It is crazy expensive. I did the fresh daily delivery for two weeks (I lost eight pounds), but they have different options that are slightly different.
I have to tell you, it was a lot of food. At the end, I had meals and snacks stacked up in my fridge because I couldn’t eat that much stuff (three meals with sides plus two snacks every day). Everything was good, some delicious, and you can specify what you don’t like or are allergic to so it can be rather customizable.
I’d do it again, if I was looking to lose more.
Oh, one thing: They will send you stuff and email you until the end of time. They called every so often for a few months afterward too. Good customer service though.
One more thing. My in-laws did it too, but they just used the books (They’re available on Amazon) and it worked very well for them. FIL lost over 50lbs and MIL lost 20 or so.
In fact, that’s why I’d first heard of it. ILs came to visit and I made breakfast. MIL requested an eggwhite omelet with one piece of bacon, a half of a banana and a cup of strawberries. Tell me you wouldn’t look at a houseguest as if they were mad.
Well, I hate to break the bad news to you, but if you’re not going to take responsibility for your own eating habits (which means counting your calories and sticking to a plan you formulate yourself), sooner or later you will stop buying whatever “food plan” you subscribe to, “go back to normal” eating habits and gain all the weight back, if not more.
This is especially true if you already think of these “food plans” as “miserable”. You’re basically saying to yourself, “yeah, I’ll do something icky for a while to lose weight”, with the clear implication that “after I’m happy enough with the weight loss I’ll go back to normal”. And if you’re objective enough, you’ll realize that the next logical step is, “I’ll gain all the weight back”, because if it happened the first time (going from (H)appy weight to H+N lbs. of weight over T months/years), what makes you think it won’t happen again over the next time period T once you “go back to normal”?
Completely agree with Robardin, I was only able to break the punitive diet - lose some weight/return to “normal” eating cycle - regain every pound and more when I finally found something I didn’t find miserable and I could just…keep doing forever. Yeah, it’s a lot of work (lots more trips to the grocery store) but I’m 2 years + at my goal weight and I feel great.
There were a lot of mental obstacles I had to work through:
“It’s not FAIR that I can’t eat as many muffins as I want” - well, it’s not fair that I can’t spend as much money as I want either, but I have to make a budget and stick to it.
“It’s not FAIR that I have to work so hard and other people are just naturally skinny” - It’s not fair that I have to go to work everyday and Paris Hilton was born rich and spends her days shopping and going to parties.
“I hate keeping a food journal and counting calories and working out” - I also hate flossing, paying taxes and waiting in line at the DMV, but those are all necessary so I just have to do them.
Like I posted earlier, my problem with Nutrisystem is the “what then?” You lose a bunch of weight, what then? If you haven’t made any changes, learned healthier habits, found new healthy recipes you like, what then? In my experience, goal weight with no plan = 1 day at goal weight and then a rapid weight regain.
I used to want to diet for a little while (and I expected it to be miserable! plain chicken breast, squeeze of lemon on a salad) and then go back to eating normally. Took me 20 years to figure out that my “normal” eating made me fat. I had to change my normal. Now that I’m maintaining my weight loss, it looks almost exactly like losing weight, except I have a weekly treat meal and I allow myself 300 more calories a day. Still pack lunches, still menu plan for the week, still food journal, still count calories (although it’s a ballpark estimate now), still try to eat 5+ servings of vegetables a day, etc etc.
Sometimes a plan like this kick-starts someone’s diet. You lose a few pounds and you start feeling a little better about yourself and it makes it easier to continue.
Looking at that board there are ways to follow the diet without their food. Sometimes it teaches you portion control.
That’s why I recommend the Atkins. You can stay on that forever if you can live without pasta and bread.
For you folks that find that having “choices” is your downfall, let me recommend eDiets.
I am on the Atkins eDiets plan right now (I think they have over 10 to choose from), and I have found it to be so…releasing. They tell you what to eat and what to buy. If you toss out all of the extra junk at your house and just buy what is on your shopping list for a week, there is literally no way to cheat (at home - but it’s the same for Nutrisystems). If you want to eat a little extra, you can’t - not without running out of food.
