Jenny Craig is a Good Start
Written: Mar 28 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Structured; pre-planned menus
Cons: Relatively expensive; counselors unhelpful
The Bottom Line: I think Jenny Craig will work for a limited group of people. At the end of the day, losing weight is hard work. Jenny Craig gave me some useful tools.
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| buben's Full Review: Jenny Craig Platinum Membership |
I recommend Jenny Craig to people who like structure and do not have to cook for their family. I went on Jenny Craig last year and ultimately bought 3 months worth of food. I did the plan that you can do over the phone and have food delivered to your door. I had a once a week call with a counselor (which I found completely worthless).
Here's what I like about Jenny Craig -- it reinforces the fact that (despite everything South Beach and Atkins and Zone diets say) you have to count calories. I was on the 1200 calorie per day plan, and I saw the pounds start coming off, even though I had been trying to diet literally for three years and had not lost any weight. What I saw with JC was that -- if I ate 1200 calories per day, I lost weight. When I overate, I gained it back. Sounds simple, but it was a very helpful lesson for me. I had a lot of excuses for not losing weight before -- chiefly, I am getting older (age 42) and metabolism is slowing down. That may be somewhat true, but I definitely saw results with JC immediately. I also realized that I was snacking throughout the day on small things at the office (mini-chocolate bars, nuts) that were adding mega calories into my diet.
What I did with Jenny Craig is go off the program and develop my own program with better tasting and cheaper frozen foods sold from the grocery store. Lean Cuisine has many extremely tasty frozen meals. Weight Watchers does as well, and there are others. The Jenny Craig food isn't bad, but it's not as good as Lean Cuisine and it gets expensive. Also, the variety is less -- it gets monotonous after a while. But Jenny Craig helped me to put together a diet that has worked well for me, and I think that I'll be able to continue with a version of this plan when I reach my goal. (I have lost 25 pounds, and would like to lose 15-20 more pounds). The thing that Jenny Craig taught me is that I should put together menus with variety (I am eating lots of tasty things, including waffles and pancakes) and keep it around 1200 calories per day, and I will see results.
I think Jenny Craig would be difficult for someone who has to cook for a family. We don't have kids, and my husband and I often do our own thing for meals. I am working a lot, and it is actually much more convenient for me to have a frozen meal than it is to cook something. If I did have to cook meals for a family, I think it would be difficult for me to sit down with my frozen meal, while they all ate home-cooked food. I think the frozen/prepackaged meals are fine, but I am not so crazy that I think they are as good as home cooked food.
A couple of other comments. Like a previous reviewer, I also had nausea caused by the diet supplements supplied by JC. I simply stopped taking them, and substituted a multi-vitamin. And the "counseling" aspect to JC is a joke. I had someone over the phone calling me once a week -- it was less than nothing. The people are untrained, from what I could tell. I actually fell off their radar screen, when the woman I had apparently left her job, and they didn't have anyone call me. I only got another counselor after I called to order more food.
Recommended:
Yes
Approximate Monthly Cost (US$) 500
Food Variety Restrictions A wide variety of allowed foods
Restrictiveness of Portions Few small portions
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Epinions.com ID:
buben
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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