My Experience on Nutrisystem
Overall Nutrisystem Experience
It is Wednesday morning and I am to starting this blog post to journal my Nutrisystem experience. I am in my late 40’s and am 239.6 lb and I would like to drop to about 215 for now. My wife also joined Nutrisystem and we are doing the plan together and to be honest, this probably makes it much easier as we are able to eat the same dinners together and support each other. As I write this we are just starting day 3.
In your first shipment of Nutrisystem, you get a Turbo take-off box which you are supposed to eat in the first week. The one I received includes a pre-selection foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 7 days. One box of Nutricrush bars which includes 7 bars, and a box of 7 turbo shakes. So you have 5 things to eat a day and you work in the nutricrush bars and the Turbo shakes, one between breakfast and lunch and one between lunch and dinner. I also downloaded the Numi app that Nutrisystem puts out so I can track my meals in my phone instead of using the paper tracker they sent.
From what I can gather from the documentation they also want you to eat 4 servings of vegetables and drink 64 oz of water each day. For me I like broccoli and carrots so I bought some from the store to add into my meals
Day 1:
Breakfast: Chewy Chocolate Chip Granola Bar
Morning Snack: Turbo Shake
Lunch: Three Cheese Chicken and added some steamed broccoli
Afternoon Snack:Nutricrush Peanut Butter Chocolate bar & some cooked carrots
Dinner: Chicken Alfredo and more cooked carrots and steamed broccoli
I used their recipe for Maple baked carrots which I thought was good and when I steamed the broccoli and placed some salt or garlic salt on it. Overall the day was fine, I did not find myself craving any food until the evening. Nutrisystem only wants you to eat that for the day, but on the app, that was only 890 calories for the day, it was about 7:30 pm and I was hungry, so I dipped into my snacks and had the carrot cake. This brought me to 1040 calories which to me is still a low calorie count.
Day 2:
During day 2, I found myself hungry here and there. I wound up eating a Fiber One Bar in the morning to help with a little of the hunger and it did the trick. They are only 90 calories so this did not worry me too much. I also ate a Special K 100 calorie pastry crisp in the evening. This means that on day 2 I ate 930 calories and that is with the extra 190 calories I ate off the plan. So why did I eat those bars instead of going into my snacks? Well those bars were actually less calories and any of the snacks I had on hand from Nutrisystem and I was trying to stay as close as possible to the Turbo 7 day plan as possible.
Morning of Day 3:
I am now 236.2 lbs. So after 2 days on the plan I am down 3 lbs.
My wife is also down 3 lbs
I don’t know if I will be listing each day, but I wanted to give you a sense of the first 7 days. I will be reporting back in every once in awhile and updating this post.
Morning of Day 4:
I am now 233.4 lbs, so after 4 days on the diet and I am down an overall of 6 lbs. That means I am averaging 3 lbs for every 2 days and I have cheated almost every day with either an extra Nutrisystem snack, a Fiber One bar or a Special K 100 calorie pastry crisp. Using the Numi app, I am still averaging around 1000 calories a day, but I am looking forward to next week when I am done the Turbo Takeoff. Currently my wife has lost 5 lbs.
Morning of Day 9:
So it is Tuesday morning, and I am currently at 231.6 lbs. The last 3 days were a little slow on the weight loss but there is a good reason that is not Nutrisystem’s fault. Saturday my wife and I decided to eat out at a locate italian restaurant. We got something called a chicken crisp which is 2 pieces of thin chicken breast breaded topped with mixed greens and a lemon type of dressing. It also comes with a side of angle hair pasta with olive oil and roasted garlic as a sauce. Usually when we would go to this restaurant we would each order a meal, this time we split one and we were full, so that was progress.
