Expensive Diet takes the guess-work away.
Written: Oct 14 '05 (Updated Oct 17 '05)
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Pros: Food is easy to prepare. Diet is easy to follow.
Cons: Customer service needs to improve. More education can add to your success.
The Bottom Line: Nutrisystem is the perfect diet for the busy, on-the-go person. Meal plans are easy to stick to and there is a strong online support system.
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| belladonnadust's Full Review: NutriSystem Weight Loss Program |
Let's face it, I've tried every diet and I go down and then I go back up with interest. Or, I stay right where I am and give up the diet before I've really given it a chance to work. I'm not very dedicated and my will-power lacks drive. Besides, I am a hedonist at heart and I just don't like giving up what I like.
I've tried Atkins, I've tried pills, I've tried Weight-watchers and I've tried those horrid cleansing diets that leave you weak and tired with your hair falling out (I was young and desperate then - never again!). So, I considered Nutrisystem for a long time before I finally decided to give it a try.
It's expensive. Expect to spend about $280 a month, not including the extra stuff you have to buy from the supermarket to complete the meal plan. On the average, I spend about $25 a week on grocery items such as non-fat yogurt, non-fat milk, non-fat cheese, fruit, fresh vegetables for dinner, non-fat dressings and quantities of salad like you've never eaten before. Add an additional $100 a month to the cost of the diet.
It's easy. You can place your order online without ever having to speak to a sales person. Each entree has a picture and serving suggestion, but you really have to work your way through a month before you can decide what foods you actually like and dislike. The food arrives in a few days and the first time, I excitedly unpacked, inventoried and stocked my shelves with it. About halfway through the box, I realized that I did not have enough shelf space to accommodate all the boxes and packets (nothing is refrigerated). Keep in mind that my family eats normally so I still have to maintain a stocked kitchen to feed them with.
Auto Delivery allows you to order a full month supply of food and each month, it is automatically sent out to you and the fee is taken directly from your account. Shipping is free when you choose this option and you get some additional perks with this option. You can edit your order any time you want to, and believe me, you will. You get a little welcome packet which includes a little diary booklet. Although I ordered enough food (through Auto-Delivery) to last 28 days, the booklet features "free weekends" where you do not eat NS foods and replace them with good meal choices. They help you determine what you can and cannot eat on the weekends. The first two weeks, I didn't "cheat" on the weekends and only ate the NS foods. Keeping track in the diary was fun at first but quickly got tedious. Still, it's a necessary step in the learning process and that's important.
Each day, I chose a breakfast item and supplemented it with my grocery items. It's kind of a shock at first to get used to the new portion sizes. I guess we're just accustomed to huge portions and part of the education that Nutrisystem offers is adjusting your portion size to what your body needs, not what we're used to eating. The first time I poured out my portion of cereal, it looked like only about 4 tablespoons and I looked at that and thought, “I’m gonna be starving!”. But, as you work your way through the day, you’re really not starving at all! The first few days took some getting used to, as I had to resist the urge to eat an entire Hershey’s chocolate bar or the whole bag of Lay’s potato chips sitting in my pantry but then you get into the groove of the diet and it’s not so hard anymore. Lunch is tasty and easy to prepare – mostly you can just use the microwave to warm up the warm entrees. You supplement the entree with as much salad greens as you want to eat but you must limit the amount of dressing you use. Dinner is a little more substantial. Choose from a huge variety of entrees, supplement it with salad and dinner vegetables and by the end of your meal, you’re pretty full. You get a dessert/snack too.
As I said, I followed the regimen precisely at first, always eating and measuring exactly what was on the meal plan. The first two weeks, I lost 8 pounds. What I realized was that I was hungriest between lunch and dinner so I began eating my dessert/snack then rather than save the snack for the end of the day. I also found that dinner was too large but I got really hungry in the middle of the day so I switched my dinner entree for the lunch entree and it worked perfect. You have some flexibility to how you follow the plan and I think that makes it more successful because you can tailor the diet to work for you. Just make sure you eat everything in the meal plan so you don't short your body of nutrients. Drinking all of your daily fluid requirements is so very important to flush the toxins out of your body and help you lose weight.
