primary transcript or webcast archive of the Q4 2025 earnings call itself was located on a company or SEC-hosted domain; the quarter-of-patients remark is in the call, not in the furnished release, and is sourced to the separately listed third-party transcript.
- Medifast, Inc. Form 8-K of 17 February 2026 furnishing the Q4/FY2025 results (Items 2.02 and 9.01, accession 0001628280-26-008641)
- OPTAVIA Integrated Compensation Plan, effective 1 January 2026 (PDF) - level-one rate tables, Team Growth Bonus to 12%, Executive Director Generation Bonus, three 0.5% Elite Leadership overrides, $250/$500/$1,000 Coach Consistency Bonus, renewal "currently $199.00 and is subject to change"
OPTAVIA Integrated Compensation Plan, effective 1 January 2026 - non-commissionable items including fees and program materials; the rule that coaches receive no compensation or credit for personal orders and are treated as the personal clients of their sponsors; Qualifying Points at 1,200 FQV or a sponsored qualified Senior Coach team; the rank table through Presidential Director; the level-one rate tables at 15%/25%/27%/29%/31%/33% falling to 10%/20%/22%/24%/26%/28% after six months; Team Growth Bonus to 12%; Executive Director Generation Bonus of 2.5%/2.5%/2%/2%/1.5%/1.5%, 12.0% across six generations at Integrated Presidential Director; three 0.5% Elite Leadership overrides; the $250/$500/$1,000 flat bonuses; weekly commissions and monthly bonuses; renewal "currently $199.00 and is subject to change"
Not established by this document: The Executive Director Generation Bonus in the 1 January 2026 plan reads 2.5%/2.5%/2%/2%/1.5%/1.5% across six generations, totaling 12.0%. This plan was replaced by the Trilivy Compensation Plan effective 1 August 2026.
- OPTAVIA Integrated Compensation Plan Quicksheet (PDF) - the rank table through Presidential Director and the Qualifying Point definition of 1,200 FQV or a qualified Senior Coach team
- OPTAVIA Integrated Compensation Plan Glossary, "Terms to Learn" (PDF) - the defined terms including FQV, GQV and commissionable volume
- OPTAVIA 2025 U.S. Income Disclosure Statement (PDF) - 23.28% with no earnings at a median thirteen months, 0.15% above $200,000 after a median 122 months, and the footnote that the figures exclude expenses coaches may have incurred
OPTAVIA 2025 Income Disclosure Statement - the full sixteen-band distribution over ALL independent US coaches, including 23.28% with NO EARNINGS at a median thirteen months in business, the $250.01–$500 median band (45.20% cumulative below, interpolating to about $349), 69.79% at or below $1,000, 82.21% at or below $2,500, 1.37% above $50,000, 0.15% above $200,000 after a median 122 months, and the verbatim footnote stating that the figures exclude expenses coaches may have incurred
- Independent OPTAVIA Coach Agreement - U.S. Policies (PDF), effective 3 May 2024 (V2024-001-US) - Policy 3.10 anti-stockpiling, the Procedures’ statement that no other purchase is required, 5.12.c prohibited health claims, Policy 2.2 health-professional portrayal, 5.5 interaction with the media, Policy 3.21 the 90% twelve-month buyback with no one-year limit in MD, MA, WY and PR, Policy 3.7.b.v the twelve-month post-termination non-solicit and Policy 2.7 downline roll-up on non-renewal
OPTAVIA Policies and Procedures and Terms and Conditions - the anti-stockpiling rule; the express statement that no product or material purchase is required; prohibited health claims; the Health Professional Coach portrayal rule; advertising pre-approval revocable at sole discretion; media contact requiring prior authorization; the 90% twelve-month buyback with no limit in MD, MA, WY and PR and a one-year lookback in ten states; the twelve-month post-termination non-solicit; roll-up of the downline on non-renewal, with reinstatement only at the company’s discretion; and the capitalized jury-trial waiver under a Dispute Resolution Agreement incorporated by reference
- Independent OPTAVIA Coach Agreement - Terms and Conditions (PDF), effective 31 March 2026 (V2026-001) - §3.5 compensation and the rule that a coach's personal order is always credited to the sponsor, and §14 capitalized jury-trial waiver under the Dispute Resolution Agreement
- OPTAVIA U.S. Policies and Procedures - signature-required Coach Agreement form (PDF, earlier revision retained on the company's media domain)
- OPTAVIA Price Index List, product list effective 5 June 2026 (PDF) - 5 & 1 Plan Kit $470.00 / 380 CV / 355 QV, ACTIVE kits at $531.75 and $499.50, GLP-1 Nutrition Support Kit $397.50, Essential Fuelings box $23.50 for seven servings
OPTAVIA Price Index List and Premier+ terms - 5 & 1 Plan Kit at $470.00 / 380 CV / 355 QV; ACTIVE kits at $531.75 and $499.50; GLP-1 Nutrition Support Kit at $397.50; Fueling box at $23.50 for seven servings; Coach Business Kit and renewal at $199.00 with 0 CV and 0 QV; CV at roughly 80.9% and QV at roughly 75.5% of retail; Premier+ discounts of 20%/15%/10% with no membership fee and a 6:00 pm ET day-before modification deadline. Company price-comparison sheet (Philadelphia, October 2022) giving $12.85 a day in Fuelings in month one, with five free boxes, and $18.30 a day for all six meals ($385.50 and $549.00 over thirty days, our arithmetic)
Not established by this document: The Coach Business Kit and $199.00 renewal line with 0 CV and 0 QV does not appear in the currently served 5 June 2026 Price Index List; the $199.00 renewal figure is carried in the Integrated Compensation Plan at index 4 instead.