Sunday we went to outback for a big family dinner and I ordered a 6oz sirloin with 2 sided, broccoli and mixed veggies. I also ordered a house salad with thousand island. Monday I had a lunch meeting at work and ordered this cubano sandwich. All other meals over the weekend we stayed with the Nutrisystem food, and my only deviation on Monday was the sandwich. The interesting thing was that when dinner came around, I was not really hungry because I was still full from the cubano sandwich, but I ate the Nutrisystem dinner at 6:30 anyway because I did not want to be starving later. So for 3 days I had setbacks with staying on the diet. I tried to be reasonable on portion control when off the diet and I still lost 2 lbs so I am still happy. It’s nice to know that you can go off the diet, and still lose weight. The key is only going off for only one meal and watching portions during that meal.
Morning of day 11:
Just weighed myself this morning and I am 230.4. I stuck to the Nutrisystem diet both Tuesday and Wednesday this week and in those 2 days lost a little over a pound.
Morning of day 15:
It’s Monday morning, start of my 3rd week and I have lost over 10 lbs already. Just weighed myself this morning and I am 227.6. We ate out on Saturday night at Cracker Barrel, but we ate smart. Nutrisystem has an eating out guide and there was a meal in there that we tried. Cracker Barrel also had this grilled chicken strawberry salad. We ordered one of each and split them. On Sunday for Mother’s day, I made a steak dinner with mixed grilled veggies and asparagus, no potato. This week should be pretty easy to stick to the diet during the week so we will see how I am doing on Friday.
Morning of day 31:
It’s Wednesday morning, and I have not reported in for a while. We have been doing well, I am now down to 222.8 which means I am down 16.8 lbs in one month. I feel great, I have more energy and I was thinking to myself what if I went to the store and bought a 15 lb bag of potatoes and put it in a back pack and carried it around.
Last weekend was memorial weekend, I did cheat but was smart about it. When I do go off the diet, I watch my portions, I may gain a pound or stay even for a day or two when I go off the diet, but within a day or two of getting back on track, I will loose weight again. So I guess on average I have lost about 0.5 lbs each day for the month of May and overall I am very happy I did this and would recommend it to anyone.
Just an update on my wife, she is down a total of 10 lbs for May. She has the same struggles I had with Various Holidays (Mother’s Day, Memorial Weekend, etc). May gain a pound, but as soon as you go back on you loose. We have eaten out most weekends, so I would say we probably did as most 5 Nutrisystem ‘s dinners in a week. So leftover food is piling up. We had to delay our next order by 2 weeks so we can eat some of the food and make more room for the next shipment.
Morning of day 58:
It’s Tuesday morning, and again I have not reported in for a while. This morning when I weighed myself I am down to 218.4 and I have hit a 20 lb milestone. Weight-loss this month was a little tougher. It’s June, and there have been parties and soccer tournaments. Over one tournament, I gained 4 lbs in 3 days, but to be fair, I lost that same 4 lbs in 5 days; so it seemed like a temporary gain. I am a little over 3 lbs from my goal weight of 215 and I will probably reevaluate my goal once I reach it.
My original plan was to hit 215 and maintain that for the summer, see how I feel, then maybe shoot for 210 or 205. Overall I am very happy. In two months I lost a total of 20 lbs.
Morning of day 112:
I have not really been eating much Nutrisystem in the last month. About 6 weeks ago, I watch a documentary called “Forks over Knives” and it changed the way I think about food. Netflix then recommended “What the Health”, and watching these two documentary totally changed my diet. The two shows advocate eating more plant protein over animal protein.
I am by no means a vegan, but I have definitely started eating more plant protein. Here is my premise. We eat 21 meals a week, I use to eat an animal protein for probably 18-20 of these meals between milk, lunch meat, etc. What I am trying to do is more that number to 5 or less meals a weeks containing animal protein. I am eating cereal with Ripple Milk, and eating more fruits and veggies. If I go to outback, I will still get a steak, but I will probably eat all vegan the next day.
I have lost an additional 7lbs, I am down to 211.4 and I feel great.