The meals are so easy to prepare and there is a great boost to knowing that each morning, all you have to do is pour out some salad and pluck an entree from the shelf and you’re ready to sail out the door. It’s terribly convenient for those who work and I traded drive-through fast food for healthier, less fattening meal choices simply because the food was readily available to me.
The food is tasty. Well, most of it. I found the breakfasts and lunches to be quite tasty and I quickly identified my favorites - cereals and yogurt for breakfast, nutrition bars or Tex-Mex rice and salad for lunch. There is such a variety of dinners to choose from such as Turkey with dumplings and gravy, Lasagna, Pot Roast and Vegetables, Marsala Chicken and Thai Tofu with Peanut Sauce. But, after awhile, they all sort of taste the same. The texture of the "meat" in the dinner entrees feels processed and the flavor of the sauce, no matter what they call it, has the same undertone of processed flavor to it, which got old really quick. By the first month’s end, I narrowed down my dinner choices to three kinds of entrees that I though I could tolerate. Everybody has different tastes and you may find the food more palatable. Also at first, I found eating so much salad got really boring, really fast. But then I got used to eating so much salad and after a bit, I even looked forward to it, even on my "days off".
You're not alone. There is tons of support through message boards, chat rooms, articles and nutrition counselors. My counselor and I speak irregularly by email and there is never any pressure to “check in” routinely. This can either be a pro or a con, depending on who you are. I like the autonomy of the service but I admit that when I need a shove of encouragement, I’m not likely to seek it out. The message boards offer a plethora of information and you can share stories, ask questions, and swap recipes to augment the over all diet. I must stress that this diet is not about what you eat! Rather, it’s a complete lifestyle change. What you eat, when you eat, how you eat, how much you eat, exercise…everything counts. Did I mention that you have to drink 64 ounces of water each day? The first week I peed constantly (even throughout the night) but your body adjusts and you get used to the quantity of water. One of my favorite features of the Nutrisystem Website is the Virtual Model. With Virtual Model, you build a model of yourself, choosing from face shapes, hair length and color and overall body type and, using your current weight, the computer renders an likeness of you as you appear now. Then, you enter your target weight and you see an image of what you can expect to look like when you’ve reached your target. It’s very inspiring! As you lose weight, you see three models. What you looked like when you started, what you look like now and what you’ll look like with the weight gone. You can even go to participating retailer’s Websites and try clothing on your future or present self. Between the counselors, the message boards and the Virtual Model, you get a lot of encouragement and support.
The Customer Service needs some work but overall, it’s not too bad. When my first order arrived, there were items missing. At first, I tried emailing customer service about the problem and when I sent the email, I got a bounce-back message stating that their customer service was overwhelmed and it would likely take two business days before anyone would get back to me. That was fine by me but by week’s end when no one responded, I was a little miffed. So, I called customer service and sat on hold for nearly 45 minutes before actually speaking to a human being. She quickly took care of the problem and within a week the missing food was delivered. When I had questions for my counselor, I found her answers to be cryptic at best and not terribly helpful. I was able to change my counselor to another one and am delighted with her. So, you have options at least. I’m 8 pounds shy of my goal and I feel better about myself and dieting in general than I ever have before. As I prepare to go off the Nutrisystem foods, I began asking questions about how to maintain my diet on “real” foods. I found the counselor to be a bit evasive about what or how much I can eat during my maintenance phase but I guess I’ll just have to find that out when I get there.
Success is in sight. Each week I weighed in at the same scale, wearing the same clothes and as the pounds came off, I felt a little more motivated to stick to the regimen for another week. I’ve been on the program for 4 months now and I am embarrassed to admit that I do very little exercise (unless you count sleeping next to my treadmill as exercise) and yet I’ve lost a total of 22 pounds. I cheat a lot now (mostly on weekends) when I spend time with my family but I actually don’t mind the challenge of seeking out healthful choices from restaurant menus or resisting the temptation to eat all the popcorn at the movies and I even indulge in some treats here and there. When you’re not allowed to eat goodies, you relish them all the more and I don’t feel so much like I need to order the large soft drink anymore because the small one will taste just as good.
Recommended:
Yes
Approximate Monthly Cost (US$) 380
Food Variety Restrictions A wide variety of allowed foods
Restrictiveness of Portions Satisfying
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Epinions.com ID:
belladonnadust
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Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 0 members
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