It’s really done wonders for me. eDiets tells me what to do and I do it. As for “what next?” the cool thing is that after about 2 months now I find myself able to automatically make the right decisions in the grocery store and in the kitchen, based on what has been ingrained in me by eDiets. I could probably even go without it now but I still enjoy it.
And it’s only like $18/mo.
Give it a try if you are looking for some heavy-handed guidance because you don’t trust yourself. It worked for me (and is still working - I have a while to go yet).
Very, very well put, Glory; with your permission I will crib it for future discussions with friends and strangers on this topic!
As for the idea of following “diet plans” until you basically internalize them, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It seems to me that either you’re consigning yourself to eating a fixed same menu rotation for the rest of your life (which would probably have the desired effect, but for me would be a completely unacceptable way to live), or else expecting to absorb the underlying nutritional principles behind the diet plan by osmosis, which strikes me as expecting to learn statistical functions by playing around with Excel built-ins: if all you’re doing are exercises in “numbers in, numbers out”, you’re not really learning “how”, just being able to regurgitate a few examples of “what”.
I also fundamentally can’t imagine ever saying, “don’t tell me the whys and wherefores, just tell me what to do” about almost anything… And especially not something as up close and personal a topic as my own physical well-being.
I can understand this, however, why just “trust” eDiets’ edicts on what your nutritional plan is? Why not read up on nutrition and calories, plan a whole week’s worth of meals based on their frequency, nutritional content and calorie values, and then stick to it? Why is it easier to cheat on your own plan than eDiet’s?
Please note that I do not mean this as an attack on ZipperJJ or even a put down of the eDiets website/service. It sounds like a good thing, not a gimmick, and can help people lose weight while using it. I am simply a strong advocate of people going through the “pain” of learning to count calories, plan meals and exercising as the most proven way to lose weight and keep it off. (I myself have done the first part in this manner – I lost 50 lbs. last year – and am so far keeping it off this year.)
As one guide book I read put it (paraphrasing), Consider who you’re emulating. On the one hand are the personal trainers and professional fitness experts – people whose livelihood depend on staying in shape, like athletes and bodybuilders – nearly all follow a similar program of self-regimented eating, food planning and exercise. On the other hand, there are the habitual dieters who are always following this or that plan this year, and another one the next, losing weight and gaining it back. If you want to avoid being one of those yo-yo dieters, why would you continue to do what they all do, instead of what the people who maintain being in good shape all the time do?
And, by counting calories and exercising, I’ve discovered can actually eat a fair amount of “sin foods” and still maintain the shape I’m in. The key is in having learned not to eat 'til I’m stuffed, and to keep these types of meals to less than 20% of my total meal count.
This is a timely discussion for me. Today (04/21) is the 5 year anniversary of my hitting my goal weight. I used Weight Watchers, and still do, but have found that as I go along, I change how I eat. I lost my weight on the Flex plan, but two weeks ago switched to their Core plan.
I agree with robardin; mindsets have to change. You can’t eat how you always ate - that’s how you got where you are. You have to change. And the change has to be permanent. I fully believe in “Everything in moderation…including moderation”. I do indulge; just not as often, and not as much. And when I feel my indulgences have gone out of control, I cut back.
Susan
(Oh, and just for clarities’ sake - I am still at my goal weight, 5 years later)
I definitely take the point that I need to change underlying habits. I am a food addict and part of that is not knowing what normal portion sizes are, eating when I’m not hungry, isolating myself to eat, etc. But I don’t know what else to do right now and it will kill me if I don’t do something. And I don’t have the control to shop smart, etc. I am hoping I will learn something about portion sizes, what foods are healthful and not harmful (there is a long list of things you can add to the plan food that won’t hurt). Maybe feeling what it’s like to not be in pain and uncomfortable and easily out of energy will be enough to teach me that I need to make long-term changes.
Good luck gigi. You ought to try the nutrisystem forum I posted the link for since your going with that plan. People there seem incredibly helpful and supportive. Even people who have reached their goals seem to offer support and suggestons without lectures.
