a.) down 12 pounds
b.) 2 inches smaller around my waist
c.) totally sick of the food
I'm glad NutriSystem ignored me and my awesome blog because now I'm free to say how much their food sucks my big left toe.
Breakfast is okay. They have muffins, breakfast bars, oatmeal, cereal... It's all *shoulder shrug* meh. Some of it has that distinct, mouth-screwing-up taste of diet (if you've ever had diet anything, you know what I mean) but all in all, breakfast is not bad. But...Kashi cereals are practically the same thing. So are Quaker Instant Oatmeal packets. And they taste better.
I like their lunches. I'll straight up admit that lunch has been my favorite meal of the day because I love soup. And lunch on NutriSystem is soup, soup, soup, soup, soup. Cup-o-soup actually. Paper cups full of dry soup mix. Just add boiling water. And a salad. They also have little cat food tins of pasta and *gasp* more soup.
But the dinners...oh, gawd, the dinners. Imagine a room temperature Lean Cuisine mixed with Puppy Chow.
I cannot stomach the dinners. I have gagged them down while the rest of the family happily digs into my casseroles and meatloaves and home cooked meals. I hate picking at my little tray of dog food, drooling over what everyone else is eating (AND I COOKED DAMN IT!) while I'm being "good". Or punished for being fat. I can't decide which.
The snacks and desserts are hit and miss. Some days I pick a goody (like the cookies!) other days I grab a dud (Sour Cream and Onion Soy Chips or certain chocolate bars). Dud days make me want to cry, because after a dinner of Meow Mix I'm holding out for SNACK (yes, all in caps) to be my saving grace.
Don't believe the people who claim NutriSystem is delicious. It's not. It's sub par diet food. There are better tasting chocolate protein bars and soy chips on the shelf at your local Wal-Mart. And at least Lean Cuisine doesn't look like dog food.
But eating it has taught me about portions--and always serving sides of vegetables. I rarely ever considered side dishes before. It was hard enough to get the main course on the dinner table, let alone worry about broccoli or a salad. Now I see that vegetables aren't Optional Dinner Fluff. They're important. They help fill me up and keep me from reaching for seconds (or thirds) of fatty, calorie-ridden stuff.
They help those recipes that are supposed to serve 4...uh, serve 4. (Not just me and Kevin.) We don't need a 9x13pan of lasagna--we need a couple pieces and a big skillet full of zucchini. We don't need two large supreme pizzas--we need one medium and a bag of salad.
And I don't need NutriSystem astronaut food. I need to cook balanced meals.
But my living room is stuffed full of it, so I better keep gagging it down. And hey, it works. For a diet, that's all that matters.
Right?
14 comments:
Try eating less REAL FOOD. Salads with fruit & veggies, high fiber meals, less fat and always less calories in than you burn off. Are you going to DIET for the rest of your life? How will you keep it off?
aww, I'm sad you don't love it. I admit that some of the dinners are bad, or maybe I'm just a bad cook so my tastebuds are used to sub-par food.
That's something I'm not willing to consider.
ohhh, but the Thin Mint Crisp bars. YUMMMM....dessert is my favorite time of day.
& congrats on being down 12 lbs :)
I got suckered into Nutrisystem after delivering my 3rd baby and not losing about 20-ish lbs. I lost absofreakinlutely nothing (except 200 some-odd bucks). 5 years and healthier eating habits later, the weight's off. Congrats on getting a good start on your baby weight loss!
If you want to try something else. there are 2 great dinner planner sites I've used. Both have low-calorie/fat options. Both come with a weeks worth of recipes along with sides for 3 months. Both come with a shopping list so you don't have to figure that out yourself.
The first is dinnerplanner.com
We used it for a year before the dinners started to repeat. In that time, there was only 1 dinner that none of us could eat. The meals were flavorful, filling, and EASY!!! Very few took longer than 30 minutes to make, and if they did, there was a bold warning for you.
The second was e-mealz.com. I like it alright, but I think dinnerplanner was better. But, this is way, way cheaper. Usually 70-80/ week for dinner. For your family, you would have enough for leftovers the next day. We don't when we buy exact quantities.
The best thing about this is that it (almost) completely elimanates the going out to eat factor. I already have all I need on hand to fix dinner for a week.
And to give you a glimce in my life, I teach high school math and coach a cheer squad, my husband is a soldier in the Army. My oldest is 15 on the footbal team, my daughter is 10 and plays soccer. I also have a 3 year old and a 7 month old. I am busy. But this is easy.
I've decided that the biggest lesson most of us can learn is portion size and eating more veggies. Remember when a quarter pounder was a BIG hamburger?
Congrats on the lesson, the weight loss, and on actually cooking. That's the lesson I need to learn.
Forgive me if this is assvice. :)
Have you tried counting calories and using something to track what you eat? I love Sparkpeople.com - it is FREE! It will tell you how many calories to eat to lose or maintain, and then you put in your food each day and get feedback at the end of the day.
Plus, there are graphs and stuff, which...orgasm. I love graphs.
But anyway, it's not really like A Diet because you can basically eat whatever you want, you just have to measure your portions and plan your day. You won't lose 5lbs a week, but you will lose weight and keep it off, because it's not a fad type of thing.
I like your Nutrisystem review. No offense to Blair, because MUAH I LUV HER, but I refuse to believe that Nutrisystem is delicious and teaches you the right way to eat.
Yeah, I did Weightwatchers for a bit after this baby, but it's pricey. So now I just use MyCalorieCounter.com (IT'S FREE) and it calculates what you need to intake to lose 1-2 lbs a week. It's awesome. Just makes you aware of what you are sticking in your mouth! You eat REAL food. I laugh because at work there are like 3 people trying to sell their Nutrisystem food they purchased and hated :)
thanks for the HONEST review!
i've found that for me it's all about the portions. although i totally failed on the portion thing last night. i knew it was bad while i was doing it, but i couldnt, and didn't want to stop.
I learned about portion control after having Gestiational Diabetes. I had NO idea! I stilll don't follow it very well, but did whn I was pregnant. I actually lost 3 pounds my third trimester...which was needed!!
You go girl on the 12 pounds!!
::takes jen out back & beats her senseless & shoves thin mint crisp bars down her throat::
Congrats on the 12 pounds! Thats awesome and so sorry but that pic of your dinner totally looks like dog food, I agree with ya on that one!
Blair: I never tried thin mint crisp bars. But I'm doing Nutrisystem D (diabetic) because that's what my mom ordered. There's a whole bunch of food that isn't on the D list.
Ha! The D list.
That picture of the food...kinda looks like dog food. Bummer it tastes bad, but yay for down 12 pounds!
Just jumping on here to let you in on my secret...Somersizing. This has got to be the easiest diet in the world. I am 11 weeks in and am down 28 lbs. What do I eat in a typical day? Fruit, Raisin Bran or Bacon and Eggs, Smoked Cheddar sausage, Greek salad loaded with full fat Feta and full fat dressing, Cheese, Hamburger loaded with Mayo, Cheese, Tomatoe and Bacon(without the bun). I'm, not kidding you, I eat awesome foods like this every single day and am thrilled with my weight loss to date. I am going for 50 lbs, and hope to do this by October. In the meantime, I am never ever hungry, and have no problems eating out as it is so easy to pick out the stuff I can have. Look into it everyone...it can work for you too!
Sorry for hijacking your comment section to toot the Somersizing horn, but when you come across something that really really works, you want to shout it from the rooftops when you hear about someone trying to lose weight the 'dogfood' way!
Good luck in your efforts..
Sassy
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