- OPTAVIA Premier+ Official Terms and Conditions (PDF, OPTAVIA_Premier+-T&Cs_060525) - 20%/15%/10% discounts, no membership fee, the 6:00 p.m. ET day-before modification and cancellation deadline, and "a mandatory individual arbitration and class action/jury trial waiver provision" with a 30-day opt-out by letter
- OPTAVIA Price Comparison sheet (PDF) - 5 & 1 Plan at $12.85 a day in Fuelings and $18.30 a day for all six meals, against grocery, fast-food and fast-casual baskets priced in the Philadelphia market, data extracted 21 October 2022
- DSSRC Case #252-2026: Administrative Closure - Medifast, Inc., closed 10 March 2026
DSSRC Case #252-2026, Medifast, Inc., administrative closure 10 March 2026 - a self-regulatory body operated by BBB National Programs, industry-funded, whose determinations are not regulatory findings; nine salesforce social posts conveying $544–$5,500 monthly bonuses, six-figure claims and "unlimited income potential," all removed shortly after notice, with the response recorded as appropriate and consistent with self-regulatory expectations. TINA.org brand file and the 2017 and 2023 income-claims databases - an advocacy organization’s investigations, not findings of law
- DSSRC Case #252-2026 decision, Medifast, Inc. (PDF copy hosting the nine cited salesforce posts, including the $544.57 and $1,356.06 bonus screenshots and the "unlimited income potential" post)
- Truth in Advertising, Inc. brand file: Medifast/Optavia
- 2017 Medifast-Optavia Income Claims Database
- 2023 Optavia Income Claims Database
- BBB Business Profile for Optavia, LLC, Baltimore, Maryland - non-accredited, with the verbatim pattern statement on refund and exchange issues and "As of 8/1/23, BBB has not received a response or action plan"
Better Business Bureau business profile for Optavia, LLC - a private, non-governmental, membership-funded ratings organization whose letter grades, pattern notices and complaint postings are not regulatory findings and not adjudications: an A+ letter grade, non-accredited, 43 complaints closed in three years and 6 in twelve months, and a verbatim pattern statement on refund and exchange issues with no company action plan recorded as of 1 August 2023. Against roughly $2.06 billion of revenue across FY2023–FY2025, the volume is small; the refund-and-cancellation theme is the meaningful signal because it aligns with the auto-renewal class actions
Not established by this document: The live BBB profile is a rolling three-year window and now reports 48 complaints closed in three years and 7 in twelve months, against the 43 and 6 recorded in the prose entry; the pattern statement and its 1 August 2023 date are unchanged.
- BBB complaints page for Optavia, LLC - the closed-complaint counts and the underlying refund, cancellation and auto-renewal complaint texts
- Trilivy Compensation Plan, effective 1 August 2026 (PDF) - flat 10% Client Support Commission, Client Support Bonus 10% to 25% from 1,500 FQV, CSB+, Coach Accelerator and Accelerator Assist Bonuses up to $3,500, Rank Advancement Bonuses $2,000 to $15,000, Executive Director Generation Bonus 4/4/3/3/2/2% (18% at Presidential Director); Executive Director at 4,500 FQV and 6,000 GQV, then one to ten Executive Director teams; Team Building Bonus 3%/4%; events, fees, taxes, business renewal, admin fees and shipping non-commissionable (document code Trilivy_Compensation-Plan_072926)
- Medifast Q2 2026 earnings release, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K of 3 August 2026 - revenue $76.4M (down 27.6%), 11,700 active earning coaches (down 48.7% from 22,800)
- Medifast, Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-051928) - rebrand of the OPTAVIA segment to Trilivy; about 11,700 active earning coaches
- Medifast Trilivy launch release, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K of 17 July 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-048574) - 14% visceral fat, 98% lean mass at 16 weeks, '10x more weight and 17x more fat', citing Arterburn et al., Obes Sci Pract 2019; forward-looking risk 'that future study results will be inconsistent with study results to date'
- Zeller v. Optavia, LLC, S.D. Cal. 3:22-cv-00434 - filed 1 April 2022; notice of settlement 31 July 2024; order granting final class certification and approval of class action settlement and entering final judgment, 30 May 2025
- Medifast Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 earnings call transcripts - CFO: decline 'driven in part by the rapid adoption of GLP-1 medications, which continues to impact the traditional weight loss category'; CEO (17 Feb 2026): 'roughly a quarter of our patients either have or are on GLP-1 drugs'
- Medifast Q2 2026 earnings call transcript - 'On August 1st, we launched an enhanced compensation plan'
- Trilivy Coach Kit page, trilivyhealth.com (Become a Coach) - Trilivy Coach Kit $199.00 with tools, plan information, 12 months of a personalized website and a smart scale; renewal sold separately behind the coach log-in
- Trilivy shop and meal-plan pages, trilivyhealth.com - Reset 5 & 1 Plan kit $480.00 for 140 servings ($384.00 on a first Premier+ order), Reset 5 & 1 Active $541.75, Reset 4 & 2 Active $507.50, Optimization Kit $404.00, Reset Fuelings $24.00 and Essential Fuelings $23.50 a box of seven
- Trilivy Premier+ Terms and Conditions (Trilivy LLC) - 20% off a first order and 15% off later orders over $350, 10% at $250 to $349.99, no membership fee, $12.95 standard shipping from 1 October 2026, 6:00 p.m. ET day-before modification deadline, mandatory individual arbitration with a class-action and jury-trial waiver and a 30-day opt-out
What we could not get
- The denominator of the Income Disclosure Statement. The document gives percentages but never states how many coaches they are computed over, and its population ("ALL Independent OPTAVIA Coaches") is wider than the 10-K’s 16,100 "active earning" coaches at Q4 2025. The total roster size is unknown, so the headcount behind the 23.28% non-earner share cannot be stated.