You may want to try an approach that I stumbled across by accident last year, that set me on my path to successful weight loss (after 3 failed attempts to follow Atkins and other “diets” over the previous 5 years): breaking up my lunches (and if very large, my breakfasts) into two meals instead of one. (You can read more about it at my LJ posting if you’re interested).
I used to match an eating pattern I later learned is called “starve and binge”. I unconsciously valued the feeling of feeling “stuffed” as a sort of contentment, and viewed eating large quantities of food as a sort of achievement. I would often eat only 2 meals a day, going until 1pm with only coffee, building up a mighty appetite to devour a big lunch, get all full and sleepy, then taper down to feeling very hungry again around 7pm, to eat a very big dinner.
This is bad not only from a “total calorie intake” perspective, it’s damaging to one’s metabolism to jerk it around like this. When one oscillates between sharp valleys and peaks, of going from “starving” to “stuffed and sleepy” multiple times on a daily basis, this is Very Bad.
So what I did was not to change “what” I ate much at all (to begin with), just my frequency – I took my “normal” big ol’ lunch but ate half of it at 1pm and the other half at 4pm. I also made sure to always eat breakfast (a large bowl of cereal) by 9:30am. This made me less hungry come dinnertime, so that I wasn’t ravenously hungry, and I generally felt much better and awake throughout the day without the peaks-and-valleys.
I also took a nearly daily walk (5 days as week) of 45 minutes or so after dinner. A walk at a relatively brisk pace, not a “stroll”. No running or jogging or treadmill or anything.
And with just these changes, very easy to do really, I lost 15 lbs. in four weeks, and set myself up to get more serious about losing weight. Without the peaks-and-valleys I also learned to listen to my body better, to disassociate feelings of eating and gorging from achievement and satisfaction, so that overeating is now physically uncomfortable. And whatever sense of sastisfaction/accomplishment I may have felt from working myself up to eating an 18-oz. steak with potatoes and wine for dinner, pales in comparison to losing two pants sizes and 25 lbs. in three months, let me tell you!
Thank you for the feedback. I have a friend on Weight Watchers who doesn’t eat all day and then uses all the points on a big dinner. I know that’s allowed but I agree with you that a steady diet of small meals is supposed to keep the sugar level and of course wards off overriding hunger. OA says HALT–don’t become too hungry, angry, lonely or tired and then try to make good decisions.
I have an innate laziness too that lets grocery shopping lapse in favor of take-out or prepared foods and that’s a downfall too.
I did something similar when I was younger, except it would be more like eat nothing for 2-3 days and then have one big meal. Sure I was really skinny, but that sort of thing is VERY VERY BAD. I’m sure it’s part of why I have trouble maintaining a normal weight now.
I’m teaching myself, slowly it seems, to eat on a regular schedule. Portion control is another hurdle for me, which is why I’ve been doing the Healthy Choice thing. I’m getting back on my diet this week, so hopefully a few more pounds will say bye bye!
VERY, VERY BAD indeed. I have an older sister who got down to a nearly “normal” weight (no small feat in my family!) by living on speed, coffee and iced tea Monday thru Saturday, and then pigging out at Mom’s house on Sundays. Her metabolism is now screwed up beyond belief. Her weight is now out of control, I’m going to guess that, at 5’7", she weighs around 280. Cutting calories like normal people doesn’t work for her, because of all those years of starve/binge eating. It’s very sad.
Before I threw in the towel on dieting and had weight loss surgery (changing my eating habits was still required, but my new plumbing likes protein, and fusses at me if I indulge in too many carbs, and will not allow overeating), I found that a modified Atkins, (something akin to South Beach) worked for me for about a year. I cut out all ‘white’ carbs: refined sugar, refined flour, white rice, white potatoes. Other than those things, I ate pretty much whatever I wanted, any time I wanted. I lost 60lbs that way, and it was practically painless. It was only after I started to re-gain while still adhering that I knew my body was not going to cooperate with such stuff.