- The split between genuine end-client volume and coach self-consumption. Because a coach’s own orders are credited to their sponsor as client volume, no public document reveals what share of commissionable volume comes from people who are not coaches. This is the single most important unknown in the file and it is the decisive Koscot number.
- Coach compensation as a reported absolute figure. The company discloses coach compensation only as a year-on-year change inside SG&A and never publishes the level. The roughly 40% of revenue used throughout this report is derived from two quarters of disclosed changes (42.4% marginal in Q4 2025, 40.8% in Q1 2026) and cross-checked against the company’s own "$3 billion paid since 2017" against $7,636M of cumulative revenue (39.3%). It is a well-triangulated estimate, not a reported line item.
- Event and convention costs. Neither the company nor the rebranded successor publishes registration prices for its national convention or regional events, and no participant-facing figure was found - so none is asserted anywhere in this report. Q4 2025 SG&A included a $1.6M increase in coach event costs even as coach compensation, marketing and employee costs were cut, which confirms events remain significant and unquantified.
- A reported pyramid-scheme and false-advertising class action in a federal district court, said to have been filed in March 2024. It appears on a single plaintiff-side aggregator and could not be confirmed against any primary docket, nor against the advocacy-group file, mainstream legal press, or the FY2025 10-K contingencies note, which discloses no material legal proceedings. It is recorded here as unconfirmed and is not published as fact anywhere in this report.
- The full Dispute Resolution Agreement. The policies incorporate it by reference and carry a capitalized jury-trial waiver, but the standalone text was not obtained - so whether it waives class actions, the arbitration forum, any fee-shifting provision and any opt-out window are unknown. Likewise, whether the pay portal holds back a minimum balance before releasing weekly commissions is not stated in any document reviewed.
- Earnings by rank, and the substantiation behind the July 2026 relaunch claims. The disclosure publishes no rank breakdown, so there is no way to state what a typical Senior Coach, Director or Executive Director earns. Separately, the clinical claims furnished in the July 2026 8-K - a 14% reduction in visceral fat, 98% of lean mass retained over sixteen weeks, and coached participants losing "10x more weight" and "17x more fat" - rest on a randomized controlled trial of two commercial weight-loss programs that the 8-K cites (Obesity Science & Practice, 2019); its sample size and control arm were not reviewed for this report, and the 8-K’s forward-looking statements list the risk "that future study results will be inconsistent with study results to date."
- State attorney-general activity and the exact disposition of the earlier auto-renewal class action. No state action was found, but a systematic fifty-state search was not performed - absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. The first auto-renewal claim was filed in federal court in California on 1 April 2022 and ended in a court-approved class settlement with final judgment on 30 May 2025; the settlement terms and amount were not reviewed. The second claim could not be located on a federal docket.
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
Looking at something else?
Enter any company name or website. If a report exists it opens instantly; if not, we start one.
Optavia - frequently asked
QIs Optavia a pyramid scheme?
QHow much do Optavia coaches actually earn?
QHow much does it cost to be an Optavia coach?
QWhy is Optavia shrinking so fast?
QIs Optavia an investment or securities risk?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Optavia’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
Tell me if this grade changes
Optavia is graded C- as of July 30, 2026. Grades move when the evidence moves - a new income disclosure, a regulatory action, a rewritten compensation plan. Leave your address and you will get one email if this one does.
One email when the grade moves, and nothing else. We will never use your address to promote an income opportunity of any kind, we do not sell, rent or share the list, and it is stored on our own infrastructure rather than with any company graded here. Unsubscribe removes everything.
Corrections
Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from Optavia than from a reader.
Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and keep a dated record of the change. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.
This address reaches a person, not a form. We do not require a takedown demand, an NDA or a lawyer to accept a correction, and we do not remove a report because a company disputes its conclusion - only because the underlying facts turn out to be wrong.